Hershey - The Great American Chocolate Bar TR - Day 3, Hersheypark, update 7/28 About This Page:

[RobDVC]

Another entertaining update, Jeff!
I stuck with you on your tour of the AACA museum. That looks really neat and something we might have to do the next time we head to Hershey.
I haven't come across a Red Robin restaurant before, but I'd love to eat there. I've never met a burger I didn't like. Can't wait to hear about your day at Hersheypark.

[WDWfan]

Jeff - Great update! I stayed with you for the cars, but I have to admit the chocolate does hold more of an attraction for me. [img]/ubb/images/graemlins/smirk.gif[/img]

I [img]/ubb/images/graemlins/love.gif[/img] the burgers at Red Robin! My favorite has blue cheese, onion straws, and a spicy sauce! So good! [img]/ubb/images/graemlins/yuma.gif[/img] I may have to have one this weekend!

Sorry you missed the preview, but it sounds like your little ones needed the rest. Looking forward to hearing about your day at Hersheypark!

[Meggera]

I stuck it out through the car tour, too. My DH would [img]/ubb/images/graemlins/love.gif[/img] that museum. He is a car fanatic. I think it's a guy thing. Looking forward to seeing what you think about Hershey Park!

Laura

[LBAK]

Thanks for the update! Can't wait for the next installment. [img]/ubb/images/graemlins/waytogo.gif[/img]

[ecmiller]

Thanks so much for your description and the photos of the AACA museum. My dear stepfather was totally into antique cars. I can't remember how many he had in the many years I knew him. He was active (president at the time of his death) in the local AACA Chapter. My mom bought one of the memorial bricks that are at the museum. She was there with my sister at the end of June. I am hoping we can get there this summer too.

[lauren-roxy]

Fantastic and hilarious update!!! Loved the car museum, even though I was sure it would be boring, but I was greatly surprised!!!!! Thanks for the tip about the AAA discount! Can't wait to read more, this is wonderful reading!!!

[bsblady01]

more please

[WEDway Guy]

Day 3 – Hersheypark Day (June 20, 2006)

Who: WEDway’s Family: Me-Jeff (34), DW-Ann (??), DD1 Emma- (5 going on 18) and DD2 Maya (2.5 going on 2.6)
My DSis’s Family (hailing from WI) – Sis Terri, BiL Mark, Nephew Matthew, Neice –Megan
My father aka Grandpa Tom
What: Visit Hersheypark and stuff
Where: Hershey, PA and surrounding day trips
HAFH (home away from home): Marriott’s Spring Hill Suites – Hershey
When: Jun 18-22
Why: A chance to visit Hershey and see distant family

First stop, a little history of the park. I didn’t know a thing about the place so it was great to find all this stuff out during our visit. For all of you who are groaning right now, don’t worry, it’s only going to be a paragraph or two long. It’s not like I’m talking cars again.

So, say you’re Milton Hershey, a guy who has been through a lot just to get his chocolate industry off the ground. What do you add to a town you essential built to support your business? A big mall? No, to commercial. A large statue eating a Hershey bar to proclaim your success to everyone? No, to ego-centric. A school? Not a bad idea, but maybe something a bit more for everyone in town. That’s it! A park of course! Long story short – he built it, and they came.

The park we know today as Hersheypark was nothing like the original park of 1907. Back then, Hershey Park was an area along a river with a baseball field, picnic grounds and a pavilion for bands and theatrical performances. Slowly, the park developed. The addition of a carrousel, band shell, scenic park train, additional fields and a zoo in the 1910’s really cemented the park as a place of enjoyment for all. In 1923, for the 20th anniversary of the company, Milton Hershey gave the town its first roller coaster, the Wild Cat. The rest of the Roaring 20’s added more thrill ides and Hershey Park was well on its way to becoming what it is today.

Now it was our chance to experience Hersheypark. (The change in nomenclature from Hershey Park to Hersheypark is still somewhat curious to me.) The park hours during our visit were 10am – 10pm so we knew we had a lot of time to check things out. Being the second longest day of sunlight this year (June 20), we could have planned it better if we tried. I knew that after a long night of park previews, everyone but the WEDway’s would be moving a little slowly this morning. No biggie though, it’s vacation. We are all out the door and on the way to the park by a quarter to 10. As you approach the entrance to the park you enter Tudor Square. As its name implies, Tudor Square is themed after a small town English square. Is it accurate? Who knows? Is it nice? Definitely. It has a restaurant, coffee shop, candy store and gift shop. As we walked through the area, many people were enjoying a nice breakfast on a patio that overlooked the pathway to the park. This location or the coffee shop would be ideal for people watching – if that’s your thing. As you get closer, the right hand side of the path has a row of what can be best described as monoliths (think 2001: A Space Odyssey). Each one was toped with a label of a Hershey product. At first I wasn’t sure what this was but I soon realized that it was a really neat way of showing the visitors how Hersheypark denotes ride height restrictions. You could check your height and see which candy height you surpassed. As a bonus, you would get that piece of candy from the nice park host standing by to answer questions or just make jokes with the crowd. The sizes broke down like this:
Hershey Miniatures – under 36”
Hershey Kisses – 36”-42”
Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups – 42-48”
Hershey Bar – 48-54”
Twizzler’s - 55-60”
Jolly Rancher – 60”+

I was really jonesin’ for a Reeses’s and asked the host if I could have one. He told me I needed to fit between the lines to get one. So, when in Rome…



We finally make our way into the park. I didn’t expect a great awe inspiring entrance, but I was a little disappointed by it none the less.



You pass under a large castle-like gateway into the park. As you come up and around a bend, you see a nice fountain with a Mr. Hershey statue in the middle. From this spot, you can go left into the Founder’s Circle area or bang a right head for Rhineland. Not really taking the time to orient ourselves we chose to go left. Shorter lines, right? I mean correct? Or yes? Or…whatever… you know what I mean. This started our journey filled with many children’s rides. (Sorry for you coaster addicts, unfortunately I didn’t get too many chances to try these out.) First up for the girls, a swingy, hot air balloon type ride. Megan and/or Matt agreed to go on a lot of these rides with the kids. They’re such nice older cousins. I’m sure these weren’t the first rides they’d choose to go on but better them than us! [img]/ubb/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]



Remember how I told you Grandpa Tom and Terri’s family went to the preview night? Well, that, in combination with a bottle or two of wine nightly, (we brought a case with us on the trip) added up to a less than chipper, not so much spring in her step, big sis. Since she doesn’t read these boards so I can post this, but I am tempting fate and my life just a little.


Terri watching the rides go round and round and round.

It’s so fun to be a little brother! (And some of you thought I was nice.)


Next up was a visit to a classic Carrousel. This is always a favorite with the girls – aww heck – the whole family likes them. I believe this carrousel is the same one that was installed in the park in the 20’s. It’s pretty cool when you think about how many happy faces those horses produced for their riders over the years.


Now, I wasn’t really expecting any character interaction at Hersheypark but boy was I wrong. As we were getting in line for another spin on the carrousel, who do we spot walking up the path but Kit Kat him/her/itself. He/she/it was really great with the kids and he/she/it even made Ann give up one of her many “got milk” bracelets from Chocolate World before getting a hug. Is that candy bar extortion? Following right up behind Kit Kat was Hershey’s Kiss. This two was another great interaction. I think the pictures from these encounters are really funny because it just seems so bizarre to pose with a giant candy. Somehow posing with a pot bellied Pooh seems right, but a bar of chocolate…I’m not so sure. No matter, it was all fun and that’s what counts most in my book.


Next up were a series of more kiddies rides for our girls. Again, their cousins were happy to oblige their requests to ride along. The rides were really similar to Midway type rides that you’d find at local fairs but in much nicer condition. Frankly, this was all the girls really needed to have a great time. I’m not going to go over all the rides, but I think there was about 20 rides for kid over 36” in height. Needless to say they had a great time. The pictures show the fun better that I can describe it. During this time, Terri’s family split off from Grandpa Tom and us to go on the bigger rides. Grandpa decided to hang with the cool family. (That or it has something to do with his lack of enthusiasm for thrill rides. I’m going with my first thought.)


One of the rides that was kind of interesting was a VERY tame version of the log flume style ride. I believe it was called Tiny Timbers. It was a really slow moving line because you can imagine how long it takes to get kids and possibly their parents situated into makeshift log/boats. The logs float through an S-curve and then head up the big hill. There’s not much more fun as a parent than building the suspense of a drop like this for your kids. “Oh boy, this is getting pretty high.” “We are going to get drenched at the bottom!” “Did anyone bring their goggles because I think we might go underwater?” You get the idea. Of course, the hill and drop were nothing that came close to upsetting the girls but I had to add a little spice to it. Grandpa Tom was waiting in the splash Zone to catch a picture of us at the bottom of the hill. There was even a park photographer there too. I thought it was nice that they did this even for the not so popular rides.


After a couple of more turns on the smaller rides, we decided to go for a trip around the park on the monorail. You read that right, Hersheypark has a monorail. (For those of you really familiar with “The Simpson’s” you can start to softly chant “Monorail… Monorail”) It’s not quite a Bombardier MarkVI, but then again, what is?!? The monorail goes thru sections of the park then makes its way out to the Hershey manufacturing plant where you can still see a platform that allowed a second access to the park or plant. It’s no longer used. After that, you venture thru the Zoo America section. This is a smallish zoo that we didn’t visit. (A Hersheypark admission ticket affords you admission to the zoo as well. An entrance to Zoo America is located right inside Hersheypark.) The ride is about 7-8 minutes long and is a nice rest for your feet. To give you some perspective, now that I think of it, it’s much more like the WEDway PeopleMover (or TTA if you must call it that) than the Disney Monorail.

A smooch for Mommy on the monorail platform!


After a few rounds of phone tag with Terri, we decided to meet back up for lunch. By now it was past 1:30pm and everyone was getting tired and hungry. Unfortunately for use, we agreed to a spot that must have been on the complete opposite side of the park. It seemed to take forever to get there. We all sat under a huge umbrella table and had meals from the various counter service restaurants surrounding the tables. The food was all typical park fare and nothing to write home about. Right next to the table area was a stripped down version of Splash Mountain on steroids called Tidal Force. Just take away all of SM’s themeing, triple the height of the drop and you begin to get an idea of what this ride is about. In one word – WET! I was playing with camera settings and got this series of shots in “Burst Mode”. I thought it was kind of cool to see the huge wave form and then drench everyone. Anyone have ideas for place to use this mode at WDW?


After lunch, the WEDway’s decided to head back to the hotel for a little nap. We were trend setter because it turns out that everyone else decided to head back for a break too. The hotel was so close that to the park that virtually no time was lost traveling. With hands stamped, we left the park around 2:30pm. I should mention here that, except for Tiny Timbers, I don’t believe we waited for more than 5 minutes for any ride. Granted these were mostly kiddie rides, but it made for nice touring conditions for parents and kids. I thought it might have been much busier at more the popular attractions, but when I asked Terri, she sad they never had a line over 15 minutes. How great is that?!?

Back at the hotel, most everyone went for a swim. After that, it was nap time, or, at a minimum, quiet time. As time passed, everyone got hungry again. Grandpa broke out a bunch of cheeses and dips for everyone to much on along with opening another bottle of wine. I think the kids slept most of this time, but when they woke up they were hungry too. If you think a nutritious meal is going to be described next you are sorely mistaken my friend. What do the kids feast on – microwave popcorn. It’s hard to argue with the goodness level there. Once again, it’s great to be on vacation.

So with another dead soldier on the desk, rested children and full bellies, we all go back to the park. We get back to the park somewhere around 7:00pm. Just by the time left I the day, I knew I wasn’t really going to see too much of the wild side of Hersheypark. I was really okay with this but would have liked to do a few of the big attractions – maybe next time. The kids still had a lot of things they wanted to ride – sometimes over and over – so we happily obliged. One of the favorite rides of the evening was called the Frog Hopper. It’s basically a row of seats attached to a single pole. The row is suddenly dropped a few feet at a time all the way down the pole. Maya and Emma really liked this one. They must have gone on it half a dozen times in a row. I like to think of it as training ground for TOT. It made for some great, but tough to capture shots.


As we continued on to other rides this evening, it struck me how much the elevation changes in this park. There are quite a few areas with pretty steep inclines for walking. It’s been awhile since I’ve been to other parks like Six Flags, so I’m not sure if WDW is abnormally flat or the imagineers are just good at disguising the elevation changes, both visually and physically. Can anyone else comment on this? We continued on to the Kissing Tower to get a twilight view of the park and surrounding area. This is one of those rides that take up, way up, in a slowly rotating compartment to give you 360 degree views. The windows on this ride were shaped like Hershey’s Kisses. Ride signage indicated that requirements for the Kissing Tower are to “Moisten lips and pucker up!” I won’t get all mushy on you but it is nice to sit with your Honey and smooch a little on this ride. The group split up again after puckering out their lips to get in some last must ride rides. It was here that I took the chance to break away for the girls to go on a coaster or two.

View from the "Kissing Tower"

The first was a mine car themed ride called Trailblazer that is really quite tame. I’d have taken Emma on it if she were with me. I’m not exactly sure why we chose that one…no lines I guess. The next ride was the must do for me on this trip – Storm Force. Terri and Mark went on this one with me. Matt and Megan decided to sit this one out. According to the ride info, Storm force launches you from 0-72 mph in 2 seconds. All I can say is WOW! The force of that acceleration is a lot more than I ever expected. Two seconds is a long time when you feel your body being pressing so hard into the seat that you’re not sure you’ll be able to peel yourself out at the end. The rest of the coaster ride was nice, but just not as cool as the launch. Unfortunately, I have no pictures of this ride but I do highly recommend it for speed freaks. At this point we the WEDway’s were reunited with Grandpa Tom for one last ride on the Ferris wheel. I’m not sure what it is about Ferris wheels, but they just don’t do much for me. They make for nice photos though.


Soon we are all back together and made our way out of the park. It was almost 10:00pm and we were essentially closing the place down. An ice cream was promised for Emma and we had a really hard time finding an open ice cream store. As luck would have it, we found one right near the park entrance. We all just sat around a table and had some ice cream while we talked about our day. It was a nice end to a great day.

I want to put in a little section here about some of the other big rides at the park. My nephew Matt went on quite a few of the coasters. He and his sister proclaimed that the best coaster was Lightning Racer – a dueling wooden roller coaster. He mentioned that the Roller Soaker coaster sounded better than it was. On this coaster, people watching get to blast riders with water guns and the coaster riders get to “drop” buckets of water on the gunners. It sounds like good fun on a hot day. I had hoped that someone would go on Great Bear, a suspended car coaster, because it looked like fun. Apparently, they never got the time, or gumption, to fit it in. The latest edition to Hersheypark was an attraction called the Reese’s Extreme Cup Challenge. This is sort of like a Buzz Lightyear ride. Two teams, chocolate and peanut butter, are competing against each other to hit as many targets during the ride as they can. The winning team gets to declare that they are what make Reese’s Peanut Butter cups taste so good. No matter if you win or loose, you get a Reese’s peanut better cup at the end of the ride. I didn’t get on this ride, but according to everyone else, it wasn’t an E-ticket attraction. But I didn’t hear them complain about the candy at all.

I know this installment was a little long winded, but I wanted to let you all know a little about what was at the Hersheypark as well as what it was like for kids and adults. As you read, there are a lot of things for little children so it worked great for us. Also, there were a lot of extreme coasters for those so inclined. The only thing lacking at the park were some “whole family” attractions which are admittedly, hard to do well. Disney really has a lock on that type of ride/attraction. Overall, I like Hersheypark much more than I thought I would. We will definitely return there someday to try out a lot of what we missed on this trip. So, if I want to go back, I’d say that Hersheypark is definitely “WEDway recommended.”

“Everyone still with me? Any questions? Comments? Funny jokes? Somebody…anybody?

Well, I refuse to quit now. I’m over half way done with this TR. A milestone of sorts.


The next installment is brought to you by the letter “S” and the number “How much???”

[Colexis Mom]

Finally an update [img]/ubb/images/graemlins/whistling2.gif[/img] [img]/ubb/images/graemlins/waytogo.gif[/img]

[ QUOTE ]


I was really jonesin’ for a Reeses’s and asked the host if I could have one. He told me I needed to fit between the lines to get one. So, when in Rome…



[/ QUOTE ]

[img]/ubb/images/graemlins/rofl2.gif[/img] [img]/ubb/images/graemlins/rofl2.gif[/img] Honestly, was the chocolate really worth that [img]/ubb/images/graemlins/questionicon.gif[/img]

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It’s so fun to be a little brother! (And some of you thought I was nice.)

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No [img]/ubb/images/graemlins/082502no_prv.gif[/img] Most of us know better [img]/ubb/images/graemlins/082502yes_prv.gif[/img]

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They must have gone on it half a dozen times in a row. I like to think of it as training ground for TOT.

[/ QUOTE ]

We just went to Lake Compounce and they had one like that there too! Frankly I was more scared on that than ToT! Alexa loved it [img]/ubb/images/graemlins/082502yes_prv.gif[/img]

[ QUOTE ]

As we continued on to other rides this evening, it struck me how much the elevation changes in this park. There are quite a few areas with pretty steep inclines for walking. It’s been awhile since I’ve been to other parks like Six Flags, so I’m not sure if WDW is abnormally flat or the imagineers are just good at disguising the elevation changes, both visually and physically. Can anyone else comment on this?

[/ QUOTE ]

Lake Compounce is built right below a very large hill. Some good inclines. Disney is very flat, probably built that way and there aren't really any big hills in Florida either [img]/ubb/images/graemlins/082502no_prv.gif[/img]

[ QUOTE ]

“Everyone still with me? Any questions? Comments? Funny jokes? Somebody…anybody?

Well, I refuse to quit now. I’m over half way done with this TR. A milestone of sorts.


[/ QUOTE ]

Still here [img]/ubb/images/graemlins/zwavin.gif[/img] Bring on the other updates [img]/ubb/images/graemlins/082502yes_prv.gif[/img] Are you sure you're going to finish this?

[WishIwasinDisney]

[img]/ubb/images/graemlins/woot.gif[/img] He's Back [img]/ubb/images/graemlins/woot.gif[/img]

Great update Jeff [img]/ubb/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

[lauren-roxy]

Another hilarious update Jeff!!! I love the pictures and hearing all about the park. We went about 30 years ago so I'm sure it's not even the same now. Can't wait for more, this is great stuff!!!!

[RobDVC]

Great update Jeff! The girls sure look like they had fun on the Frog Hopper. Hurry back with more!

[Meggera]

I love the pictures of the girls on the rides. How cute! Great update.

Laura

[DisneyFanAnn]

[ QUOTE ]
Another hilarious update Jeff!!! I love the pictures and hearing all about the park. We went about 30 years ago so I'm sure it's not even the same now. Can't wait for more, this is great stuff!!!!

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[img]/ubb/images/graemlins/yeahthat.gif[/img] We were there in the late 80s/early 90s and this is really taking me back..even though it's changed so much!