Trip Report: Hersheypark & Knoebels

I started off my trip on Thursday. I wanted to give myself a full day to get down to Hershey and just relax before three full days of amusement parks.

On the way down, I visited the Indian Echo Caverns. It's a cool place about five minutes from Hersheypark. The cavern tour lasted about an hour. It's a typical cavern and the tour was fun.

I also stopped at the Quiksilver store in the Arundel Mills Mall in Maryland. Shopping for clothes is definitely the most boring thing to do ever. But I'm obsessed with Quiksilver stuff, so going an extra 90 minutes out of my way to go there wasn't a problem for me.

Then Friday and Saturday, it was all about Hersheypark! I haven't been to this park in about ten years, so there was a lot of new stuff for me to see. It's another perfect family park - I was really surprised at how many rides they now have.

My favorite was definitely Lightning Racer, two wooden coasters intermeshed with each other. And the park actually lets them race too! The Thunder side usually wins, but Lightning (my favorite of the two) finally came in first a few times on Saturday.

There's also two other great wooden coasters there - Wildcat and Comet. I'll never forget the Friday night rides on Comet as we were able to hear Bruce Springsteen playing in the nearby arena. We kept listening carefully to which song Bruce was playing hoping it wasn't his last one as we all wanted to escape the parking lot before the sold out concert crowd did. When we heard Born To Run and then Thunder Run shortly after, I thought for sure we weren't going to make it. But luckily, he kept going. They closed the coaster at 11pm (and yeah, I had to stay right until the end) - Bruce ended about 5 minutes later. As I left the parking lot, I heard him playing Bobby Jean - close call as that was the last song!

There's a lot more than just wooden coasters at Hershey. Some of the other rides...

• Great Bear - a very cool inverted coaster, especially at night.
• Fahrenheit - a steel coaster with a 97-degree first drop.
• Sooperdooperlooper - a classic 70's roller coaster.
• Reese's Xtreme Cup Challenge - a cool indoor ride where you shoot at targets and compete against other cars. This is one of the best of this kind of ride as the laser guns worked perfectly.
• Frontier Flyers - I love this kind of ride. Especially since I figured out how to fly this one very quickly. The poor nearby tree branches weren't so happy.
• Flying Falcon - the same as the Sky Hawk ride at Marineland. I mention this because it was running a fun and fast ride cycle - something I wish Marineland would do with theirs (hint, hint).
• Hershey's Chocolate World - This is actually outside the amusement park. They've got a cool tour there explaining how Hershey's chocolate is made. And yes, they were giving out a small chocolate bar after getting off the ride. There's also a giant chocolate store there and an awesome food court with lots of chocolate options (I love the new Heath bar frozen yogurt).

After an incredible time at Hersheypark, we all headed to Knoebels to spend the next 24 hours there. Naturally on my way, I had to take the route that brought me through Centralia, Pennsylvania. It's been a little while since I've been there. I noticed they've taken down some of the warning signs, making it easy to just drive by and not realize what you're passing. It looks like some more of the deserted houses and structures are gone too. And I didn't see any smoke coming out of the ground this time. But it was still strange going through there, seeing all the aging neighborhood roads, driveways, and signs without any buildings. I did get out of the car for a bit and looked down the deserted portion of route 61. I didn't venture too far though. Be very careful if you do as portions are still extremely hot (the fire continues underground) and the ground could potentially collapse at any time. As Knoebels was waiting, I decided it was time to escape Centralia.

Knoebels is the home to the greatest wooden roller coaster on the planet - The Phoenix. I was raving about The Beast at Kings Island a week ago and that is an awesome ride. But The Phoenix is the best of its kind. Crazy airtime, no trim breaks, and a crew that keeps the line moving as fast as the ride does (okay, that's an exaggeration obviously, but they are the fastest and best there is).

I've talked about Knoebels before - the park is 100% perfect. Free admission, free parking, very reasonable food prices, a perfect setting, employees that love their job, and owners that care. When visiting, you'll constantly see the Knoebels family wandering through the park making sure everything is going well (Dick Knoebel can sometimes be seen driving around in a bumper car or flyer car that's been turned into a golf cart - so cool).

There was a strange storm that happened shortly after we all got there. It was beautiful outside and then literally five seconds later, a nightmare of rain. It was almost flash flood crazy - I've never seen anything like that start so fast and without any warning at all. But after about 20 minutes, it became nice again. The rain changed Phoenix from an already perfect ride to a completely berserk ride. It was a great night.

For day two there, me and my friends mostly just relaxed and lazily wandered the park. We rode the Skooter Bumper Cars (considered the best anywhere and I agree), Haunted House, Frontier Train, the Sky Slide (which is definitely not just for kiddies), and a bunch of the other rides. The Flyer was my last ride of the day (always gotta save the best for last). It was a perfect day and a great weekend.

So if you're going to be roadtripping through Pennsylvania this summer, stop by these parks. I guarantee you'll have an awesome time at either of them. But both is always better!