First Impressions Of Hershey Park

As it is on most trips to new places, Hershey Park was a special and exciting one for us. It has always been a park that I was extremely interested in and in July, we finally got the opportunity to visit the historical park.

We did not get the opportunity to do a full day visit, but we were pleasantly surprised at how well and fast we moved through the park on our Tuesday Night visit.

We arrived at the park around the 4:30 pm mark and worked our way to the park ticket window. We did not purchase the tickets beforehand and purchased them right at the park.

We purchased the sunset tickets with was around $35 with tax. It’s a small discount from the full day ticket price. Which from our experience is right around the industry average for a park this size. Certainly nothing to complain about there.

We’ve been spoiled by Cedar Point…

To be honest, we have been a little spoiled by one of our favorite parks Cedar Point, so the expectations were not as high for Hershey before going into the park. After all Cedar Point is a rather large and has over 18 Roller Coasters, which I believe at this time there is only one other park that has more Coasters.

At this point, the parks we have been too have not compared to the volume on the roller coaster that park has, which is kind of unfair to judge parks by, which we don’t. We learned quickly that Roller Coasters are not the only thing that can make a park special.

There are other things that can separate each park from one another. The best part of our travels is that we have come to realize every park has it’s own unique style and beauty to it.

I did not do much research on the park before entering Hershey Park as I didn’t want to completely make the trip with an agenda to which we would follow. We made it a “let’s see what happens” type of trip and it did work out perfectly.

Before entering the park gates I noticed a huge sign right in front of a fenced off area that had a ton of construction going on behind it. The sign read future home of our 15th coaster.

Wow!

I had no idea that Hershey was that large and contained 14 active roller coasters. I was shocked. Although they are still lagging behind Cedar Point on the Coaster count, they seem to be catching up fast.

I have no doubt that before too long, they may even break even on the coaster count in the future, depending how each park is going to handle future development.

On top of the roller coaster craziness, I was instantly shocked at the parks layout, offerings, and attractions. The park provided a little shock to me that maybe, Cedar Point should take notice of and it was kind of a little different than what I truly expected.

I could see some similarities, but Hershey had it’s own vibe and it’s own vision, which honestly was nice to see. It’s a very beautiful and unique park.

Hershey Park Blew Me Away!

The first shock wave came when I saw how many roller coasters the park had. I wasn’t expecting that many. Honestly I was only expecting around 7 – 9 coasters, which was truly and underestimation on my part.

The second thing I loved and wish I had more time to explore was the water park and the zoo that was located in the park. I had no idea that the Admission included these attractions with the daily park passes.

Again not to take a shot at Cedar Point, Maybe, they need to rethink their pricing a bit on that front. The dual pricing of the water park and theme park is an added bonus for Hershey Park guest.

Although in that park, for Cedar Point the water park is on the outskirts of the park, it’s still close enough to be a great combine item to allow the guests to enjoy dual admission. More on that subject on another day, but I’m finding more parks like Hershey that are offering the dual admission. That’s a leg up against the competition and a thumbs up for the Hershey Team.

The 11 acre water park looked amazing and it was pretty active when we went by it. To save time to capture all that we could we did not go directly in the water park, which is a bummer. To be honest, I prefer water parks over actual theme parks. Water is my friend and for me, water parks are heaven.

While we zoomed through the park on this trip, I didn’t personally get to ride many rides at Hershey Park, but My daughter got her fair share of Coasters. The park’s crowd on this day was pleasantly small and she was getting off and on roller coasters by either walking directly on or waiting a maximum of 15 mins. Believe me for a theme park ride wait time, that is gold.

Unfortunately we did not get to get on the new Reese’s Cupfusion ride which looks to resemble some of the interactive dark rides you get in Disney and Universal, the wait time was a little high on that one, maybe our next visit we’ll have more time to endure that line.

If the park gets a little crowded they do have a Fast TRACK program which will allow you to skip the regular lines on 14 participating attractions.

The park did have plenty of food and drink options. We were able to get a small but quick meal and some drinks, a review on that will come out later. But the park had several options which was fantastic. From our visit we could see and identified a few restaurants that we would like to try on our next visit.

First Impressions Mean A lot…

Overall our brief experience and first interaction with the park was exceptional. Again we only had a short time there and did not get to experience all the park has to offer, it was still better than I expected.

I can certainly see the potential of this park and how it could become one of my favorites. There is more to experience before I give out a full grade on this one, but first impressions, the parks a winner in my book and a must do for any family.

We have more to share from our trip to Hershey Park so keep an eye out for future content, pictures, and videos of the wonder park that is located in Pennsylvania.