A few coasters at Hersheypark
Aug. 25th, 2011 01:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mmcirvinWe visited Hersheypark yesterday, at the tail end of a road trip. Hersheypark has many amazing roller coasters, both steel and wooden. But our schedule only permitted a single day, the lines were actually kind of long for a weekday, Sam wasn't feeling so well for much of the afternoon (she was better today), and we had 5-year-old Jorie with us, so I only got to ride three. (Admittedly, I probably would not have been hardcore enough to ride many more.)
Still, that was enough for lots of fun. The indulgence that tried my family's patience (since I was waiting in line for an hour, and kept them waiting longer than I'd promised to meet me for lunch) was one of the park's most heavily hyped coasters: Fahrenheit, a vertical-lift, 97-degree-drop coaster similar in that regard to Canobie Lake's Untamed (though it's by Intamin instead of Gerstlauer), but much bigger and faster.
The drop didn't feel that different from Untamed's for me, despite its larger size; the rest of the ride has a lot more twistiness to it (I don't think I can even describe the inversions adequately; RCDB says it has 6 and I'll take their word for it), with several well-done headchopper illusions where it looks like the track's approaching itself or the supports far too closely. Another cute touch is, of all things, the final brake run; it's hard to tell from the video, but it's pretty abrupt and actually slopes downhill, aimed at the queue area.
I think I still prefer the way Untamed's drop leads directly into a great big vertical loop to the pop-up-and-roll thing that Fahrenheit opens with (update: this is apparently the "rare Norwegian loop"; guess I should have savored it more). But it's a great, scary ride, certainly one for the hardcore steel-coaster freaks. Be aware that most of the queue area is hidden behind the station, and you may not be able to tell if it's a long wait unless it's two hours or more.
After lunch, I got to ride on my very first coaster for the second time, and pass the torch. I hadn't even remembered, until my sister Megan jogged my memory, that I'd ridden the Trailblazer when I was a kid. This is a not-too-scary Arrow "Mine Train" coaster from 1974, which goes up a little lift hill and then goes on a surprisingly fast ride around a bunch of curves and helices. There's no big drop, but it makes a little abrupt dip under the Dry Gulch Railroad tracks at one point.
What makes this ride special is its low height limit: though it's capable of entertaining adults, and I'd class it as a family coaster rather than a kiddie coaster, kids Jorie's size and even smaller can ride it. I'd prepared Jorie for the possibility by showing her the video linked above, and she'd been excited about it for weeks. I'd half-expected her to beg off at the last minute, but she didn't. Sam came along too, though she got separated from us at the head of the queue and ended up riding nearer the rear of the train.
While we were in line (I think, working backward from news reports), the Virginia earthquake occurred. The seismic waves would have reached Hershey in a matter of minutes, and I know people around the area felt it, but we didn't notice anything out of the ordinary. The queue is on an elevated, roofed platform with a fair bit of vibration just from kids stomping around, and there's the noise of the trains coming in and out. There was an incident in which a little boy who had been climbing on the queue maze railings abruptly fell on the floor and started wailing, but I can only speculate about any causal link.
Jorie, who quails at a lot of kiddie rides, was completely fearless getting into the car. I was reassured too since the ride now has individually ratcheting lapbars that fit her pretty snugly. The ride was everything she expected; I looked over at her while the train was tearing through the big heavily-banked helix, and she had the biggest grin on her face. Later on, she said the dip under the railroad bridge was the best part. Unlike my childhood self, she was already a twice-over veteran of the Dragon kiddie coaster at Canobie, so she had some idea what to expect. She was a little disappointed that the train didn't run the circuit twice like the Dragon, but I explained to her that it was because the route was much longer in the first place.
I think she was braver than I was. I didn't ride a roller coaster again until I was a teenager and rode the legendary Mister Twister at Elitch Gardens. I have a feeling Jorie isn't going to behave that way.
At that point, Sam, who is wonderful, told me that she knew I'd been looking forward to this trip for a long time and that, even though I'd kept them waiting before lunch, it would be fine if I went and rode another ride on my own while she went on the sky ride with Jorie. I picked my other historical/sentimental must-ride, the sooperdooperLooper. I remembered this from my childhood visit as the one that got away. I was big enough to ride it and was sorely tempted, but chicken-ness ultimately ruled the day. At the time, it was a really big deal: the first modern vertical-loop coaster on the East Coast and still one of the very few that existed. It's a 1970s Anton Schwarzkopf coaster with a single loop and a terrain-hugging layout, similar to the Revolution at Magic Mountain though somewhat shorter. Now it's dwarfed by the Great Bear, a Bolliger & Mabillard inverted coaster (seats below track) that winds all around it. I unfortunately didn't get to ride the Great Bear, but I aspire to sometime.
The wait for the sooperdooperLooper was relatively short. The nice thing about it today is that it's one of the very few inverting coasters that still uses lapbar restraints (individually ratcheting, not single-position). All the ones made today have bulky, often uncomfortable over-the-shoulder restraints. They're probably needed given the stuff those coasters do, but I can testify that the sdL absolutely does not need them. I felt secure enough that even if the coaster had by some implausible means gotten stuck at the top of the loop, robbing the riders of centrifugal force, I'm sure I would not have fallen out (I think![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
derspatchel mentioned Schwarzkopf actually doing this to some insurance people as a visceral demo). One consequence of the lap restraints is that the height limit is unusually low for a looping coaster; Jorie was less than an inch under the line, though she's informed me she's not into inverting coasters anyway.
By today's standards, the sdL is almost a relaxing ride. There's a moderate-sized drop and that lovely big old loop; the track knots through the loop and then goes through a dark tunnel, whose existence I'd learned of and forgotten before I rode, so it was still a surprise. After the midcourse block brakes, there's a whole second half of turns and hops through the surrounding landscape. I liked riding it all with just a lapbar.
The kids like to grouse about how something with one loop cannot be a sooperdooper looper, but I think there's still a place for this level of thrill ride. Even had events not intervened, I'm not sure I'd personally have been up to riding, say, the Storm Runner (Hersheypark's Intamin launched coaster) after conquering Fahrenheit. But the sooperdooperLooper was just right, besides being relevant to my geeky interest in the history of loopy steel coasters, and I could say that I'd finally gotten that ride after all these years.
When I got off the Looper, things started getting confusing: Sam's mother called her up in the sky ride queue worried about the earthquake, Sam texted me about it, and I spent way too much time trying to contact my various relatives by phone in the face of clogged circuits, cellular/wifi dead spots (Hersheypark consists of a network of loosely connected nodes separated by hills), and the overwhelming roaring of the Great Bear with its resonant box supports.
Eventually I worked out that email was the way to go, and soon figured out that nothing particularly dire had happened to anyone. At that point we went for some ice cream, and Sam came down with a nasty headache that kept her from wanting to do anything but sit in an air-conditioned quiet solitary place, like the car. I hope her earlier hunger while I'd been standing in the Fahrenheit queue didn't bring it on.
So, under worse circumstances than I'd wanted, I had Jorie for the rest of the day and could not coaster any more. I'd planned on doing this at some point anyway so that Sam could have some big-ride fun, but I was sorry Sam didn't get that. Anyway, Jorie and I had plenty more fun together. At one point we rode the Dry Gulch Railroad, the park's cheeseball-Western-themed steam train; Jorie pointed to the Trailblazer's tracks and said "What's that?" and I got to impress her with the fact that she'd ridden it already. At the end of our day we went to the Chocolate World attraction outside the park gates and rode the free "tour", a bizarre dark ride vaguely simulating the process of chocolate-making, only with animatronic singing cows (they'd added those since the Seventies). Jorie pronounced it "awesome".
I'd like to go back. Megan has suggested going on a joint trip with her family next season; that's probably the way to go, with more adults around to watch children and handle contingencies (and people to ride coasters with!) I didn't get to ride any of the park's beloved woodies, and Megan loves those. And then there's Skyrush...
Still, that was enough for lots of fun. The indulgence that tried my family's patience (since I was waiting in line for an hour, and kept them waiting longer than I'd promised to meet me for lunch) was one of the park's most heavily hyped coasters: Fahrenheit, a vertical-lift, 97-degree-drop coaster similar in that regard to Canobie Lake's Untamed (though it's by Intamin instead of Gerstlauer), but much bigger and faster.
The drop didn't feel that different from Untamed's for me, despite its larger size; the rest of the ride has a lot more twistiness to it (I don't think I can even describe the inversions adequately; RCDB says it has 6 and I'll take their word for it), with several well-done headchopper illusions where it looks like the track's approaching itself or the supports far too closely. Another cute touch is, of all things, the final brake run; it's hard to tell from the video, but it's pretty abrupt and actually slopes downhill, aimed at the queue area.
I think I still prefer the way Untamed's drop leads directly into a great big vertical loop to the pop-up-and-roll thing that Fahrenheit opens with (update: this is apparently the "rare Norwegian loop"; guess I should have savored it more). But it's a great, scary ride, certainly one for the hardcore steel-coaster freaks. Be aware that most of the queue area is hidden behind the station, and you may not be able to tell if it's a long wait unless it's two hours or more.
After lunch, I got to ride on my very first coaster for the second time, and pass the torch. I hadn't even remembered, until my sister Megan jogged my memory, that I'd ridden the Trailblazer when I was a kid. This is a not-too-scary Arrow "Mine Train" coaster from 1974, which goes up a little lift hill and then goes on a surprisingly fast ride around a bunch of curves and helices. There's no big drop, but it makes a little abrupt dip under the Dry Gulch Railroad tracks at one point.
What makes this ride special is its low height limit: though it's capable of entertaining adults, and I'd class it as a family coaster rather than a kiddie coaster, kids Jorie's size and even smaller can ride it. I'd prepared Jorie for the possibility by showing her the video linked above, and she'd been excited about it for weeks. I'd half-expected her to beg off at the last minute, but she didn't. Sam came along too, though she got separated from us at the head of the queue and ended up riding nearer the rear of the train.
While we were in line (I think, working backward from news reports), the Virginia earthquake occurred. The seismic waves would have reached Hershey in a matter of minutes, and I know people around the area felt it, but we didn't notice anything out of the ordinary. The queue is on an elevated, roofed platform with a fair bit of vibration just from kids stomping around, and there's the noise of the trains coming in and out. There was an incident in which a little boy who had been climbing on the queue maze railings abruptly fell on the floor and started wailing, but I can only speculate about any causal link.
Jorie, who quails at a lot of kiddie rides, was completely fearless getting into the car. I was reassured too since the ride now has individually ratcheting lapbars that fit her pretty snugly. The ride was everything she expected; I looked over at her while the train was tearing through the big heavily-banked helix, and she had the biggest grin on her face. Later on, she said the dip under the railroad bridge was the best part. Unlike my childhood self, she was already a twice-over veteran of the Dragon kiddie coaster at Canobie, so she had some idea what to expect. She was a little disappointed that the train didn't run the circuit twice like the Dragon, but I explained to her that it was because the route was much longer in the first place.
I think she was braver than I was. I didn't ride a roller coaster again until I was a teenager and rode the legendary Mister Twister at Elitch Gardens. I have a feeling Jorie isn't going to behave that way.
At that point, Sam, who is wonderful, told me that she knew I'd been looking forward to this trip for a long time and that, even though I'd kept them waiting before lunch, it would be fine if I went and rode another ride on my own while she went on the sky ride with Jorie. I picked my other historical/sentimental must-ride, the sooperdooperLooper. I remembered this from my childhood visit as the one that got away. I was big enough to ride it and was sorely tempted, but chicken-ness ultimately ruled the day. At the time, it was a really big deal: the first modern vertical-loop coaster on the East Coast and still one of the very few that existed. It's a 1970s Anton Schwarzkopf coaster with a single loop and a terrain-hugging layout, similar to the Revolution at Magic Mountain though somewhat shorter. Now it's dwarfed by the Great Bear, a Bolliger & Mabillard inverted coaster (seats below track) that winds all around it. I unfortunately didn't get to ride the Great Bear, but I aspire to sometime.
The wait for the sooperdooperLooper was relatively short. The nice thing about it today is that it's one of the very few inverting coasters that still uses lapbar restraints (individually ratcheting, not single-position). All the ones made today have bulky, often uncomfortable over-the-shoulder restraints. They're probably needed given the stuff those coasters do, but I can testify that the sdL absolutely does not need them. I felt secure enough that even if the coaster had by some implausible means gotten stuck at the top of the loop, robbing the riders of centrifugal force, I'm sure I would not have fallen out (I think
derspatchel mentioned Schwarzkopf actually doing this to some insurance people as a visceral demo). One consequence of the lap restraints is that the height limit is unusually low for a looping coaster; Jorie was less than an inch under the line, though she's informed me she's not into inverting coasters anyway.By today's standards, the sdL is almost a relaxing ride. There's a moderate-sized drop and that lovely big old loop; the track knots through the loop and then goes through a dark tunnel, whose existence I'd learned of and forgotten before I rode, so it was still a surprise. After the midcourse block brakes, there's a whole second half of turns and hops through the surrounding landscape. I liked riding it all with just a lapbar.
The kids like to grouse about how something with one loop cannot be a sooperdooper looper, but I think there's still a place for this level of thrill ride. Even had events not intervened, I'm not sure I'd personally have been up to riding, say, the Storm Runner (Hersheypark's Intamin launched coaster) after conquering Fahrenheit. But the sooperdooperLooper was just right, besides being relevant to my geeky interest in the history of loopy steel coasters, and I could say that I'd finally gotten that ride after all these years.
When I got off the Looper, things started getting confusing: Sam's mother called her up in the sky ride queue worried about the earthquake, Sam texted me about it, and I spent way too much time trying to contact my various relatives by phone in the face of clogged circuits, cellular/wifi dead spots (Hersheypark consists of a network of loosely connected nodes separated by hills), and the overwhelming roaring of the Great Bear with its resonant box supports.
Eventually I worked out that email was the way to go, and soon figured out that nothing particularly dire had happened to anyone. At that point we went for some ice cream, and Sam came down with a nasty headache that kept her from wanting to do anything but sit in an air-conditioned quiet solitary place, like the car. I hope her earlier hunger while I'd been standing in the Fahrenheit queue didn't bring it on.
So, under worse circumstances than I'd wanted, I had Jorie for the rest of the day and could not coaster any more. I'd planned on doing this at some point anyway so that Sam could have some big-ride fun, but I was sorry Sam didn't get that. Anyway, Jorie and I had plenty more fun together. At one point we rode the Dry Gulch Railroad, the park's cheeseball-Western-themed steam train; Jorie pointed to the Trailblazer's tracks and said "What's that?" and I got to impress her with the fact that she'd ridden it already. At the end of our day we went to the Chocolate World attraction outside the park gates and rode the free "tour", a bizarre dark ride vaguely simulating the process of chocolate-making, only with animatronic singing cows (they'd added those since the Seventies). Jorie pronounced it "awesome".
I'd like to go back. Megan has suggested going on a joint trip with her family next season; that's probably the way to go, with more adults around to watch children and handle contingencies (and people to ride coasters with!) I didn't get to ride any of the park's beloved woodies, and Megan loves those. And then there's Skyrush...
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no subject
Date: 2011-08-25 03:08 pm (UTC)It has since entered family lore that I laughed the whole way through while my brother screamed his head of (possibly we both only went on one).
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Date: 2011-08-25 07:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-08-25 07:49 pm (UTC)Fun!
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Date: 2011-08-25 07:24 pm (UTC)Somewhat related to roller coasters, I thought this (http://dcist.com/2011/08/kings_dominion_still_rules_old_domi.php) was interesting.
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Date: 2011-08-25 07:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-08-25 08:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-08-25 09:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-08-26 01:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-08-26 02:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-08-26 11:03 am (UTC)Some of this may not even be pure subjectivity; the ride people get will physically vary depending on the loading of the train, where they're sitting in the train, the condition of the track and the weather, and tweaks made by the proprietors for safety or comfort. Woodies in particular get retracked and adjusted frequently.
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Date: 2011-08-26 11:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-08-27 10:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-08-26 04:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-08-26 04:21 pm (UTC)Before I ever got to the sooperdooperLooper
Date: 2011-08-27 04:32 am (UTC)Re: Before I ever got to the sooperdooperLooper
Date: 2011-08-27 04:54 am (UTC)Looking into this stuff I'm beginning to realize the long reach of Werner Stengel, Schwarzkopf's chief engineer, who was responsible for the modern clothoid loop and obviously had a lot to do with the superdooperLooper and also the Six Flags Over Texas Shock Wave.
Today his little company (http://www.rcstengel.com/) seems to consult with everyone in the business. I think the reason Fahrenheit resembles a giant Gerstlauer Euro-Fighter is that Stengel's firm was involved in designing both.
Re: Before I ever got to the sooperdooperLooper
Date: 2011-08-27 12:43 pm (UTC)Those were Arrow shuttle loops, probably designed by Ron Toomer, during the era when Arrow was the American name in steel coasters.