OT...Hershey Park and Sesame Place

[GraysMom]

Another vote for Knoebels ! My parents and grandparents live nearby, and I've gone every year since I was born (including working there during college). They have great food (Cesari's Pizza has one many awards for amusement park food) at very reasonable prices and lots of rides for younger kids (DS2 especially loves the Kiddie Whip). The park also has lots of shade trees and is in a valley, so it stays cooler during the summer heat. As others have mentioned, there is a campground right next to the park, as well as another one offsite that is owned by Knoebels as well (and offers a shuttle to the park). They also have picnic tables that anyone is free to use, and a large pool with water slides to cool off in. It's a VERY family friendly park. You can check out the park at http://www.knoebels.com. If you have any questions, I'd love to help answer them.

 

[jetprincess]

I agree that Hershey Park seems to be for older kids. When we were in the area we visited Chocolate World which had a factory ride and some other activities. It was right up my 18 month and 4 year olds alley and it was free to visit. We also Visited Dutch Wonderland in Lancaster. It was great for little ones too.

No advice on Sesame Place. My kids have never really been into Sesame Street.

 

[Barbers2005]

Dh, dd4 and I all love Hershey Park. We're not that far away (about 3.5 hours) so we've been quite a few times. It is a really clean park. I've been to several other amusement parks in the NW (Dorney, Six Flags Darian Lake) and none of them were as well maintained. There's a suprising number of rides for little kids there, too. Many of them are mini's of the "big kid rides," like the scrambler- too cute. Be sure to check out some of the shows, we saw a couple of musical shows that we all enjoyed, and the sea lion show is a lot of fun. ZooAmerica is pretty cool too, and it's included in the price of Hershey admission- all the animals are from North America, but there were a lot of species from the South and Southwest that I'd never seen before. A weird perk about Hershey is when you drive through the town there is a certain spot you get to on the main street where you are surrounded by the smell of warm chocolate. It makes my mouth drool just thinking about it. Our last trip whenever we would hit that spot we would all roll down the windows in the car and take a deep chocolatey breath. Mmmmmm...chocolate.

 

[3boysmomma]

We went to Sesame in June of 2003, with my 3 1/2 year old son. We had a great time BUT 3 days later he was hospitalized for 5 days due to ingesting the Bacterial laden water. He was VERY ill with Campylobacter, which is a bacterial like Samonella. He then developed reavtive arthritis ain some of his joints which is a side effect of the bacteria. STAY AWAY!

 

[Sleeping~Beauty]

We went to Sesame Place last summer, my DH's aunt and uncle live close by. My children were 3 and 1 at the time. We went with my SIL, BIL, and nieces and nephew all under 7 years old.

I do not recommend it. We won't be going back. It's very dirty. Garbage cans were overflowing and spilling on the sidewalk. Play areas were filthy. No one that worked there cleaned anything up.

Even the rides you sat down on were all yucky.

We are looking into doing Dutch Wonderland this summer.