Here's a brief review of our trip on Friday, August 12 with some pointers.
We had an awesome time! We absolutely love this park. It was so clean and ride operators and other team members seemed very happy to be there. There were no ride breakdowns during our visit. Hershey seems to have upped its food game in the park as well. We really enjoyed the whoopie pies with ice cream and it looked like there were lots of other tasty treats we didn't have time to try.
HPGO was a must for us. The lines were very long...some over two hours. We rode every coaster as well as the new Reeses cupfusion and mostly just walked on. The longest wait for us was the first time we rode the Storm Runner which was about 30 minutes but it looks like we got there during a shift change. We ended up riding Great Bear twice, Storm Runner twice, and Lightning Racer three times. 15 total coaster rides, 1 cupfusion and 1 train ride in our eight hour day (subtracted one hour for dinner).
Candymonium and Laff Track were great new additions since our last visit. My boys and I loved Laff Track (and the line was 2.5 hours but we got on in 5 minutes with HPGO). I still think Skyrush is too painful on my thighs and Great Bear is still #1.
Check park hours before you go and especially before you purchase HPGO. I had assumed it was open regular hours like it always has been when we've gone. 9 or 10 am until 11 pm...I purchased the "unlimited" HPGO before checking the hours...come to find out the hours were only 11 am to 8 pm. Had I realized I probably would have saved $ and purchased the once per ride HPGO since we really had very little time to do multiples. Still worth every penny however since we only had one day.
The only downside: The Chocolatier Restaurant was a let down and with limited park hours I kinda wish we hadn't made a reservation. Luckily it only cost us an hour of park time but really wasn't worth it. Our server was excellent though. We ordered the Ferris Wheel Sampler but the kitchen staff accidentally delivered it to the table behind us who didn't say anything and just let them leave it at the table (they didn't eat any of it though). We didn't realize what happened until they brought out our entrees and we asked where our sampler was. Then, we overheard the people behind us asking them to take it off their bill since they didn't order it....why they didn't say something when it was brought out is beyond me...at that point we decided to just eat our entrees rather than have everything at the same time. The server was very apologetic and took it off our bill.
For our entrees we ordered the pulled short rib mac n cheese (2 orders), the take5 chicken sandwich, and the bbq short rib with mashed potatoes. My boys shared the chicken sandwich and one of the mac n cheeses. Here's some pics (I didn't take them until they already split the sandwich).
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They said the sandwich was fine but the fries weren't good. My DS-26 said they tasted like they were fried in old oil.
We all thought the mac n cheese was fine. Nothing special.
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My DH and I shared the other mac n cheese and short rib dinner. This is a picture of my half. The short rib and mashed potatoes were good. The carrots were practically raw. I had to saw them with the steak knife to get a bite.
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Everything tasted fine but nothing that any of us would say was amazing or even different with the added "chocolate"....honestly the chocolate wasn't even noticeable in any of the dishes. Seemed like a missed opportunity and kind of a gimmick.
Overall a great day and still one of our favorite places to visit.