Left with most of Friday and all day the following Monday and nothing to do, we planned a long weekend to Hershey Park. "Long" describes the journey out of New York on Friday afternoon. It took us two hours just to get out of New York City limits on the way to Jersey, making the entire trip nearly five hours.
We decided to stay in Harrisburg to save some driving time to the park. We usually stay in the Lancaster area when we visit PA, and we should have done so on this trip, too. Although our hotel was lovely and the staff exceptionally nice, the area is pretty blighted. Someone Bob knows referred to Harrisburg as "the Detroit of Pennsylvania." The contrast between Harrisburg and Lancaster is stark: run down buildings and sad looking people versus green pastures and smiling faces.
After dinner at a brewing company in Harrisburg, we returned to the hotel where the staff arranged for movie night in one of the conference rooms, complete with 'Smores and popcorn. Back in the room, Robert quickly decided he did not want to sleep on the sofa bed, preferring the grown-up queen sized bed instead. That was a wise choice. Samantha woke at 5 in the morning with a sore throat that was diagnosed a few hours later as strep. Thankfully the urgent care centers in PA have their act together and she received her first dose of medicine and was pronounced healthy for the park.
Pro Tip: Hershey does not offer discounted tickets at the gates. But if you have a AAA membership you can get discounted tickets through the Travel Club. And, guess what…….there is a Travel Club just outside Hershey Park Drive. Donna ran in and scored our tickets with a $30 savings. $30 that we gave right back to Hershey in bottled water and beverage purchases!
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The kids were pretty excited to visit the park. Samantha, in particular, because she missed out on buying a stuffed animal last year in Chocolate World. It's all she talked about on the car ride down.
Just a couple of years ago, there'd be no way she would pose with that character! But this year, she actively sought out a character to pose with. Sammy was in heaven when she was invited to dance in one of the concerts.
We stayed in the park almost 10 hours but the highlight of the day came in the last hour, when we took our first family ride on grown up roller coasters. We started with one of the older metal ones, the Trail Blazer, with traditional sit-down cars and the kids enjoyed it. For the last ride of the night, we boarded the old wooden coaster, the Comet.
Wooden coasters are thrilling because your brain wonders if the creaking noises you hear are the tracks disintegrating beneath you. The kids were very excited as the train ascended the first big peak, with the sound of the chain dragging the cars uphill. Samantha's face was glowing and she had a giant smile. Then we hit the peak and began rocketing toward the ground. The smile was gone, replaced with a tear rolling down her cheek.
All was right in the world be the end of that first drop, as the kids realized they would not be thrown from the train. They whooped and hollered for the remainder of the ride. Robert said the ride "blew my mind." Sammy said it "blew my socks off."
We made our customary trip into Chocolate World for ice cream and……yes, a stuffed animal, before heading back to the hotel.
On Sunday, Bob declared that he wanted to visit City Island in Harrisburg. He remembered going there during a previous visit in the area. The hotel desk clerk was skeptical of the plan, for good reason.
Let's just say the park has fallen into disrepair and leave it at that. We walked out onto the old suspension bridge following a ride on a sad steam train, and left. After two minutes of discussion, we decided our day would be best spent in the Lancaster area. We made the commute over to Lancaster, stopped for lunch and then continued onto Strasburg for a train ride.
We thought the kids would be tired of the steam train, having ridden on it so many times already but they asked to go again. We just missed the 4 o'clock train and, as such, had to wait for the last public train of the day. It was a treat to ride in the late afternoon light, as the temperature grew a little cooler. The light really shows off how cute the kids are.
This is probably the third year in a row that we've missed this guy by two weeks.
Someday, we'll plan well enough in advance to be there when he is out of the barn and pulling passenger cars.
No trip to Strasburg is complete without some NY style pizza and old fashioned ice cream, available just down the road from the railroad.
We returned home on Monday in record time, 4 hours, ready to begin summer camp the next day.
