Hershey Park

Wow.. just WOW.  I cannot describe how impressed I was with this amusement park!  I could not wait to blog about this one..

To take no time off of work and do this in just a weekend, we headed to Hershey, PA after work on a Friday.  By the time we stopped for dinner in Breezewood, and got to the hotel (3 miles from the Parks and Attractions), we went to bed to start the day off early Saturday.  The plan was to arrive at the Park shortly after it opened, and head straight to the back of the park for the water slides.

Day 1

First of all – HOLY.PARKING.LOT.

This place was wayyyy bigger than the five of us had pictured.  If you’ve ever been to Walt Disney World Parking Lot – that is how we felt. For anyone that hasn’t yet been to Walt Disney World, that translates to “HUGE.” The parking is $12 for the day, and there are trams to take you to the main gate! Very cute how each area is named after a different Hershey candy. Hope you have your walking shoes on..

All of the water slide part of the park is included in your admission ticket. If you too want to do the water slides and the park in one day, do not stop and look/ride anything on the way to the slides. By doing the slides early, you will beat the crowd and lines of people that head for the slides in the heat of the afternoon. Again, this park is way bigger than we had envisioned. A lot of, “WHERE are the slides?” from my 7 and 10 year old nephew and neice we had with us on the walk to find The Boardwalk (water park area).

Also, like Walt Disney World, the park was SO clean and just..well..VERY nice!

Let me say that we (the adults) had so much fun in the water park. This is probably the most fun (ride wise) I have had in a long time. The slides called the Whirlwind and the Surge were AWESOME (*still smiling thinking about them*).

The Whirlwind Funnel below where you fly up it (half pipe style) in a special tube for two riders.

This is the “kids” area themed like Atlantic City. It was majorly impressive and we adults also had some fun in there. 😉

That GIANT water bucket above (top middle) fills completely up and tips over every ~5 minutes… Watch out!

Not only were the rides we went on the rest of the day impressive (! 12 coasters here !), I must also mention how impressed I was/am with the food selection inside the park.  You are NOT forced to eat fries and burgers for every meal! We were able to have a sandwich from a Subway for lunch (not ideal but decent for a theme park), and I had a Greek Chicken Salad for dinner. It was VERY good too, I might add. Of course we had to finish with some Hershey’s ice cream dipped in none other than..  Hershey’s Chocolate!  What a wonderful day we had at the park, and we still didn’t get to ride everything. We will have to make a trip back.

Day 2

Ahhhh… Chocolate World.  And that’s exactly what it is! This is located right by the entrance to Hershey Park. They share the same parking lot, but you are routed a different way.  Parking is free for Chocolate World though, if you don’t plan to stay the whole day.

I recommend to get to Chocolate World as SOON as you can. Like, as soon as it opens.  We doddled around in the morning at the hotel, slept in, etc. So, we were later than we wanted to, but hey that rest felt good after the day before at the park.

This place was PACKED.

The entrance to Chocolate World is FREE including the Factory Tour. You pay for any additional items, such as:  make your own chocolate bar, chocolate tasting, etc.

Since we arrived in the late morning, the make your own chocolate bar was sold out until later in the afternoon (when we were planning to head home). MAJOR bummer. We opted for the chocolate tasting class instead, and we weren’t disappointed.

The free factory tour was SO cute. Again, I can only say it felt a little bit like Disney (hint:  It’s a ride).

My 10 and 7 year old niece and nephew LOVED it. And I can’t say that we didn’t either.

The photo below is NOT from the chocolate tasting class. 🙂

My 10 year old niece looked at me last night while making s’mores, held up the chocolate bar, and said, “look Brittany, HERSHEY’SSSS.”  I said, “I know, and now we know all the secrets.” <3