Matt McIrvin's Freaky Alternate Reality

Of the four parks I had scheduled for this trip, the last and probably the one I knew the least about was Dorney Park, a 140-year-old park in Allentown, Pennsylvania that had become one of the less-famous members of the Cedar Fair chain, and was acquired by Six Flags in their recent merger. It seemed like Dorney had an actually fairly impressive ride collection given its under-the-radar status, with a Morgan hypercoaster called Steel Force that would be my first by that manufacturer. I was excited for that.

The weather had been getting hotter over the course of the week, Friday was a scorcher and I was actually tempted to sample Dorney's waterpark or at least its water rides. But there were a lot of coasters I wanted to ride, and it ended up being an almost pure credit crawl, kind of like my first full day at Hersheypark though not quite that intense. I made sure to stay hydrated, at least.

I pulled into the parking lot right at open, already excited from seeing Iron Menace and Possessed running near the entrance to the lot. The front gate, with its security check lines, was once again mobbed with school groups, crowds of teenage kids in identical brightly colored T-shirts. I could deal with that, with a little basic strategy.

Dorney Park is essentially built on a hillside with the park entrance at the top of the hill, and a winding path to the bottom serving as the spine of the park. Most of the rides I wanted to start with had their stations down at the bottom of the hill. So it was an easy decision to just head directly to the bottom and work my way up, beating the crowds that were still milling around at the top. It was relatively empty down there, with short waits for all the rides, though often part of the queue would be out in the sun. First off was Steel Force, shot by East Coasters here:



Steel Force was a really good ride, ultimately my second favorite in the park, but with a 1980s-throwback feel to it (though it's really from the late 90s). I haven't ridden a Morgan before but the design feels very Arrow-like, made of straight lines and circular arcs, with pretty strong airtime when you crest all those many hills. It's over a mile long, actually the longest coaster I've ever ridden (by a hair). It's fairly smooth, for all that.

Next up was Iron Menace, the park's newest coaster, shot here by East Coasters (warning: the woman next to him is demonstrating the strong psychological effect these dive coasters can have on the general public):



This was my second Bolliger & Mabillard Dive Coaster after Busch Gardens' Griffon, but it's very different. Like Griffon, its star effect is a drop that you get held at the top of for several seconds before being let go, which here is beyond-vertical. It's a much smaller ride than Griffon, but with a more involved looper layout after the drop. It still has wide trains, but they're only 7 seats wide, with a narrower track than Griffon. The restraints are different: the newer flexible vest restraints instead of over-the-shoulder "horsecollars". And it had been the subject of a lot of online discussion for a reason that was not great: Iron Menace supposedly exhibited the worst case so far of a recent affliction of B&M's formerly glass-smooth coasters, the "B&M rattle".

Well... Iron Menace is a fun ride and not uncomfortable, but I can confirm that, yes, it rattles a lot for a brand new B&M. It shakes as much as an old Arrow mine train, which is surprising. It didn't really bother me, though--might even contribute to the thrill; it's just worrying for what it might imply about B&M and its future.

Next ride was a simple one but it made me laugh for some reason. Here's East Coasters' video of Possessed:



This is an Intamin Impulse, a late 90s-early 2000s model of ride that seems to be gradually disappearing. This one came from the defunct Geauga Lake park in Ohio. It's an inverted launched shuttle coaster, where you ride in seats hanging below the track and get launched forward and backward up a pair of tall spikes by a linear induction motor. In this case, one of the spikes is also twisted.

The launches are fairly punchy, but I think the cleverest detail of the thing is the little seat belt. This is a belt that buckles the over-the-shoulder horsecollar restraint shut, and all it really is is a measuring device, making sure the restraint is closed far enough to hold you in. Most of the time, when these measuring belts exist, they're attached to the front of the restraint, and the belt adds a bit of psychological security, closing the gap that would otherwise exist around the level of your waist.

But it can do its job just as well attached to the SIDE of the restraint, so that you don't get that psychological security at all, and that's what Intamin did. That little gap is there when you're dangling there up the backward spike and that restraint is the only thing holding you in your seat.

I had rented an all-day locker near the top of the hill, which maybe I shouldn't have done, since I kept tromping back up there to retrieve or stash my phone and wallet. I think at this point I took a break to get a soda, so it was a little while before I came back down the hill and rode Thunderhawk, Dorney's century-old PTC woodie, an earlier work of our old pal Herb Schmeck:



Might as well stick with East Coasters for the rest of these; he seems to have the best Dorney Park videos. This coaster tracks pretty well, but its design is decidedly pre-modern, I had a back-row ride as I usually endeavor to get on these wooden coasters, and there were some surprisingly intense moments. There's one spot, I think when it passes under itself just before the far turnaround, that it jinks suddenly to the side. I had my arms in the air, grooving on the airtime, and this wrenched my back to the point that I was worried I was hurt. Turned out not to be a problem, but I think I'd have done better there if I were holding on and riding defensively.

At this point, I broke for lunch (a cheesesteak at Chickie and Pete's with Crabfries, which are apparently just regular fries with Old Bay seasoning--I'm not sure about the branding decision here). Slowed down a little in the afternoon as the heat started to get to me, but the next coasters were a pair of estimable B&M loopers.



This is Hydra The Revenge (I sure have been riding a lot of Revenges lately--wolves, wildcats, mummies, Hydras, they're all getting revenges), a peculiar B&M floorless built on the slope. Its most famous feature is the "Jojo roll", a lazy roll inversion near the ground that it slides into right out of the station, offering a very freaky sensation. This was apparently named after the Dorney Park VP who suggested it, but it's become the general industry term for this type of feature. This is the original Jojo roll. After that, there's a lift and four more inversions, including a really weirdly profiled cobra roll. I liked this ride, though it had the longest outdoor line I had to stand in at Dorney, baking in the sun.

I've been talking about loose-article policies, so I should mention Dorney's system, which is different yet again from any of the others I encountered. Like most of these parks, they have banks of bins, really cubbies, on the exit-side platform where you can stash loose items. When you board the train, you walk all the way through to the other side (somewhat awkwardly), stash your stuff there, and then board.

What's unusual about Dorney is that in an effort to keep people's stuff from getting lost or stolen, they try to do assigned cubbies! There's a specific bank of shelves for each train, and the individual cubbies are actually labeled by row, so that presumably every seat has a specific cubby it's supposed to use. I'm not sure most of the riders actually understood this system, per se. The real-world use was a bit haphazard. I heard a guy riding in a row with me on Hydra mention that he was only riding the coaster so that he could retrieve the stuff that his friends had accidentally left there.

Slowing down still more, I took another break and rode the park's quirky streamlined purple kiddie train, the Zephyr, which dates back to 1935. For once, East Coasters doesn't seem to have this so I'll use the park's official POV:



This now winds all around the coasters at the bottom of the hill that I'd ridden earlier in the day, though from inside the passenger cars it's hard to get good photographs. Parts of the course are surprisingly pretty.

I waited until near the end of the day to ride the coaster up at the top of the hill near the entrance, the splendid Talon. This, portrayed here by East Coasters once again, turned out to be the best ride at Dorney Park, and an unexpectedly amazing way to round out my CT/PA coaster trip:



This B&M invert is butter-smooth even for 2000-era B&M, one of the smoothest loopers I've ever ridden, and it is strong; the inversions gave me that blood-pooling-in-the-legs feeling that fans of these rides seem to crave. It leaves Hersheypark's Great Bear in the dust and I think that by itself it ought to put Dorney Park on the map.

But the park's whole ride collection is really good! There's not a lot of filler here--I did skip the Wild Mouse and the Peanuts-themed kiddie coaster, and if I ever come back here I need to do Demon Drop, the strange early drop tower that looks like it's almost half a coaster. But at this point I was beat.

My hotel turned out to be right across the street, and I suppose I could have parked there early, saved on parking and walked to Dorney. But never mind. My hotel room had a great view of Talon as evening fell. If it had been the beginning of my trip instead of the end, it would have been tremendously exciting. As it was, it was still nice.

Postscript: Day 6

I ended up not doing much of interest on my final day. Had a decent hotel breakfast, had a long phone conversation with my daughter who is visiting Japan, and got on the road. There were some museums I'd been thinking of hitting along the way, but the trouble is, museums keep much earlier hours than amusement parks, and I got started much too late to hit them with much time to visit. So I just headed home, taking frequent breaks.