The Best-Kept Secret About Hersheypark!
You may know about our quest to visit all 50 states and our goal to see all of the National Parks, but did you know we’re also on a mission to visit as many theme parks as possible? Yeah, we didn’t either lol However, while we were on our Mason-Dixon Road Trip, I realized we’ve hit up a TON of theme parks. Over the last few years, we’ve hit up Disney World, Universal Orlando, Wild Adventures, SeaWorld, Legoland, and Peppa Pig Theme Park. On this trip, we added a new theme park to our list: Hersheypark.
Hersheypark is a candy-themed park in Hershey, Pennsylvania. Yes, that Hershey. Believe it or not, the park opened in 1906! The founder of the Hershey, Milton S. Hershey, opened the park to create a green space for factory workers to unwind with their families. In 1908, a merry-go-round was installed. Shortly after, a carousel, roller coaster, and other rides were added. Soon, the park became a full-on theme park.
I first visited Hersheypark in the mid-90s (It blows my kid’s minds that I was alive in the 1900s) with my family. I remember loving it as a kid, so when I began mapping out our Mason-Dixon Road Trip, I knew we had to take the kids.
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The Best Kept Secret About Hersheypark!
While researching the park, I came across a juicy little tidbit of info that blew my mind! Believe it or not, when you purchase a regular ticket to Hersheypark, you get instant access to preview the park the evening before. Whaaaaaatttt!?!?! Extra time in the park? Yes, please!
The hours of this preview window vary, so you’ll want to check out the official website near the time of your visit to confirm what they will be. Typically, you’ll get 1.5 to 2 hours to explore Hersheypark.
Once I found this out, I switched up our itinerary a little bit to make sure we were in Hershey in time to take advantage of this. We hit up Gettysburg National Military Park and Eisenhower National Historic Site and high-tailed it to the land of chocolatey goodness.
After checking in to our hotel, we told the kids we were going out to eat and surprised them by taking them to Hersheypark for our preview. Our preview night was December 23rd, so it was during the holiday season. I expected it to be crowded, but I couldn’t have been more wrong. The park was dead. We walked up to each ride and had 0 wait times! During our 90-minute preview, we rode at least a dozen rides. Anyone who visits theme parks will tell you, that’s quite impressive!
Our Hersheypark Experience
The next day, we got up to hit the park again. With the preview under our belt, we had a pretty good grasp of the park’s layout. The kids mapped out what rides they wanted to conquer again and couldn’t have been more excited about visiting the park.
Since we were visiting the park on Christmas Eve, the park had limited hours. The park opened at noon, but Hershey’s Chocolate World opened at 10 so we headed to the theme park to check that out. Hershey’s Chocolate World has shops, eateries, and add-on features. There is a free ride that takes you through the process of making chocolate, which we all enjoyed. We ended up doing it twice just to kill time. At the end of the ride, they give you a sample of Hershey’s chocolate, which my kids thought was pretty cool.
We spent some time in the shops before waiting at the park’s entrance for the park to open. In our experience, many parks will open a few minutes early… although there was an announcement that the park was ready for visitors, they didn’t open the gates until noon on the dot.
The park closed at 4 on the day of our visit, so we had 4 hours in the park. Despite this, we didn’t feel robbed of our time since we had the preview. Plus, we had another day of 0 lines, so we walked directly onto every ride, which was pretty amazing! If you visit any of the Florida theme parks around the holidays you’ll experience longer than normal wait times, so to have virtually no wait was remarkable.
One bummer was that several rides were not open due to the temperatures. Since it was so cold out, there were no roller coasters open (which is something we’ve experienced at other parks). As far as thrill rides are concerned, there were only 2 available: an indoor roller coaster, and a “baby roller coaster” as my kids called it. All the open rides were the type of rides you’d find at the fair, which was a bummer.
What to Pack with You for Hersheypark
- Sunscreen
- Water bottle
- Towels/bathing suit (if visiting during the warm months when the waterpark is open)
What We Loved/Hated About the Park
The Sweet Stuff
- We loved that the park had short wait times.
- The park was decorated for the holidays and had the most incredible Santa. He even had his reindeer available for kids to visit (from a distance).
- The park was clean and easy to navigate.
- The park has an app that you can use to check wait times, order food, view maps, etc.
- There are storage lockers available to rent for the day. This is handy if you don’t feel like toting around a backpack or bag of towels (if you’re hitting up the waterpark).
- Rider swaps are available if needed. This is super handy if there isn’t one adult per child. You can ride the attraction with one kid while the other(s) stay with the operator. When you finish, you can swap out the kids and go on the ride again without having to wait in line.
The Bittersweet Stuff
- The prices for adding on things like making your bar of chocolate were pretty expensive, especially when you have a larger family.
- There were a lot of rides that our boys could ride, but our daughter couldn’t, and vice versa. There were very few rides that all 3 kids could ride together, which meant we often had to split up. It would have been nice if there were more rides that everyone could enjoy.
- There were not a lot of rides that adults could ride on. The kids had to ride alone on most rides, which wasn’t an issue for our kids but I could see it being a problem for others.
- Speaking of rides, there were some rides that the kids were permitted to ride during our preview, but not permitted to ride the next day. Although the kids were measured before each ride (which I totally get), not everyone was on the same page with who could ride.
- There weren’t many food options when we visited. We saw evidence of several eateries around the park, but they were not open during our visit.
Save a Pin & Start Planning Your Adventure
For future reference, be sure to save our “Epic Guide to Hersheypark.” Pin one of the images below to Pinterest. Go ahead and follow 5 Suitcases on Pinterest while you’re at it!
While we were in Pennsylvania, we also visited Gettysburg National Military Park and the Eisenhower National Historic Site. Check out our YouTube Channel to watch more videos from our Mason-Dixon Road Trip or other theme parks.
