Dorney Park to Remove Stinger Roller Coaster

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Dorney Park is featuring a new Blog post that covers many off-season happenings at the amusement and water park, including the construction of an all new restaurant (Tidal Wave Cafe), track refurbishment on Thunderhawk, new food options at the park for next year, the hiring of a brand new executive chef, the addition of additional Coke Refresh stations and the removal of the Stinger roller coaster.

Wait, what was that last thing?!  At the bottom of the blog post, the park drops a bomb that Stinger will be removed:

"Finally, from time to time we have to move things around or even remove them completely in order to look to the future.  Stinger, which came to us from our sister park California's Great America in 2012, will be removed to make room for future planning opportunities. We don’t have details to share right now, but we are working on future planning and development of the park."

The coaster, which had some occasional downtime issues over the years, was built at the park for the 2012 season.  Here's our original story on the opening of the ride, if you want to get reacquainted.  It was moved to the park from California, where it first opened at California's Great America in 1998 - meaning it had 13 seasons there, and 6 at Dorney Park.

The ride is a Vekoma Invertigo, one of only a handful to have been built around the world.  It mimics the layout of a traditional Boomerang coaster, but features inverted trains that seat riders face-to-face.  Standing 130 feet tall, the train moves forward and backward through a total of six inversions during the ride's course hitting a top speed of 50 miles per hour. 

© Google

Focusing on the park's description that the ride is being removed for "future planning opportunities," let's take a look at Stinger's home in the park.  Sitting generally where Laser (another coaster) once sat, it resides at the far end of the bottom of the park.  Beyond it is a set of Larson Flying Scooters (which are confirmed to be open in 2018) that were added a few years back, restrooms, and old picnic groves that contain a haunted house for Haunt.

Now, I could start to outline the areas on this map for development, but to get to the point fast - if the entire area was cleared out there would be a pretty large area that could be used for multiple purposes.  Is a new section of amusement park needed?  Or does a cabin resort make more sense?  What about a second entrance that's closer to the overflow parking lots?  My mind races, imagining what could come.

For now, we can be sure that Stinger will be removed before the start of the 2018 season, and that we have a new project of some sort to look forward to!

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