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Taking advantage of a warm sunny day, plenty of visitors flocked to Dorney Park today for the opening of this year's
Great Pumpkin Fest, a family-friendly Halloween celebration.
The event is held in a part of the water park, which is closed for the season, and features a ton of activities and experiences for kids and their parents. The short walk under Talon leads to the event, which curls around the Wildwater Cove wavepool and the area surrounding it.
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There are a ton of activities going on at all times at The Great Pumpkin Fest, including several live shows at regular intervals. Above is one of them, but there are 4 different performances that rotate across the stage throughout the day.
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Of course The Great Pumpkin Fest wouldn't be complete without a great pumpkin (there is one indeed) and also plenty of Peanuts characters dressed up for the Halloween season. Here are Snoopy and Linus all decked out meeting visitors.
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The Funster House is like a haunted house only not haunted or scary. It's just a silly fun house that kids can go through and receive a treat - not a trick - at the end.
The area also has a petting zoo, mask making area, small tractor rides, a bale maze, pumpkin painting and of course trick-or-treat street.
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And of course also this, Pigpen's People Washer, which I think is pretty adorable. It's a giant suds play area that kids appeared to be having a ball in. I didn't want to get too close for a photo, though, as the suds were flying!
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As for Halloween Haunt, which starts this coming Friday the 21st, the park is nearing completion on set up and will put the final touches in place this week before opening. There is much to see at this point, though we won't cover everything in this article so as to save some content for the actual event!
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Dorney Park's Main Midway area has received some new decorations for this year, including this neat headless horseman statue in the center planter. Many years ago the park had a similar one, but he met an untimely end (maybe because he has no head?) so this is a new for 2018 version.
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The lantern boxes that we saw under construction in our
pre-haunt update are now finished and spread throughout the Main Midway. The feature colorful images on all sides, and I can't wait to see how they look at night!
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At the end of the midway in front of the Wave Swinger's entrance is this new set up, during the day this is a nice witch, and she has a cool backdrop that's an overgrown atrium type of set. Guests can visit with her and have their photo taken... honestly the set the park created for this is the coolest part in my book! Oh, and at night, no longer a nice witch... so watch out for that.
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The new stage we also saw being built in our pre-haunt update is now in its final location, in Hydra plaza in front of Meteor. This will be the home of the new Overlord's Resurrection show. Taking place each night at 7:00 pm, this will be the kickoff to the night's scares. The Overlord will be brought to life and call upon his fleet of monsters to take over the park and... well scare everyone!
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Not a new decoration, but the hanging pumpkins are back on the midways leading to CornStalkers. I love these pumpkins (they all flicker at night) and think they add so much atmosphere to this part of the park.
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But there are some new ghosts that have taken up home along the Road Rally path by the creek. These look awesome and are going to look even better at night with some spooky lighting and all that fog...
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The all-new Port Of Call area, which is a combination of dance party, cirque show and a bar, looks ready to go and guests can already walk through the area. No longer a scare zone, this area now works well as a gathering point for entertainment and beverages, something that I'm hoping really clicks with the crowd this year.
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The Port of Call Pub will be located here, serving different beverages including the specialty brews that were created for the park this year, and a new one for Haunt. These will pair nicely with the Dead Man's Revenge DJ, some themed characters and the Jolly Rogers cirque-style show.
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It sounds like a fun area to hang out in this year, and its inhabitants, like this gem, are just dying to see you there!
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The park's Pumpkin Spectacular, which is located along the pathway leading to Urgent Scare, is coming together and looks great! I love this kind of addition to the park's atmosphere, it may not be a house or a scare zone but it adds a lot to the event in my book.
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Because the display is stretched along a path, it is quite hard to get everything in one shot. But in addition to a cast of pumpkin characters, there are plenty of real pumpkins creating larger designs as well, here is the sun for instance.
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And of course you have to have Snoopy in there as well!
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I think that about does it for our final Haunt preview, I'm keeping some things off the site until Haunt actually starts... like I said earlier. You'll notice the image above is the only one of Necropolis that I've added... on purpose!
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See you all next weekend for the opening of Halloween Haunt! Plan your own trip using the park's
official website.
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