Hersheypark Announces New Chocolatetown Area + New Roller Coaster for 2020

Hersheypark has made their grand announcement, revealing that a new 23 acre section of the park is being developed for 2020, named Hershey's Chocolatetown.

Designed to be a place where guests can dine, shop, play and more, Chocolatetown will also totally redefine the way that visitors enter both Hersheypark and enjoy the Chocolate World visitors areas.

© Hersheypark

This aerial view of Chocolatetown shows the entire development in one shot, focusing on the new entrance area to the park.  A key component to the plan is a much more modern, larger and friendly entrance to the theme park.  The front gates and associated plaza will be moved forward toward the tram drop off area, which is also right near the entrance to the visitors center.

© Hersheypark

This ground level view shows what visitors will be greeted with when they start their day at Hersheypark.  With amenities such as ticket windows, rentals, guest services and more available well outside the entrance, the flow of the area will be greatly improved.  Also located in the plaza will be a big new Kettle Corn location, accessible without entering Hersheypark.

© Hersheypark

Located just to the left of the park entrance will be a large structure (seen above), open year-round, that will hold several additions in 2020.  First, there will be a flagship Hershey store, 10,000 square feet in size and filled with merchandise unique to the property.

Also in the building will be a confectionery kitchen along with an ice cream parlor.  A large part of the structure will also hold the biggest full service restaurant and bar that Hersheypark has ever had.  The restaurant will have a patio space that overlooks Chocolatetown, serving as another great gathering spot for visitors.  With year round operations, these amenities will make the visitor center experience, although in a separate structure, sweeter than ever.

© Hersheypark

Once inside the park, visitors will find a large Hershey Kiss shaped fountain waiting for them, with a giant roller coaster zooming through the plaza.  The fountain is designed to be a perfect photo spot, which looks wonderful from these renderings.  It overlooks the station of the park's new coaster, and has a steep drop-off beyond it to the creek below.

© Hersheypark

Curving to the left, visitors will find the park's classic Carousel (which will turn 100 next year!) moved to a prominent new location within Chocolatetown.  Also along this pathway is another new building, a 2,200 square foot full service Starbucks with both indoor and outdoor seating.  The renderings show a couple other smaller buildings in the area that were not yet detailed, so there may be even more to come as the development proceeds.

© Google Earth

For those familiar with Hersheypark's current entrance, most of it will be removed to make way for all of Chocolatetown's additions.  The structures marked above with a red X will be removed, and land currently blocked by the road (since removed) will be used for the plaza and roller coaster station.

© Hersheypark

And speaking of the park's new roller coaster, Hersheypark is only saying that it will be the property's 15th coaster, and will be their fastest, tallest, longest and sweetest coaster to date.  The park's animations for the expansion show the ride's station (above).

© Hersheypark

 Different parks of the images that were released give a good look at the ride's layout, and from these it certainly appears to be a B&M hyper coaster - standing around 220 feet tall.  The steep first drop is followed by a large air-time hill, a carousel turn around, more air-time hills and an upward helix.  The trains look to then dive down toward the creek and swoop through the entrance plaza before the final brakes.

© Hersheypark

You can also see in the animation that there is an orange, red and blue train on the chocolate colored tracks (with silver supports), which matches up nicely to the Reese's, Twizzlers and Kisses images on the station concept art.  While more details on the coaster won't be released until next summer, it certainly appears as though the ride will be as Hershey themed as they come!

Here is the full animation of Chocolatetown that was released with the news today.  You can really tell how dramatically different the entrance area to the park will be once the expansion opens in 2020.

In all the park is spending a whopping $150 million on Chocolatetown, and although the entrance will be heavily modified it will still function to get visitors in the park all next year.  Construction will start in January of 2019, and Hersheypark promises to release new details of the are in batches over the next 18 months.