Dorney Park 9.1.08 Mini Update

Had to stop by for the last day of the 'summer' season, here's what I saw on this Labor Day 2008.

They started selling season passes for 2009 early this year, having a Labor Day sale. $85.99 is pretty good price, much lower than in recent years. People on the DPO boards are reporting that this is the price the passes will sell at during The Haunt.

From in the water park you can see some CornStalkers props located in the maintenance road that will the home of the haunt. The red thing is the top of a big old tractor.

From when you cross the maintenance between the water park and Thunder Canyon you can see several tractors, lighting rigs, big wooden crosses, and plenty of cornstalks.

Club Blood is getting all sorts of cool graffiti on the outside of the building. Sorry for the bad picture but this is what available to see from inside the park.

Magic House on Boo Hill is all ready to go (on the outside, at least).

Finally, they added another hearse to the front plaza, this is the one with all the crows on it but with new Haunt lettering.

The park now closes for a few weekends for buyouts only. After that, The Haunt starts!

Voodoo Works Its Press Magic

© 2008 The Morning Call / Monica Cabrera

Voodoo at Dorney Park also had it's media day yesterday - this week has been very busy with new ride media days/openings.

There's a bunch of articles online, some with video of the ride in action. The Morning Call has a nice article with a video of the ride in action. The Philly news stations also were there for the opening, here's NBC and here is CBS's video. Finally, we have WFMZ and The Express Times' contributions to the coverage.

Dorney Park will be open daily for the rest of the summer starting this weekend.

Voodoo Opened Today

So I took a chance and stopped by the park today hoping that Voodoo might open. Lucky for me, it did.

I got there early and noticed that a full ride crew was at Voodoo cleaning, and the management types were milling around. Cleaning queue rails only means one thing in my Cedar Fair experience, and that is that a ride is going to open soon.

But I'm getting ahead of myself, they were doing some work on Laser, it almost looking like they were sanding or something on the tracks. One train was at the very end of the brake run.

Also, there's a new little SnoCone stand right at the entrance of Voodoo. I can't help but wonder if this is new or used-Geauga - which if true would be funny considering it's at Voodoo.

So they started testing Voodoo a few times with the water dummies, did the full runs and the not full test runs, etc. - and then they emptied the water out of the dummies and removed them.

After a while, and much more cleaning of the ride's train, people started to gather at the entrance to the ride and a big line started to form.

And then it opened! I was lucky to get a ride on the first public train, and it was pretty great. It was pretty much what I expected, but in a good way. The launch is fun, and I also actually really enjoyed the holding brake.

The park handled the crowd very well (no Canada's Wonderland Behemoth stampedes) and the dispatches on Voodoo were fantastic. Props to the park for both of those.

It was a perfect blue sky this morning, then by the time the ride opened I had this not-so-great sky as a background for photos.


Important park people and very happy riders of Voodoo. The crowds really seemed to love the ride.

It's a great ride to watch from the midway, too.


On a final note, here's a nice shot of the Ferris Wheel (new logo on the middle panel).

Congrats on your ride opening, Dorney!

Dorney Park 2008 Opening Day Part 2

Here is the 2nd part of my Dorney Park opening day photos. This section is pretty much all Voodoo shots.

This way to Voodoo! All the sign posts have been updated.

Let's start with the ride's entrance sign. It's awesome. It totally clashes with the bright (somewhat unappealing) orange of the station, but the sign itself is fantastic.

The logo is only somewhat 3D, but features those awesome fake melted candles at the base of it. Dorney really does have an eye for detail with this stuff, like Hydra's smoking dragon head on its sign, even the meteor rocks they created for around Meteor.

The view as you approach Voodoo on the park's lower midway. This pic is one of many, many shots I could take that make me wonder why Dorney is still mocked for having too few trees!

Getting closer... the ride really towers over the park.

This one was taken from the bridge that passes over the creek.

Here's the new Voodoo plaza, if you will. The station and queue sit pretty much right on the midway, and on ground level unlike Steel Force, Talon, and Hydra, so you can get up real close to the ride. That makes it's presence very different from previous coasters at the park.

The station from the opposite side.

They made an area where you can get really close to the launch section, which will be great for watching riders once the ride is operating.

Here are some closer shots of the trains. Here are cars one and two. Again, the seats are purple, like Dominator's and Thunderhawk's (no not Dorney's rides ... at Kings Dominion and Michigan's Adventure - which makes me realize Cedar Fair copied a lot of Dorney names for stuff...).

Here you can see the end of car 4 which is the last of the 'new' part of the train. Starting with car 5 you can see that the train is the old style from Geauga Lake.


Here's the bulk of the queue for the ride. I'm really surprised that it doesn't have any shade covers. If they do not add them that's going to be really horrible in the summer.

Then the queue wraps around the supports for the holding-brake tower in this little area.

... and then heads back to the station. The emergency exit for the ride empties into the seating area for Monster Grille as seen above.

Here are some close up shots. We have the holding-brake tower, the actual holding brakes, and the stopper at the top of that same tower.

Taking a look at Voodoo's area, or plaza, or whatever, some work was done here as well. Above is the basketball game that was relocated for Voodoo, it's now where Laser's sign used to be.

Here's a mega picture of stuff. At the top of Possessions, a new store that has a ton of Voodoo merchandise, and plenty of other ride related items as well. There's a second version of the sign for the store in the lower left which is awesome, the games by Voodoo are now officially the Voodoo Games (used to be Laser games) - And Voodoo has it's own flags flying around the ride as seen on the right. That was a really horrible run-on sentence.

I'll finish with some photos that show Voodoo from all over, here's one of Laser with Voodoo's towers behind it.

Here is the twist tower from across the creek.

And here's a nice one that was taken over the creek by the Zephyr station area. This is another one that makes me wonder why people say the park has no trees...

Okay that'll do it for me! That was a lot of resizing and editing and posting for one day. Hope you enjoyed, and thanks to Dorney for a good time!

Dorney Park 2008 Opening Day Part 1

Today was Dorney Park's opening day for the 2008 season. The weather wasn't that great, but I made it out to the park to take some pictures, enjoy some rides, and see what's new this year.

As we know, Voodoo is not opening until late May. They have some new banners up in the park featuring Voodoo.

They've just started construction for the building that will hold Club Blood this fall. They took out some of the hill that was here and put a construction wall up.

View from the other side. When on Hydra I could see that they have cleared out the area for the building, but it looks like construction is still in the early stages.

99.9 The Hawk was at the park for opening day, they had a spinning wheel that guests could try to win a prize at - not sure what they would have won, though.

The Peanuts characters are the only entertainment in the park until Memorial Day weekend.

Hydra was open, along with all the other coasters except Voodoo and Laser. I took a spin on Hydra and the rattle was really bad today. Aside from that it's still a fun ride.

Very little difference, but this island finally got a little fence around it - I always hated seeing people tromping through it during the summer when it's full of flowers.

Just needed to stop and take a pic to show how Voodoo looks from across the park.

This deal is back again this year, if you're going to visit often and like to drink a lot, well, I guess it makes sense!

Just wanted to take these shots because I can with my new camera!

I took notice of these little guys and had to snap a picture, they're so cute! Too bad they grow up to be pretty mean birds...

Not sure exactly what the deal was with this, but it made me feel like I was in Disney with people trying to sell me a timeshare. It's probably something along those lines ... but I was going to let them give me the speech in order to find out for sure.

The Whip got a fantastic new sign! I really like the design. But that's not all the love that the ride got...

The entire attraction has a new wood floor this year. They were also able to make an exit from the ride platform that helps better control crowds. Three cheers to Dorney for not only keeping this classic, but actually spending a good deal of cash to give it the attention it needs!


Laser's sign was moved when it was displaced by a basketball game. For the record, the ride has no new paint and no visible changes that I could tell.

Solomon's Snacks has turned into Icee Mix It Up. I hope they have a hose nearby to clean the place up during the summer! Looks fun though, really - not very popular today because it was so cold!

I was taking a break and realized just how much the trees and stuff has grown in around Camp Snoopy over the years. Now that the trees are so big the Camp aspect sure fits better!

They're pushing Season Passes in a lot of ads around the park, also making note that pass holders get in free to The Haunt this fall - something that all Cedar Fair parks seems to be marketing this year.

Sorry for the glares - here's a couple new posters that are on the side of the Arcade, one for The Haunt and a nice Voodoo poster.

Part 2 will be all the Voodoo photos I took - there are many. That part will be up soon!