It may be the middle of winter, but the park season is slowly creeping up on us. During this time, the American Coaster Enthusiasts usually organize an event in several areas of the country for parks to discuss what they are adding for the season. In previous years one of these events called East Coaster was held at Dorney Park, but this year it is coming to the Sweetest Place on Earth: Hershey. My friend and co-worker has allowed me to come along and join in on the fun for the weekend.
For Friday (today), a tour of Hersheypark’s Service Center and a construction tour of Laff Trakk was on the schedule. The park’s Service Center was supposed to house space for the park to work on all the rides…when it was first built. Now that the park has pretty much doubled in size since the 1970’s, it now only has space for the park’s major attractions (coasters).
The Service Center houses several different areas from a parts inventory shop, machine shop, sign shop, non-deconstructive stress-testing area, wood shop, fiberglass area, to a car vehicle shop where work to the park’s trams, vehicles, and golf carts happen.
The shops are buzzing with activity this time of the year with maintenance employees everywhere working hard to get the attractions ready for the 2015 season.
Out in the park, we got to walk down to Laff Trakk and have a brief Q&A with Lisa Howard and Laura Woodburn, the park’s rides department managers on information about the ride.
- As of right now, there is nothing certain yet on if Laff Trakk will be running for Christmas Candylane as they are trying to aim to open the ride for Memorial Day Weekend.
- Upon entering the queue, which will be on or near where that path to the Midway Tent was, guests will enter into the indoor queue area (with the red roof) or to the right to the outdoor queue area in front of the building. There will be a few fun house elements in the indoor queue area and possibly Laughing Sal.
- The station will be something unique to the park as it will feature a separate unload area, a loading area as well as a second loading area specifically for ADA guests and it will be wheelchair accessible to the station.
- The ride will operate 5 to 6 cars at a time and feature only a lapbar (no seatbelts).
- The cars will be limited in how much they will spin (I think 30 rpm was said to be the max).
- The test seat and control system arrived just the other day. Cars may arrive later in February.
- The outside of the building will be painted, so don’t expect it to remain the current white color for long.
Be sure to check out some of the photos below for some behind-the-scenes photos of Hersheypark’s Service Center, Some new things being done in the park, and some Laff Trakk photos from inside the park. Be sure to share this update on Facebook and you may win an envelope of brochures/maps!
I want to thank my friend Will for letting me come along to the event, ACE, and Hersheypark for being great hosts.
Stay tuned for day two!
-Chris

One of the things displayed is the top piece to Wave Swinger, which now has a new LED lighting package. Don’t know if it will be like that on the rest of the ride, but if so, then it will be awesome!

The trains are made mostly out of fire-protected wood. They seem to be slowly making progress on reassembling them, which is a good sign!

Over in Sidewinder’s area, it looks like things are good to go. You can also see more wheel bogeys for Skyrush too.

Here’s the underside of a Fahrenheit car. You can tell where the drive tires make contact on the car.

These containers are paint to touch-up the track and cars for Laff Trakk, once it starts being assembled.

Having been in the Service Center back in 2009, it felt great to be able to go through again and check out what’s changed.

The have kept Looper’s original entrance sign!
They plan on fixing it up again and possibly doing something with it again eventually.

The Carpenter shop also has some machinery to be able to bend the track rails for the park’s wooden coasters.

Much of the crew in here is busy year-round in here and if they have to replace a sign, they can easily get a replacement.

While down here, Laura, the director of rides, gave a pretty interesting Q&A session on information about the ride.