Today marks just fifty days until my home park, Dorney Park & Wildwater Kingdom, opens for their 123rd season. After Hydra roared into action last year, Dorney Park is taking the year off from thrill rides and using the opportunity to make some necessary general park improvements. Shortly after closing for the 2005 season an old landmark building in the park, the Dorney Mansion or Gold Mine building, was removed due to poor structural integrity. For 2006 the void left by this removal will be filled with a new Subway restaurant, featuring an outdoor patio area to dine and enjoy shows across the way at the park’s Center Stage. As a sweet treat this summer, Dorney Park will be selling cotton candy for $0.25 this summer. Along with all the other Cedar Fair parks, this is sure to be a hit.

Dorney Park’s big new additions for this year are focused in Wildwater Kingdom, Dorney’s water park. For 2006 a new wave pool, Wildwater Cove, is being added to alleviate over crowding of the main wave pool. Pool side cabanas are also being introduced.

While the improvements for this season are sure to prove successful as much as they were necessary, one can not help but look to the future. The removal of Skyscraper from the bottom of the park at the close of the 2004 season left a void of attractions in that area of the park. Could something be up? After all, Skyscraper was only added in 2000. After the removal of Hercules between 2003 and 2004, a gap was left in the park’s roller coaster collection for wilder wooden roller coaster. Hercules obviously had to go, and while Thunderhawk is a great ride (would be fantastic without the head rests), the poor thing needs a big brother. A wooden twister coaster such as the offerings of Great Coasters would be the perfect compliment in the way Twister compliments Phoenix at Knoebels. I am sure others will agree that a great wood coaster would be a better addition than any of the popular gimmicky steel rides out there right now. Hopefully the latest trend of building wood coasters is continued by Dorney!

The countdown to opening day continues. I look forward to opening day at Dorney Park and seeing what other surprises are in store for the 2006 season. See you on the midway!

This entry was posted on Friday, March 17th, 2006 at 10:33 am and is filed under Editorials. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.