After the craziness of Hershey Park, today was about the more chilled out, relaxed atmosphere of Dorney Park. This Cedar Fair park has a rich history and is the perfect park for a chilled out Sunday of B&M's, Intamins and Morgans?!

One of my biggest observations of the parks on this trip is that when there's a water park as part of the admission, thats where people want to be. The 100/200 odd people waiting at the entrance to Dorney made a swift right to Wildwater Kingdom. Without even trying we got to Talon first, front row, only two riders on the train. Weird quirk of Dorney is that the air gates don't open, you have to push them. Must be a slight frustration for ride ops, having to shout 'push the gates' on every ride. 

Talon is a very traditionally layout B&M inverter but it looks absolutely gorgeous. Yellow, orange and blue really works on that thick B&M track. It's all eerily quiet. I'd heard that the track was filled with sand but you struggle to even know the train is on the move. If no one is screaming on a train, it's as if the ride isn't even moving. There are some lovely forces on the ride but it is on the tamer side. The to the ground helix was definitely the highlight, nice and low to the ground and a fitting bit of iconography for a ride that holds you in the grip of fear.

Next stop was Hydra: The Revenge. The last of those rides I spoke about in the first blog. Yet again we got to the train and were the only two people on board. This peculiar B&M floorless is very unconventional for this ride type. Odd order of inversions, everything taken at a gradual pace. The jo-jo roll is quite representative of the ride as a whole with the more graceful way it takes inversions being vastly different to the other Floorless I've done so far on this trip. It also had quite a severe rattle that really made itself apparent after the cobra roll. The operations were rubbish to say the least. Later on in the day the glacial pace was really causing an unnecessary queue. 

CHESSINGTON REPRESENT.

Our next stop was Possessed, an Intamin impulse coaster which Chris hates. Yet again it was just us two so we opted on the front row and it was okay if not a tad repetitive. No, the real highlight of the park is Steel Phantom, a morgan hyper which is excellent and reminds me heavily of Magnum Force. It's a lovely long ride with huge amounts of air time. Would have ridden more if it had not broken down.

Thunderhawk was the rides older wooden, previously named Rollercoaster. One thing I love about Dorney is how much it celebrates its history. What I don't like is how a lot of it has been removed and doesn't exist anymore. There are bits here and there such as Rollercoaster, the Whip and the Zephyr. But the rest has been eradicated and is completely gone. A few boards here and there are dedicated to remembering what else has been there. But all this talk of dark rides and there's none at Dorney now at all. Such a shame.

A selection of classic funfair rides dots around the park and the ride operators have a lot of fun on the PA getting the guests pumped and ready to ride. There's a real contrast of Dorney with other Cedar Fair parks I've done; Dorney rates nicely because it has a charm and still has the feel of a family owned theme park. We took a ride on Wild Mouse. This has the worst operations of any ride ever. Well it is a maurer wild mouse so should have expected this.

We took a couple of rides, were about to leave then noticed Demon Drop was open. This intamin first generation drop tower is surreal, so weird. Not recorded for multiple rerides but its fine as a novelty.

We left to get ahead of the poor weather forecast. We had a lovely day. Sure the park is nowhere near the others in terms of park investments. But it is a decent, varied day out. I recommend. If they do get the B&M dive machine like is rumoured, this will be the second cedar fair park to get one just after I've visited. I shall return..