A few months ago, Kevin let me know that his work was renting out Hershey Park and selling tickets at a discount.  We have all been needing something fun like this, and so we jumped at the chance to do it.  And Saturday was Hershey Park Day, and we were all so excited!

We started things off with the Chocolate Tour at Hershey’s Chocolate World.  The kids loved seeing the chocolate in the giant store.

The tour was really cool, and we all liked learning about how they make chocolate, but I think that everyone’s favorite part was getting a free little Hersey bar at the end :).  Yum!  (I don’t think we will have to go on the tour again though – it was more of a one time thing.)

Once we got into the park, we went to the official measurement station to get the kids measured for which rides they could go on.  We were so excited when Arthur was just barely tall enough to be a “Reeses.”  This meant that he could ride on a selection of roller coasters, as long as he was with an adult – and knowing that Arthur is just as adventurous as the rest of us, this was awesome news.  And so we went to the big white roller coster, the Comet, and rode it first.  He LOVED it and begged to go on it again.

The park wasn’t all that busy, mostly because it wasn’t open to the general public, and so we had fun discovering everything.  Derek usually had his map out to direct us where to go, and then there were sweet moments – like when I caught Lily and Derek walking hand in hand – so sweet :).

Arthur went on a lot of rides, but his favorite was the Coal Cracker – a log flume that he got to ride over and over while Kevin and I took turns riding some of the bigger roller coasters with Lily and Derek.  He had a giant smile on his face the whole time.

We went on a lot of the big roller coasters, but we ran out of time to go on all of them.  Our favorites were the Great Bear and Storm Runner – they were so awesome!  And they had a kiddie swap option, so that we didn’t have to wait in line twice.  Granted, nobody really knew how it was supposed to run, and so we had to do it differently on every ride, but it worked out great.

Toward the end of our time, we picked two more family rides to go on all together.  Laugh Track was one of them, and it was awesome!  Indoors and really fun, with carnival mirrors in the waiting area.  And Arthur got to ride it with us and loved it, as usual.  I love that we all love roller coasters!

Lastly, we did one more run on the Coal Cracker for Arthur.  I think it was his seventh time riding it :).

Right before we headed out, we noticed that the Great Bear only had a five minute wait, so all of us, except for Arthur, rose it one more time.  And then the kids got to ride on Starship America as we were leaving the park.  So much fun, and I don’t think we could have packed in any more.  We all had a fabulous time!  And Arthur played so hard all day, he fell asleep as soon as we drove away.  I consider that a successful family adventure :).

Oh, and when Arthur woke up this morning, he turned to me and said, “Is it Hershey Park Day again today?”  I guess he really loved it :).