Hersheypark Halloween

Last weekend, we visited Hersheypark in Hershey, Pennsylvania for a special holiday event called Hersheypark Halloween. This park has some great offerings, but unfortunately we weren’t able to experience many of them.

Before you dig into our day at Hersheypark, check out our experience at Hershey’s Chocolate World. We all preferred it to Hersheypark and it was a less stressful experience all around.

Hersheypark Halloween

Hersheypark divides its year into four seasons: Springtime, Summer, Halloween, and Christmas Candylane. Hersheypark Halloween is their fall celebration and it includes themed decorations, special events, themed food and beverages, and dark rides on coasters and other attractions throughout the park.

Dark Nights is an “immersive haunt experience” with multiple haunted houses and scare zones. This event requires a separate ticket.

Our Experience

When we planned our Hersheypark trip back in March of this year, I wasn’t even thinking about Halloween yet. I just knew I wanted to take our family to Hersheypark and enjoy the attractions (and, frankly, the food) that I’d heard about.

Unfortunately our experience was not a favorable one. We arrived 30 minutes before opening and waited to enter. The lines seemed long, but we naively attributed it to the bottleneck at the entry gates.

We made our way to the back of the park and to experience our first attraction: Laff Trakk. This indoor coaster is fun house-themed. We only had to wait a few minutes to get on, which seemed promising. While I’ve never ridden it with the lights on, the darkness made it impossible to see the track and it was a much more thrilling ride than I’d anticipated. We left the attraction eager for more and optimistic about our park experience.

Our next stop was the Trick-or-Treat Trail, otherwise known as Treatville at the Boardwalk. This special event was held in the waterpark section of the park, which is fairly centrally located.

I only took two of my children through the trail to collect candy because my oldest, at 13, was considered too old for the event. Luckily my little ones were willing to share.

It took us about 10 minutes to walk through this attraction and by then, the crowds had caught up with us.

The Crowds

As we made our way to the next coaster, the wait time for it had reached 45 minutes, which was the lowest in the park. In reality, though, we were in line for nearly 2 hours.

During that time, we watched no fewer than a dozen people leave the queue to purchase Fast Track (cut the line) passes and discussed sunk cost fallacies.

The crowds were a consistent problem for the rest of the evening. In some places, we could barely move through them. We were frequently separated from our children when moving from one place to the next, even if we attempted to hold hands on the way.

I’m sorry to report that the park was too crowded for us to enjoy much of anything. All in all, we experienced 4 attractions (including the Trick-or-Treat Trail) in an 8-hour window and did not have time to purchase any food or drink. The attractions we did experience were excellent, but we didn’t feel like we were able to do enough to justify the cost of tickets.

Plan Your Visit

Hersheypark
100 W. Hersheypark Drive
Hershey, Pennsylvania 17033
website