Tuesday 29 January 2013

SkyRush at Hersheypark - Review


Hersheypark feels like a small family owned park… With a number of large, steel thrill coasters. There’s some genuine backbone to the place which evokes an old fashioned, caring company that puts their heart before, or at least in line with, their head. Hersheypark originally opened as a leisure park for employees and families of the Hershey Chocolate Company, which is the most wonderful thought in itself. Whilst the reality today is business, the illusion carried on by the park’s accumulated history is magical.

It’s a weird place, certainly not what I expected it to be and far from a perfect park. In fact, despite how much I truly love the place, there are very few obvious positive points to make. It’s pleasantness rests mostly on the atmosphere. It’s very much an amusement park, not a theme park, which surprised me on my first visit. This “family theme park” is dominated by some very large, unthemed roller coasters, and they pay particular interest to dressing them in strings of lights like a classic amusement park of the golden era. Yet somehow, the park feels big budget too, and not just because of it’s high entrance fee and expensive ride hardware. Like a nice Blackpool Pleasure Beach, nice in that it’s clean and friendly and appropriate for contemporary audiences.  The huge rides are cluttered and dance over your head and each other and every path in such a way to really make you feel apart of the place and the carnival fun it promotes. At night, the place truly comes alive. It all feels very honest, very authentic, very friendly and nostalgic.

Sunday 27 January 2013

Walt Disney World… Some Initial Thoughts


Having only just visited Walt Disney World Resort in Florida “properly”, I thought it would be apt to jot down some of my initial thoughts.

Epcot was our first park. We arrived in Orlando fairly late in the day, so it seemed logical to pick the park with the least to actively do. To my surprise, Epcot would be a park we would revisit. I struggled to be impressed with the dull Future World section of the park at it’s entrance, though visiting in January without the foliage displays I’d seen in photos was disappointing. I enjoyed how the landscape doesn’t feel like a theme park in places, but more akin to a resort or recreational park. But I couldn’t get past how dated parts of it look. I gather that might be half the charm for many, or perhaps the entire point – but I find that somewhat unconvincing logic based not on personal taste or experiences, but someone else’s preconceived idea. Like the nonsense of “its classic, therefore it’s good”.  The aquarium especially looks incredibly dark and brutalist, reminiscent of London Zoo’s aged architecture. I always thought of Disney attractions as being timelessly relevant and not appealing to contemporary designs of when they were build, but we found more outdated environments at the Transport and Ticket Centre and in Tomorrowland at Magic Kingdom. I felt like the intentions of this section of Epcot were no longer relevant, and possibly never was? I know little of the park’s history, so my opinions are purely objective to my experience in early 2013. Who in their right mind would pay that much for what is essentially a museum?