philly bucket list: hershey, pa

Ryan and I were fortunate enough to find a church shortly after we moved to Philly.
We only had one bad experience while church-hunting. An experience that maaaay have included a 3 and a half hour long sermon and hundreds of Asians. Not that Asians are bad or I'm a racist or anything. It's just a little awkward when you are one of the only two white people in a purely Asian church. I felt like everyone was looking at us thinking, "Heehee, someone didn't get the memo."
After that we got a postcard in the mail for Epic Church, went there the next week, and never left :)
We love our church.
We love our pastor and the people there.
We love their vision.

So after service one sunday, we were just hanging out, chatting with the pastor and a few friends. And out of nowhere, he's like, "So..we were at the beach this past weekend and I thought, 'Ryan and Nancy would like something like this!' so we want to send you guys on a little weekend getaway!"
And I was all, "REALLY?! YIPPEEEEEE!!!"
And Ryan just stood there. Boys.

After some planning and swapping of ideas, we decided to shoot for an amusement park. Which was perfect, since Hershey was on our Philly bucket list!!

 We had SO MUCH FUN! Hersheypark is a great amusement park. Sure, the rides aren't as huge as at Cedar point, which is the amusement park we grew up going to, but they're really good! And there is a lot of other stuff to do there besides ride roller-coasters.

Hersheypark offers a "preview night", so if you have a ticket for the next day you can enter the park at 7:30pm the night before! We were hoping to get lots of our roller-coaster riding in the night before while the lines were shorter. We went on a wooden roller-coaster first and it was so jerky and jostling. We both got off and felt...not right. And then I thought, "Oh shoot. I can't be old enough to say, 'I'm too old for this' yet!" That can't come until my 30 birthday. Which I am determined to make as miserable as possible. (I have a complex about turning 30. I'm not saying that everyone out there who is over 30 is old.) So we charged on, both determined that we were most definitely still young enough to ride roller-coasters.

Turns out that wooden roller-coaster was the worst ride in the park.
We spent the next day riding almost all of the roller-coasters there. And loving every minute of it.
Definitely still young enough. (Phew! I've still got a good 6 years left in me!)

This was one of my favorites, even though I really FREAKED out on it.
It's called Fahrenheit, because of the high degree of the first hill. I'm not even kidding, it is STRAIGHT up and then on the way down, you even go under the track a bit. It was crazy.

I wasn't kidding.

 On the way up, I was ...well, like I said, freaking out.
"I'mfreakingout. I'mfreakingout. I'mfreakingout. I'mfreakingout. I'mfreakingout. I'mfreakingout."
That was me.
And then at the end, I was like "WHOOOOOO!! That was AWESOME!"
Pretty sure everyone on the ride loved me.

But to be honest, I freaked out at the beginning of every ride. And then loved them at the end.
Storm runner was also a really good one, you get up to 70-something miles per hour and it just SHOOTS you off in the beginning. You're just sitting there waiting. And waiting. And waiting. And then all of a sudden, "Get Ready. Herewego." WHOOOOOOSH! You're off. It was awesome. And SO. FAST.
And we liked the racing wooden roller coaster a lot. Mostly because the 2 racers were "Thunder" and "Lightning." And I liked going on Thunder so we could sing "Thunderstruck" by AC/DC.
Everyone on that ride probably loved me too.

But enough about roller coasters.
We also got to go to CHOCOLATE WORLD! Hello! Can you see why I had so much on this mini-vacation?

A little hot, and a little tired at this point

We went on this really stupid "ride" that takes you in a loop and shows you how they make chocolate. Complete with singing animated cows. It was bad. But then you get some free chocolate at the end.
So naturally, we went on it again. (Ryan's idea, I swear)
I think the lady passing out the chocolate felt bad for us, because the next time through she gave us 3 samples each. How sweet of her, right? Saving us the misery of going through that dang ride over and over again.

I really wanted to do the factory tour where you make your own candy bar, but the tickets for that were sold out. So we did a tasting "class" instead. It wasn't the greatest thing we've ever done, but it was fun. And I got to eat chocolate. So...no complaining here.

 

Overall, Hershey was a great addition to our Philly Bucket List!

Currently playing on the record player: "Simon and Garfunkel's Greatest Hits"
(Thanks, Em! LOVING this record!)