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News & Rumors
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DORNEY PARK
& Wildwater Kingdom
Allentown, PA (Abbreviation: DP)
Cedar Fair L.P.
 Park News - (8/17/2023) So what’s going on at Dorney Park now? Based on a new teaser video posted by the park, another announcement is coming on Sept. 7th. Based on the creepy feel, this may be a final bit announcement about the park’s Halloween Haunt details, with the Haunt starting a week later on Sept. 15th.
(4/22/2023) You can add Dorney Park to the growing list of Cedar Fair parks that are adding a new Chaperone policy to their park operations this season. The new policy goes into effect starting on Sunday, May 7th and states that any guest age 15 and under must be accompanied by a chaperone age 21 or older to remain in the park after 4pm daily. The chaperone must stay with the group they are overseeing inside the park, have a valid ID proving their age and those underage found without a chaperone will be asked to leave the park.
2023 - Nothing is known to be added at this time...
2024 - Iron Menace - (8/21/2023) If you’re heading to Dorney Park you might want to keep an eye out for Iron Menace pieces. A reader mentioned seeing a truck with a couple of very large gray coaster supports in the Pennsylvania area.
(8/10/2023) Dorney Park has announced Iron Menace, a new B&M Dive Machine coaster featuring a beyond-vertical, 95º first drop. This will actually be the “northeast’s first dive coaster”, standing 160 feet tall, featuring four inversions and a top speed of 64 mph.
It is interesting to note that they’ve built a backstory behind this ride as well about a Scottish businessman from the early 1900’s named Hiram S. McTavish. McTavish, owner of a steel mill, built “a massive hauler” to transport workers and ore on rails at dizzying speeds that he named the Iron Menace. Soon after McTavish vansihed without a trace, leaving the mill to close and rot away.
Keeping an eye on the concept art and animation,you’ll notice that this B&M Dive Machine features 3-rows of 7-across seating, just like the one that opened at Six Flags Fiesta Texas in 2022, making this the second “D7” production model. Also, unlike just about every other B&M Dive Machine built, this one does not feature a large turn at the top… instead you will rise up and head straight for the 152 foot drop, much like the popular “Baron 1898” model built at Efteling. Pulling out of the plunge, riders climb up into a massive immelman, a zero-g-roll, an incline loop and then a final corkscrew before heading back to the brake run. You did read that right, Iron Menance features the return of B&M’s tilted or incline loop, a feature found on many of their previous generation Stand-Up coasters, but otherwise not really seen put on a newer design in many years, making this the first time it has been used on a Dive Machine.
As for “Hiram McTavish”, this is a name that fans of Knott’s Berry Farm may recognize. If you’ve visited Knott’s and come across the small boot hill cemetery, there is a grave for a Hiram McTavish that tells a legend about how McTavish’s “heart will beat again after 100 years and any varmit placin thar foot on his grave who feels that beatin will be saddled with good luck”. The trick here is that guests who stand upon the grave will actually feeling the beating of his heart coming from the ground. As you can see on the tombstone below, ole Hiram McTavish passed away in 1886.
(7/30/2023) Dorney Park has posted new teasers for their upcoming announcement on August 10th, including a blog post titled, “Forge Your Own Fate” with links to three creepy teaser videos. Based on the creepy content alone, I had first thought that this may be something for Halloween, but the blog confirms this is for the park’s upcoming 2024 coaster project announcement.
So what exactly does “Forge Your Own Fate” mean then? Will riders be given a choice of some kind to make? This brings to mind the unique Fury roller coaster that opened at Bobbejaanland in 2019. This unique creation from Gerstlauer rolls out of the station and onto a turntable, where guests are asked to push a button to “vote” if they want to experience the ride forwards or backwards. At this point the votes are tabulated and the turntable begins to spin into the right position to begin the swing-launch sequence that starts off the ride experience. (See Fury In Action Here)
So what do you think? Could we be seeing a similar concept brought to Dorney Park for 2024?
(7/22/2023) We know a new roller coaster is now the plan for Dorney Park in 2024, and the park has now set an August 10th date to make some kind of announcement, along with the message, “Forge Your Own Fate”. They’ve also posted a short creepy video clip that at first glance almost seems more like something for Halloween Haunt, except it also ends with the Aug. 10th announcement date teaser, promising that we’ll find out “What’s happening behind the fences at Dorney Park for 2024”.
(5/8/2023) Based on photos posted to Twitter, some early digging and survey markings for Dorney Park’s 2024 coaster project can now be seen. According to other posters, the BM on the stake actually stands for Benchmark, which is the placement of “a post or other permanent mark established at a know elevation that is used as the basis for measuring the elevation of other topographical points.”
So… to be clear… “BM” does not equal “B&M”.
(4/22/2023) It is full steam ahead for Dorney Park to add a new roller coaster for the 2024 season. The project was first revealed in a meeting with the South Whitehall Townshiip Planning board in February to build a 161 foot roller coaster on the former site of the Stinger roller coaster, and now the township has granted the project approval as of April 19th.
While the full details of what the new ride will be, Dorney Park officials have confirmed that this will be a steel roller coaster, and something brand new, and not a transplant of a used ride from another existing Cedar Fair park.
(2/18/2023) The meeting at South Whitehall Township went well for Dorney Park, as the intended plans to add a new roller coaster to the park for 2024 were officially presented and given in initial “ok” from the Township. There are still some necessary project approval phases that must be met before things are fully green-lit but nothing major is expected to come-up that could derail the project. Once everything is approved later this year, we can expect Dorney Park to release the full details, likely in the late summer or early fall when they start to sell 2024 season passes to the park.
Currently all we know for sure is that the roller coaster will stand 162 feet tall, and be placed on the 2.7 acre site that used to be home to the park’s Stinger roller coaster that was removed in 2018.
(2/6/2023) I was able to pull a couple of images showing off the proposed land used for Dorney Park’s 2024 coaster project that were posted to the South Whitehall website. While they don’t show the ride’s layout, you can make out footers for it around the area, see how some existing structures will be removed to make way for new pathways and the station and queue for the new ride. One thing that doesn’t look like they will need to change at all, unlike the plans from 2020, is the railroad tracks.
(2/1/2023) According to the latest website update for the South Whitehall Township, the next Planning Commission Meeting to be held on Feb. 16, 2023 will feature an application from Dorney Park called “Dorney Park Project 2024, Major Plan 2023-101” According to the brief, the park is planning “to construct a new 161.67-foot attraction on the site of the Stinger Roller Coaster” on a 2.7 acre portion of the parcel.
The Stinger was the park’s short lived Vekoma Invertigo roller coaster that only ran between 2012 to 2017, and actually ran as Invertgo at California’s Great America from 1998 to 2010.
It is worth noting that this is the same location where the park had begun to work up a proposal back in early 2020, just as COVID arrived and put everything on hold. At the time, it was suspected that Dorney may have been looking into adding a wooden shuttle coaster concept and the early leaked proposal and layout was only seeking permission for a 106 foot ride. With the new plans seeking permission for a 161ft ride, it sounds like Dorney has their sights on something a bit bigger.
What it is however, is a bit of a mystery right now. For comparison’s sake, the tallest point on the nearby Possessed coaster is 185 feet, while both Hydra and Talon are shorter than the 161ft proposal. Off the top of my head, the only ride I can think of that has opened at a Cedar Fair park near this height, but also featuring a compact layout, would be HangTime (150ft) at Knott’s Berry Farm. It may be worth mentioning that HangTime replaced Knott’s former Vekoma Boomerang, which has about the same footprint as Dorney’s former Stinger/Invertigo coaster as well.
So honestly, a slightly bigger Gerstlauer Infinity Coaster with a beyond vertical first drop and some fun inversions might actually be a decent choice for Dorney Park if Cedar Fair were looking to their other properties for some inspiration.
If you were curious about what Dorney was planning back in 2020... I’ve left those posts below so you can see what might have been.
(5/3/20) A little good news about those proposed coaster plans for Dorney Park that were spotted a couple of weeks ago before being pulled down. A new update from NewsPlusNotes confirms that the park did share the plans with a different planning commission this week, but not the one they need to to get final permission. Since the park is still sharing the plans, it seems the project is still active. They also confirmed that the pulling of the previous plans from the South Whitehall Township was because the township asked for all plans to be pulled because they were having difficulties setting their new virtual meetings up and wanted to delay until they could get their end of things ready. So all said and done, Dorney will still need to showcase these plans before South Whitehall before they can build anything, but it is good news that they are still actively presenting the plans, which means the project has not been canceled.
(4/12/20) Weird happenings at Dorney Park this week. On Thursday we were sent a copy of a PDF file that Dorney Park had sent to the local planning commission about a future ride proposal. The proposal said that the plan would involve relocating a portion of the Zephyr train ride to make room and that the new attraction would be 106 feet tall and take up much of the location where Stinger (Vekoma Invertigo) used to sit.
I’ve overlayed the plans over an aerial of the park and you can make out a pretty clear layout of where where the track of a new wooden coaster would be placed, along with guest queue paths, and even the modification of the turn on the Zephyr that would be pushed out towards the back-road to make room for the coaster. The coaster itself has a rather interesting feature… it appears to have a spike on the end, which would make this a shuttle coaster. A wooden shuttle coaster, which immediately brings the Switchback at ZDT in Texas to mind, an ultra compact intense creation of the Gravity Group. Switchback is a lot smaller however, standing just 64 feet tall, but made to fit the compact space of a FEC location, rather than a full size theme park.
Take a look at the overlay images I put together below to show off the layout, going up the lift like a normal coaster, hitting the spike at the end, and then rolling backwards through the entire layout until stalling out a second time while going backwards up the first drop. It would then roll forwards into a set of brakes before a switch track that would activate to send the train back into the station. You can also see a POV of Switchback in action below as well.
One small note… sometime between late Friday and Saturday the PDF of the ride’s layout was removed from the planning board website, and a note added that all the proposals for the online meeting planned that day were cancelled. I can only hope that we’ll see this resurface at a later date, assuming the park doesn’t change their future plans due to budget cuts due to the virus.
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Track Record
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Dorney Park &
Wildwater Kingdom
Allentown, Pennsylvania
Cedar Fair L.P.
Abbreviation: DP
www.dorneypark.com
Newest Developments
2021 - Seaside Splashworks
2017 - Kaleidoscope and Dodgem
2015 - Cedar Creek Flyers
2014 - Snake Pit
2012 - Stinger &
Dinosaurs Alive
2011 - Planet Snoopy
2010 - Demon Drop
2009 - Good Times Theater
2008 - VooDoo
2007 - AquaRacer
SAT MAP
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