Candymonium at Hershey Park | Media Day Review

Last year, Derrick & I attended our very first Media Day when Kennywood (our home park) opened their brand new roller coaster: Steel Curtain. The experience was out-of-this world & something I will never forget.

Since then, Derrick’s YouTube channel & roller coaster presence have continued to grow. He has just shy of 8,000 subscribers to his YouTube channel now – and it’s rare for us to go to an amusement park & for someone to not recognize Derrick. (Although, the mask requirements most parks have in place right now definitely make it much tougher for his fans to spot him – they still do though & that blows my mind!) Going into 2020, we had high hopes of attending several media events for the new coasters opening up all around us. And then, COVID-19 moved into town & changed literally everything. Parks that were on schedule to open new coasters had their productions slam on the breaks & many parks have since moved their “new for 2020” attractions to “new for 2021”. It’s been tough to witness.

Hershey Park had completed their brand new coaster before all of the craziness went down, so they forged ahead with opening their new B&M Hyper Coaster: Candymonium. Unfortunately, the park itself was forced to delay their opening day – but as we entered the month of July – they were given the green light & they finally were able open for the season.

Originally, it didn’t appear that they would even have an “official” media event – but kind of last minute – the invitation went out & we were invited to attend the opening of Candymonium on July 2, 2020.

Hershey Park is about 3 hours away from us & since we didn’t want to leave our kids overnight (we’ve never left Leander overnight yet!) we made the decision to do the whole trip in one day. That meant getting up around 4am to hit the road – but honestly – that 3 hour drive to Hershey felt like nothing at all – Derrick & I were so excited!

The event was completely different from Kennywood’s Media Day – there was a smaller group of people & less fanfare. Nonetheless, we had a wonderful time & got multiple rides in on Candymonium. This is my favorite type of roller coaster, so you can imagine that I was super happy.

My official review: it’s a fantastic ride – smoother than butter – I just wish it was a little longer.

We have plans to head back to Hershey Park this coming weekend (with the kids this time) and I can’t wait to get back on Candymonium!
OH & if you watch Derrick’s “first impressions” video above – he originally wanted me in the video – but our height difference is pretty comical – as you’ll see me slowly disappearing as he failed to tilt the camera down enough to see me. Guess that’s a “skill” we need to work on!

I mentioned that this media event was different from the event we attended last year & another reason for that is: we have more coaster friends! (And by “we”, I mostly mean “Derrick”). Pictured below is Derrick hanging out with Jonathan of RampagingRex Productions, Jason of New Jersey Coasters, and Jack of New England Coaster Fan.

We had Jonathan snap a photo of us – just like he did last year at Steel Curtain’s Media Day!