The Chocolate Wonderland

The Butterfly House at Hershey Gardens was so cool. Although I don't ride roller coasters, I love to watch them. Storm Runner had the best viewing area for coaster-watchers like me.

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We drove.

Okay, I am all for budget, but this was even a little too much for me. Yes, in case you were wondering, the Red Carpet Inn does in fact have a red carpet. Perhaps so the blood stains don't show up as well. It was really scary, the type of scary that you fear, when waking up in the middle of the night, that you may step on a little bug that goes crunch beneath you. My husband's motto is, "It all looks the same when you're asleep and your eyes are closed," but this seemed a bit beyond that.

The red carpet was all tore up. The linens seemed clean, but I didn't have one of those nifty CSI lights. I wish I did, although I might have been sleeping in the car after that. The bathtub/shower was the smallest I have ever seen. If you weight more that 150 pounds, you would have to turn sideways to take a shower. That we did have to laugh at. No one murdered us in our sleep, so I guess that is positive, but I would not recommend staying here.

After being extremely disappointed that the Chocolate Ride no longer gives out full-sized Hershey bars but now gives out mini-sized bars, I was ready for some dinner. After seeing our scary motel room, we decided to spend as little time in it as possible. We decided to take a drive into Lancaster and go to Willow Valley for their buffet.

Buffet: I used to remember this as the greatest, but now that I have been better places, it is just okay. My husband tried ham loaf for the first time, which was surprising, as he never eats anything with "loaf" in its name. I had my only-in-Lancaster piece of shoofly pie, and then we spent the rest of the evening exploring the resort, wishing we were staying there instead of our Bates Motel.

Breakfast: You would think that there would be plenty of places to eat breakfast in Hershey. You would be wrong. Perhaps they want you to come to the park early and pay inflated prices for a meager pastry. After driving around for about 30 minutes, we finally ate at Friendly's (there was a diner, but the wait was like 2 hours). What can I say--it was Friendly's. The family next to us was visiting other family members and was from California, so at least their conversation was interesting to listen to. Apparently, California has very good oranges.

Park: Okay, we didn't eat anywhere in the park. Nothing really looked all that appetizing. They should work harder on their food advertising. We were so busy riding the rides anyway. We drove home and ate at our local diner, The Philly Diner. The food was good, as always. They have excellent gyros.

I wasn't sure what Hershey Gardens would be like, but I thought it sounded like a relaxing way to spend the day, especially knowing a crazy day of theme park fun would follow. Hershey Gardens was beautiful. We had a great time, and it was well worth the money. It is located up on a hill that overlooks the amusment park. It was fun hearing the faded screams of people on the roller coasters from time to time. The gardens are well gardens. They were open and bright and lovely. My favorite thing of the day was the Butterfly House. I would go back just to spend time there. It is a giant green house with butterflies flying around your head, sitting on flowers and sitting on you. I had a bright neon-green butterfly land right on my leg, and it didn't let go for about 20 minutes. The volunteers who worked there kept offering to rid me of the insect, but I said I was okay because I wanted to see how long it would be before it decided to let go. The coolest thing is that they have a big glass case of real cocoons, and we saw two different butterflies emerge and become born. It did take a while, but if you are not in a hurry, I highly recommend waiting around--it was an awesome experience.

I am still mad about this. At the end they now only give you a mini chocolate bar instead of a big one. We only did the free ride, because everything else cost too much money. We got on the ride, and it was interesting but not as cool as when I was a kid. All I could think about was the CSI episode where the guy died of lead poisoning because he ate chocolate everyday that had traces of lead in it from being in Columbia, where there is lead in the fuel, which mixes with rain. Anyway, it is interesting, but it needs a total renovation. Something with more of a Disney caliber would be great.

Hershey Park was nice. It is clean and very family-friendly. Soaker Coaster was fun. It's not really scary, and you get to dump a bucket of water on someone's head. My husband loved all the coasters and rode Storm Runner three times. It had a great viewing area. At one point, these two grandmothers were in the front seat, waiting to launch. They were giving each other high-fives and getting pumped up--it was really funny.