Patch-E, Notd665 and I arrived at Houlihan's at about 11:40 so people wouldn't be waiting for us to get there, but stuman1137 beat us by about 25 minutes.
Over the course of the next 40 minutes (from left) PapaBoo, Patch-E, Mad Brahmin Disease, Shadowdane, Korban, devnullgt, stuman1337 and Notd665 would eventually assemble. 
Evil Benius and his +1 just missed out on all the group shots I took. haha
Things were looking good at 1:30. The check arrived, the weather was sweet but things started to go a little awry. Our waitress (who was awesome the whole time) was running food for other tables and the clock was ticking on our 2:00 meeting time at the park.
We finally settled up things with her, and hopped into our cars to find that most of Hershey and the surrounding areas were doing the same thing. It started to occur to me that we might not have the park all to ourselves as we had in 2006. It was a little too nice out, and that would mean one thing : families.
The heading of this section should read more like 2:30 : Hersheypark. By the time we all got through the traffic, into the gates and found a parking space far too much time had passed. El Tigre called while we were in the traffic jam and said that he was a Chocolate World, but I said we were stuck in traffic and to just go into the park without us. He was bringing his sister and a couple karate kids with him and had to have them home at a reasonable time, so I didn't want him waiting around for us.
We slowly regrouped at Chocolate World. My little carivan was the last to arrive. We waited in line at the gate, got tickets and were finally into the park. I called El Tigre to get his status, and he was in line at the Great Bear and was two cars from getting on. We headed that way. The next half hour would have us catching a ride on the Great Bear and finally regrouping with El Tigre but I snapped a couple interesting pics while we were in line.
HAY LOOK MisterPhoton! IT'S A MOTHERFUCKING BALLOON FESTIVAL!
The Great Bear is a lot of fun. It's an inverted coaster and pretty damn wild. This is the first ride we got on since that's where The Tiger was last spotted.
This video isn't mine, but it lets you see what these poor guys were in for. lol
I bet you didn't know Phil was going to be there.
We saw this sweet shack from the line. I thought you guys should know.
I somehow missed this, but the other guys said some chick exited the line with puke all over herself. I didn't notice the girl, but I was the only one in our little group to notice the trash can she tried to barf into. Shadowdane walked right up to it and put his hands right next to the vomit on the top of the thing and I said to him "You might not want to do that..." and all of a sudden all the guys near the can took a jump back noticing the barf all over it.
This picture is for someone else. Once you see Korban's pics and write-up, this picture will make a lot more sense. (These are his shoes, btw).
I wasn't aware of this, but apparenly PapaBoo is not much of a thrill-seeker and was of nervous about all the roller coasters. I was being my normal loud chatty self and didn't notice his nervousness, but others did and we were sort of talking about it when we broke off into separate lines to get on the 'Bear. There's a lot more to this plotline in a bit.
After the ride, we finally hooked up with El Tigre and his crew, and found this sticker on my back.
Thanks again, Notd665/Alex.
The Great Bear was enough roller coasters for PapaBoo, StuMan1337,Evil Benius and +1 so they were going to sit this one out. I'm jealous they did. lol
Korban is why we can't have nice things.
Storm Runner is one of those 0-60 in about a second roller coasters and it has an 18 story drop or something insane like that. I wouldn't know since Korban broke the damn ride before I could get on it.
Korban and mccreadypj17 got on the ride one car ahead of us, and we were all next up in line (except El Tigre, his sister and the karate kids who were all waiting to get on the lead car) when the ride broke.
As we stood there for the next 40 minutes hoping that the ride would get back up and running (this is in addition to the 30-40 minutes we were already in line), we all came to blame Korban for our troubles. Thanks man.
At least we still knew where El Tigre was. ;)
We finally abandoned all hope and went to catch up to the other guys at the arcade.
Not a whole lot to report at this place other than getting to watch Korban play DDR. Someone has some video but here's a taste.
Keeping 15 people in sync at an amusement park is pretty tricky. 15 people, 15 bladders. We killed about another 30 minutes hiking to the closest restroom, using the facilities, waiting for everyone to get done and regrouped. At some point we realized we lost Mad Brahmin somewhere around the arcade so we had to send out a search and rescue party ... fun.
We also lost El Tigre, his sister and the karate kids around this time. I'm not sure what happened, but I don't have them in any more pics. I'm bummed I didn't get to say bye. We need to do more stuff, Tigre!
I promise, this is where things start to get good.
We were all still together at this point and didn't manage to lose anyone between the can and the ride, even with Korban stopping at the Henna tatoo stand to inquire about an 'ILTC' tramp stamp
By this point, the park was *packed* with people. We fought our way through the crowd to the Lightning Racer. The 'hook' to this ride is that there are two coasters on the track racing each other.
We waited in a long long line that was moving at a pretty good clip (and it should since every ride is two coasters full of people) everything was working fine until we showed up.
We got up to the car queue and things started going wrong. They shut down the ride for about 10 minutes and ended up bringing up one side of the coaster (fortunately the side we were lined up for). While we waited, we did what any good Shacker would do:
I don't exactly remember the order of who rode when, but I know that Korban, mccreadypj17, Notd665 and I all got on the ride together and had a great ride. Notd665 and I were in the front car, and it was awesome -- the front of the car isn't solid wood but it's like a iron gate or something ... very neat experience.
We got back to the station and Stuman1337 and devnullgt got on the ride. Since a bunch of our crew were still in line or on the ride, Notd and I stood on the ramp and waited for them.
At this point, I could tell ... PapaBoo was getting a little nervous.
Is he biting his nails?
Barf
lol
And when he got on the ride, I caught this awesome pic of the 'Boo and MBD:
Finally, the train carrying PapaBoo, MBD, Evil Benius and +1 left the station and headed up the hill.
While that train was on its way up the hill, two things quickly became apparent:
#1 : The returning train carrying devnullgt and StuMan1337 was stuck and was having issues getting back into the station
#2 : I'm #1
I think Korban was the first to notice that the other train was stopped on the hill. We ran down the ramp and tried to find a good vantage point to watch the drama unfold.
lol
We were laughing our heads off down on terra firma looking up at this mess. mccreadypj17 laughed and pointed out that PapaBoo was blind -- he was holding his glasses along with the picture PapaBoo had bought of himself barely keeping it together on The Great Bear.
We did what we could. Pointed and laughed.
And took a nice group shot:
I think PapaBoo was freaking out. They know better than I would, but MBD and/or Evil Benius said PapaBoo offered money to the chick the park sent up to keep everyone calm money to let him walk off the ride.
According to MBD, the park chick said something to the effect of "I guess we're going to have you guys get off and walk down now..." when the ride lurched back into action.
If you haven't seen it yet, here's the pic of PapaBoo that was taken during the ride:
Patch-E took that pic spy-style at the ride photo booth after the ride. MBD actually bought a copy, so we might get a slightly better version at some point, but this is awesome. Patch-E took spy shots of his pic on almost every ride last year and it was hilarious watching the people manning the booth glare at him as he stopped, snapped and kept walking after every ride.
PapaBoo was thrilled to finally be off that death trap and meet up with his chums:
Once again, I'm #1!
Took a couple pictures in line, but all the pics I took while waiting for the ride to start up were too shitty to post.
Because of our incredibly bad luck all day with the rides, PapaBoo was the only one who ended up heading over to the Giant Center for the hockey game. Shadowdane and MBD were initially planning on joining him, but wanted to get at least one more ride in before they left.
I think PapaBoo aged about 10 years in the span of the evening, but he was an incredible sport and didn't barf once. I'm seriously glad he came and it was good seeing him again.
After PapaBoo left, we sat down and grabbed drinks and ice cream. We hadn't eaten anything but a few of MBD's peanut butter-filled Hershey's Kisses, so we were pretty hungry.
Our last ride of the night was The Comet, which is Hersheypark's oldest coaster. It's a fast wooden coaster that's always a good ride. It was about 9:00 at this point and we were all pretty beat. StuMan1337, Shadowdane and MBD had long drives ahead of them, and Patch-E, Notd and I were pretty done and wanted to get home ahead of some of the traffic, so we all headed out.
Herding 15 people around Hersheypark was challenging and we had pretty bad luck with the rides. As of about 7pm that night, Patch-E had only ridden one ride -- the Great Bear -- all day. He kept getting stuck behind Korban, who was breaking rides left and right as I said earlier.
Thanks to all that came! I hope we can do it again soon, and I hope some others who read all this shit come out next year as well.