Negative-G - Hersheypark 2015

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The Lightning Racer Roller Coaster at Hersheypark, Hershey, Pennsylvania

Lightning Racer is a twin tracked racing/dueling wooden coaster so when you enter the station you have a choice. Do you want to go for the red (Lightning) side or do you want to go for the green (Thunder) side.

As there was no wait we went for the red first and then headed right back on to try out the green side.

Lightning Racer was designed by Great Coasters International who did The Wildcat. One thing about the coasters they design is the engineering on them are top notch. As a coaster it is like a Mercedes with every little thing engineered in a logical and efficient way to make it so the coaster always performs as it should.

Speaking about performing as it should from what I have heard is that GCI put it in the rides programming that the only way they can dispatch one train by itself is to put the entire ride in Maintenance Mode which mean that for normal operations they are always dispatching both trains at the same time. I love this because the point of any racing coaster is to have the coasters racing. If you go to 90% of the racing coasters in the world like at Six Flags, Kings Dominion, Kings Island it is rare to find the racing coasters racing. The folks at GCI are coaster enthusiasts and decided to make it so their racing coaster always races. Good.

The Lightning Racer at Hersheypark, Hershey, Pennsylvania

Lightning Racer races for part of the ride but for some of it Lightning and Thunder take different paths and sometimes fly right past each other going opposite directions which makes for a really fun and interactive ride.

The whole point besides having fun is to see which train makes it to the finish line first. As with GCI's engineering there is no ambiguity on who wins as they even engineered into the ride lights that light up depending on who crosses the line first.

Making the trains race and the lights as to who won are just little things that can make a good ride into a great one.