This year, my husband and I decided to get season passes for Hersheypark. The amusement park is in Hershey, PA, home of Hershey’s Chocolate, which is about an hour from our house. While we love roller coasters and rides, we love Halloween even more. With Hersheypark Halloween opening on September 17 this year, there are two additional weekends to the Halloween celebration at the park. My husband and I visited on Sunday to check out the scares.

As usual, Hersheypark Halloween has 13 coasters open, as well as many of the less scary family rides. Not all rides are open so be sure to check the website to see if your favorite rides are open before heading to the park. Before hitting up any of the rides, we walked through ZooAmerica, which is included in your Hersheypark admission. It is one of our favorite things to do in Hershey. Then we rode on our favorite coaster - Great Bear - and one of our least favorite coasters - Storm Runner. Great Bear was amazing, as always. Storm Runner was surprisingly a much better ride for us than it has been in the past. I’m not sure if it’s because we were in a different section of the train but we actually enjoyed the ride this time.

For dinner, we elected to eat at the Spring Creek Smokehouse. During the Halloween event, many of the food vendors have Halloween-themed food available. The Smokhouse has a Coal Dusted Half Chicken (which has some charcoal covering to turn the chicken black), a black brioche bun (made with cuttlefish ink so it is not good for anyone with shellfish allergies) for their pulled pork and brisket sandwiches, and two desserts: Sinful Cinnamon Bread Instestines (cinnamon bread with a red coating on top) and Evil Eye Cherry Pie (a cherry pie with an evil eye on top). We had the Coal Miners Platter, which lets you pick two meats and two sides plus a cornbread muffin. The meats were not the sandwiches so we didn’t get to try the black brioche bun but we did try to cinnamon bread and it was absolutely delicious. It may have been my favorite part of the meal.

Afterwards, we hit up two of the tamer rides (Dry Gulch Railroad and The Kissing Tower) before heading into the Dark Nights haunted houses. There are four haunted houses, which are not included with your park ticket. You do need to purchase an add-on in order to go into the houses. If you don’t want to spend the extra dough, there are three scare zones around the park with roaming actors. My husband and I didn’t find the actors particularly scary but we did enjoy watching them.

As for the haunted houses, we managed to get through three of the four houses before the night ended. Haunted Coal Mine, The Descent, and Twisted Darkness were the three we walked through. (We’re planning on visiting Creature Chaos on our next visit.) These are much like any other haunted house Halloween attraction - costumed actors try to jump scare you as you walk through decorated rooms with various special effects. Again, my husband and I don’t get scared by actors. However, we found the decorations and the special effects awesome. This was the first weekend of the houses so maybe the scares will get bigger as Halloween looms closer. But for now, we didn’t find any of these houses particularly scary. Enjoyable, yes. Scary, no. With that said, our favorite house was Twisted Darkness. The interaction with the actors and the effects made it a wonderfully spooky haunted house.

If you aren’t into the scares, you can easily skip the haunted houses and most of the scare zones. Unfortunately, if you want to ride the rides at the back of the park (in particular, Lightning Racer, and the Ferris Wheel ), you will need to go through the Midway to Misery, which is listed as “spine-tingling” on the scare meter. All of the other scare zones can be avoided with a slightly longer walk around it.

Considering how close we live to Hersheypark, the Halloween event is a no-brainer for us. But if you are looking for a super scary, thrilling Halloween experience, this isn’t for you. This is an event for people who love riding rides and maybe get a thrill out of some jump scares. Or if you want to check some of the Halloween-themed food vendors. I’m hoping to get a bite of Dark Moon Orange Sorbet at Milton’s Ice Cream Parlor or Brain Freeze Sundae at the Turkey Hill Ice SCREAM Parlor. Yeah, the ice cream at Hersheypark is good. You can never go wrong with a good ice cream sundae.

Hersheypark Halloween runs from September 17 through October 30. They are only open on Saturdays and Sundays from about 2PM until 10PM. Check the website for the hours before you visit the park. I hope to see you there!