All set? All clear!👌🏼Aaron here bringing you a review of the Iron Menace pass holder preview event held at Dorney Park April 20th and 21st. First and foremost, I apologize for taking so long to get this posted. It turns out starting a blog is a bit more difficult than I thought! That being said let’s dive 😉 in and talk about the day.
The morning of the event I woke up to a sick kiddo and had some fear I was going to need to miss out and stay home. Thankfully, I’m blessed with an amazing wife who encouraged me to go and said she would stay home. I picked up my parents and we made our way to the park, months of anticipation building up in all of us. The excitement reached a crescendo when we turned on Lincoln Avenue and got to watch Iron Menace do its thing as we made our way to Dorney Park Road.
As we pulled in we noticed there was only a handful of cars there. Dorney had only marketed that Iron Menace, MT Buckets, Steel Force, and 1 to 2 other attractions would be open for the event. I believe this severely impacted the attendance of the event. The staff was very helpful, but informed us we could not enter prior to our 10 AM ticket time. As we stood and waited we noticed something odd, Possessed was running and there were people in line for the Whip. As we entered the park we found out that there was closer to 10 rides running, and with next to nobody in the park we realized how great the day was about to be.
We were informed we needed to head over to the new Steel Yard Gifts to pick up our fast lane pass for Iron Menace. At this time we still were under the impression we’d get 1 ride on Iron Menace. We had attended another pass holder event for a different park the year prior and during that event we only got 1 ride on their new coaster. We figured today would be no different, I will talk more about this later. As we approached Iron Menace we spoke to an employee for a few minutes sharing our excitement for the new coaster and the park. Much to our delight, it was at this point we were informed that we could ride Iron Menace as many times as we wanted. Talk about feeling like a kid in a candy shop.
I’m going to take a slight detour to talk about the new Steel Yard area of the park and the theming of Iron Menace before I talk about the ride itself. Dorney Park crushed the Steel Yard, in my opinion the theming of this area was on par with Busch Gardens, just isolated to 1 section of the park. The attention to detail is outstanding, including the McTavish Steel logos on the trash cans and the industrial looking exterior for the buildings. The queue and station for Iron Menace is immersive in the story of the ride and features a wide range of decorations that any blue collar worker will recognize. No, seriously, my dad is a blue collar worker and pointed out a few objects he has or previously had from his work history. One improvement I think the park could have made would be to include the station audio down stairs where you enter the ride. When you are at the loading area there is an audio track playing that is drowned out by the hustle and bustle of the platform. Getting to hear the story while walking through the artifacts would have been enjoyable. Aside from that the park crushed the theming and I hope to see them expand their theming to this degree moving forward.
Back on track here, we made our way up to the platform and without any wait hopped in line for the front row. Up to this point our only experience with a dive machine was Griffon at Busch Gardens Williamsburg. I had some concerns about the vest restraint on Iron Menace reducing the air time. When we got to our seats and put our restraints down I actually felt like I had more room than I do on rides with the B&M over the shoulder restraints. After our first ride I decided I wanted the vest restraints to replace the over the shoulder restraints on all B&Ms. They are far more comfortable and I did not feel it affected the airtime at all.
Dorney Park advertises the ride as having a 3 second hold, I’m actually not sure this is accurate. After about 10 rides, a few in which I counted, I think it is actually closer to Griffon’s 5 second hold. I find this to be a good thing, as it helps the anticipation for the drop build even longer. In the front row the drop gives decent air time, but our rides on the back we got great air time and a nice pop of ejector air time when the train hit the beyond vertical portion of the drop.
I would describe the ride as having 3 different experiences depending on your row. In the front it is smooth and you get a good balance of airtime and hang time. The middle row I felt got the most out of the hang time for the zero g roll and corkscrew. The back row was by far the most intense row and it was the only row I felt a little bit of a rattle. I’ve seen many people say Iron Menace already has a bad rattle, I did not feel it and nobody who I have personally talked to felt it either.
Overall, Iron Menace is an outstanding addition to Dorney Park’s lineup. It’s my number 2 coaster overall, sandwiched between Wildcat’s Revenge and Pantheon. That may be a controversial opinion, but the ride is a ton of fun. I would have loved for it to hit 200 feet like some of its peers, but I’m not of the belief every new addition needs to be the tallest to be great. The ride time is short, but the lack of a wait makes up for this. With 4 inversions, plus the hold at the top of the lift hill, the ride is nonstop excitement from lift hill to break run. The operations on the ride were also phenomenal. The team running the ride was in mid season form, consistently getting trains out in about 1 minute.
After 5 rides on Menace we forced ourselves to head over to Steel Force. I was almost as excited to ride it as I was Iron Menace, as the park updated the control panel and made this ride mirror its sister coaster Mamba at Worlds of Fun. Prior to the changes I enjoyed the coaster but it was very much a middle of the pack ride. We were lucky enough to get the back row for our first ride. The lift hill was noticeably faster, a huge improvement already as it previously felt the train was struggling to just get up. As we reached the top I was having a casual conversation with my parents when I was suddenly thrown back in my seat. Turns out the slight hitch at the top of the lift hill was also gone. Wow, did that make a difference on the drop or what! The first drop had substantially more airtime than it did before the update. The rest of the ride to follow was no different. Steel Force absolutely flies now and the camelback has just as much airtime as the first drop. The increase in speed going into the helix made for some nice forces, but the best change came with the post-helix brake run. The brakes barely hit when we rode and as a result I was basically standing on the bunny hills on the return run. This was legitimately some of the best airtime I have ever experienced, thanks in large part to the restraint. The updates have breathed a new life into the old girl and she is now a force to be reckoned with. Kudos to Dorney for adding an outstanding coaster while giving some love to their marquee attraction to create a sold 1-2 punch.
After hitting Revolution and Thunderhawk we decided to hit the Iron Mill to try the new offerings. All 3 of us went with the chicken sandwich, but the flatbread pizza looked equally delicious. Unfortunately, we were not able to try the pierogis or deep fried Twinkie as they were unavailable. The chicken sandwich was delicious, it tasted very fresh and was juicy with a nice helping of cole slaw on top. We all were very impressed and felt it was good food, not just good amusement park food which we know is a low bar to clear. The fries were also very good. My sister and brother-in-law were able to get the pierogis the next day and thought they were outstanding, high praise coming from people who eat home made pierogis on a regular basis. The offerings at the Iron Mill seriously had me considering adding the dine all day plan to my season pass, they were that good.
We finished up lunch and decided to hit Possessed a few times before closing out the day with 1 more ride on Iron Menace. As we got off Possessed we noticed nothing was running on Iron Menace and were very disappointed to learn it was not running. To be clear, we were not disappointed in the park, just that we were going to miss that final ride. We went into Steel Yard gifts and grabbed some merch and as we left the store we were informed that it was back up and running, turns out they just needed to turn it off and back on, as an IT professional this gave me a chuckle.
Overall the Iron Menace preview event was a 10 out of 10. Heck, let’s call it an 11. Dorney Park created a true VIP experience for its passholders and other parks in the area should take note. We waited nearly 2 hours to ride another park’s newest coaster during a passholder event, and only got 1 ride on it. Dorney Park not only gave us the ability to ride their new coaster as much as we wanted, they created an entire day in the park to reward their passholders. I could not have been more impressed with the event, and everything that Dorney Park had done with their new ride. Hosting charity events is such a classy way to share your multimillion dollar investment and to see them giving so much money to charity made me love the park even more. One advantage to writing this late is Dorney has also announced a new event, Menacing Mondays, which will give gold pass holders after hours access to the coaster the first Monday of June, July, and August.
Iron Menace is a phenomenal addition to Dorney Park's line up and it is not too late to head over to the Dorney Park Website and get yourself a gold pass and get some bonus ride time on this awesome machine.
As always, if you want to stay up to date on my latest content follow me on Instagram and Facebook to get notified anytime new content drops, and to follow my adventures as they happen!
