Family Trip to Hershey Park with Chevrolet

True story: I’ve lived less than an hour and a half drive from Hershey, PA for the last 12 years and I had never been to visit until this weekend. Yesterday, thanks to Chevrolet, my family got the chance to finally visit Hershey Park.

Chevrolet is actually a sponsor of the park and they have something unique going on that I haven’t seen at any amusement parks that I’ve visited in the past: test drives! Before you walk in the gates of the park, there is a parking lot set up where you can test drive current model Chevy’s – it’s free, you just need your driver’s license!

Because I drive a big ‘ol minivan and don’t get to do the fun and carefree thing much, I chose to test drive the 2013 Chevrolet Camaro. Convertible and in red, of course.

I had a nice girl from Chervolet ride along with me as I test drove. She told me that the Camaro can go from 0-60mph in 4 seconds! There were plenty of folks in the parking lot who were testing and pushing that little factoid out, but ever the Mom, I drove my Camaro at a nice normal speed and managed to avoid hitting any of the orange cones. (Go me!)

I’ve been toying with the idea of getting rid of my minivan lately. The kids are getting older and we don’t really need it, plus I only have two kids. I do love the space but I am interested to check out some bigger SUVs soon. They didn’t have a Suburban available to test drive but I do hope to try one of those out soon. (Also toying with the idea of the Chevy Traverse, which we test drove back in April when we hit Orlando.)

But back to the test drive. It’s kind of a smart move on the part of Chevy, really. Before driving, we heard from Dan Adamcheck, GM’s Regional Sales & Marketing Manager and the first thing he said was what I was thinking – that he had had doubts about this working. Who would want to stop and test drive a car when the kids were yanking them into the park? Yet, it works. There were lines of people waiting to do this. And this was at 10 am right at park opening! And as we left (around 5:30), there were still just as many people.

Local Chevy owners get invitations to test drive but it’s free to everyone. It’s a neat way to test out the latest Chevy model on the market – or if you’re like me, play convertible driver for a few minutes! Dan was telling us that the current Chevy owners really love it. They are loyal and love their cars. He said he regularly sees Chevrolet logo tattoos – people love their Chevys that much! Definitely says something about the brand if you’re going to get a tattoo with the logo, right?!

After our test drive, we headed into Hershey Park for a day of fun thanks to Chevrolet. It was such a fun day. We measured up first and my little monkey was a Hershey Bar, which made him qualify for many of the scary rides (to which he said, yay! and I cringed!)

Nate was a Twizzler which made it that he could go on all of the rides that I saw. He’s a huge thrill seeker. The crazier the ride, the more fun. Unfortunately for him, Mom and Dad are wimps so while he went on a bunch of the roller coasters with my hubby, he’ll have to wait for the really puke-my-guts out rides until he has a cousin, willing adult or ’til he gets old enough for me to let him go alone!

We spent over 7 hours in the park doing all sorts of fun things like the rides, the water park and a competitive round of bumper cars with the fan! I’ll share more picts on my family travel site shortly but overall it was a great day and many thanks to Chevrolet for having us!

Disclaimer: Chevrolet got us local accommodations and gave us complimentary tickets to Hershey Park. As always, all thoughts and opinions are my own.