Forgive me father, for I have sinned . . .
I did something a little bit bad.
You see, this summer, the boys and I decided to get season passes to Dorney Park & Wildwater Kingdom, an amusement park close to our house. It has been the first year that I have done this.
Before this summer, the last time I had been at Dorney Park was 2014, before I had any children. On that visit, while waiting in line to enter the park, I remember seeing the security people going through the bag of a preteen boy and throwing away his lunch in a big garbage can. He might have even had some of his food in the cargo pockets of his shorts. It seemed sort of extreme in my opinion. For some reason, I found this to be kind of traumatic for me. I don’t know if it was traumatic for the boy. Maybe he knew that Dorney Park has a policy that prohibits bringing in outside food. He could have known what he was doing. But at the time, it seemed kind of cruel to me. They even threw away his little sealed bag of Doritos!
Flash forward to this summer, 2025, when me and my family get our season passes. Earlier in the season, the boys and I had a sort of playbook that we operated under while we were at Dorney Park. We would ride, then go back to the car and eat lunch and get our swim bag before going to Wildwater Kingdom. Alternately, we would do things in an opposite direction on other days. Sometimes we would swim first then go back to the car to drop off our bag, then eat lunch, and then ride rides. On one particularly hot and crowded day, we stayed at Wildwater Kingdom and purchased lunch for the whole family so that we could stay with our friends at the waterpark and stay cool. It was kind of expensive in my opinion for what we were eating. But it served a need.
In short, I followed the rules this summer because I felt sad at seeing that boy have his lunch dumped into a garbage can. I begrudgingly accept that establishments have rules for a reason. We did purchase our season passes for a small pittance considering the number of times that we visited this summer.
However, one day in July we ran into our friends at Dorney Park. It was sort of a last minute decision for both of our parties to be there. We joined together and had fun riding rides with them. They do things a little differently than we do in the they usually don’t try to do both Dorney Park and Wildwater Kingdom on the same day. They either ride rides or go to the waterpark. Also they don’t have the same routine that we have, which is fine. Since they didn’t plan on going to the waterpark, they didn’t have a big bag to manage. Instead, they brought a few energy bars in my friend’s belt bag and purchased food when they were hungry.
On the afternoon where my story takes place, it was around 2pm and I was starting to get hungry. We hadn’t planned on meeting them, so I was operating under our usual car/ food plan. I decided to take Nugget with me to the car to eat lunch and get our swim bag in case we decided to swim later that afternoon. I didn’t bring Mr. Man with me because he was having fun riding rides with friends. We ate the sandwiches that I packed and I tried to figure out how I was going to sneak in Mr. Man’s sandwich. I decided to put it into the shelf bra of my swimsuit because I assumed if my bag was searched they probably would prod around there too much. They might think that the sandwich was extra padding or something.
Then we walked back to the park entrance. We decided to stop at the cash to card machine. Since Dorney Park is a cashless park, we let our sons add cash to a card so that they can manage some of their own money and buy things while they are at the park. That day Nugget wanted to add a little money to his card. We had a lot of trouble adding money with the cash machine and I was starting to get a little annoyed.
That is when I realized that I could smell something pungent! Right beside the card machine was a man smoking something while talking on the phone. What he was smoking was unmistakably not a legal substance in the United States right now. He looked super relaxed, like he was having the best day of his life.
Maybe something inside of me broke, but that really bothered me. I was annoyed because here I was being worried about bringing my own homemade sandwich instead of purchasing the $18 pizza slice and breadstick that doesn’t come with a drink and this guy was sitting on park beach smoking weed and talking on the phone without a care in the world. And on top of that I couldn’t even figure out how to add tooth fairy money to a cheap debit card because kids can’t pay for their own souvenir with cash at this park.
So that’s when I decided what my next course of action would be. I decided that if I was directed by security to have my bag searched after walking through the metal detector, I would throw this guy under the bus.
And that’s what happened. It was a slow time of day. There weren’t many people going through the gate at 2:45 in the afternoon. I was flagged, of course. Maybe there is a quota about how many people need to be searched or maybe it is because my swim bag has a metal hook in it to help secure keys. I don’t think I look like a person trying to sneak weapons into a park. Whatever the reason, there I was. So when I was lead to the bag searching line, I knew what I had to do and I was ready to do it.
I got right to it. I didn’t even wait for them to find my sandwich. I complained like a Karen that my swim bag was being searched for food and that nobody even noticed the man smoking a joint on the bench not fifty feet from where we were standing. Then I pointed at him with my finger.
Perhaps it is because they understood my point, or maybe it was because the bag-searching security team members wear an ear piece, but they said “You can go” instantly without going through all my pockets and I walked on through the gate to the ticket scanning area, free as a bird.
So that’s my story.
I don’t necessarily feel good about it. Nobody wants to be a WWW (whining white woman). But seriously?
Pro-Tip: In case you are interested, on our last Dorney Park trip we learned that you can sneak an Uncrustable sandwich into a Dorney Park by placing it in a drink refill cup and get through security without anybody giving you a second look. Tested. 10/10 would recommend.
It’s very sad they parks like Hershey and Dorney don’t allow outside food- parks are extremely expensive for families and most food in parks is not only expensive, but junk! Our local park (Kennywood) still has plenty of picnic tables and allows people to bring in a cooler and outside food ( but they do check cooler thoroughly )
That is amazing that Kennywood lets you do that! We went to Philly’s ballpark and you can bring like nothing in. I brought in a clear fanny pack and I thought that I was going to get turned away. Also again the food is very expensive. It makes going out feel very elitist.
Kennywood does let you bring food in, but they have so many rules around food and drinks. If you bring a cooler, it has to be under a certain size and be soft sided. You can bring in water bottles, but they’ve have to be empty. You can’t bring in anything during fall and Christmas events. It’s a lot to remember. Like you though, I do occasionally try to sneak in a small snack or two for our family, feeling like a rule breaker while definitely smelling people partaking in some illegal substances without a care in the world.
At Dorney you can bring one sealed water bottle per per son and metal water bottles as long as they are empty but they don’t usually make you dump them out if they do have liquid we found.
I get that these parks are trying to keep people safe by going through their bags but sometimes it feels like the reason to go through bags is to keep the food and drink profits up.