Your 2024 Theme Park Plans

Love this as a topic! My family and I will be hitting up Universal Orlando for four days this spring. My 8 and 11 year olds believe that Disney is too "kiddy" for them, and prefer the thrill rides at Universal. Universal has become a family favorite, which is shocking because I was always "team Disney," until recently. We will also be taking their first trips to Sea World and Busch Gardens. (As we found out, it is a special kind of torture to kids who love roller coasters to not be able to ride all of them on a visit...)

The kids had such a blast at Cedar Point in 2023, we are going on an extended "Ohio trip" in 2024 for both Cedar Point and Kings Island.

Trying to figure out of Alton Towers fits into our trip to the UK this August. We are going to see a Wolverhampton Wanderers game for my son, plus sides trips to Ireland and Scotland. Alton may not fit, but we are going to try...

We gave Six Flags one last year with our season passes. If we are as disappointed as we were in '23; we may forgo the annual pass for a "home park."

I think the topic of this discussion should have been better worded so more people would participate ("Your 2024 Theme Park Plans" might have garnered more interest). Nonetheless, I think we have a pretty busy year on tap for 2024...

Obviously, we will be visiting Six Flags America, Kings Dominion, and Busch Gardens Williamsburg a few times each in 2024. Aside from the re-tracked Loch Ness Monster, there aren't any major additions to my 3 "home" parks this year, but we'll almost certainly make 6+ visits combined between the 3 Mid-Atlantic parks as we normally do.

My son's band is going to Hersheypark this spring, so I will probably tag along as a chaperone so I can finally get some rides in on Wildcat's Revenge since we never made it up to the park in 2023.

We will almost certainly make it up to Dorney Park in 2024 to ride Iron Menace, and since we didn't make it up to SFGAdv in 2023, we'll probably head over to Jackson, NJ as well (probably on the same weekend trip).

I'd like to get to Cedar Point this year because it's been a few years since we've been to Sandusky, but it's possible that we miss out on that park again this year, but equally likely that we do go and pair it with a long weekend trip down to King's Island as well.

Our big trip for 2024 is going to be to mainland Europe. After going to England in 2023, my son has the urge to go back across the pond, so we're tentatively planning a trip to Sweden to visit Liseberg with a drive through Denmark (maybe to Legoland in Billund) and onto the continent. I would love to try to hit both Europa Park and Efteling (and maybe even Phantasailand), but as a family we'd still want to balance a traditional European vacation with visits to popular theme parks. We're almost certainly going to avoid Disneyland Paris to stay out of the region during the Olympics. Unfortunately, because of the Olympics, the Tour de France, an event I've always wanted to see, route is staying predominantly in the south (including into Italy), which will probably add an extra day or 2 to a trip that's already looking to be in the 10-14 day range.

Thanks Russell - I fixed it... hahahaha

This year, having limited travel options, will be a better year for me, in terms of diversity. (I went to CP TEN times last year.) I will probably start with CP, do indiana beach, holiday world, and most importantly, KI coasterstock. and then more CP.

After doing major trips to Europe in 2022 and Japan in 2023 as well as annual big US theme park trips from 2017-2022, I'm going to be toning it down significantly next year as I've covered much of the US and can't afford to go intercontinental. However, I've still got a few things on my radar. The year is early and plans could (and very likely will) see some change, but here's what I've tentatively got in mind...

Trip #1 is an Atlanta trip that will include stops at Fun Spot America Atlanta and Six Flags Over Georgia, but is predominently for non-park stuff in the city. Depending on time, I'm considering extending the trip to return to Dollywood as I haven't visited since 2020, but that part is TBD. Looking at May for this, but could wind up being moved later depending on how other plans slot in.

Trip #2 would be my biggest park trip of the year: a visit to Cedar Point for their annual CoasterMania event in June. This one is entirely dependent on whether or not I can get tickets to the event. If it happens, I'm planning to make a week out of it and also include Holiday World, Indiana Beach, Kentucky Kingdom, Kings Island, maybe Michigan's Adventure, and perhaps a credit stop park if convenient.

Trip #3 is super tentative, but it would be a four corners roadtrip from my home in SoCal. The primary purpose would be to check out the new Mattel Adventure Park, but I'd also like to swing through Colorado to stop by Elitch Gardens once more, check out the new coaster at Glenwood Caverns Adventure Park, and hit up Lagoon again (as well as some non-park stuff and perhaps a credit stop park along the way). Mattel Adventure Park would need to open by early July at the latest for this to happen.

Lastly, Trip #4 is my international trip for this year, which I'm planning to do down in Mexico. This isn't really a park trip, but would include a day at Six Flags Mexico in order to hit the last Six Flags park I still need to visit.

Beyond that, I've got Cedar Fair and Six Flags passes, so I'll definitely be hitting my local parks in those chains (Knott's Berry Farm and Six Flags Magic Mountain) plenty of times and will likely venture to the NorCal parks at least once during the year. I also intend to visit Disneyland at least once this year after not going at all in 2023, though it likely won't be until late in the year.

Coney Island (Brooklyn) and Playland (upstate NY).

Planning to rent an apartment https://www.newyorkrentalbyowner.com/ for a couple of weeks and also explore the city.

This summer I will have a just turned 3 year old and a 7-8 month old so it doesn't look like I will be getting to any parks this summer with the family, although we may try a trip to Hershey park since its only about an 80-90 minute drive for us.

I will be getting to Hershey Park myself a couple times this spring, as I do every year, since I am a high school physics teacher and we take our students there for a class field trip.

We are heading to San Diego in February so we will be driving up to Legoland to check it out for the first time. Also on our list there will be San Diego Zoo which seems amazing.

In April were going to Orlando to do the Universal parks since we have seasons passes and will sadly not be able to go to HHN this year. My husband likes Star Wars and I managed to get after hours tickets to Hollywood Studios which I'm actually pretty excited about. I think the after hours party is a great thing for Disney to have since I probably wouldn't have bothered without it.

In October we managed to snag a spot on the Lego Insider tour so will be doing Legoland Billund and a tour of Lego House so quite excited about that! Hopefully we have time to visit Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen as well.