Dorney Park is a smallish theme park located in Dorney, Pennsylvania. If you’re not from Eastern PA or New Jersey, you may not have heard of it. Part of the Cedar Fair chain of parks, it currently has a roster of 7 roller coasters with three real eye-catching standouts: a Morgan hyper coaster (Steel Force), a floorless B&M looper (Hydra: The Revenge), and a B&M inverted coaster (Talon).
If you’re a well-traveled coaster enthusiast or even if you’ve been to bigger parks in the region like Six Flags Great Adventure or Hersheypark, then Talon may not strike you as a jaw dropping thrill ride. It is on the smaller side of B&M inverted coasters; where riders are positioned below the track in four-across seating. But that fact does not tell the whole story. Thanks to a great design and a good choice by the theme park, Talon plays the perfect part in a lineup that already had its intense coaster boxes checked with Steel Force (and previously with Hercules).
Talon opens with the textbook B&M swooping first drop. After that, you’re treated with a succession of silky smooth inversions including a 98-foot tall vertical loop, a zero-g roll, an Immelmann, and a corkscrew. When you’re not being turned gracefully head-over-heels, you’re flying passed the ride’s brightly-colored track or staying close to the ground. Out of the inversions, my favorite is the zero-g roll, which can provide a brief moment of weightlessness, but thankfully all of the loops and turns are executed seamlessly. For me, one of the most memorable elements was a short, quick drop under the lift hill that really caught me you off guard. Inverted coasters aren’t known for their drops, but this drop was quite memorable.
By 2001, when Talon was built, the designers had clearly evolved since first introducing their inverted coasters with the half dozen Batman clones around the country. The pacing on this ride is ten fold better than say Batman at Six Flags Great Adventure where you feel like you were tossed in a dryer and put on tumble with one quick inversion after the other.
Talon is an amazingly smooth coaster that while thrilling, is also an excellent first looper for kids and less experienced riders. It also has excellent re-rideability as evidenced by Bobbie’s 16 rides on Talon during a fundraiser. This is not an imposing giant inverted coaster like Alpengeist, but a more compact ride like Afterburn at Carowinds; which I rate Talon, just a hair below.
Final Rating – 8.5 (Great-Approaching Excellent)
Check out this front seat POV video of Talon at Dorney Park:
What’s Your Take?
Have you ridden Talon at Dorney Park? What’d you think? Leave a comment below.
This was a part of our 12 Days of Coasters special! Every day from Christmas until January 5th, we gave away a roller coaster review for you to enjoy. You can check them all out here. We thank you for reading, hope you’ve had a merry holidays, and wish you a happy New Year!
