I had listened to a podcast in January telling of how clean and fun Dutch Wonderland is. They also recommended to visit while your kids are young enough to enjoy it and also to try to avoid staying in Lancaster in July and August as the heat is extreme. The water park is open Memorial Day through Labor Day so I thought Father’s Day Weekend would be the perfect time to visit. We booked Old Mill Stream Campground in February and had no problem booking a site near the playground.
Old Mill Stream Campground is in fact owned by the same family that owns Dutch Wonderland and is situated right next door to the theme park. You can buy discounted tickets right from the campground store and walk on over. This is the attraction. They don’t have a pool and the playground is pretty small but it didn’t affect our fun. We actually extended our stay to three nights after I convinced Linda that the children would not be missing much in school. Since we were right next door we left our toad home.
The kids just loved Dutch Wonderland! They’re at the perfect age being that there were only one or two rides all three of them couldn’t go on. Linda couldn’t go on any of the rides being she has a fractured foot but she was a good sport as she watched us enjoy the rides. We rented an electric scooter to make things easier during the day. We all went on Merlin’s Mayhem and Sarah and I went on the wooden coaster that goes over the campground (book the other side of the campground if you prefer less noise). We also went on the family coaster twice back to back and pretty much every other ride in the park including Duke’s Lagoon. We arrived at 11 am and closed the park at 8:30. I never thought we would make the whole day there!
The next day we chilled at the campground. The kids made some new friends in a camper across the street and played sports with them all day. Sarah and Ava actually played flag football!
It really was the perfect weekend! Our new friends told us they go every Father’s Day which had our kids already asking to repeat the weekend next June. We’ll have to see if work allows. I definitely would like to go again before the kids graduate to older rides at Hershey Park.
I highly recommend Old Mill Stream Campground to any family with young kids looking for a weekend getaway. We will definitely be back.
If you’d like to see more of Dutch Wonderland and Old Mill Stream Campground check out the video below. Thanks for stopping by and say tuned as summer is just getting cranked up and we’ll be traveling to some old places as well as new ones!
travelingterrells.net 