Jellystone Park locations across Pennsylvania are open and have modified their activities to take into account social distancing best practices.
“The minute we went live, the phones lit up,” said Tracy Czambel, chief operations officer for the Jellystone Park in Mill Run, which opened May 1. “We had 180 campers in the first weekend alone.”
Czambel said that the Mill Run location has been busier than normal in May.
“People are ready to get back to some sense of normalcy,” she said. “It has been fun to see the kids out riding their bikes through the campground.”
The Mill Run location has added a new zero entry swimming pool with interactive water features and two new 175-foot-long water slides, all of which will open for Memorial Day weekend. The park now has three swimming pools.
“We will have to limit occupancy in the swimming pools and water slides. We are working out the details according to CDC guidelines,” Czambel said.
The Mill Run location has also modified its existing activities and created new activities, such as beach blanket bingo, which can be played outside to ensure proper social distancing.
This past weekend, the Milton location organized a bike marathon, where riders competed against each other in separate age divisions, from ages 4 to 7, 8 to 12, and ages 13 and older. The goal was to see which riders could last the longest.
Another new social distancing activity which is proving to be quite popular are evening dance competitions.
Instead of having Saturday night dances, the Jellystone Park locations in Milton and Harrisville are having evening singing and dancing competitions in which a DJ drives through the park, stopping at each campsite to play song requests. Park staff then videos the singers and dancers at each site using Facebook Live so everyone in the park can see the competition.
The Harrisville location has taken the same approach with its miniature golf course, which is now limited to four families on the course at one time. Players must also maintain one golf hole between them. The golf balls and clubs are sanitized between usage.
Memorial Day weekend activities at the Jellystone Park location in Quarryville include a selfie scavenger hunt, an outside game of hopscotch against Ranger Smith, outside yoga with Boo Boo, tie dye t-shirt making and an early afternoon drive by dance party with the bears.
While organized activities and theme weekends have been modified to comply with social distancing guidelines, some amenities are temporarily closed at some locations, such as playgrounds and jumping pillows.
