Day 7 – Busch Gardens
The chaos I referred to in the last day's report was a drive down to Tampa to Busch Gardens on what promised to be a busy day based on previous years’ queue times. As planned, we got up early, grabbed breakfast and hit the road at around 8:15. The plan was to get to BGT by 9:30 so that we were there for park opening. We were booked for one of their animal experiences at 11:00 so by getting in at opening we were hoping to grab rides on a couple of the big coasters before that.
It was all going well and we left the recommended exit off the I-75 at around 9:10, and then the worst happened. There had been an accident earlier in the day and the main road to the park was closed! This meant that after around 30 minutes of sitting in traffic we ended up back on the I-75 and had to travel a couple of exits further before getting off an approaching the park from a different direction. By the time we arrived it was after 10am and by the time we’d parked and got the bus to the entrance it was nearly 10:30, and any chance of getting early rides before our animal encounter was gone. F**k!
So as planned we headed to the Animal Care Centre for our behind the scenes tour. It was quite interesting, as they had several potentially injured birds of prey in to assess, doing X-rays of several, and the tour guide was informative and humorous. The problem was the tour was supposed to last around 75 minutes but was closer to 90, and my cred anxiety was really starting to set in!
One good moment of the tour was the ability to take this photo of Sheikra from an angle that most people probably wouldn’t be able to. Didn’t help with that cred anxiety though!
After the tour it turned out that Anna had arranged a special surprise for me, which was to meet the Aardvark they have at the park (I love Aardvarks). Unfortunately nobody had told our tour guide so there was further faffing around and we eventually got to meet the Aardvark, who is currently not in an exhibit at the park due to digging her way out of the last one!
This was all very nice, but by the time that was over it was approaching 1pm and we still hadn’t ridden anything. As expected, the park was very busy and with most queue times at an hour or more, the only sensible thing to do was grab lunch and make a start on the rides afterwards.
(Random topiary pic, just because!)
So with lunch settling we headed for the ride I’d hoped we’d do at 10am, Cheetah Hunt. With a 50 minute queue at least we’d have time for our food to go down, and having waited that long a front row ride seemed the only sensible option. It also gave me the chance to record my first on-ride POV with my dodgy Chinese Go-Pro knockoff (that’ll be coming soon).
I’ve read a lot of people knocking Cheetah Hunt, but I thought it was great. Not Taron great obviously, and the first of the three launches was pretty pointless, but I enjoyed the acceleration, long layout, weaving close to the terrain and even a bit of airtime on the hills. No complaints from me at all on this one.
(Bonus goon-friendly info board!)
Anna was feeling a bit ill due to the intense heat that day so I did all my coaster rides alone from this point on while she tried to stay in the shade. With Cobra’s Curse temporarily down and Montu’s queue at 25 minutes I decided to leave both of those till later, and we headed up towards Kumba. That was showing a 60 minute queue so I decided to try Sheikra. So after a sweaty walk round most of the park I finally found a coaster with a reasonable queue time, waited 20 minutes and got my front row ride on my second B&M dive coaster.
This was everything Oblivion could’ve been if Alton Towers had more space, no height restrictions and didn’t insist on having the first version of any new type of coaster. It still wasn’t amazing but the first drop was great and I enjoyed it a lot more than the glorified drop tower at my local park!
I then made my way back to Kumba, whose queue had officially gone down to 45 mins, though I only waited 30 at most. Rather than waste time waiting for the front row I went for the back on this one.
What a great ride! A great old school B&M with a cracking layout. I love how they’ve packed so much into a relatively small footprint, as it weaves over and under itself. And who doesn’t love a tunnel? This is definitely my favourite B&M sit-down coaster, and so photogenic too.
Anna was still overheating so we decided to cool down with a ride on the Stanley Falls Flume, which meant me walking back to the Stanleyville area. After all that walking I needed to cool down too! The queue for this ride was one of the most claustrophobic queues I’ve ever stood in, and the number of fast-trackers queuing via the exit was ominous. After about half an hour we got on, and the flume itself is a pretty mediocre one, but we did get wet at least.
With 3 of the 4 major creds done, we made our way back towards the Pantopia area. I really wanted to ride the classic Scorpion, but the queue looked insane (I couldn’t actually find a wait time anywhere) so with only an hour or so left before the park closed I made the difficult decision to skip it and instead went on one of the ride I was most anticipating - Falcon’s Fury!
Without doubt this drop tower is one of the scariest rides I’ve been on. Plummeting face-down for 200+ feet is enough to make anyone sh*t their pants and while that thankfully didn’t happen, there was plenty of swearing from me and the three other people I shared a gondola with. Anna recorded the whole thing on her phone while I recorded a POV, so watch out for a ‘simulcast’ video in the future
There was now only half an hour to go so we made our way back to the front of the park. Cobra’s Curse was again having technical issues so I went for Montu, which had just a ten minute queue. Add another ten for front row of course, but I always try and get my first ride on an invert on the front.
What a ride it was! I’d heard Montu was intense, and that had me worried as the last really intense B&M invert I rode (Batman at SFOG) I found too intense to be fun. Not so here – Montu mixes intensity with fun almost perfectly, and instantly became my second favourite B&M Invert and sneaked into my Top Ten. If I was to pick out a favourite moment then it would probably be the second loop, which is a simple but effective moment coming just after the MCBR.
After coming off the ride I checked Cobra’s Curse again and it was back running, but showing a 30 minute queue. I had no idea if they would even let me on at that point so decided to skip it and grab 2 further rides on Montu, which was now walk-on. The back row ride was even more intense – the forces as you go through the Batwing element are just crazy!
No decent pics of Montu from inside the park but I did get this beaut on the way out...
And that was that. Basically the BGT trip was a bit of a train wreck – I missed 4 creds, didn’t even see two areas of the park, had no time to see the wildlife, spent 50% of the day in queues and ended up a sweaty, disgusting mess. It was everything I hate about a day at a theme park, not helped by the crap layout of the park, which has obviously grown organically rather than by planning. Also annoying was the lack of queue time info – I never saw any information boards, half the rides didn’t even have a queue time sign (and half those that did were incorrect) and there’s no in-park Wi-Fi or queue time app either. I did get to meet an Aardvark though!
I felt that for a park of this size it was rather dated compared to its competitors in Orlando, which is a real shame because it definitely has the best coasters of any park in the state. Obviously I want to go back to get the creds I missed, and I’m sure they’ll add more great rides (or RMC the ones that are SBNO) so I just hope they’ve improved some of the more annoying aspects before we return.
The one upside was at the end of the day, we got to eat at our first Cracker Barrel of the trip and we didn’t have to drive to Orlando because we’d booked a hotel half way between Tampa and our next day’s excursion. Which you’ll find out about in the next update.
Sorry for the lack of photos for this bit of the report - I was too busy running around.
