Busch Gardens/Adventure Island Photo TR!

[pvcoasterguy]

Busch Gardens Tampa Bay Photo TR

June 26-30, 2005

 

Some pictures at the bottom of this post.

 

-Day One, In-Transit-

 

We journeyed down to Tampa on American/American Eagle, from Moline, IL. All went smoothly, but we had a very tight connection (28 minutes) in O’Hare, which is a huge airport. However, after a nice sprint through the airport, we got to the gate on time. Both flights were pleasant, with nothing very notable on either one. However, the American MD-80 seems to have more legroom than average, even with “More Room throughout Coach” removed.

 

Got our rental car (an awful Lincoln Towncar) that couldn’t be parked in a ton of spots because it’s so long. We then got to our hotel (on St. Pete’s Beach,) and relaxed.

 

-Day Two, Busch Gardens Tampa-

Hopped back into the Towncar, and drove to Busch Gardens. Then we went on a huge bridge across the Gulf, which had a ton of signs that said “Fog Smoke.” What the hell is Fog Smoke? (Unfortunately, I couldn’t get a good picture.)

 

Got to Busch Gardens, and took our spot at about 9:45. Then we went to guest relations to get our tickets. The line was huge for guest relations, and was the longest line we experienced the entire time in Florida.

We got into the park and were immediately amazed. What a good looking park! We headed for Gwazi Tiger first. We were in the middle of the train for this ride. The crew wasn’t too slow, yet they weren’t too fast, either.

 

We all enjoyed Gwazi Tiger. It was a fun wooden coaster, with a ton of twists. The ride wasn’t very rough at all. It had a bobsled-type feel to it. The overbanked hill was amazing, with floater airtime, and was just overall a cool element. Very fun coaster, reminded me of Outlaw at Adventureland. (I think Mike Boodley designed both; but the Outlaw when he was at CCI.) We rode Gwazi Lion also, which had a better sense of speed throughout the ride. Both were a lot of fun and pretty smooth.

 

Then we just kept walking forward, and came upon ShieKra. The line was about 30-40 minutes, but the line just kept moving because of the huge capacity of the ride. We were all excited about this amazing looking

coaster.

 

We got assigned to the back row, which was cool. We got into our recliners, and we were off. Going up the hill, I was actually a little nervous. On the lift, you’re basically laying down because of the angle of the seats and lift. You finally get to the top, and turnaround to the drop. The holding brake wasn’t very effective in the back, but was still neat.

Then it released. We were all floating out of our seats, totally amazed. Then we went up into the immelman, which is so graceful and cool. Then we turned around, and hit the mid-course brakes. Then we dove off them, into the tunnel, with a ton of airtime again. We did an overbanked turn, and hit the water. We got a little wet, but not very bad. Then we went up another hill, did a slow turn, and hit the silent magnetic brakes. Amazing. Awesome. We were going to hit it tomorrow again.

 

We continued on our way, reaching Python. We were greeted with a sign that said the wait was 100 minutes. We walked up the queue, and found that there was no line. We headed towards the middle of the train for our ride.

 

My brother and I were in the first row of the car, which meant I had no place to put my legs or my size 13 feet, so I had to cross my feet, which wasn’t very comfortable. I had a nice smooth ride, with no headbanging, but that was only because I was so tall, I was above the harness. My brother got banged around pretty bad. Pretty good ride.

 

Then it was off to Kumba. I was looking forward to this ride. We walked right into the station and had a two train wait for row two. We pulled down our harnesses, and started up the lift.

 

We dove down the first drop into an intense vertical loop and awesome dive loop. The we went through the forceful barrel roll. Did a small dip and headed for the fast cobra roll, then hit the midcourse brakes. We dove down again, into the cool interlocking corkscrews. Then we dropped into the tunnel, and did a tight helix, which ended our ride. Wow. Kumba was a very forceful B&M, but was still smooth, and a fun ride.

 

I was really looking forward to riding Scorpion, because I love Schwarzkopf’s. This one did not let me down. It was my first looping coaster with a lap bar, and it was very cool. We were in the back car. The loop was very forceful, as was the very tight helix at the end. Nice ride.

 

Cheetah Chase was broken down, so we headed to the other side of the park via the Skyride.

 

The Skyride was a very relaxing, nice, long ride. We saw a ton of animals from it.

 

Next we went on Montu, which had a fairly long line. (About thirty minutes.) It broke down while we were in line, but it only lasted about 10 or 15 minutes. Now it was our turn to ride, in the middle.

Montu was a blur to me, but was still fun. I really liked the trenches and the Batwing. However, I still prefer Batman or Dueling Dragons to it.

Now it was lunch time, and we ate at Crown Colony. There was a huge line for it, being the second longest line of the trip. However, the food was good, so we were happy.

 

Then it started to pour and thunderstorm. We waited it our, but it was still raining when we went outside to visit the Edge of Africa walk-through. After that, we left, because the rain wasn’t going to let up for awhile.

 

-Day Three, Busch Gardens Tampa-

Today was mostly a day of repeat rides. Only a few notes for this day.

- We went on ShieKra two more times today, as it only had a ten minute line. We went on the back once more, and then got the front once. I preferred the front because you still got the airtime, but the holding brake was better, and so was the tunnel.

- We went on Congo River Rapids, because it had a five minute line. Enjoyable, and we got soaked. The rapids were fairly big on this ride. It was neat how they got the boats to the correct side of the station, with the high pressure hose.

- We got on Cheetah Chase, which was pretty fun. There were no brakes on the first part of the ride (switchbacks), but the ones on the dips were on hard. Okay ride.

- We went over to Rhino Rally, which had a slow-moving 45 minute line. However, we discovered the single rider line that no one was using, and got on in five minutes. Our driver was really good, and did a lot of her own jokes. She even made fun of the ride, by saying “And now we’ve all got to pretend we’re going over a waterfall when we’re not!” And pointed at some people taking pictures of the ride, very close (my parents,) and said, “Look, there are some native cannibals!” But you can’t forget about the “African Killer Ducks!” But, we actually had to help her get of the pontoon bridge that Vekoma made, because we were stuck. We helped her by shaking forwards and back, which let us get off. Then she had us cheer really loud for her at the end, because “I’m the cutest and best driver at Busch Gardens Tampa.”

- We ate at the Desert Grill, that I think used to be some German name. There are two lines that you can go in, so obviously we went in the shorter one. The lady in the other line comes up to my dad and I and says, “I hope you enjoy your lunch now that you cut in front of us.” Man, I was ready to yell at her, but we let her pass us. What a bitch.

- The lines were very short today, and we had a great time at the park.

- We also went through a couple animal exhibits (you’ll see the pictures below.)

 

-Day Four, Adventure Island Waterpark-

- We only had a few hours here, because we wanted to go back and swim at the beach.

- We hit quite a few things in two hours.

- First we went on an enclosed tube slide, the Aruba Tuba. It was pretty fun. But it was more fun to see all the people go from sliding really fast to going to a complete stop on the final dip, by getting stuck on it. I have no idea why people were getting stuck in that one spot; I didn’t.

- Next we went on the Everglides, a water sled type slide thingy. First you put your really heavy sled on this platform, and you get on. Then the platform goes to an angle and releases the stopper at the end of the platform which lets you go down the steep slide, and hydroplane across the water. Cool, but weird. Robb has some photos of Adventure Island on this site, under photo galleries.

- Next we went on Key West Rapids, which was the hit of the day. It’s ultra-wide tube slide, so you spin around during the ride, with three separate parts to it. You splash down after each part. Very cool.

- Next we went to the Splash Attack, which is one of those big water tree houses. There were some pretty fun slides in there. But, it wasn’t as good as Cedar Point’s, because you couldn’t dump buckets of water on people going down the slide.

- Now we went of the Caribbean Corkscrew, which is the slide that intertwines with the other slide, next to it. This was crazy. You couldn’t see anything, and you were going side to side, up and down, with a ton of water in your face, very fast.

- We also went on Runaway Rapids, which is a bunch of body slides in a mountain-type structure. The slides were really weird, because they didn’t feel like the newer type slides- they were a lot softer. Still a lot of fun, with some good turns.

 

-Day Five, We got O’Hared!-

O’Hare is a death trap. That’s all you can say about it. First, our flight was delayed from Tampa to Chicago by two hours, due to “Air Traffic Control.” We were going to miss our connection, so we went up to the gate agent, whom was very helpful. He booked us on another flight, the 7:00 one, but we’d have to get our boarding passes there, by showing these cards. Okay, fine with us. He was a great guy, and without him, we wouldn’t have gotten on the “Fifty-passenger regional jet overbooked by twelve people” flight.

 

Got to O’Hare, and got a bite to eat. Then we noticed our 7:00 flight was delayed to 7:30, then that was changed to 8:00, which kept going in 30 minute increments until 9:30. Almost every American Eagle flight was delayed. And they were playing musical gates, the always fun game to try and lose passengers for the overbooked passengers, so the blame could then go on the people who got lost, so the airline wouldn’t take any responsibility. Whew! They changed our gate seven or eight times in the time we were at O’Hare. You had to be on your toes. We finally got to board the EMB-145, our tiny regional jet that I can’t stand up straight in. We got O’Hared.

 

We had an awesome time a Busch Gardens and everywhere else we went. (Except O’Hare.)

 

The larger photos of ShieKra and other rides/animals are located here: http://photobucket.com/albums/y150/pvcoasterguy/Busch%20Gardens%20Tampa/?start=all

A cool view of ShieKra!

Runaway Rapids...

What are these turtles doing?

He wants a toothpick.

Awww...

Gwazi!

The "Flamango Stance."

[Erik Johnson]

Great TR. Busch Gardens is one of my home parks (I guess anything within 2 hours by car is considered a home park...not sure though). I enjoyed reading it.

[socalMAN123]

Nice and long TR! Sounds like you had fun!

---Brent 8)

[pvcoasterguy]

^^ You're lucky... both of my closest parks are over three hours away. But, they're awesome and very fun parks (Adventureland and Six Flags Great America.)

[Coasters 4 ever]

Great TR. Glad you had fun.

[coasterdude5]

Great TR! Too bad it was cloudy and rainy.