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Busch Gardens Tampa Bay (BGT Discussion Thread)

p. 375: Phoenix Rising family inverted coaster announced for 2024!

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Cheetah Hunt construction!

Trip Report to come soon!

I couldn't get to the Crown Colony viewing area as it was closed until 1:00. I got to the park first thing and did my thing but it was closed until 1:00...

Hope you like the pictures.

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Coming to Busch viewing Montu!

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Cheetah Hunt at the entrance of the park!

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First headed towards Gwazi with the new trains! SO MUCH BETTER! Lion is my favorite and a lot smoother than Tiger.

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Lion going down the drop!

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Cheetah Hunt tower through the trees! Great scene!

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Morning rise to Cheetah Hunt!

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Through the trees again...great setting!

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Walls are down and landscaping are done under the tower! Looks great!

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Under the arch view.

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Another view.

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Walking around toward Montu with the tower popping over the wall.

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New landscaping around the first turn and trench. Looks fantastic!

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Entrance! It said it had a 240 minute wait. O GOD!!! :)

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Tower shot! The theming is phenomenal!!! This is probably the best themed coaster after Expedition Everest!

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Cheetah Hunt coming back from Montu.

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First Turn.

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Entrance again. I can't believe this used to be the Skyride entrance.

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Another tower shot!

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Another first turn shot. This is a very photogenic ride! The views are going to be amazing from the ride experience.

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First turn.

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Tower.

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Cheetah Run through the glass!

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Crossroads entrance overlook.

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Another look.

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Tower from the Arch.

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The new landscaping under the tower. Just amazing.

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Under the tower and through the sun.

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Tower by the drop.

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Looking back towards the Skyride station and Drop.

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Looking ahead. Last element of ride.

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Hop!

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Amazing view.

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Heading to Kasi, Mtani, the baby aardvark, and many exotic animals!

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Sleeping...aww

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In person...they are adorable.

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Baby aardvark!

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He was wide awake and roaming around his room and sniffing I guess.

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Cheetah Hunt Corkroll.

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Cheetah Hunt into and out of the Rhino Rally portion.

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If only there was a Cheetah Hunt train there.

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Wow, some amazing pictures so far by the TPR crew! Cheetah Hunt is a very photogenic ride, and I love all of the different shots you can get of the coaster through it's long, winding course.

 

Unfortunately, I seem to have gone just a bit too early. I wish I could have known all about their new coaster before I went last April. I guess I'll just have to wait until 2012 or 2013, but I'll be spending some quality time with Untamed myself this summer...

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Thanks for the updates, the pictures are great. The Skyride is also looking awesome with all the new scenery, it will be a new experience. I am pretty excited about Friday, chance for a little moisture though. Anyone know BGT policy on running the rides in the rain.

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Should still run unless there is lightning near by, which you can bet there will be since almost any rain in Florida around summer time is from a thunderstorm. However, if there's only like around a 10-30% chance, you should be good. We haven't really kicked off the rainy/afternoon-thunderstorm season yet.

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Just saw someone I follow on Tumblr comment on Cheetah Hunt - apparently their grandmom works for BGT and each employee was allowed to bring a guest to some sort of event they held tonight. His words:

 

"It was pretty cool, really smooth, but not exciting."

"It was alright. Not worth waiting hours for, but i only waited 30 mins, so it was fine."

 

Sounds about accurate to me, judging by the videos. Hopefully I'll be down to ride it next January! (And Kumba will be open this time!)

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WOW! This ride looks amazing! The colors are so vibrant, and it really stands out in that section of the park. I love the entrance and the banners and all the landscaping around this ride, but the hill over the skyride is downright awesome looking!

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So, tonight I was invited to and participated in the employee preview night. I was able to get 5 rides in on Cheetah Hunt. Let me start off by addressing the "speed" issue, the ride is faster than it looks from off ride, that is all I will say on this matter. Now, about the ride itself, it's great! Cheetah Hunt is probably the most re-ride able coaster in the park. It features multiple areas of your usual Intamin ejector airtime, as well as a startling abundance of lateral forces.

 

The start of the ride is extremely epic, only thing I could compare it to would possibly be the double launch at the start of Volcano at KD, just replacing the inversion at the end with some nice airtime. The tower gives great views of the park and the surrounding areas, and the drop off it gives another decent pop of airtime. The only really "meh" part of the ride is the SkyRide jump, it just goes a bit higher than would be wanted and instead of feeling like an Intamin air-hill, it felt more like a B&M floater hill. The heartline roll following though makes up for it as it supplies a rather generous portion of hang time.

 

The MCBR is where this ride takes a shift in its format and goes from, constant speed swooping movements to the type of ride we'd expect, along the lines of Maverick. For one, the canyon portion is probably my favorite part of the entire ride, featuring many moments of lateral gs. That's right, these surf curves actually aren't pointless! Anyways, after that the third launch actually has a decent kick to it and the following parabolic air-hill is almost as intense as Maverick's first air hill. The following s-curve hill supplies yet another pop of ejector air, and the last s-curve hill is possibly the most intense moment of the ride. The sudden dive out of the hill creates really intense laterals and the quick jump back up to the brakes produces a fairly intense moment of high-gs.

 

Overall, while this ride is not as intense as the rides Maverick and iSpeed deliver, this ride is still above average and scores from me a spot in my top 20 and a solid rating of about 9/10. It is a perfect addition to the park and really rounds out the ride selection. I believe BGT has a winner on their hands here and should bring in some heavier crowds for a while.

 

On another note, Cheetah Run is an extremely cool exhibit and is well worth checking out, especially for the demonstrations, plus Cheetahs are just cute .

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^^The crew was actually really good. I think they got a sampling of the best workers from each of the other rides to be the opening crew for it. The trains were moving through pretty quickly, never waited more than 30 minutes, except for one downtime but the Intamin curse is a topic for later .

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The only thing I'm disappointed is the 2nd launch. This ride is built for speed and adrenaline. They were promoting all of their videos that it was tons of speed and I thought they were going to get as close as possible to the animated POV. I was looking forward to this ride hoping the speed would increase but now it just doesn't look to be the same. I thought this would be the best ride in the park because of the speed and looking at the videos, I guess not. Is the waterfall running in the Rhino Rally portion?

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So, tonight I was invited to and participated in the employee preview night. I was able to get 5 rides in on Cheetah Hunt. Let me start off by addressing the "speed" issue, the ride is faster than it looks from off ride, that is all I will say on this matter. Now, about the ride itself, it's great! Cheetah Hunt is probably the most re-ride able coaster in the park. It features multiple areas of your usual Intamin ejector airtime, as well as a startling abundance of lateral forces.

 

The start of the ride is extremely epic, only thing I could compare it to would possibly be the double launch at the start of Volcano at KD, just replacing the inversion at the end with some nice airtime. The tower gives great views of the park and the surrounding areas, and the drop off it gives another decent pop of airtime. The only really "meh" part of the ride is the SkyRide jump, it just goes a bit higher than would be wanted and instead of feeling like an Intamin air-hill, it felt more like a B&M floater hill. The heartline roll following though makes up for it as it supplies a rather generous portion of hang time.

 

The MCBR is where this ride takes a shift in its format and goes from, constant speed swooping movements to the type of ride we'd expect, along the lines of Maverick. For one, the canyon portion is probably my favorite part of the entire ride, featuring many moments of lateral gs. That's right, these surf curves actually aren't pointless! Anyways, after that the third launch actually has a decent kick to it and the following parabolic air-hill is almost as intense as Maverick's first air hill. The following s-curve hill supplies yet another pop of ejector air, and the last s-curve hill is possibly the most intense moment of the ride. The sudden dive out of the hill creates really intense laterals and the quick jump back up to the brakes produces a fairly intense moment of high-gs.

 

Overall, while this ride is not as intense as the rides Maverick and iSpeed deliver, this ride is still above average and scores from me a spot in my top 20 and a solid rating of about 9/10. It is a perfect addition to the park and really rounds out the ride selection. I believe BGT has a winner on their hands here and should bring in some heavier crowds for a while.

 

On another note, Cheetah Run is an extremely cool exhibit and is well worth checking out, especially for the demonstrations, plus Cheetahs are just cute .

Great to hear! This is exactly what I thought when seeing the POV's, not quite as intense as say Maverick, but still an excellent 9/10 top-25 ride with great airtime and laterals. What coaster would you say is now the best at the park?

 

Oh, and this ride is stunning to look at.

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Is anyone besides me tired of seeing pictures of this? I mean it looks fun and all but you can only have so many pictures of the same thing.

when I get tired of seeing something I stop clicking on places where more than likely there will be pictures of it...lol

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FORGET EVERYTHIN I HAVE SAID ABOUT THIS RIDE!!!!!!

 

OMFG, this looks absolutely outstanding!

It certainly not looks like a extreme thrill ride, but it is a amazing combination of everything!

 

This coaster looks like a coaster that really is worth the wait! (both in line/and in constructing! ;b)

Damn, it's very long! Awesome job Busch Gardens Tampa!

 

Cheetah hunt looks like 2011 coaster winner!

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The only thing I'm disappointed is the 2nd launch. This ride is built for speed and adrenaline. They were promoting all of their videos that it was tons of speed and I thought they were going to get as close as possible to the animated POV. I was looking forward to this ride hoping the speed would increase but now it just doesn't look to be the same. I thought this would be the best ride in the park because of the speed and looking at the videos, I guess not. Is the waterfall running in the Rhino Rally portion?

 

I'm gathering you missed my statement in my review that the speed is not an issue at all and it feels a lot faster than it looks. To address your question about the waterfall though, it is in fact running and people sitting on the right side of the train can get an occasional mist from it.

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Woah! That POV is awesome, and this ride is a lot longer than I expected it to be! The whole ride is so unique and cool, and I love the section where Rhino Rally's water section used to be! I cannot wait to see this open to the public!

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The only thing I'm disappointed is the 2nd launch. This ride is built for speed and adrenaline. They were promoting all of their videos that it was tons of speed and I thought they were going to get as close as possible to the animated POV. I was looking forward to this ride hoping the speed would increase but now it just doesn't look to be the same. I thought this would be the best ride in the park because of the speed and looking at the videos, I guess not. Is the waterfall running in the Rhino Rally portion?

 

If you watch closely, it really does look just about the same speed wise as the animated POV. The thing is, the animated POV had copious amounts of motion blur added everywhere to give it the illusion of going faster than it really was. The only area that might be a little slower is the figure-eight, but other than that, they look very similar.

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I'm so excited to ride. Can't wait til Friday! It does look abnormally long. That 3rd launch with the airtime hill after leads me with some questions. How exactingly did that feel, Andrew. You said it messed with your head, right?

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Looks like a damn good ride to me!

 

 

This is the official POV from Busch Gardens. Wonder why they didn't have audio? Oh well, hopefully we'll get a fun onride with Robb and Tyler tomorrow!

Edited by SharkTums
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Just watched it via BG facebook and i totally agree! it looks fantastic! now will everyone can shut the hell up about it being slow. The pull-ups into the hills look like they'll pull some nice G's an the trick-track looks very disorientating! cant wait to try it in July

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