BGT advice?

[shepp]

I'll be at BGT midweek late January. SheikRa's the priority, of course, but I haven't been there for years, and in addition to the coasters, I'd like to hit the animal attractions, including Rhino Rally, and the stage show. I assume the place won't be too crowded, but it'll only be open 8 hours. And when I was at BGW, they opened most sections of the park considerably later than the gates, which was a pain. So...any advice from BGT veterans on what to hit when? What opens late? Or at that time of year, should I basically not worry about queues?

[ParkTrips]

I went on a Friday in October and it was packed! Really odd since it was a weekday, plus they had their halloween event going on. What Im saying is that crowds can be considerably hard to predict.

 

I went to Universal (during the week) in January, and crowds ranged from across-the-board walkons to 90+ minutes for Mummy and hour waits for Hulk and Dragons, again, hard to predict.

 

If you must do Rhino Rally, I'd hit it early as the line moves slow and for some reason people like to ride it. Honestly, I'd skip it and ride the train for a similar (and IMHO better) experience.

 

I went to Montu first this last trip and it probably didn't open until 15-20 minutes after the park, but I don't know about the rest of the park since my last visit had been in 2002 prior to October.

 

- Joe, who admits that wasn't much in the lines of tips, but thats because Florida parks can be so damn hard to predict!

[Erik Johnson]

January is a great time to go to the park. Typically the hours of the park is either going to be 9:30AM-6:00PM or 10:00AM-6:00PM. If you are planning to do Rhino Rally I would sugggest that you do it first thing. It has terrible capacity and they really do not run enough jeeps. After you ride that one I would suggest Gwazi then SheiKra. They are able to run a lot of people quickly through SheiKra. But again since you are going in Jan, I do not think you have to worry about crowds very much. Though it would be suggested you get there about 15 to 30 mins before park opening so you can walk over and do Rhino Rally first thing. They usually open everything all at once, though they did not open SheKira until around 12:00 or 1:00 for the official TPR gathering. But I consider ourselves lucky, beacuse the sign in front of the park said it was going to be closed for the entire day. Let me know how the shows are, I still have not done Haunted Lighthouse 4-D or Katoga (however you spell it). Enjoy BGT!

[Robbie]

I was there in July of 03 and the longest wait was 20 minutes for Kumba

[shepp]

Thanks for the advice. Yeah, I know about Rhino Rally, but I figured we were there already, and if it wasn't too much of a wait...

 

I did see The Haunted Lighthouse at BGW, and it was...well...terrible. But the fish spat at you.

 

What got me about BGW's scheduling was that I got there good and early, but when the gates opened, BBW was down and the DarKastle/Alpie area was still closed off. One employee told us AC was open in place of BBW, so we hightailed it over to Italy, but that was still closed off. So with getting there early and a lot of running around, there was basically nothing to do for the first half hour or more. I understand the crowd control rationale, but it was frustrating. That was more than ameliorated, though, by a complaint to Customer Relations getting us a second-day pass, and the op at Alpengeist allowing three front-row rides in a row at the end of the day.

[alpengeist04]

I know, the BGW scheduling is a pain. I went 4 times this year and each time, Italy (Apollo) opened around 30 mins. later and Germany (BBW) an hour later. I do have to say that each time I went Darkastle and Alpengeist were open 10 mins after the park opened, so by the time I walked back there I was able to walk right on.