I was hearing the rumors that Sand Serpent may be closing soon at Busch Gardens (we even wrote a post about it last month). Today the rumors were confirmed with the Sand Serpent scheduled to close permanently on July 9th. However, this closure was somewhat personal for me in that I’ve got a 6 year old son named Thomas who is slowly growing and graduating to new rides, essentially measuring his growth by newly available roller coasters. Just a month or so ago he passed 46″ and his first response was, “I get to ride Sand Serpent!”

A couple months ago I started seeing YouTube videos from people like Midway Mayhem that talked about potential plans for the Pantopia area that could include a new attraction, perhaps even a Giga coaster station in that area. These theories were pieced together from demolition permits filed by the park, survey markers (nails) spotted by keen observers and the demolition of the neighboring “looping starship” called Phoenix.

I let my son know that they might be closing Sand Serpent and he essentially broke down in tears because he might never be able to ride it. We live slightly north of Atlanta, so a trip to the park isn’t an easy afternoon drive, most of the time there are vacation days and hotels involved even though we have season passes. However, we pledged that even though it may require a plane flight or a crazy drive we’d get him on it assuming Busch Gardens gave a little notice. Last week I was lucky enough to be in Orlando for work and we extended a day to make the trip to Tampa on a hot summer day, essentially to ride Sand Serpent and Thomas got his rides!

June 6th was a magical morning. We showed up and Pantopia was a ghost town and for about 20 minutes we essentially had Sand Serpent to ourselves. We told the operators our story and they were super nice and made Thomas feel special. Thomas loved the ride (see the pic above) and I’m so happy we took the time to visit that morning given today’s news. It hurts a little knowing there will be one less roller coaster he can ride at Busch Gardens until he’s 48″, but hopefully whatever replaces it will be worth it.

Soon Sand Serpent will sit empty having run its circuit for a final time. There’s a chance it may be sold and reappear somewhere else, but if not, thanks for the fun and the memories.