Busch Gardens has announced its new suspended family coaster for 2024, Phoenix Rising, which is replacing Sand Serpent, the Phoenix looping starship and a couple of kiddie rides. It’s interesting that of all that the new name plays off of the former looping starship? I guess “Montu 2” was too corny? It will be interesting to see two B&M inverts in the same park though. Few details are known though about Phoenix Rising other than a sketch and a few lines in a press release:

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The code name for the Busch Gardens Sand Serpent replacement is Project Halycon. This project is not just taking the old Sand Serpent plot of land, but a huge part of Pantopia. Although there have been no official announcement about a replacement, clues can be drawn from permit filings about what the park is up to. You can see from the permit revisions below that there is a locker area proposed and there is also a test seat involved. It also mentions a station! Thanks to Penguin_Master23 on Parkfans.net for finding this on the Accela Database which is a wealth of information for building permits searching under the park’s name or address.

So just because it has lockers and a test seat doesn’t mean it’s a coaster. After all, Stanley Falls has lockers and there’s a test seat for Serengeti Flyer. However, these taken together combined with the size of the space are tantalizing clues about what is coming to Pantopia and replacing Sand Serpent.

There have been a lot of rumors and thus far no official announcement as to what is replacing Sand Serpent and taking over a large section of Pantopia at Busch Gardens Tampa, known by the code name Project Halcyon. Last year Serengeti Flyer was announced on October 11th and in 2018 Tigris and Iron Gwazi were announced on September 12th, so hopefully we’re getting close. Here are some of the things that are rumored and the order is my guess of most to least likely.

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June 9th was the last day for the Sand Serpent, but this week 3 other rides disappeared from the website and are behind construction walls as well. They were the 3 kid rides located in Pantopia including the Busch Flyers, Desert Runners and the Kiddie Train. Also, the signs have been removed from the Sky Ride (per Busch Gardens Junkies) and it’s gone from the website Add this to the demolition of the SBNO Phoenix, the fire/demolition of Wild Surge and the official closing of SBNO (Standing But Not Operating) Tree Top Trails in Jungala and that’s 8 attractions in the past year by my count with the only addition being the Serengeti Flyer. That brings the park down to 24 rides with 9 of those being children’s rides.

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There have been so many rumors as to what will replace Sand Serpent. These include everything from a Giga coaster to an indoor ride using the Pantopia Theater to a wing coaster to family coaster. Busch Gardens isn’t exactly known for its theming, however the Egpyt area of the park is highly themed including the men’s bathroom! Whatever replaces Sand Serpent, however, I’m just hoping a little time, money and effort are spent theming the new ride, at least as much as this restroom.

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Busch Gardens is often a little light on ride theming (excluding the amazing work they did with Cobra’s Curse), but I do appreciate how they often tie the ride motion to animal motion. An excellent example of this is Cheetah Hunt which mimics the acceleration and ground movement of a cheetah. However, many people probably miss the animal connection with SheiKra, the awesome B&M dive coaster, and its movements matching the “shikra” bird of Africa and southern Asia.

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Had a chance to ride the “milder” version of the Serengeti Flyer at Busch Gardens a couple of weeks ago. It was a Tuesday morning and the ride was a walk-on around 10:30am and running in “milder” mode until 1pm. I’ve ridden a lot of these S&S Screamin’ Swings now from Barnstormer at Dollywood to Finnegan’s Flyer at Busch Gardens Williamsburg.

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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!”

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There have been rumors of Sand Serpent closing on social media and YouTube after a demolition permit was filed for a structure at Busch Gardens. Sure, it could be for the play area in Jungala (which has now disappeared from maps), but with the demo of the looping starship Phoenix, all the chatter has been that this is the area for the next new attraction with survey markers all around Pantopia.

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