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.

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.

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!”

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.

Ride operations can be a big part of whether you have an enjoyable or a frustrating day at a theme park, especially on a busy day. If you visit them parks a lot you may start to pay more attention to the workers and the differences between different theme park chains. An operator’s number one priority is safety, but they must also move quickly.

UPDATE!!! Great News! With this Instagram post on August 5th, Busch Gardens confirmed SkyRide is coming back! “DON’T WORRY! It’s not going anywhere— just receiving a little TLC. 😎 Stay up to date on our social media and website for more details and information regarding the Sky Ride!”

So ran into a ride operator from Busch Gardens at another park and I asked him about what happened with Wild Surge. He said the ride had a fire (which I normally would have been skeptical of since there’s been no news of that), but then he showed me a picture on his phone! He said it happened around December and it appeared pretty heavily damaged, thus the reason why a temporary refurbishment turned into a closure.

It’s always sad to see a ride go, I guess the ride gods give a new flat ride (Serengeti Flyer) and then take away (Wild Surge). What closed for refurbishment on November 28th appears to be forever with it being removed from the website and park maps.

After being closed for nearly a year, Falcon’s Fury is expected to reopen soon according to this article from Tampa’s Bay 9 News! The shutdown reportedly is not related to the tragic drop tower accident in Orlando, but instead to not being able to get spare parts due to supply chain issues.