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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Beer and Busch Gardens just seem to go together. We’ve written in the past about the history of the parks, their onsite breweries and ties to Busch Beer. The one sentence summary is there used to be a big Busch brewery near where Iron Gwazi is today and the park was originally started to help market the beer. Today, however, we will focus more on the modern connections with the locations and types of beer you can find around the park.
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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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Busch Gardens starts its Summer Nights this week with events running May 26th through August 6th. Events include extended hours, fireworks and lots of great entertainment. The two gems of Summer Nights are the fireworks and the Cirque Electric show, however the addition of several party zones and other entertainment really amp up the energy in the park making for lots of fun.
Continue readingIt’s May the 4th (Star Wars Day) and there really aren’t connections between that movie franchise and the park, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t Hollywood connections. Probably the closest thing to “Star Wars” were several episodes of a Travel Channel show called “Insane Coaster Wars”. The episode above features Sheikra at Busch Gardens Tampa, but another episode featured Montu.
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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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Busch Gardens were known for years as essentially theme parks built adjacent to several Anheuser-Busch breweries. Although the first “Busch Gardens” were the public gardens at Adolphus Busch’s house in Pasadena in the early 1900’s, the original “theme park at a brewery” concept was Busch Gardens Tampa Bay. This park opened on March 31, 1959 on the site of the company’s Tampa brewery, although it would be several years/expansions later before it would resemble a modern theme park.
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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.
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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!”
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BGT Safari 