Busch Gardens Tampa – Certainly NOT Like Williamsburg

So did this visit fair any better? Not really when you take everything into account. Cheetah Hunt, Kumba (testing after extended downtime), and Falcon’s Fury (again) were all closed. Stanley Falls had recently closed for good too, but we still got to look at it like I did with Gwazi in 2014.

Now I have the Kumba and Cheetah Hunt credits, but this time around Sam would have coasters she would ultimately miss out on. I mean, I was bummed too since I like both coasters and would have loved to ride them again.

Then there was the way the park handles Howl-O-Scream (HOS). We’re used to the way Busch Gardens Williamsburg (BGW) handles theirs. You buy a ticket during HOS days and you get access to the park all day and the haunt. Not with BGT. You have to either leave the park and come back in, or get a wristband to show that you can stay in the park. For those that do, the park closes for an hour with nothing to do, so you just stand around feeling like an idiot. Furthermore, once the HOS starts, there is no leaving the park and returning. Once you’re out, you’re out. Cool, got it.

What they don’t tell you is once you toss that wristband on, you can’t leave and return either. Yes, even though HOS doesn’t start for almost two hours, once that band goes on, you have to stay in the park.

Had I known that, I would have taken out our merch and my camera real quick, came back in, then got the wristband since it was well before the time where you couldn’t re-enter. And no, they wouldn’t issue me a new one either. I asked.

Then there was the HOS Fast Pass. We bought the package that let us skip each haunt once and then 10 rides. On the site it just said “10 rides.” When issued the pass, it came with a list of rides that you could skip once each. That would make sense, but it wasn’t advertised that way. Furthermore, numerous rides on the pass weren’t even open that day which included the aformentioned Cheetah Hunt, Falcon’s Fury, and Kumba.

We decided to go to guest services and ask what we were supposed to do about the closed rides. Their answer was that we could come back another day and use them. When we informed them we were traveling and only at the park one day, a supervisor came over. She told us we could just tell the ride ops that for the closed ones we could skip another ride instead. Great! But I bet the ride ops didn’t know that. And they didn’t.

And speaking of ride ops! Oh boy… I never saw so many people have phones out during restraint checks and dispatches. The ops didn’t tell people to put them away, or take them from the riders to put into bins. They just let them go. The worst crew was easily on Iron Gwazi followed up by the one at Cobra’s Curse. Our train literally went by three ops standing on the platform watching the large group in front of us have multiple phones out and taking selfies, which continued onto the elevator lift. Nothing was said and we weren’t stopped.

Okay, enough bitching. I don’t want this to be a trip report just bashing the park, but those things needed to be said. Now onto the ride highlights from our long day.