Busch Gardens sign nowhere near the entrance
Our original plans included a one-night stay in Tampa after our cruise on Celebrity Constellation, which was supposed to be followed by boarding Royal Caribbean Serenade of the Seas the next day. We booked at a La Quinta specifically because it had guest laundries and the plan for our day on shore was to do all our laundry between cruises and take the covid test for the next cruise that was still required before boarding any cruise ship at that time. Several days before we were to disembark the Constellation we got the news that Serenade of the Seas was cancelling all future cruises for the next couple months, starting with ours.
statues
With people cancelling cruises right and left at that time due to covid or the inability to get there due to their flight having been cancelled, we thought Celebrity would bend over backwards to make deals with anyone wishing to stay onboard for the next cruise as the ship would likely sail less than half full again. It holds over 2000 passengers and had just 700 for our sailing. We were wrong about that though. They weren’t willing to do anything other than what was already available on the internet to anyone who may or may not be able to get there. We could actually have booked that sailing for less online through Vacations to Go than onboard through the onboard future cruise staff. Even through Vacations to Go it was not any sort of bargain though. It was not even remotely a good deal at a price considerably higher than what we’d paid for the cruise we were on at the time, so we just decided to go home.
animals at Busch Gardens
We could only get a nonstop flight either too early to get to the airport from the time people are allowed to disembark the ship or not until late in the evening where we wouldn’t get home until the middle of the night and it’s a very long drive home from the airport. At the time nonstop was the only way to go to prevent the possibility of getting stuck at some random airport if the second flight of the journey got cancelled. We decided to just keep the already booked hotel in Tampa and fly out the next morning. The hotel just happened to be across the street from Busch Gardens. Since we no longer needed to prepare for the next cruise and it was right there we decided we might as well go.
roller coaster up close – taken from the ride’s exit path
It’s cheaper to buy the tickets online than it is to buy them from the park when you get there, plus you avoid the ticket line. For $25 less than the entry price per person at the gate the online ticket also included a free meal. Free food is a great bonus considering the price of food in the park. The free meal was redeemable in several locations within the park.
flamingos
At the one we went to if you didn’t have the free meal ticket a meal consisting of one meat, one side, and one drink cost $45 for pre-made cafeteria food from warming bins or cold trays depending on the item. That was also what was included in the free meal. They had other things you could add, but they all cost extra. The portions were generally not very big. Even with the online discount tickets aren’t cheap, but still $70 less per person than buying it at the gate and then purchasing that minimal meal inside. (There is cheaper – and one would hope better – food at some of the many little stands.)
roller coaster
I hadn’t been to Busch Gardens in many years before this trip and mainly remembered it having a lot of big crazy roller coasters. It does have a lot of those, but it also has so much more.
the first roller coaster we rode
Unfortunately not everything was open, but there was still a lot to do. A couple of the roller coasters were not up and running and some of the other things were closed too.
roller coaster
Our hotel was right across the street, but from a totally fenced off side of the park. We could see roller coasters out our window, but the entrance was on the opposite side. We had to go to the end of that block, cross the street, walk past the entire park including a parking area, turn another corner, and walk a short distance down that block to gain access so a pretty long walk to get to something that was right there.
view from the top of a roller coaster that looked mellow, but was actually very jarring with jolts and jerks on every corner
The park is divided up into a variety of sections so you can’t just go straight from one roller coaster to the next. There might be a couple within the same area, but then you have to walk to another area to find another one. There are other things to do in each area. I suppose that keeps the lines shorter since people are busy walking from one area to another rather than just heading straight into the next line. We were there pretty early and the lines were very short, but later in the day after more people arrived lines for things got longer, though nowhere near where they would be in peak season.
carousel (not in the little kid ride section)
There’s a whole section of little rides for small children. There’s a few child-friendly things in other areas of the park too, though like other things not all of it was open.
Sesame Street topiary
There are plants throughout the park, and some actual small gardens.
no way
One crazy looking ride goes up a giant pole and then drops down, first facing the people downward before it drops, then springing them upright again before it quite gets to the bottom. A lot of people got off that ride and then had to search for their shoes that fell off while they were on it. A couple months after we were there a teenage boy fell off a ride similar to the drop one at a different park and died. I have to be careful what I ride due to motion sickness issues and that one was a definite no. Some of the roller coasters are fine, but the ones that spin people around too much or the one with sudden changes from forward to backward are not anything I would do because I really hate barfing and that’s what they’d cause.
train
There’s also a train, which people can ride around to see various animals and the location of some of the roller coasters, or they can use it as transportation between one station or the other. It actually has 3 stations, but one of them was closed so it was just stopping at 2.
roller coaster over a train station (taken from inside the train)
You don’t have to get off at any particular station so once you are on it you can ride it around as many times as you want. It takes awhile to make a full circuit though.
zebra seen from the train
There are some animal exhibits in different locations in the park, with the majority of them in a big area where the train goes through. You can see quite a lot of different animals from the train. People can also pay extra to ride in the back of a safari truck on dirt roads that crisscross through the area and get closer to some of the animals than the train, which mainly skirts the edge.
meerkat
A paved trail goes by some animal exhibits that you don’t see from the train or truck. One of them was meerkats. It was mainly meerkat holes. Only one meerkat came out of a hole while we were there. It was much smaller than they look on the TV show Meerkat Manor. It must have been a young one because it was far smaller than the 9-14 inches adult meerkats grow to.
water ride – we did not go on it remembering from a previous visit it can get you really wet and the day was too cold to walk around in wet clothes. You have to pay to use the squirt guns to shoot at these people now and nobody was using them so it wasn’t as bad as it could be, but the ride can get unlucky people sitting in the wrong place wet on its own – and the wrong place could be anywhere depending on how the raft turns.
Busch Gardens has 10 roller coasters, 2 drop rides, 2 water rides, and some other rides. In addition to the little rides for small children there are also some play areas. There’s an ice skating show in the Moroccan Palace and for the little ones a couple Sesame Street shows. Besides the safari, there are other behind-the-scenes type animal tours people can book to have a closer look at some of the park’s animals. There are gift shops scattered throughout the park, but none of the roller coasters we went on exited directly through a gift shop like so many attractions do these days.
giraffes
It was a nice way to spend a day. Even with some things closed there was still more than enough to do there to fill a day. It would take more than one day to see and do everything.
elephant
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