Grant's Hols Sept/Oct 2014 - Day 11 - Busch Gardens + Ice Hockey

[grant_w]

<--- Day 10 - Airboat

Day 11 comes around and one of the days I've been looking forward to the most, Busch Gardens, my favourite park of them all, and then straight to the ice hockey at Tampa. I'm a huge ice hockey fan and go to my local team every week and have done for 23 years now, I even played recreational ice hockey for a couple of years until injury forced me to stop so going to an NHL game is a HUGE deal for me.

We got to Busch Gardens at opening time of 10am and aimed straight for the Cheetah Hunt as it is one of two rides there we hadn't been on, no queue as it was early. We all absolutely loved the ride! We noticed that they 'run' the cheetah later in the day so wanted to be back for that, never seen a cheetah run at full speed.



Next we went straight for the other ride we hadn't done before, Falcon's Fury. Again there was zero queue, in fact they were waiting for people to turn up before they run the ride. Only myself and Stuart rode this, Nina doesn't do drop rides.




Falcon's Fury

We thought it might be a good idea to get the wet rides out of the way as we were going out after leaving the park so we had time to dry so we went on Congo River Rapids, the log flume and Tidal Wave back to back. We love the water squirters after the river rapids, it amuses us every time



We then went round the other rides, I still love Montu even though it is getting old now and while we were in the area we wene back to see the Cheetah run, they set up a 'lure' and the cheetah runs up and down the enclosure a couple of times, I was really impressed not having see a cheetah run so fast before.

The remainder of the time at Busch was spend going round the animals enclosures and doing the odd ride





Before we left we had time for 1 last ride and we had a choice, Cheetah Hunt again or Gwazi, the only ride we hadn't been on. We chose Cheetah Hunt again, Nina doesn't like Gwazi and we all loved Cheetah Hunt so much the first time.

We left Busch Gardens at about 5:45 and made our way the short distance to the Amalie Arena. It took about 20 minutes in the traffic. The first problem is finding somewhere to park. We had an idea where to park, but an accident on the road leading up to the official car park was blocking the sliproad into the car park, by this time we had driven past all of the $10 car parks in the waste ground so we had 2 choices - drive right the way out of Tampa and come in again and choose a $10 one, or go in one right outside the front of the building knowing its going to be expensive. We did the 2nd option and it was $30 but we were literally across 1 road and we were in the arena, no wondering where we had parked, no walking miles to the rink, perfect spot.

This was the view as we walked into Thunder Alley, there was a local band playing and the cheerleaders were doing some routines. Not a bad start to the evening.


The doors opened after a few minutes and people started going in. The security to get in was a bit over the top and it took a good 10-15 minutes to get in but once in we found our excellent seats.



I took a few photos from my seat to show how good the view was from the seats



It was an excellent game with Tampa beating local rivals Florida Panthers 3-2 in overtime. We got out in no time and drove straight out of the car park and was back at the villa in an hour. Still a very long day though, but a very enjoyable one

Day 12 - Islands of Adventure --->

[grant_w]

Edit: moved it to the correct place

[Guest]

Just discovered your trip report Grant.Great photos and nice to read reports of places other than Disneyworld.

The rodeo and ice hockey looked great places to visit for a taste of real Florida.

Look forward to reading the rest of your trip report.

Janette

[grant_w]

Thanks, there are a loot of amazing places in Florida other than Disney. I know a lot of people are quite obsessed with the place, and being a Disney site, that's understandable, but there's plenty of other things out there

[Guest]

The Ice Hockey looks great fun & its great to take a step out of the Disney bubble now & again for sure !

[Ilovesnowwhite]

Wow ice hockey looks a brilliant evening im off to see what they are playing next sept
xx

[grant_w]

Each years schedule usually comes out in about July
They play preseason games in September then the season starts at the beginning of October
The game we went to was the first game of the season. We were all given a free 'opening night' rucksack for being there!