The Haunting Sequel - Day 1 - Busch Gardens | Serengeti Safari | Kangaroos Giraffes and Rain

[Safyre]

Day 1 – Thursday

Our first full day in Florida, yay!

We had set our alarm for 7, as we had plans today, but I woke up at 6.15 anyway, and saw Dave was already up and had made the coffee.

I was impressed by how good a sleep we had. Maybe we need two double beds!? That or we were just really tired.

We got organised and went down for breakfast. We had booked B&B and thought we had paid for breakfast, but when we got there we were very disappointed. There were two breakfast buffets at the hotel. One ‘included’ and one was an extra $10 each. The extra one had bacon, eggs, sausage, fruit, yogurt and everything you would expect.

The one we got had toast. Or a small selection of cereal.
We had booked All Day Dining at Busch so had a bit of toast and left.
We were glad we had woken up so early so we could get out and head for Busch Gardens.

We drove over to Tampa, loving the Prius, and arrived at Busch at 10.30. I have brought my Haunted Mansion tablet case as a bag instead of my red rucksack, as I already hate carrying a rucksack. I need a cross body!

As we pulled into the car park, parking was $22 or the preferred parking was $24, so we went for that. It was right over at the entrance so saved us the tram ride.

As we pulled into the parking lot, a guy walked out in front of us without looking, making us do an emergency stop. That would have been a nice start to the holiday! Guy didn’t even have the good grace to look embarrassed let alone apologise!

We had bought our tickets from Groupon USA and had them printed out. We had no idea what to do with them, turns out we just scanned the bar code at the gate and straight in. Quite pleased with them.
There was just a short queue to get in (spoiler alert, shortest queue of whole trip) and we picked up a map on the way, which we needed a lot!

We didn’t have a plan for the day, so headed left, thinking we needed a drink, and passed the kangaroo area. This is where you can handfeed kangaroos, so we went for it. A small tub cost $6.42 so we got one to share, which was enough.

In my notes I have written that this is where my life peaked! I never knew that I wanted to, no, needed, to hand feed a kangaroo. But it was simply incredible. It was a highlight of the whole trip, we both loved it. I would definitely do it again, it was amazing.
One particular kangaroo kept nudging the others out the way to get the food. We named this one Shelby like one of our dogs that does this.

The kangaroos were so gentle and friendly, I wish we could have snuck one home in our bag!
We didn’t have much left in our tub when we noticed a kid in front of us who had no tub, and was picking little bits up off the ground to feed them, so we gave him the rest of ours. Everyone should know the pleasure of feeding a kangaroo!

There was a handwashing station at the end too. The whole park was lovely and clean.

We walked on and went through a very short bird enclosure.

We had prepaid for the all day dining plan, but hadn’t activated it yet, and weren’t really sure what to do with it. We found out we could do it at Zambia Smokehouse so we headed there.

We had our photo taken for the wristband, (just on the computer, not on the actual band) and given our wristbands for the dining plan. We both got a drink , I had cherry coke, and we had some grapes. This alone would have cost us $15 so looked like the dining plan would be good value.

While we were having our drinks, I told Dave that as a surprise for his birthday (he just turned 40 in case I haven’t already mentioned this 100 times) we were booked to do the Serengeti Safari and would be feeding giraffes! I had worn my giraffe tshirt specially.

He was definitely surprised by this.
There were squirrels and birds running around the tables looking for scraps.

We decided it was time to go on a coaster, so we went to Sheikra. We hadn’t done a lot of preparation for the rides, mainly as I was worried about not fitting on them. I was pleasantly surprised to fit on everything we tried here today.


This was a scream, literally, we both screamed our heads off! We had our Go Pro on with a chest mount so we have a good video of both of us screaming, although Dave would now deny this, obviously.
After getting the cobwebs blown off, we decided to sit down for a while with some lunch, and try to recover, remember our names etc.
We headed in to Bengal Bistro and got some lunch.

Again, the dining plan proved really good value here. My bread looked like it would be hard but it was soft and lovely. It was called artisan bread. I had a turkey club sandwich, Dave’s had a mix of cold meat, and we both got cake. Dave had half my sandwich as it was a lot of food.

Then it was time (already?!) for our safari. Even with the park map we got lost a couple of times today. This was one of them.
We took some bottles of water with us on the safari but when we checked in there was a cooler and cups of water available. I poured some on my head to try and cool down, it was really hot.

Before the safari, they told us to put our bags in a big, communal locker, which was padlocked and our guide kept the key. We took our water bottles and the cameras.
We walked round to the loading area and found some people who hadn’t been at the assembly point, they were able to join us but had to carry their big backpacks for the trip, as we weren’t allowed to put bags on the floor of the truck.

The tour itself is 30 minutes standing on the back of a flatbed truck. You hold onto a rail around the outside so have one hand on the rail at any time the truck is moving.
We got to see some animals, and a completely different perspective of the park, which was really interesting, then we got to the giraffe feeding area.

Although there were lots of giraffes about, only one was hungry, and she was only 6 months old. We were still able to feed her but due to her age, we weren’t allowed to touch her. We all had a go at feeding her some lettuce, then they took some posed photos.

The photos came out pretty good, however they were $25 for one photo, which we felt was a bit steep after paying for the tour as well, so we just stuck with out own photos. Not sure if I regret this now or not.
The tour was good and the guide was good, and I’m glad we did the tour. It was really super hot on the truck tho.

After this, we decided it was definitely time for some more rides. We went round to Cheetah Hunt first. Again this was a walk on. And like the other rides here, there are test seats outside.
Like with Sheikra, we didn’t really know what the ride was going to be like, but oh boy! This was such a good ride. I think this one was my favourite.
We had paid earlier for an all day locker rental, it was $6 and could be transferred to any locker in the park, so we used the lockers at each ride. There were boxes at the side which may have been good enough, but we preferred the locker with the cameras.
Next up was Cobras Curse.

Again, complete walk on, and really good fun, we were not expecting the twist in the middle!
Then quickly on to Montu (I think we did all these rides in about 15 minutes!)

Oh my. This ride was…. Mental. And slightly uncomfortable. The G force hurt my legs, and strangely, my ears. The inversions especially, insane!
We definitely needed a rest after all this, so we went to get some bottled water (which we got on the dining plan FYI) and then onto the Skyride.
It was nice to have a wee break and a chat about the rides.
When we were up, we decided to really get the most out of the dining plan and have dinner before we left. Dave wanted to go back to Zambia Smokehouse, which was handy as it was the first place we came to when we got off the Skyride.
While we were walking round, we heard an announcement that the Skyride was now closing due to incoming inclement weather, yet the sky was clear and blue.
We went into the Smokehouse, and we both went for the Brisket Sampler (which was $18 on it’s own) and desserts and juice. The puddings (one apple cobbler and one bread pudding) were a bit burnt, I think they had been sitting there a bit too long under the heat lamp.

While we were eating, we were debating our next and probably last ride, either Kumba or a repeat ride on Sheikra, when an announcement came over that all the rides were now closed dues to the weather.
As we left the Smokehouse, there was a mass exodus from the parks. Then we heard the next announcement, saying, take shelter immediately. This felt very dramatic and we weren’t sure if we should have been running or panicking or not. No-one else was so we didn’t.
We saw Big Bird out for a photo op, all by his lonesome, and decided to go and say hello.

Then we stopped at a shop for a new magnet for our fridge, when another announcement came over that the tram to the carpark wasn’t running. We did have smug faces here.
We walked to our car past a load of people still waiting for the tram…?
I don’t know if the next bit was due to the weather or not, but it took us an hour to go 10 miles when heading out of Tampa. Only now could we see the weather we had been hearing about, it was definitely turning. It rained. A lot.

In total it took us 2 hours to get back to Orlando. We went straight to the Character Warehouse as I wanted to look for Cruise Line goodies and a new bag.
The rain had stopped now but the sky still looked heavy.
No bags (boo) but I got Dave a DCL tshirt, a RocknRollercoaster tshirt and some Jack Skellingtom PJ bottoms. I got a long sleeve top with a split in the back. Spent about $40, and we were both a bit disappointed this year.
We managed to get on the wifi at the outlets to get an address for the nearest Walmart, which I actually remembered from last time, Turkey Lake Road. We went there next.
I got a bag, but wasn’t happy with it, it was just the best I could get as a cross body bag. I knew I still wanted a better one.
We mainly got some water and juice for overnight. But I also got some Halloween pyjamas for $10.
While walking around, we could hear thunder and rain.
When we got to the door, we could see it, and the dozens of people sheltering. It was biblical.

We stood for a while waiting for a sign of it letting up, but this never came. We debating legging it to the car, but I wasn’t keen, we would get soaked. Next thing I knew, Dave had done a runner, sprinting through the puddles. I just stood and watched. No chance was I running for it.
I assumed he would come for me, which he did, like a saint.
I still got soaked just reaching the car.
The hotel was 3 miles away, and it was pretty scary driving in that weather. I would probably have chose to stay at Walmart but it had been half an hour now and no sign of stopping. By the time we got to the hotel, not only was it not raining, but the ground was dry. As we walked from the car to the room, the rain followed us.
By the time we got in our room, it was torrential now here.

We made a short video and put it on our Youtube channel.


We were both pretty tired, and I already had the nasty heat rash on my ankles, so we went to bed.

Here is our vlog of the day at Busch Gardens:



And here is the video of the rain:

[Cinderella]

Great day - lovely giraffes 🦒

[lovedisney]

Great day

[Palm trees]

What a lovely busy day. Florida rain really is something else!

[Floridafour]

Aaah those kangaroos, so cute.
Lovely day, thanks for posting 🙂