Causin' Carnage 24th August 2016 - Day 13 Busch Gardens

**PlutoFan** · 8 Oct 16, 06:43 PM

The alarms went off at 6:30am…then 6:45…then 7:00 and at last one of us got up and went into the shower (DH).

I got up and put some washing on – that should wake the kids up.

We’d told them we want to leave to go to Tampa at 8am, although it was really 8:30am when we wanted to go on our way, we thought it might get the kids up on time.

After I and DD had both had showers, DS was still in bed at 8am – too many parks early in the holiday was really hitting us hard now. I think we all could have slept in for several hours.

We eventually left at 8:40am, so not too bad. We had an easy ride done to Busch Gardens, En route I phoned my mum as it was her 87th birthday. I also got the chance to say Happy Birthday to her identical twin sister as my mum was staying with her for their birthday.

We had a chat for a few minutes, most of which was her saying ‘oh you sound so close, you could be in the next room’ and ‘this call must be costing you a fortune’, no matter how much I told her it wasn’t costing me anything (my contract is with 3, so I have the At Home feature).

We arrived at around 9:50am, for a park opening of 10. There was a queue for the tram, so I hopped on a single spare seat and the others walked up to the entrance. I changed our voucher for tickets at the booths and purchased a set of Quick Queue tickets for us all, at $20.99 each. These are a one-time Fast-pass to a selection of rides –

Congo River Rapids
Cheetah Hunt
Falcon Fury
SheiKra
Monta
Kumbo
Log Flume
Plus a Bonus Ride, which presumably is any one of the above.

There was a note on the ticket booth saying Cobra’s Curse was not running.

As I finished these transactions, the others arrived at the entrance, so we went in and got some breakfast at the bakery near the entrance – the usual pastries and cakes!

We went round to Cheetah Hunt, passing the cheetah in its run, where the ride was showing a 20 minute wait. DD wanted to go on it as Stand-by but we decided to take the Sky Ride to the top of the park and work our way back.

On the way over, we got stuck for several minutes approaching the middle station and spent our time waving at DD and DS in the gondola behind us – they ignored us!

DS, DD and DH went on the Log Flume, but I missed out as I needed to ‘restroom’ urgently while we were queuing up. I hadn’t had any more problems with my stomach since the flight out, but didn’t need to be taking any chances.

DS and DD then rode SheiKra three times on the spin without using the QQ as there was hardly any queue at all.

I’m sure they’re in there somewhere.

Once they were SheiKra’d out, we went over to the Congo area and onto the Rapids ride. This was quite enjoyable, but seemed even shorter than Kali River Rapids. I thought I’d got away without getting too wet until the boat got blasted by a water cannon just as we were about to go up the unloading slope – I was soaked as was DD. DH had got the worst of it on the actual ride and DS had got off quite lightly considering he was sat next to DH.

Next up was Kumba for DD and DS but while they were queuing, the ride closed due to the weather. There followed a good old thunderstorm, thunder, lightning, the works – which took about an hour to go over.. This was our first rain for a week so we can’t complain.

The kids got onto Kumba as soon as it opened and absolutely loved it.

It was then onto Pantopia where we stopped for some lunch –

DD – Chicken Tenders
DS – Chilli & Cheese Hot Dogs
DH and I – Hot Dogs

These were nothing special, but much needed!

While sitting here we commented on the difference between the staff here and the CMs in Disney & Universal. The BGs ones just looked at it as doing their jobs, but the WDW / US CMs seemed to want to give more of an all round experience, and there’s more of a feel-good factor.

DD and DS decided to go on Sand Serpent – which was an incredibly slow queue, they were waiting over half an hour for what appear to be a small queue.

Once they were off, we walked down to Cheetah Hunt to it ride it – the stand-by was now showing 15 minutes but we thought we should use our QQs. Before going on I thought I’d just better check I could fit in the seat – disaster! I couldn’t get the belt to catch into the shoulder harness, so I couldn’t got on. I was a bit disappointed as I was looking forward to trying this ride.

DS and DD went on, and then DH went on with DD using my QQ. They said it was great

DH and I then said we wanted to go round the park on the train ride, so they could spend the next 90 minutes doing whatever they wanted to. We gave them our QQ cards and arranged to meet at the front of the park at 6pm – closing time.

They disappeared off and we went to catch the train at the Nairobi station. We found we’d just missed one and had a 30 minute wait so had a drink while we waited.

We watched with some fascination as the people before us in the queue ordered a funnel cake each. They were massive, and then had the contents of a can of squirty cream added AND several scoops of ice-cream. And they had one of these EACH! One of them would have done the four of us!

When the train came, I managed to bag a left-hand edge seat so I was in prime position to get photos of the animals.

We stopped for quite a while at one of the station as the train needed to take on water, which made us laugh as the chap behind us had been showing off his knowledge about everything to his son, and had spent a considerable part of the journey telling him it was an electric train, not steam only for the announcement regarding having to take on water giving information about the steam train!

It took about 35 minutes to do a full circuit of the park, so we got off at Nairobi station and walked slowly down to the front of the park.

I then realised I’d been slightly vague with the meeting arrangements – but fortunately around 6:10 we spotted the kids. They had had a great time got on several rides in that 90 minutes, including two rides on Montu, Cobra’s Curse (which HAD opened), Kumba and Cheetah Hunt again – they said all rides were walk-ons, which we weren’t surprised about, the park had been very quiet since the rain earlier.

We got the tram back to the car park and were on our way by 6:30pm. The day had been particularly successful for the kids as they BOTH now love the coasters. The change in DS from last trip has been amazing.

DH only went on three rides and the train, and I only did one ride and the train, but we are not big coaster fans. I’d mainly got the QQ passes to allow the kids to double up if they wanted to, but to be honest, they were probably a bit of a waste of money as the park was so quiet. We also noticed that most of the visitors were British – there were very few American accents around.

On the way back, we had a discussion about US car driving – with the kids both having newly passed their driving tests they think they know it all. DH was defending American drivers and saying that British drivers are more aggressive and tail-gate a lot – only for FOUR cars to pass us at high-speed tail-gating each other and some suicidal weaving between lanes to occur just ahead of us.

We did point out to the children that ‘under-taking’ wasn’t legal at home and naturally makes us nervous when we see it.

For what it worth, my take on this is that driving in the US USED to be more relaxing than driving at home but they seem to weave more, don't know indicators are for and drive faster now. Combining that with the lack of warning for turn-offs - which is most likely due to having lots more turn-offs – makes it less relaxing than before. This is mainly referring to driving on Inter-states – the local roads are fine.

We arrived back at SSR around 7:30pm, having decided in the car to go to the Turf Club for dinner. DS decided he wasn’t very hungry so wouldn’t be coming with us – we told him to get something from the pool bar or the Artist’s Palette if he want a snack.

DH and I changed and went to the pool bar, telling DD to meet us there at 8:30pm. We had a couple of Bud Lights and DD turned up on time!

At the Turf Club, we were told there was a 20 minute wait, which was fine, so we got a drink in the Lounge bar – as soon as we sat down, we were called into the restaurant.

DD spotted the bruschetta on the starters menu which is her absolute favourite so we had to have a starter today!

Starters
DD – Spinach and Artichoke Bruschette
Me - French Onion Soup
DH passed on starters

Entrees
DD – Chicken Pasta
DH – Prime Rib
Me – Lamb Chops

Desserts
DH – Chocolate Expresso Torte
Me – Sorbet
DD – Hot chocolate! She said it was great.

DH was underwhelmed by the Prime Rib – I’d had this when we went to the Turf Club in 2013 and hadn’t thought much of it either.
After dinner, DH went back to the room, DH and I sat in the Lounge and has a Mojito and Sangria respectively, and then it was time for bed

Excitedx4 · 10 Oct 16, 04:40 PM

Sounds a great day at Busch, we are heading there in August for the first time, my second time having not been for about 15 years

mouselover22 · 12 Oct 16, 10:39 PM

Lucky with the crowds today. Kids sounded like they enjoyed themselves

Cinderella · 13 Oct 16, 07:47 AM

Great day!

**PlutoFan** · 22 Oct 16, 07:04 PM

Originally Posted by Excitedx4

Sounds a great day at Busch, we are heading there in August for the first time, my second time having not been for about 15 years

The kids love it now they both do the big coasters.

Originally Posted by mouselover22

Lucky with the crowds today. Kids sounded like they enjoyed themselves

They certainly did, and of course with most of the US kids back at school, it made a huge difference to the crowd levels.

Originally Posted by Cinderella

Great day!

Thanks

collybird · 21 Feb 17, 02:56 PM

What a difference between the price of Express passes at Busch Gardens and Universal, no wonder you opted to go to Busch Gardens today!

**PlutoFan** · 28 Mar 17, 07:10 PM

Originally Posted by collybird

What a difference between the price of Express passes at Busch Gardens and Universal, no wonder you opted to go to Busch Gardens today!

Well, we do love Universal, but the Express passes would have been a bit ridiculous - and imagine if we hadn't have needed them. We didn't really need them at Busch, but at least they were only $80.

**WileyCoyote** · 29 May 17, 08:16 AM

Fab day at Busch, great that you all got so many rides done. We always find we are really tired, it feels like so much more walking and the train can be a bit random !
I get quite nervous in the car now over there, it all feels so fast , but maybe that's as I don't drive much now over here . Andy thinks it's much better driving over there than here.