Busch Gardens

On the Gulf Coast of Florida, just ever so slightly north of Tampa, there is a major theme park that often gets undeservedly overshadowed by its Orlando competitors. Busch Gardens is a bona fide theme park that seriously deserves your attention and respect. This theme park has taken many personal considerations into account, and the result is a theme park that packs extreme thrills, fun kid zones, a wild safari, surprisingly good shopping and food, and world class rides all for the price of one admission. If you are on the Gulf Coast, we highly recommend experiencing Busch Gardens Theme Park and Adventure Island.

This theme park has never been a stereotypical theme park, even at its conception. Originally built for the employees of the Anheuser-Busch brewery located in Tampa, this theme park helped the workers unwind on a busy day, but it only used to serve free beer and free parrot shows(…awesome). The brewery has since moved to Jacksonville, but the free beer and parrot shows remain, with the addition of heart-stopping-adrenaline-pumping rides and attractions. Busch Gardens focuses its theme on Africa, so the section are divided according to African regions, and the animals found in the Safari are species native to Africa.

Don’t you just hate it when a roller coaster is over in thirty seconds? Busch Gardens excels at building long lasting roller coasters, so the thrills last much longer than at other theme parks. The roller coasters are innovative, such as the newest, SheiKra, the nations first dive coaster. There is Gwazi, which is a dueling wooden roller coaster (don’t be fooled: modern technology now allows wooden roller coasters to perform feats usually reserved for steel coaters) and this coaster is a guarantee screamer. Kumba is a classic roller coaster, and a real behemoth at that: 4,000 feet of track! Montu is located in the Egyptian section of the park, and this coaster holds the record for most inversions on an inverted roller coaster. The Python and The Scorpion round out this list of coasters and they provide their own thrills – you have been warned!

There are of course daily activities, such as Broadway inspired shows and free beer tasting (21 years and older please), but the best daily show is on display at the Edge of Africa and the Serengeti Plain, which allows park goers to get up close to wild African animals. Unlike Disney’s Animal Kingdom, this park does not have as many places for the animals to hide, so you are guaranteed to see these animals in their glory.

Admission costs is $56 for adults, $46 for kids. However, Busch Gardens offers a Rain Guarantee that simply states if it rains at all during your visit (even just a little) you can get a free entry to the park good for the next seven days. The FlexTicket is available, and this ticket ($225 for adults, $190 for kids) gets you unlimited access, good for fourteen days, to Islands of Adventure, Sea World, Universal Studios Florida, and Wet ‘n Wild in Orlando in addition to Busch Gardens.

Florida Tourists Guide