Busch Gardens Mega Post

Way back in 2020, I told Shane I wanted to take him to an amusement park that summer.

COVID hit and it didn't happen.

I thought about taking Shane this summer. Kings Dominion is nearby (and where I went as a kid). Carrie is NOT a KD fan, though. She vastly prefers Busch Gardens (We went there in 2011!).

We talked, but it never happened.....until this weekend.

Patrick and Shelby had a baby shower this weekend. Unfortunately, it was a 3 hour drive one way on Saturday when we have no barn chore coverage. It put the idea of traveling into my mind, and we decided to visit BG Sunday (Gen and Chris coming along was bonus!).

Shane woke up looking fresh, ready, and green.

We piled into the car and left early. Loki had to ride in the back.

We stopped by Wawa on the way out of town for breakfast and supplies. I made the mistake of letting Shane use the water bottle. He backwashed heavily (Chris had been kind enough to share some jerky...).

Loki got off at Grandma and Grandpa's. They're on the way and agreed to watch him, so he wouldn't be human-less for too long!

We arrived to the park just as it opened. Carrie splurged for the good parking.

Everyone was looking forward to making fun memories!

This time of year is Hallow-Scream. The park turns haunted at 6 PM. There are some rides/attractions that shut down because of it, so we figured the park would be less crowded first thing in the morning.

We were interested in rollercoasters...and Shane's tall enough to go on them all now!

For hours, the most crowded part of the park was the entrance (England).

We were able to walk and look at things without being crowded, at all.

The animals weren't particularly active, but they weren't our main focus either.

The first roller coaster of the day was a classic: The Loch Ness Monster.

We were ready. Hairs were dyed, buddies assigned, and the motion sick people had started their day with Dramamine.

But where was everyone else?

Not that we were complaining! We got to walk right up to the coaster sans line.

There were a few people lined up for the front cars, but Carrie wanted to ride at the back anyway.

The only wait time we had was for the previous people to get off!

Shane loved it. He was screaming, hooting, and hollering even on the slow parts. I snapped a post-run selfie.

I snapped a quick pick of us from the screens on the way out. Shane hadn't realized there was a camera. Now that he was conscious of it, he tried to make faces the rest of the day! Chris does this thing where he always keeps his hands up when he rides a rollercoaster.

With no wait, we immediately cycled back through for Round 2!

After that, we were off to Ireland.

There's still time before October, but, like I said, Hallow-Scream.

I pointed out a story for Shane to read. He had no interest in seeing any spooky shows!

Part of Ireland had been converted into a haunted house. It wouldn't open until 6 PM and we didn't plan to stay until then, so we walked on.

The aviary was closed, but was set to open up later. We walked past a theater for animal shows, etc, etc. The park felt like it was still partly asleep.

Which was perfect for our purposes. 

The Griffon was the next coaster on our route. 

And again, there was no real line. We started making jokes that Shane was going to have unreasonable expectations when it came to theme parks!

The first row of the Griffon is the scariest when they leave you leaning forward and suspended a couple hundred feet in the air, so we rode further back (Plus, the front usually had a line!).

Shane loved it at the end, but Carrie said he dug his fingernails in during the ride!

Carrie, Shane, and I immediately hopped back on for a second ride! No wait!

Then we waved to people going down the big drop.

Shane said the Griffon was his favorite of the day!

Our next stop was the Invader, a wooden coaster.

Only it was temporarily closed. We'd have to wait, and who wanted to do that!? That was for normal people at a normally crowded theme park!

We walked on. We had to pass through more spooky decorations to get to the next coaster. I think Shane was glad we didn't come at night (he's not a big fan of scary stuff).

Alpengeist was next. I was so amazed at the lack of lines I made sure to take photographic proof of each.

Alpengeist is a hanging coaster. There was a wait for the front and back rows, so we hopped in the middle. 

However, the view is so restricted I thought it would be worth waiting one or two cycles to get front row seats.

So we did.

It was that easy. 

Gen and Chris watched from below. Gen's stomach was only good for one ride on each coaster, but they didn't have to wait long before we were ready to move on!

I highly recommend visiting uncrowded theme parks. Anyone who paid for a quick queue pass or the like wasted their money!

What's that? Why aren't their action shots from the coasters? 

Reasons.

I probably could have gotten some, but I didn't feel like risking it. If we'd been required to wait in hour lines I might have to squeeze more material and memories out each ride, but we didn't.

Verbolten was next. Gen and Chris opted to sit out and I realized why after running through it.

There was a cool drop after the coaster came to a stop, but before that we went through a dark indoor section with lights. It actually made me feel disoriented (and if it did that to me, guess how Carrie felt. We didn't ride twice!).

As we exited, Shane pointed out the drop tower was opening. Shane, Chris, and I hopped on the inaugural drop for the day. Unfortunately, the ladies didn't think to take pictures.

By that time, Shane was hungry. We'd been in the park for about two hours and ridden 4 different roller coasters a total of 7 times and dropped from over 200 ft!

The Festhaus was nearby, so we masked up and went to look for Carrie's favorite Busch Garden's cake.

It wasn't there.

It felt like prices were up, too. It was $50 for two meals and two drinks (We paid $45 after Gen used her pass to get us 10% off).

I thought Shane would like the music show, but he said it was too loud. All the adults agreed, but it was a little surprising from Shane.

It was about that time I started to pay more attention to how many people wore masks. I didn't expect people would wear masks outdoors (we didn't), and they had to come off to eat (obviously). But I noticed the vast majority didn't seem to wear masks at all.

We're all vaccinated (save Shane), so I'm not COVID-frightful. However, I know vaccines aren't a perfect guarantee, either. The lack of masks started to make me think more on the topic than I wanted. I do what I can to minimize potential risks, because I don't want to get quarantined and miss time to help my students or risk passing it on. 

Thankfully, we were back outside soon enough. The crowds were happily sparse for an amusement park!

And the weather was fantastic. Not too hot or cold.

And the lines! The lines were the best! We went on Apollo's chariot twice.

On a whim, I turned on Runkeeper and told it I was about to take a bike ride.

The next roller coaster, Tempesto, was just around the corner. It was a unique one.

The was only one set of cars, because it would go forward AND backwards.

One ride was plenty for Carrie! Shane got two rides, because I was still in line when the first ride ended. He stayed seated and went with me.

At that point, we'd ridden everything....almost. We still needed to go back and try Invader. 

To save some footsteps (and for fun), we rode the gondola.

Something we noticed walking around the park was that most of the Busch Gardens employees were from Virginia (It says on their nametags). In the past, they were from all over! The people who helped us get off the gondola were the first non-VA nametags I remember (They were both from California). 

Just another example of the pandemic.

We took a rest and hydration break outside a paint-your-own-pottery store.

After being scared by the prices, we continued on to the Invader!

Shane's turned out to be a big fan of rollercoasters. I wasn't surprised! He was really brave and got on everything. He'd point stuff out stuff like "So, we'll die if this comes up, right?" and make Carrie worry! Not that it stopped her from riding anything. She started a competition where she wanted to keep her hands or her legs up the whole time depending on the ride (which was too much effort for me!).

I took a quick picture of the photos at the end. The employee said, "No photos," so I put my cell away. I get that they want to make some money ($20!), but my cell phone picture is piss poor quality with all the watermarks anyway. If I wanted a quality photo, I'd pay. I don't. I just wanted proof we rode.  If there's an app out there that removes the watermark, I don't have the interest in looking it up.  

Carrie almost wanted to order a photo at one point, but decided against (which I approved!).

At that point, I was ready to go home. Carrie, too. Not Shane. He wanted more! We had friends with us, too, so we wanted to stay as long as they wanted with a hard cut off at 6 PM to make it home for horse chores. It turned out Chris and Gen were getting tired, too, so we all agreed to let Shane ride a little more.

Shane wanted to go back to the Griffon!

At that point, lines were forming. They were nowhere near what I'd consider real amusement park lines (Maybe 5-10 minutes?).

It was more people and more closely packed without masks than I liked. I was starting to hit my own limit for crowd contact.

Shane got his rides in, though! We weren't going to waste the day!

Everyone wanted ice cream, but the ice cream shop was closed. I'd recommended waiting until after to get Blizzards at Dairy Queen. My proposal was accepted on the second try.

We walked through the gift shops of Ireland. The AC was fantastic. Chris and Gen bought Shane a stuffed animal as a memento of the trip. 

We told Shane he could go on one more roller coaster on our way out: The Loch Ness Monster. You can see Carrie was tired since I caught her yawning.

She's going to be annoyed if she sees I posted it, so don't rat me out. It's perfect for the narrative.

I decided to wear my mask in line this time and even on the roller coaster. There had been some people who wore masks while riding and I was curious what it felt like.

It felt like wearing a mask. Some of the wind made it through, but less than if I hadn't.

The last ride was, of course, the longest wait to get on and off the ride. There were lots of issues with people too short hopping on, the crew was slow, etc. 

We sat outside for a while before we rolled in and rolled out of Busch Gardens. It was a quarter past 4 PM.

We got a text from Grandma that Loki was "enjoying walking Grandpa," as we left.

He's such a good boy!

Loki got one last chance to pee as we said our goodbyes. 

We would have picked Loki up a little earlier, but we did stop for ice cream (oh boy!). 

And that was out Busch Gardens trip! Shane finally got the chance to go! He made everything exciting by being so excited. Sure, there were times that he acted like a water bottle was the best thing ever, but most of it was genuine.

I'm just glad to have finished the post! Lots of happening and lots of pictures means lots of typing! I'm not caught up on the backlog yet, but I'm getting there!