Who says you don't need a big camera
Well quality ain't great if you blow them up much!
--
Thursday 13th October
As well as a couple of nights at HHN, I wanted to do the Busch event too and so had sorted a front-of-line pass thingy for it
this evening. But since I needed to be in Tampa for that, I went over and spent the day(ish) at
Busch Gardens Tampa, which is
always a good park ; possibly the most "me" park of the Florida ones, in that its much more like the places I like than the Orlando
parks (even if the Orlando ones are pretty spectacular in places themselves).
I wasn't really in a rush to get there or to rush around the place - was going to be a long day anyway if the evening event was
going to be busy I figured (and with an hour+ drive afterwards to get back) and I've done BGT a few times before, so was just going to
spend the time meandering around.
I had two new things to do though, the new-ish drop tower and the new family coaster ; obviously headed to the cred first but it was down for
some unspecified reason, so made my way to the drop tower instead.
Pausing only to pay respects at Rhino Rally
and watch the elephants for a while
New-ish tower is quite impressive ; very huge and bang in the middle of the park.
Face-down position is a interesting novelty and a bit unsettling in the moments before the drop (for me anyway)
Drop itself is good, but not sure the face-down added much to that few seconds.
Anyway a better drop ride than the one at Williamsburg (just to compare rides in the same chain).
Since I was there anyway (the drop ride is in the old Timbuktu area, now renamed Pantopia for some reason) - had a ride on the always
splendid
Scorpion
and the less than splendid
Sand Serpent (which I'm pretty sure I had not even bothered with on my previous few visits here)
Carrying on around the park I made my way to
Kumba, which is one of the great old school B&Ms. And it felt it a bit to be
honest, the transitions being a bit clunky compared to super smooth modern B&Ms.
But its still just lovely isn't it?
Bit further around the big loop that you have to take to get around the park is the next B&M,
SheiKra - which is also rather
nice of course
Honestly, how anyone can still rate Oblivion as good after being on one of these big beasts ; kidding themselves I think.
A moments silence for the fallen.
Thought it a bit strange that they had named a whole bunch of stuff after their old coaster that they had spent so many years trying
to ignore (my last visit here was before it closed, but it was not running that day, previous visit it was only running one side, so I
think I only ever visited once when both sides were "up" and that would have been 2004)
Done a lap of the park, by now then, but new-cred was still down - starting to get worried now...
Consoled myself with a couple of rides on the excellent
Montu instead then
followed swiftly by a couple more on
Cheetah Hunt, which I'd ridden before but enjoyed a lot more this time I think (although
do recall the horrible shoulder restraints giving me serious pain at the end of the second ride - back row)
The chair-lift thing next to Cheetah Hunt was not running either, so needed to take the train to see a lot of the animals out on the
Serengeti area. That also killed a lot of time.
Happily the new-cred was running by the time I'd train-ed around the animals for a while, so made my way into
Cobra's Curse
Q-area was pretty cool ; main holding area has this big snake thing mounted on the wall
Every now and then it all goes bonkers (projection mapping and lots of sound effects) then settles back down quiet again for while
(occasionally some of the characters on the wall would do something), then it would all go bonkers again with fire and evil curses
and the like. Nicely done anyway.
Loading was on a conveyor belt system - never been totally convinced that these help, but the line was moving fairly consistently I
guess.
Ride is fun, but as a "family coaster" nothing too great. Big snake thing is cool, but doesn't do anything (apart from a bit of
audio when you reach its mouth) - actually the vertical lift is pretty cool.
The spinning is controlled for the most part ; its fixed for the first third of the ride, then controlled spin for the next bit (you
go up a bit of a conventional lift hill part way through the ride) and only free spin for the last bit I think.
Anyway, good fun solid family (filler?) coaster.
--
Needed to get some food before the
Howl-o-Scream event started, but a lot of the normal food places were closing down
as the park closed down - then I spotted that there was some event-themed buffet thing going on in the big eating hall place in the
middle of the park - for something like $20 this was an all-you-can-eat buffet thing for an hour, a run through of one of the event
shows
Fiends while you ate, and a time-limited front-of-line pass wristband (in fact also 1/2 hour early entry to the houses too). So despite
me already shelling out for the fastpass option anyway I did that.
Show thing was kinda-election themed (how topical), some guff about various monsters being elected monster-president. Oh the Irony.
Was OK, even if big song and dance shows aren't really my thing - could stare at the sexy-zombie-nurses for a while at least though.
The event opened at 7:30, but with the early entry wristband I had acquired could enter stuff at 7 instead.
Q for the first house I did
Zombie Mortuary, walked past this Q straight into it though.
Was OK - zombies in a mortuary obviously. Very budget though, especially compared to the HHN standard (unfair to compare to that I
guess) but probably sub-standard compared to the SixFlags ones as well. That comment applies to all of the houses to be honest too,
all the actors had to do their own screaming, which inevitably leads to a huge variation quality and enthusiasm from them. Wasn't
expecting the very scripted HHN-type audio, but perhaps some actor-triggered effects would have been good.
Next up was a new-for-2016 house
The Black Spot - this was a lot better than the Zombie one (I hadn't realised that
most of the houses were repeats from previous years either) - was something to do with a pirates and the like. Had to walk through
one of the scare-zones to get to that house too, and they were actually very well done - probably better than the scare-zones at
HHN to be honest, possibly because they were not as busy (you really can't get away from crowds at HHN) so were a bit more than just
a load of scare-actors wandering through the crowds but actually hiding and jumping out and stuff.
Another thing that worked well for Busch was that you could even be alone in the park at places, and then there were also the odd
scare actor hiding in the bushes and such - saw a lot of them ahead before it got too dark but one or two really caught me out - one
especially on a little bungee swing thing which meant he could leap out of the bushes at just above head height - much surprise.
They used that trick in a couple of the houses too to good effect, probably would have been better if they used it a little less
though as once you'd seen three or four bungee-swing-scare-actors jumping out of you from behind a wall it got a little repetitive.
The gates to that "Gwazi Park" were open by now (was still using my fastpass wristband but the normal Qs had opened and while not
super busy probably had a 20min Q) - the goon in me was geekily interested as you could walk past a bit of Gwazi to get to the
next house
Circus of Superstition (but more about Gwazi-geekdom in a bit). This was a Chromadepth (3D glasses) job
and it was a bit poor - scary clowns (yawn) and the like - forgettable.
Think I did another new-for-2016 house next ;
Motel Hell and I kinda liked this one - lots of nasty happenings
in a spooky motel, but seemed to me a lot of thought had gone into this one in terms of riffing on various motel-themes, dead people
in the laundry, corpses in the swimming pool etc.
Not far away was
Death Water Bayou, and this was good too - good sets (enter thru the house in the pic below) and
some spooky voodoo business going on.
The last house was
Unearthed and was probably the best one. Geekily best because it was built inside Gwazi's Q line.
You actually walked through Gwazi's station and across a little bridge over the coaster tracks on your way into the house.
The house was some haunted excavation, unearthed evil spirits type affair. (They should have gone for haunted roller coaster IMHO though)
There was one other headline-attraction ; Zombie Containment Unit - but that didn't even appeal to me ; was a laser-quest type
shooter (with Zombies) it seemed. So I didn't do that.
I had done all of the houses in the 90 minutes my food-based-fastpass had given me so had not even used the fastpass I'd paid for -
so on principle I then used that to ride some coasters in the dark ; didn't need it for Montu or Cobras Curse but used it anyway, it
did save me about 10 mins Q for Cheetah Hunt, which was quite different in the dark - out in the serengeti area in the dark was cool.
SheiKra was the only big Q I skipped with the pass though - probably an hours Q at that point (which I found very odd as virtually
everything else had minimal Qs). I tried to use the fastpass on another walk through the Motel Hell house, but there was not even a
regular Q to skip at that point so that pleasure was lost on me too.
Having got everything done a LOT earlier than I thought I was going to I headed back to Orlando.
So overall the event ; was OK, not great. Considering it was an upcharge event I had expected more from it, obviously not as much as
the HHN experience but significantly more than the SixFlags experience and it wasn't significantly better in quality than FrightFest -
it had a bit more quantity than FrightFest I guess.
Not sure I'd bother going back to it either (considering each year is mostly a repeat rather than new), definitely wouldn't bother
with a paid-for FastPass if I did (but definitely would bother with the food/fastpass option).
--
OK nearly done now, just one more day to get through...
Silly pic of Kumba until then though;
