Disco Lumberjack
Roller Poster
I recently returned from a big 2 week trip to Florida, I had an incredible time, although I am branding it the "Hell Swamp" (I will also accept "America's sweaty undercarriage") because the heat and the humidity were borderline unbearable in parts. I am possibly part polar bear when it comes to temperature tolerance, so if you are similarly inclined I would suggest you don't visit Florida in September. This trip covered a lot of parks, and even though we visited BGT a few days in to the trip I felt like writing about it first.
Transport
We were staying at Disney's All-Star Sports and as I can't drive we got an uber to a nearby non-Disney hotel and caught a shuttle bus to the park. This got us to the park a little later than we would have hoped, but it was a comfortable ride and very easy. If I was to plan this trip again I would probably make BGT our first park of the trip and stay in Tampa for our first night, then head to Orlando for the rest of the trip.
The Park
I really wanted to love Busch Gardens Tampa but the problem is I'm not sure Busch Gardens Tampa wanted to love me back. My issues with the park can be boiled down to three things: not enough covered/air conditioned areas to shelter from the oppressive heat, the poorly thought out locker system and the most depressed looking theme park staff I have ever encountered.
One of the nice things about our visit was that pretty much everything was a walk-on apart from Sheikra which had a 30 minute wait, I put my bag and all my loose articles into the locker as instructed, this included my water bottle. The queue ended up dragging on due to slow operations and I got very thirsty. It turns out I probably could have brought my bottle with me and left it in the station while riding and it would have been fine. But this wasn't at all obvious at the time. I think the whole approach to loose articles is just really poorly thought out. Making people use a locker before even joining the queue just means that anything you might have brought to maintain some level of comfort/entertainment while waiting is unavailable to you. I have pretty big issues with how the locker system works as well, requiring you to enter multiple codes where superior systems would just have you scan a park ticket or some other barcode. I can imagine on busier days the queues for the lockers get pretty horrendous.
My experiences with the staff were broadly fine, I was able to buy what I wanted to buy and I had no complaints about the quality of service, but everyone seemed incredibly checked out and in many cases just plain depressed. I wonder if the staff were also finding the heat/humidity oppressive, it would certainly affect my mood at work! I think management need to consider making some changes to improve staff wellbeing because it did have an impact on how I felt about the overall experience. I also think the operations were quite slow, some of this seems to be process related, the Iron Gwazi restraint checking process in particular is kind of ridiculous. By far the best staff interactions I had were with the ride ops on Montu, they seemed genuinely happy and they were dispatching trains pretty quickly.
The phrase that comes to mind with BGT is "unfulfilled potential", it has some amazing rides and it's a beautiful park. It's just let down by basic issues that seem like they could be fixed with enough care.
Iron Gwazi
As soon as we hit the park we made a beeline for Iron Gwazi, we rode at the back and my first thoughts were "that was good, but not as intense as I was expecting", the airtime was great, the death roll totally delivered, but I was expecting more. Later on in the day after getting all of the other creds I lapped it. By that time it had well and truly warmed up and it was trying to murder me with forces, I loved every second. It comes in at number 3 in my top 15, the only reason it isn't higher is because my thighs just could not handle lapping it later in the day.
Tigris
All pain, no thrills, a fine addition to an exhibit at a torture museum.
Sheikra
A very forgettable B&M dive, next time I visit I'm very likely to just skip this.
Kumba
I really enjoyed this, just a great classic B&M looping coaster with some fun positive forces. We rode it in the rain, which did limit my enjoyment somewhat. My biggest regret of our visit is that I didn't ride this more to get a full sense of it.
Scorpion
We lucked out and managed to snag the cred for this, originally it was going to close permanently the day before we visited but it stayed open for a few more days. I thought it was perfectly fun ride, quite janky but not in a bad way. The lapbars failed to release when we came back into the station which was quite funny. I know it's a classic Schwarzkopf, but it's definitely not the best of them and I'm looking forward to seeing what BGT put in its place.
Cheetah Hunt
I had a vague sense that somewhere past the extreme pain, there was a fun ride happening around me while on Cheetah Hunt. Unfortunately I just do not agree with those old Intamin OTSRs, they're a super snug fit and they murder my shoulders. With something like Stealth it's fine because it's over so fast, but Cheetah Hunt just kept going. It's unfortunate because I think with updated trains I would have really enjoyed it.
Cobra's Curse
A good fun ride, pretty forgettable until you start spinning.
Montu
The ride I was looking forward to almost as much as Iron Gwazi, I wanted to see how it stacked up to Nemesis - and I think it just about comes out the victor. It's got such a forceful whip on a lot of the transitions, but it also has a number of dead spots. Comparing it to Nemesis is tough, because Nemesis has slightly less whip but also has no dead spots. I can easily see me swapping them in my rankings after my next visit to Towers, they're just that close.
Phoenix Rising
Closed
Conclusion
Despite my issues with the park, I did really enjoy my visit to BGT, but it's almost entirely because of the high quality rides in the line-up. I would like to return someday, probably in January!
Transport
We were staying at Disney's All-Star Sports and as I can't drive we got an uber to a nearby non-Disney hotel and caught a shuttle bus to the park. This got us to the park a little later than we would have hoped, but it was a comfortable ride and very easy. If I was to plan this trip again I would probably make BGT our first park of the trip and stay in Tampa for our first night, then head to Orlando for the rest of the trip.
The Park
I really wanted to love Busch Gardens Tampa but the problem is I'm not sure Busch Gardens Tampa wanted to love me back. My issues with the park can be boiled down to three things: not enough covered/air conditioned areas to shelter from the oppressive heat, the poorly thought out locker system and the most depressed looking theme park staff I have ever encountered.
One of the nice things about our visit was that pretty much everything was a walk-on apart from Sheikra which had a 30 minute wait, I put my bag and all my loose articles into the locker as instructed, this included my water bottle. The queue ended up dragging on due to slow operations and I got very thirsty. It turns out I probably could have brought my bottle with me and left it in the station while riding and it would have been fine. But this wasn't at all obvious at the time. I think the whole approach to loose articles is just really poorly thought out. Making people use a locker before even joining the queue just means that anything you might have brought to maintain some level of comfort/entertainment while waiting is unavailable to you. I have pretty big issues with how the locker system works as well, requiring you to enter multiple codes where superior systems would just have you scan a park ticket or some other barcode. I can imagine on busier days the queues for the lockers get pretty horrendous.
My experiences with the staff were broadly fine, I was able to buy what I wanted to buy and I had no complaints about the quality of service, but everyone seemed incredibly checked out and in many cases just plain depressed. I wonder if the staff were also finding the heat/humidity oppressive, it would certainly affect my mood at work! I think management need to consider making some changes to improve staff wellbeing because it did have an impact on how I felt about the overall experience. I also think the operations were quite slow, some of this seems to be process related, the Iron Gwazi restraint checking process in particular is kind of ridiculous. By far the best staff interactions I had were with the ride ops on Montu, they seemed genuinely happy and they were dispatching trains pretty quickly.
The phrase that comes to mind with BGT is "unfulfilled potential", it has some amazing rides and it's a beautiful park. It's just let down by basic issues that seem like they could be fixed with enough care.
Iron Gwazi
As soon as we hit the park we made a beeline for Iron Gwazi, we rode at the back and my first thoughts were "that was good, but not as intense as I was expecting", the airtime was great, the death roll totally delivered, but I was expecting more. Later on in the day after getting all of the other creds I lapped it. By that time it had well and truly warmed up and it was trying to murder me with forces, I loved every second. It comes in at number 3 in my top 15, the only reason it isn't higher is because my thighs just could not handle lapping it later in the day.
Tigris
All pain, no thrills, a fine addition to an exhibit at a torture museum.
Sheikra
A very forgettable B&M dive, next time I visit I'm very likely to just skip this.
Kumba
I really enjoyed this, just a great classic B&M looping coaster with some fun positive forces. We rode it in the rain, which did limit my enjoyment somewhat. My biggest regret of our visit is that I didn't ride this more to get a full sense of it.
Scorpion
We lucked out and managed to snag the cred for this, originally it was going to close permanently the day before we visited but it stayed open for a few more days. I thought it was perfectly fun ride, quite janky but not in a bad way. The lapbars failed to release when we came back into the station which was quite funny. I know it's a classic Schwarzkopf, but it's definitely not the best of them and I'm looking forward to seeing what BGT put in its place.
Cheetah Hunt
I had a vague sense that somewhere past the extreme pain, there was a fun ride happening around me while on Cheetah Hunt. Unfortunately I just do not agree with those old Intamin OTSRs, they're a super snug fit and they murder my shoulders. With something like Stealth it's fine because it's over so fast, but Cheetah Hunt just kept going. It's unfortunate because I think with updated trains I would have really enjoyed it.
Cobra's Curse
A good fun ride, pretty forgettable until you start spinning.
Montu
The ride I was looking forward to almost as much as Iron Gwazi, I wanted to see how it stacked up to Nemesis - and I think it just about comes out the victor. It's got such a forceful whip on a lot of the transitions, but it also has a number of dead spots. Comparing it to Nemesis is tough, because Nemesis has slightly less whip but also has no dead spots. I can easily see me swapping them in my rankings after my next visit to Towers, they're just that close.
Phoenix Rising
Closed
Conclusion
Despite my issues with the park, I did really enjoy my visit to BGT, but it's almost entirely because of the high quality rides in the line-up. I would like to return someday, probably in January!
