Our family absolutely loves amusement parks, and we manage to have a great time everywhere we go—except here. This place is quite literally the worst amusement park we have ever been to.
First of all, though we already had tickets, we waited in line for over an hour just to get IN—with three small children in the blazing sun. The entry line was so long that they didn't even bother running the tram from the distant parking lot because the line actually backed up all the way to the lot!!! To make matters worse, the entire wait happened in the unshielded, blazing sun! Now, this is Florida, which means it's either pouring rain or blazing sun—there's very little in between. So why on earth isn't this walkway covered? Small children and the elderly were really struggling, and it was unpleasant for all.
Hoping this was a fluke, I spoke to several employees, who all informed me that this happens every day. To me, this kind of disorganization is unforgivable: it's not like they opened a week ago and are still figuring out the kinks...they've been open for decades and should have this more than figured out by now. It's obvious that they simply don't care.
When we finally got inside, we were horrified to learn that the average wait for every ride was two hours! Find me a three year old who can wait two hours in line for ANYTHING, much less a 45 second ride—I dare you.
Hoping to let our little ones have at least some fun, we took them to the Sesame Street children's area...where they were forced to wait in long lines just to go on the playground! The cranky woman guarding the toddler trampoline kept yelling at the little ones in line, and would only let five children in at once—even though this enclosed trampoline is absolutely enormous and there was a line around the building.
Unable to get on anything, we decided to have lunch and try again later—except that 90% of their eating establishments were closed for unspecified reasons. The only one we could find that was open (a BBQ joint) had lines even longer than the park entry lines!
I haven't even mentioned the price-gouging yet. Keep in mind that admission to this place is inexplicably more expensive than Disney, though it offers none of the value (if Disney is a 10, this place is a 1). Nonetheless, when you finally get inside, they nickel and dime you to death. It cost us $30 to rent a stroller that was not even a stroller: it was literally a shoddy plastic wagon with wheels that was impossible to steer, had no seat belt or rain cover, and was so low to the ground that my toddler kept getting his foot run over by the wheel!
The rides require you to remove all loose items, as is typical for roller coaster parks, but unlike every other park on earth, they don't have cubbies at the ride locations where you can stash your stuff while on the ride and then grab it afterward. Instead, they force you to rent a crappy locker for way too much money.
The food is unbelievably expensive (a basic chicken nuggets and fries kid meal was $20) and pretty terrible quality. They have the audacity to charge you for animal encounters inside the park (and not even super cool, up close ones—they literally charge you to do things like get within 10 feet of the kangaroo exhibit!). The animal enclosures were dirty, run down, and very stinky (and the animals seemed sad and unwell). The park is dirty and unkempt, with litter everywhere, and everything desperately needs updating.
Oh, and mamas—the bathrooms were filthy, which is a pet peeve of mine. I ended up changing my son't diaper outside in the grass because the changing table was so nasty.
We ended up leaving less than two hours after we arrived because our kids were begging us to go home! And as if all that wasn't bad enough, we stood in line for another 40 minutes to catch the tram back to the parking lot, because unlike Disney, who has trams lined up back to back that run all day, these fools were running a SINGLE tram back and forth, even though there were several empty ones parked nearby. This is completely typical of Busch Gardens: lazy, inconsiderate, and happy to inconvenience you once they have your money.
With the millions of dollars they are clearly making, one has to wonder where it's going, because it clearly isn't being used to improve anything at the park. They clearly don't care about their customers at all, and though we bought the annual Fun Passes, we will never go here again. Save your money.