We've visited Busch around 10 times since 2003 from the UK, it's always been our favourite park and we dedicate two days of our trip.
This year we chose not to come back for the second visit day. It has gone downhill a lot and it was now our least favourite visit of the whole trip.
It was hard to find a coffee as soon as we got there and had to wait in a huge queue of people getting food just so we could get one canteen coffee each, crap and expensive. The server at the till had no idea if they served coffee or not haha and couldn't be bothered asking her mate 1 metre away so we just had to wait 20 minutes and see. We discovered later on that the coffee shop was actually combined with the ice cream shop (thanks for not telling us server lady), so same system, had to wait in a huge queue of people getting ice cream lol, again the servers were really rude and just not interested, waiting at the final till to pay for our coffee and the server just walked away for a bit to drink their own lol.
Anyway we found out that more than half of all the rides and all of the big rides were down for maintenance, which was a massive shame since I'd checked online a month earlier with no mention of ALL of these rides being down :(
One of the only rides we ended up going on was Cheetah Hunt and the photo server told us he'd ran out of the ride official frames and go find one elsewhere (omg ok).
Montu and Iron Gwazli which was an hour wait (incredible ride!) - the big thing with queue organisation with Busch gardens is that when you get to the next in line, you're not counted and organised and matched with single riders, instead there is a free for all with people pushing in, whole rows of seats taking off empty, arguments and just a really bad situation for those with anxiety, it was horrendous. So all three of the rides we went on were like this and just soured the day with how POOR the organisation was.
Oh and the Chick-fil-a bill for three people was 80 dollars, more expensive than our previous dinner at hard rock cafe haha! Just three burgers, three fries that weren't included as a meal and three drinks.. 80 dollars, we kept the receipt because of the shock it gave us.
In fact, nothing at Busch was affordable so I didn't buy a thing and I was so disappointed by the day that I didn't even take any photos at all.
The app map was incorrect and not updated too, smoking areas are not where they used to be and the map did not address this so we wasted a lot of time just trying to figure out where we could have a cigarette?
Just all a bit crap really compared to what it used to be and doesn't compare to the other parks at all.
Not enough staff, not organised, staff not polite and didn't care, spent the day trying to find smoking areas, trying to find coffee, waiting in huge queues for just 3 rides, going back and forth to reception to find a Cheetah Hunt frame, took a train loop around and ate at the most expensive Chick-fil-a in the world and that was it.
So sad seeing my favourite park in a shadow of itself and I can see it falling behind and closing if continues..