curatorialprowess
Mar 2022
I have been a lifelong fan of Busch Gardens. I can't count the number of times I've been to Williamsburg, and I've been to Tampa twice prior to this visit. I *loved* Busch Gardens. But this was, bar none, the worst experience I've ever had in any theme park. I understand and sympathize with staffing issues, but the waits we faced with everything we did were untenable to the point that they should have been selling fewer tickets to cope.
We paid around $400: two tickets, parking, food, and a couple beers each. I guess our mistake was in not paying even more for quick queue, because in the 7 hours we were there we only managed to ride two (2!!!) rides. We waited at least 2 hours for each of those rides, and 1.5 hours for a terrible burger after searching for close to an hour for an open restaurant. It turned out there was one poor guy cooking for the whole line. If we'd had any idea how long it would take to get food we would have left, because by the time we got it and finished eating, the ride wait times were universally clocking in at around 90 minutes or more. The quick queue line for the ride we finally picked was inexplicably long, leaving the rest of us totally parked. We stood in place for about 20 minutes, gave up, and left feeling defeated.
I have experienced a super crowded park, a busy park, a blisteringly hot day at a park; I have never experienced a day that made me never want to go to a park again. This was our babysitter-facilitated splurge after two years of pandemic self-restraint. I'm sad and extremely disappointed.