Busch Gardens

Reading time 5

I had military appreciation tickets for Busch Gardens, so my wife and I made a weekend out of it. We haven’t been on a date in a few years, mostly thanks to COVID. And the last time I was at an amusement park, I got injured on a roller coaster. Since I’m heading out for the day, I made sure that I packed all my meds, and off we went.

We picked a weekday instead of a weekend to visit the park and we made a really good choice. The longest line was for the first coaster (InvadR), which was around 15 minutes. Most of the rides were 5-10 minutes tops, with several we walked right up and were next in line to ride.

The good thing about Busch Gardens Williamsburg is that most of the lines are covered and most of the pathways are covered as well, so I didn’t get too hot from the sun. And on their water rides, you tend to get really wet so we used those to keep me cool.

In fact the “Escape from Pompeii” water ride, we got soaked on. We were in the front seat and had a very heavy lady next to me. When we got to the top of the first hill, we dropped a little and normally you don’t get wet from this, but we all got soaked from the waist down. And on the final drop, we got soaked the rest of the way, but we didn’t care. We were still wet in spots several hours later.

The one thing that upset me about the park was the lack of “fair food” like cotton candy, fried this and that, and, corn dogs just to name a few. These things were there, but you had to know where you were to find them. They weren’t around every corner like they used to be years ago.

They have a nice GPS-enabled interactive mobile app, that not only shows you where you are, but if you click on a ride, it will tell you turn by turn how to get to it, which is a nice feature. I don’t know if they have wait times built in, as we weren’t concerned about wait times for this trip.

I was very nervous on the InvadR coaster, as I was scared I would aggravate my costochondritis. I love wooden coasters, but as I noted above the last time I rode a coaster, I hurt my ribs and since costochondritis already causes me a great deal of pain, I didn’t want to make it worse. But I decided to go for broken, and I’m glad I did, it was a fun coaster and the only thing that got hurt was my sunglasses got broken (I had them in my pocket).

That evening we stayed at a local hotel, which was a HUGE mistake. The Country Inn and Suites was a total dump. In fact, the first room we had was being used by someone else. The bed was unmade, towels were on the floor, and food was in the refrigerator. They gave us a second room and that was actually clean, except there was a sock on the floor next to the couch. However around 9:30 that evening, there was noise at the door, I looked out and saw a family trying to get into our room. I opened the door and they were told that this was their room. It seems like the employees and the management all need to look for new jobs as working at a hotel seemed to be beyond their capabilities.

The halls in this hotel haven’t seen a working vacuum in weeks. There was a small pile of dirt and pubes in every corner of the bathroom. The secondary lock on the door didn’t work and the parking lot looked like someone dumped a few open bags of trash everywhere. I guess because they are a destination hotel, they don’t have to really try that hard. People will stay there sight unseen because they need a place to stay the night near their destination.