Busch Gardens Williamsburg

 

Welcome to Busch Gardens Williamsburg - celebrating 50 years

The first hamlet you visit is England

Moving into Scotland now - this is the home of the Loch Ness Monster

Now to Ireland - the home of Finnegan's Flyers

Italy is next and it is home to the most rides - this is Escape from Pompeii

The multi-launch coaster Pantheon is a great ride.  Some insane elements

Tempesto - a Sky Rocket II clone but still a thrilling ride

Apollo's Chariot is the park's B&M hypercoaster.  Lots of good airtime

Roman Rapids

Moving into Germany now.  Verbolten the multi-launch coaster with an indoor section that includes a drop track was unfortunately not operational today

This building is Das Festhaus

Inside you can get some delicious German-inspired food

The best part of the experience is that they have a show to watch while you eat

This is DarKoaster

This is an indoor launched straddle-coaster that features thematic elements and has a unique layout that sends the coaster around the layout twice before returning to the station

Alpengeist is still one of the largest B&M inverted coasters to be built

Moving into New France we find InvadR - the park's wooden coaster

They also have a really good smokehouse restaurant here

France is the final hamlet and it is home to Griffon, the park's B&M dive coaster

One fun thing to do here is ride the Skyway

The course is a triangle configuration with stations in France, Germany and at the front of the park

You get some very neat views while riding

Plus it is a great way to get away from the crowds when the park gets too "people-y"

New this season is Big Bad Wolf - The Wolf's Revenge

Yes, the coaster trains have a wolf head that has glowing eyes

This is a B&M family inverted coaster

To us, it reminded us of a larger Dragonflier - which is a good thing

The thematic elements along the course really add to the ride.  It was a lot of fun

It was great to get back to BGW.  Another awesome day at the park

Busch Gardens Williamsburg

 

Today's park is Busch Gardens Williamsburg, the 12th park on our Eastcoaster 2023 Road Trip

Making our way quickly through England ... and actually most of the park

Straight to Darkoaster.  10 minutes later we were on the ride.

Our thoughts on the ride is that it was fun and honestly unique.  I however cannot imagine waiting more than 30 minutes to ride it though.

Since QuickQueue only allows one skip the line on InvadR we headed there next to get a few laps in early to not have to spend our one time so early in the day

We next headed to Italia and found our first denial of the day - Tempesto.  It would never open today.  Well so much for getting to skip that line one time.

So we went and drowned our sorrows on Pantheon

During the course of the day we rode this 5 times.

We found the ride to be fun, but with so many elite rides in one park, we're not sure it "shines" as bright as some make it out to be.

Apollo's Chariot was next.  We still consider it to be one of the better B&M hypercoasters

When you can skip the long line and get angry glares from the stand by people - you ride Roman Rapids.  Yeah we got a little wet

Since we were already wet, we did Escape from Pompeii next.  Any reason why most of the effects in the building are not working right now?  That was a huge disappointment

Continuing our lap around the park, we ended up at Loch Ness Monster.

It sure is pretty to look at.  The ride experience is not so much

Finnegan's Flyers in Ireland was new to us.  It was awesome swinging out and looking down at the water

Back in France we stopped by and took a few laps on Griffon.  I must say this was the most challenging crew to work with in regards to QuickQueue.  Their lead was a "peach" who definitely was not having a good day.

Alpengeist is such an imposing coaster.  It just looks huge in this valley.  We loved our numerous laps on this B&M inverted beast.  Front is still the best seats

Verbolten is just a lot of fun.  I am still bitter about it taking the place of Big Bad Wolf, but I can appreciate the ride for what it is.

I do have to mention that this last part has gotten a little rough.  Not sure what that was about

We were bummed that there was no show in Festhaus on Tuesdays

But that didn't stop us from eating there anyway

So we purposefully saved our skip for DarKoaster for later in the day for this reason.  That line is over 2 hours long.  I cannot imagine waiting that long for anything - and especially not this ride

Don't mind us, we'll just walk on the ride and straight to the front row.

We had a great time at Busch Gardens today.  Definitely recommend getting QuickQueue as that just made the day so much easier and we didn't have to spend so much time standing still - which kills us old people (ok we're not old, just not as young as we used to be)