Busch Gardens & De Soto National Memorial

 

On Friday, we spent some time at Busch Gardens. Susan and I visited this park early in our marriage, and took the kids here on their first trip to Florida. While the Williamsburg park is themed to countries in Europe, Tampa’s park has areas based on regions of Africa, plus both have a kid area called Land of Dragons.

The entrance area is in the south, and themed to Morocco. Just to the west are the Bird Gardens, and where the brewery used to be, before it was removed and a racing wooden coaster named Gwazi was built there. Next is Stanleyville, then Congo in the northwest. Timbuktu is in the center. There used to be a dolphin show there, but it was removed and replaced by a 3D pirate movie, which we had watched in Williamsburg last year. The kids rode the new wild mouse coaster, Cheetah Chase, a couple of times, as well as Scorpion, another coaster.

East of Timbuktu is the Serengeti Plains, and to the south is Nairobi, home of the new jeep ride, Rhino Rally, which we really enjoyed. In the southeast corner are Crown Colony and Egypt. There are no family style dark rides at Busch Gardens Tampa, and the theming is light, but it’s a nice park.

In the afternoon the lines got long however, so we left and drove down to the De Soto National Memorial, which commemorates the 1539 landing of Hernando de Soto and the first extensive organized exploration by Europeans of what is now the southern U.S.

Bryan enjoyed trying on the chain mail at the visitor center. Both kids earned Junior Ranger badges there. Yesterday we flew back home.