Pages

Thursday, July 19, 2012

Anniversary Trip: Roller Coasters!

We had such a blast riding roller coasters together...all told in our 2 1/4 days at Busch Gardens and Water Country we tallied 60 rides!

We started each day there with The Loch Ness Monster.



Since the Scotland section of the park opened early, this coaster opened early also. We rode it a couple times in a row without much wait at all.



And we also decided that the back was the place to ride...faster and more thrilling than the front on this one!



Apollo's Chariot is the 7th ranked coaster in the world (!) and is fast and high. I didn't manage to get a great photo...this is a look at it from the parking lot.



The cars themselves were fantastic, our favorite harness system. The seats are up high and only have a lap restraint, which makes you feel very open.



The front was the place to be on this one! Again, because of the nature of the cars, you really felt like you were out in the open in the front.



Alpengeist was probably our least favorite of the coasters at Busch Gardens, but it was still excellent.



It is full of corkscrews and flips and is a little more rough than the others too.



That's Alpengeist upside down as seen from our sky ride across the park.



Griffon was a fantastic and thrilling ride.



The cars were shoulder harnesses, but were held to the track from under the seats instead of over. This photo was taken while we waited for them to hose down the car because someone had gotten sick on it. (This happened on more than one occasion while we were there!)



Near the end it rushes down towards a body of water and the speed of the coaster causes the water to spray up into the air.



Griffon hangs you up at the top of its first hill, suspended for over 5 seconds looking 90 degrees down. Talk about anticipation!


Escape from Pompeii is a water "coaster" that is mostly a large drop, but it also has some nice pyrotechnics inside the "ruins".


We managed to not get very wet on the actual ride...the water cannons at the end soaked us pretty good though!



Verbolten was the new ride this year, and we thought we were not going to get to experience it. It was closed all day Monday and only open for an hour on Tuesday. We had a short time on Wednesday before we needed to head home and we were really hoping to get on this one.



We stood in line with the ride closed and had just 10 minutes left before we needed to leave when they started running cars! We made it!



So excited to get to ride! This one starts and finishes outside, but has a middle section in the dark that includes two blast offs and one other thrilling surprise.



They ran 4 cars at the same time, so the line really moved quickly once it got started.



What an awesome few days together!


We'll be making another trip to ride roller coasters in the years to come!



2 comments:

Ten Page said...

Gee, Alpengeist is actually my favorite coaster there. Because I'm kinda small, I don't like feeling like I'm about to fall out of the car, and on Alpengeist I felt nice and secure.

Beth Anne said...

Oh it's still good! I was actually in between harness settings do sometimes it was nice an tight but a few times were very loose...still a lot of fun!