The last time I had been on a roller coaster was in Vienna, Austria when I was six. Since I’m already fifteen years old, that was quite some time ago. We had planned on visiting Busch Gardens in Williamsburg several months ago while in Virginia, but due to bad weather, we were unable to go. Fortunately, we got a second chance at Busch Gardens theme park in Tampa, Florida.

However, as the days started counting down, it looked like we may have to miss the theme park again. It was supposed to rain, but in the end, it was a beautiful day – and a great day for riding roller coasters!

We spent about eleven hours at Busch Gardens. In that time, I rode around twelve times on different roller coasters, a few carousels, and a couple younger-kids’ rides with my youngest sisters.

The first roller coaster we rode was the Air Grover. It’s a ride for younger kids and only lasts about 45 seconds, but it packed quite a punch!

My favorite roller coaster at Busch Gardens was the Cheetah Hunt. It’s the longest ride at the park. With a gravitational force four times above the regular force of gravity, three launches, a zero-gravity roll, an electrifying 130-foot drop, and the fact that it overlooks the “Serengeti Plain,” you can see why there was a 25-minute waiting time (and that’s in the low season!) to ride the roller coaster.

The Cheetah Hunt starts off with a 0-60mph (0-97 km/h) burst of speed. It gains a bit of elevation before you plunge down into the first tunnel. Next, you’re rocketed high up in the air – if you decide to look around, you can actually see quite a bit of the park – before spiraling down what looks like a figure eight. The roller coaster seems to slow down a bit at this point; possibly to give you a birds-eye view around and a good look at the terror ahead. The next part is a bit crazy. You take what feels like a near-vertical dive down into a second tunnel before rapidly zooming back up. I could literally feel my stomach rise and fall from the intensity. I was so glad that I barely had anything in it (even after the ride, I was a bit hesitant to eat anything more than a couple cashew nuts). After all that, there’s the third and last tunnel and then quite a bit of twisting and turning as the ride flies through a canyon over a river below.

Following that ride, I was so happy to be back on solid ground – but if it hadn’t been for the long waiting line, I definitely would have gone again!

My second favorite ride was the Scorpion. I rode that one eight or nine times! How did I end up riding that roller coaster so many times? Well, I was waiting with my dad and two sisters outside the entrance to the Scorpion while my mom took my youngest sister to the bathroom (we had wanted to ride the roller coaster together as a family). We waited and waited and waited…. it was pretty boring – and tempting, considering the roller coaster was only a few steps away.

Finally, one of my sisters and I decided to ride the Scorpion together as many times as we could before my mom and youngest sister returned. It was already dark out, which made the whole experience even more exciting.

This ride starts off with a slow climb up the railway. Once you reach the top, it makes a turn before you’re launched down the track and shot up the vertical loop. I experienced my first vertical loop on this roller coaster, and although I thought it would be scary, it was amazingly fun! After the loop there’s a lot of banked turns as you circle down toward the ground before zooming back up again. I can remember grasping my lap bar and pushing against it as I did my best to keep my back and head against the seat. It wasn’t easy, being tossed from side-to-side as the roller coaster made its extreme turns. The sounds I heard on the Scorpion are ones I will not forget. As I’m writing this, I can still hear the distinct sound of the Scorpion, like a locomotive chugging at above-max speed, shrill squeals and screams from the riders as it banked and soared. The scariest part for me was the end, as we were brought to a quick stop, the brakes screeching beneath us. I was always afraid that the breaks would give out from the intense speed of the roller coaster and that it wouldn’t be able to stop in time. Despite that, I had so much fun on that ride that once it finished, my sister and I would run around the gated perimeter and catch the next ride – as it turned out, we weren’t the only ones. There were actually several times when the whole roller coaster was filled with kids our age and younger, running around the ride to catch the next one just as we were.

If you need to wake up, just hop on either the Cheetah Hunt or Scorpion, and they will do the trick a few times over!

While we were at Busch Gardens, we also rode the Serengeti Express, a convenient train that shuttles people around the park by crossing the open-air zoo. One thing I found interesting about Busch Gardens in Tampa is that it’s not only an amusement park with roller coasters, flumes, and other cool rides, but it also has an entire zoo home to over 200 species of animals! As we ran from one roller coaster to the next, we had the opportunity to see many different exotic animals, ranging from zebras and giraffes to Aldabra Tortoises and African penguins. The park even offers a safari at the 65-acre “Serengeti Plain,” where you can ride around in a Land Rover and feed the giraffes from your hand.

My family had thought about trying the flume ride, but after watching several people come out soaking wet, we decided against it – but if it had been a hot, Floridian summer day, we definitely would have tried it!

We also enjoyed the “Christmas on Ice” show, which was a dazzling display of ice skating. The show was broken up into several different segments. There was one part of the show where a couple of professional ice skaters pretended to be awful at ice skating – at one point, I honestly thought that one of the ice skaters was going to skate right off the edge of the rink and fall on the audience! However, toward the end of their gig, they all began ice skating like professional ice skaters rather than beginners.

I really enjoyed how it started snowing inside the theater at the end of the performance. It was fun to watch my younger sisters paw at the air as they tried to catch the snowflakes with their hands.

Finally, to complete our visit to Busch Gardens, we enjoyed an amazing fireworks display. My mom was able to capture several seconds of it on her phone (before it died shortly after).

Dare to explore!

Vivienne