Park Review

Busch Gardens Williamsburg Williamsburg, Virginia By Jeremy Norris September 23, 2001 AUTHOR'S NOTES: This was originally posted to CoasterBuzz, so if you read it there, feel free to disregard this one. The "I-Fan" referenced several times here is my buddy Rob who goes by the screen name of "Intamin Fan" on CoasterBuzz. Also, this trip was taken a week before my last HersheyPark trip, but the conclusion at the bottom still holds. [END AUTHOR'S NOTES] "Water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink" A friend of I-fan's gave him two complimentary tickets to Busch Gardens Williamsburg and he invited me to come along with him, since he knew I had never been there before. After a somewhat lenthy-feeling ride down, we paid the six-buck parking fee, took the tram, and entered the park somewhere around 11am. The DAY: Sunny, REALLY Sunny, high ~80F, not a cloud to speak of. The PARK: Very picturesque, layout somewhat confusing The RIDES: Oh come on, I'm not going to give all that aways so quickly While riding the tram, we could see that there was pretty much NO LINE for Apollo's Chariot so it was our goal to head over to "Festa Italia" first. At the entrance to BGW, I couldn�t help but notice how similar it was to HersheyPark's entrance. Walking over to Festa Italia, we realized that it was going to be quite warm out in the sun so we decided to get a quick sprinkle on: ESCAPE FROM POMPEII (Intamin themed Shoot-the-Chutes (STC) I guess it was mostly my suggestion to ride, as I had heard a great deal about the theming. I-Fan also quipped "It doesn�t get you very wet". With that, we hopped into the back row (a one or two boat wait at most) and were off. The �show� in the upper rooms was pretty good with the pyrotechnics and all, but it was a lot shorter than I imagined. Still better than your average STC. On the drop, however, we got fairly drenched. I thought you didn�t get too wet!? (thanks a lot I-fan). Moving on from there, we looked around for while and watched some of the flat rides spin their magic. Then, we actually walked PAST Apollo's Chariot in search of Roman Rapids (more bleedin' WATER). ROMAN RAPIDS (Intamin river raft) We loaded up with four other captives - I mean patrons - and went spinning down the pike. The ride is pretty good as it keeps a decent amount of speed through the course. There isn�t much in the way of theming that I noticed, but there are plenty of wet spots. Suffice to say, I was drenched to my drawers (TM)! We stood around for a while trying to catch some sun to aid in the drying of our clothes. Soon though, enough was enough and we HAD to ride: APOLLO'S CHARIOT (B&M speed/hypercoaster) AC marked the final B&M hyper left for me to ride. I loved Raging Bull and liked Nitro well enough, so I was expecting a pleasurable experience. I-fan had no seat suggestions so I said all the way to the rear. Within a short wait, we were off. AC has the best first drop (ridewise) of the three hypers. RB's is cooler because it goes into the ridiculously small looking tunnel, but I liked the feeling of AC better. And there was airtime galore on this ride. I really loved the turnaround on this thing and, overall, enjoyed the ride more than Nitro. Contrary to popular belief, I'm NOT an airtime whore so I still hold Raging Bull in higher regard as, being a twister fan, I find the out and back layout a bit pedestrian. But AC is great at giving the �floaty�, butt-off-the-seat action. Also, what was strange was there was quite a bit of rattling and vibration in the ride. Not �roughness�, as some might say, but not the �cloud-like� feeling of the others. Maybe the wheels just needed changing. Personally, I liked it that way. Well, now that we were in the riding mood, we walked over the hills and into the woods for a ride "at the speed of Fright" on: THE BIG BAD WOLF (Arrow suspended) Okay, I've been on two other suspendeds � Draggin� Iron @ CP (snooze) and Top Gun @ PKI. While enjoyable, both were little more than scenic flights. Furthermore, while walking up to the ride, I could hear trim brakes all the way down the final drop over the water. With that attitude, we boarded 1.2 of BBW, me thinking that hey - at least we'll see some good theming. As we drop out of the station and approach the lift, we encounter a small set of trims (before the lift?!?) so I'm REALLY expecting a family ride. From the top of the BBW lift, I could see the alleged "Eagle's Nest" on top of the first inversion on Drachen Fire. I cannot say for sure it is an eagle's nest, but there is a large pile of dirt and twigs up there that looks like some kind of nest to me. As for BBW itself, the ride is wild and intense the whole way through. I'm not surprised that many credit Anton S. with the design, as his trademark insanity is all over this ride. I never imagined a suspended could be this good. Heck, this ride was more breathtaking than some of the hypers and megaloopers I've ridden. Way to go Arrow! (oh, and Anton too I guess..) After this, we moseyed over to the little coaster in the park: WILD MAUS (Mack wild mouse) The top of the ride (the S-curves) was pretty good and reminiscent of the ride at HersheyPark. All similarity ended there, though. The rest of the ride was a series of hard brakes and unthrilling drops. As a whole, I'm not a big fan of mice (animal or coaster). Let's just mark this one on the count and move on. And move on we did, over to the German/French border where lurks the snowy monster: ALPENGEIST (B&M Inverted) Okay, y'all know how I feel about Raptor right? Good! With that in mind, everything about Alpie screamed to me a bigger Raptor. YAWN! I was in no big hurry to try out this ride, and I was not patient enough to wait an extra 40min for the front. So once again, to the rear we went. I was able to snag the leftmost seat (�death seat� possibly?) and away we went. We traversed the weird spiral-like drop and I could tell almost immediately that this was no Raptor! We TORE through the I-man and vertical loop, pulling many G's at the bottom of each, but it wasn�t until we RIPPED through the cobra roll with a ferocity that almost rivals Montu's batwing that I understood why people like this coaster so much. The Hostyl One was impressed, something that does not happen often. I remember thinking that if the cobra roll (an element I despise on inverts) on Alpie was that good I cannot wait to ride Deja Vu. Anyway, there was one coaster left to tackle. Perhaps the most photographed tubular steel railed coaster around: LOCH NESS MONSTER (Arrow interlocking looper) There's not a lot to Nessie, but being a certified Arrow fan, I couldn�t help but love it. There are three REAL drops on the ride, a LONG tunnel and NO headbanging. Not to mention that it was a walk on when we first rode it. I could have stayed there all day just listening to the soothing sounds of the lift. But alas, I was starving and it was time for some of that "great Busch food" I had heard so much about. But before we got to the food, we went over to the "new" Ireland section to check out the motion sim: CORKSCREW HILL (Iwerks? simulator) I'm not a huge fan of 3-D sims. I like them enough, but this year, they haven�t liked me. I've ridden between five and ten sims this year, and all of them had me feeling a least a little "peak-ed" and most of the one with 3-D glasses made we want to hurl (not yet though...). Anyway, the animation on CH was phenomenal. I could watch a whole cartoon made like that a whole weekend. However, on one part you are riding a horse - and that lasted a whole third of the ride - the bucking was really wild and the seatbelt tightened up on my gut. The entire ride left my midsection in pain, internally and externally. To settle my stomach, it was time to put some heavy food it! We looked around a few places and I finally found a place (the something-rather-another Smokehouse) that had a ribs, chicken and brisket combo platter. The chicken was aiight (white meat, yeech). The ribs (pork) were decent. But the beef brisket was da� bomb, baby. I could go for a big sammich of that right now. We then took the train ride back over to Festa Italia where we rode AC a couple more times in rows two (even more air) and eight. Here I-Fan paused to play Dance, Dance Revolution (DDR). Me, I just watched and snickered. We did also grab a ride on the surprisingly intense DA VINCI'S CRADLE (Flying Carpet). As we made our way back to the train, some little bastard in the SPLASHUS MAXIMUS water balloon fight area missed her target and the water splashed on my legs instead (JUST as was FINALLY dry). We boarded the train, which goes RIGHT under Drachen Fire, and I really wanted to hop off and show the coaster some love. Maybe BGW could buy some trains off of Premier. Hey, they aren�t that far away... For some dumb reason, we went ahead and rode: LE SCOOT (Arrow Log Flume) You know the deal here. Go up really high, bang around for a while, drop, bang your way back to the station. However, the banging on this one wasn�t too bad. And we didn�t get more than sprinkled. Here we grabbed another ride Alpengeist in row two and this ride seemed even more intense than the first one, especially in the cobra roll. We also took a random seat in BBW, which I also enjoyed as much as before. Here we took another break because I-fan wanted to play DDR again (this time in a different location). This time, I decided to join him. We played head to head and (of course) I won.. However, now I'm addicted to the damn game. So much so that I just bought the Playstation version off ebay, complete with two dance mats! Anyway, I-Fan wanted to take one more picture of Nessie so that's where we went. Of course since we were there, we had to ride once again. With that things were winding down, but we also wanted to catch the "Pirates!" show. There was one more starting in about fifteen minutes, right at the 7pm closing time. We looked around in the shops for a while then entered the theater. The first thing I noticed was water on all the seats (uh-oh). Well, as you can guess, there was water shot off at various parts of the show including one point where I got a veritable bucket of water on me (not happy). So I pretty much had water on me the entire day like some bad episode of "You Can't Do That on Television". Anyway, after buying a generic BG and LNM shirt, we headed home. With only a brief stop at a Mickey D's and me driving, we made it back to DC in two hours, ten minutes. All in all, BGW is a good place; I'll return there someday soon. But as for now, HersheyPark still holds the "Best Park in the Mid Atlantic Region" for me. However, if BGW got a woodie and re-opened Drachen Fire.... lata, Jeremy The above park review, and all other reviews contained on this site, are property of Yahoo! Groups, Yahoo! Geocities and their respective owners. See Yahoo's Copyright Policy for more information.

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