Being back from vacation hurts. In so many ways, lol. I still haven’t gone through all of my pictures, but I do have the ones from our first park, Busch Gardens Williamsburg, all sorted so I will share those today. That’s what we’re doing. I will save my BIG PANTHEON STORY for a separate post because I will probably have way more to say about it than is necessary. You know, the usual.
Super awkward shot but I just love this section of the park so much!
We were waiting for Henry to find out if there was any place in the entire land that served veggie burgers because the last time we ate pizza at FEST HAUS, we all got sick (not like, food poisoned, but more like THAT WAS A LOT OF CHEESE). We were going to eat in the Italian section of the park but the line was extremely long even though the park wasn’t very crowded, so….Fest Haus it is, I guess.
Chooch pointed out the strawberry cake and then I couldn’t not see it so guess who got the strawberry cake? It was Henry. But only because he knew I wouldn’t get it for myself so he got a slice to share. Henry doesn’t care about his gut health so he always takes one for the team.
Dude it was actually quite good.
This time I split one personal pizza with Henry and it was the perfect amount. It did not bind me, nor did I find myself doubled over in extreme intestinal strife for the rest of the afternoon. Guys, we do not come to parks to eat. We come to ride.
Bro.
I actually felt uncomfortable with them performing so close while I was trying to eat and by eat I mean shovel cake into my gnashing maw. Especially when they were trying to shame people for not participating in the Chicken Dance. LOOK LUCY, I like to cluck around with the energy of your average kindergarten birthday party attendee, but not while I’m trying to mow down a thick wedge of strawberry cake. Thanks, and kindly piss off with your lederhosen, Tuba Terry.
Meanwhile, Chooch had raspberry cheesecake which he somehow stuck his elbow in, as evidenced by the schmear of raspberry glaze I spotted on his sleeve shortly thereafter.
Henry told him to go to the bathroom and use cold water, and he proceeded to return to us with half of his sleeve drenched in water, because instead of just spot-cleaning, he stuck his entire forearm under the faucet.
That’s my brilliant son, people. Gifted status. Don’t be fooled.
It was in the 50s on this day which was fine at first but as the day went on, I started shivering and then couldn’t stop and then eventually I was practically convulsing and Chooch was yelling IT IS NOT THAT COLD, STOP IT but I could barely hear him because my ear canals were frosted over.
We were really concerned about the potential crowds on this trip, being spring break and all, but it seems that our school district’s spring break falls later in the season than most so we pleasantly surprised at the crowd levels for Park #1! Granted, this was still a Saturday and the weather wasn’t TOO bad, but we were still enjoying station waits and/or walk-ins for some rides, although the “crowds” did seem to come in waves. For instance, we walked onto Apollo’s Chariot earlier in the day, came back in the afternoon and walked away after seeing a – gasp – line, but then got a station wait a bit later. It was almost as if the crowds were moving in a clump. And that was fine with me!
Griffon is so photogenic! We didn’t ride it on this visit though. Dive coasters just aren’t our favorites. We did ride Alpengeist though (pictured in the shot above this one) and it was the first time we actually had to “wait” in a line, and it was only about 25 minutes but spoiled Chooch was not having any of it. He gets so surly sometimes.
Even when the sky is gloomy, this park is still so lovely.
Now that I think about it, I don’t even think any of us fought the whole time we were there?!
YOU GUYS. Remember last summer when I was so sad that I didn’t get to ride LochNess because of dumb stupid idiotic lightning?? Well, I got my redemption ride.
It wasn’t as great as I remembered it to be, aside from the EPIC TUNNEL/CAVE THING. Unfortunately, I was too concerned with the fact that some asshole in front of us had his phone out the whole time, so then I spent the second half of the ride in fear of needing plastic surgery once my face is done being a Samsung billboard.
My favorite part of Busch Gardens is the walkway down by the water! There are steps next to the entrance of Lochness and it always feels like a secret.
Mr. McDonald’s pays for his own stupid fucking games now!
F R E E D O M.
Here are the Robbins Males, in line for Verbolten, which they both thought was WAY TOO LONG yet only took about 20 minutes and everyone knows that Verbolten is the best ride in the whole damn park and 100% worth the wait, so can it.
(OK, Pantheon is the new Daddy of this joint, but Verbolten is still a solid coaster. I always my laugh my fucking face off on it.)
I have no idea which ride line we were in for this. Everything is a blur.
Seriously though this park is gorgeous.
Oh! Here’s a great story. I had been craving ice cream ever since earlier that morning when I saw one of my ENEMIES (we will talk more about this in a separate post) indulging in a cone while waiting in line for Pantheon. The last time we were at Busch Gardens, we couldn’t find any ice cream places that were open because even then, a lot of (if not most) parks were understaffed due to Covid. But I figured out that he procured this icy delight at Roman Frieze. This also worked out well because it happened to be the same place that was selling the pineapple Dole Whip served in a pineapple that kept taunting Chooch throughout the day. (“I REALLY HAVE TO HAVE ONE OF THOSE,” he kept announcing, and I don’t know why but the image of Chooch walking around spooning himself ice cream from a pineapple while wearing a hoodie just made me LOL.)
So we get in line for the damn ice cream and it’s all confusing because some worker tried to get us to leave the line and go to a new line that he had just started but we were already nearly to the counter and other people were already getting into the new line so I politely declined his offer. But he kept pushing for us to go to the new line and I said, “But I don’t want to lose our spot?” and he gave me this shit-eating OK HAVE IT YOUR WAY look, like I’m some big stoop passing up his once in a lifetime offer.
I guess you had to be there but he was for real stressing me out and then Henry didn’t want him waiting on us because he was touching door knobs and people’s backs with his gloves on and then didn’t change them when he got back behind the counter.
But then he did change his gloves so Henry unclenched.
I wanted the KIDS SUNDAE because sprinkles and whipped cream seemed like a delectable choice at the moment, but when I ordered it, the LINE MISMANAGER instantly grabbed a waffle cone and started filling it up with softserve. I thought that maybe he was doing someone else’s order first because now that there were two lines, it was chaos in there. But then he squirted it with whipped cream and did all the other FIXINS and as it dawned on me that this my KIDS SUNDAE, I said to Henry, “You can just have that and I’ll order it again but specify that I want it in a cup.”
BECAUSE I ASSUMED THAT A SUNDAE WOULD AUTOMATICALLY BE SERVED IN A CUP IN THE FIRST PLACE?
Henry started to protest but I swiftly took the waffle cone, passed it off to him like a frozen Olympic torch, and then placed my do-over order.
Oh meanwhile, Mr. Economics blanched at the price of the Dole Whip in the pineapple (it was like $12 I think) and opted for just the Dole Whip in a cone. His McDonald’s paychecks are really teaching him the value of a dollar, for sure lol. Everything is SO ASTRONOMICAL to him now.
As we sat down on a wall to eat our icy snacks, I peeped Henry’s pout. “What’s your problem?” I asked.
“I didn’t want this!” he cried, chopping a hand toward his KIDS SUNDAE cone. “I wanted DOLE WHIP!”
Chooch and I promptly cracked up.
I forgot that this happened or else I would have included it in some of the postcards I sent, lol.
Later, we had a weird experience in line for Invadr because the family in front of us were annoying but in a strange way. It was three young kids (an older girl and her two little brothers) and they all had SUPER BIZARRE cartoon voices and the mom looked like Biggest Loser: Little House on the Prairie edition, I’m sorry, that was mean but this was the thought that passed through my asshole brain as we stood in line behind her.
The kids weren’t bad by any means, but it was their voices, man. Their voices, especially the girl’s, were like Rugrats IRL. Like an adult doing theatrically fake child voices. Like Elmira on Tiny Toons. Just really strange. And then they were playing this weird game about how many cookies something would cost and I swear I saw Chooch’s ghost leave his body. He was like, “I’m outta here-yaaaaaaaa.”
Anyway, while we were standing in line, Chooch was watching the train go past and suggested that we ride it when we were done on Invadr (really great wooden coaster, btw). So when we got off Invadr, Chooch and I ran straight to the train platform and made it JUST IN TIME. We scrambled into a row and then saw Henry calmly walking up the ramp. He saw us and shook his head.
“Thanks for telling me where you were going,” he huffed, having JUST made it before the train departed. LOLOLOL.
Chooch said I looked possessed here. Thank you! How sweet.
This is Chooch turning around to see what was screaming behind us and why its keeper wasn’t doing anything about it. I really hate screaming children.
Chooch took this right before we left – Henry and I doing our best “couple pose.
”
I left out all of the PANTHEON stuff because it deserves its own post. But I will tell you that after eating that ice cream, my body temperature plummeted, combined with being whipped into oblivion on coasters on a 50ish degree night, and I was shivering so hard by the end of the night that my body was straight WRACKING. Chooch was appalled by this and at one point yelled, “IT IS NOT EVEN THAT COLD!” and was even inspired to look up the weather when someone in line was also saying how cold they were.
“OK, you’re over here shivering, that person over there is whining about being cold, IS IT ACTUALLY COLD? I’m looking it up,” he said, because this kid is hot-blooded. Of course once he saw the temperature, he gave me the ARE YOU FUCKING SERIOUS look because it really wasn’t THAT COLD but somehow IT WAS?
Then I lost my voice at one point too and panicked because what if I had gotten Covid, but then I woke up the next morning and felt 100%, so I guess it was just all the screaming and being cold. I do get cold extremely easily.
/abrupt ending.