Busch Gardens Williamsburg / Europe

I'd included Busch Garden's Europe (formerly Williamsburg) on the trip because I'd been told it was one of the best "themed" parks in the U.S. There really hadn't been that many on the trip so far with Dollywood being the best by quite some way. I had been to Islands of Adventure in Florida, which had the best theming I'd seen in the U.S. so it would be interesting to see how this compared.

Busch who make bad beer own two parks. This one in Virginia, which now has the European theme and the other in Tampa, Florida that now has the African theme and name. After figuring out how to buy the ticket without having a zip code (I'd conveniently failed to see the "foreign visitor" button) we made our way into the park.

Well this looked very quaint, we must be in the British area of the park, which they've labelled Banbury. I'm sure the American's think this is how quaint British villages look with the Tudor buildings and big wide red paved road. I just wondered why they'd chose "Banbury" as the name and not "Banberry", which is how the majority of visitors would pronounce it.

In the Ireland part of the park there are no rides but there are some nice stage shows and this excellent 4D cinema themed around the audience being mistaken for a box of "little people" and sent around the Irish Countryside. I don't know if its my eyesight or not but I don't always get the 3D effect in these rides. This one without shadow of a doubt worked perfectly for me to the point of making the horse ride sequence particularly rough on the stomach.

The park has some animals within it, although nowhere near as many as the sister park, which is admittedly part Safari park anyway. In keeping with the European theming they had a number of Bald Eagles, indigenous to Portugal and the northern reaches of Spain. They also had wolves, which admittedly can be found in Scotland foraging through the bins of Glasgow council estates in the early hours of the morning.

We hadn't come all this way to look at birds with their wings clipped, we were here for the rides. The first was the latest attraction to the park, The Legend of DarKastle. Themed around a Transylvanian castle, this "Spiderman @ IOA" type attraction saw you boarding a sled and journeying through the castle into a mystical realm where animals led by the castle owner try to kill you. I had absolutely loved Spiderman and whilst this had a better story, it lacked the scenic elements that the IOA ride had, such as real fireballs etc.. This was still a great attraction though and everyone was coming off raving about how great the ride was.

In a few years this queue line will become a fully grown hedgemaze, which will make queue jumping a hell of a lot more difficult than it was when I was there.

Keith had told me about a really nice looking fountain somewhere in the park and as we made our way through the German area of the park he was adamant it was just around the next corner and repeatedly telling me about how great it was. When we turned the corner this was what I saw, not that exciting at all really!

It turned out he'd got it wrong and the correct fountain was around the next corner, and yes it was pretty decent, as fountains go.

Big Bad Wolf was the first coaster at this park we rode and was one of the swinging variety similar to Iron Dragon at Cedar Point and Top Gun at King's Island. This however was in a totally different league with you swinging through an inaccessible Bavarian village in the first half of the ride...

...before hitting a huge drop for a ride of this type and flying over the lake awaiting at the bottom. Keith had done a good job ensuring I'd ridden the coaster before walking over the nearby bridge where this shot was taken, so I didn't know the drop was coming.


The Italian part of the park is quite vast and contains quite a collection of rides, most of them tailored to the family. Not surprisingly if you have an interest in statues you'd spend most of your time in this bit of the park.

I quite liked this Leonardo da Vinci themed ride using his gliders as inspiration for the cars. For the scared kiddies there were conventional cars for them to sit in. For those a little more brave there were lie down glider ones closer to Da Vinci's original designs.

Apollo's Chariot is a big hyper coaster that is rather unfortunately placed at the edge of the park where it is nigh on impossible to take pictures of it. This ride is famous for its press day where a stray bird flew into male model Fabio's face breaking his nose (the bloke's not the bird's). Fortunately we had no bird encounters to brag about.

Here's one shot I got, not very good admittedly. I think the better shots can be taken from outside the park but not where we had parked. This was taken near the the Rapids ride.

Which is deceptively wet. Those bits of the ride you can see all look fairly tame with some poorly aligned water cannons that give passers by the opportunity of shooting the riders. However on the return leg back to the station you get completely soaked by some devilishly positioned waves.

Being one of the biggest areas in the park, the Italian section also has a performance stage where entertainers croon out big band songs to keep the elderly visitors happy.

Interesting sign #26
"Virgina law prohibits the taking of alcohol beverages beyond this point"
The park had these signs dotted around the park but only at either side of bridges. I know America is full of silly state laws, I can only assume drinking alcohol on a bridge in Virginia is another thing you can't do. Very strange!

Coaster numero three was the Scottish themed Loch Ness Monster. I was expecting this to be themed more around the lake but it was located on the side of the hill instead. The idea of having tunnels under the water and camel backs as the humps may be how it would be built now. I guess the technology just wasn't there when the ride was conceived.

The ride used to have a large dragon in the latter half of the ride where the helix is but it's not there now, or if it is its hiding in the dark; you certainly don't get to see it if it is. This leaves the best bit of the ride to be the linked loops found half way around the circuit, although this has nothing to do with the Loch Ness monster, unless there was an occasion where he tied himself into a knot.

Looks like Mr. Griswald did alright after his trip to Wally World. He now has enough money to run his own bank!

The water splash ride was superb although it was prone to breakdowns. We got stuck in the station waiting to go. Fortunately we weren't stuck in the top as its full of explosions, fireballs and collapsing scenery themed around the eruption of Vesuvius over the city of Pompeii.

Alpengeist is the most talked about coaster in the park and justifiably so, its also one that I had wanted to ride for a really long time. It's an absolutely huge inverted ride, themed rather cleverly around a ski lift that goes out of control. There was a nice touch in that the trains had skis in holders on the side, not real skis of course, they'd have fallen out. This was a great ride and was definitely as good as I'd imagined it would be.

Having done the rides the last hour of the evening was spent with the entertainment. The swing show in the Italian bit of the park was alright, although Keith being the critiquing dance teacher thought the performances were weak. The final show however over in the main auditorium was excellent with some crazy trampolining.

Busch Gardens is a very nice park but not the best themed one, IOA still has the U.S. crown. It lacks a large number of rides but the few it has are world class. Definitely a case of quality over quantity. However you can't have good rides and happy people unless the operations is top-notch, which at this park they were. They were definitely moving people through the rides at a decent rate.

North-west to Kings Dominion.......Now!