Busch Gardens Tampa Reopens with a Few Hiccups

Busch Gardens Tampa reopened on June 11th with new safety measures in place. Due to storms in the area, I made a visit their 2nd day after reopening. With theme parks in the Central Florida area quickly opening in short succession, every park has its own set of safety standards and precautionary guidelines to create a safer environment for guests. Busch Gardens did a lot of things right for ensuring public safety, but there’s definitely some room for improvement. Here’s my experience . . . 

New Health & Safety Procedures

Like most other theme parks that have reopened, Busch Gardens has several new measures in place to ensure the safety of guests and employees alike. These new guidelines include temperature screenings, mandatory face coverings, physical distancing and increased cleaning and sanitizing around the park.

From the moment you get in line for the tram, there are signs advising guests to follow the safety guidelines of wearing a face covering, keep a safe social distance, wash/sanitize your hands often, and use contactless payment as much as possible.

After getting off the tram (they seat parties in every other row), you’re directed to go through a tent to have your temperature taken. They also have a small stand outside the tent selling face masks if you don’t have one with you (you won’t be allowed inside the park without one). Once you pass the temperature check, you’re free to head through the bag check at the front gate and into the park!

Reservation System

Busch Gardens currently requires a reservation to visit the park on any given day as they are operating at a reduced capacity in accordance to their safety guidelines. Reservations can be made online, and you must bring both your reservation and your park ticket/pass with you. Additionally, your reservation must be presented at both the parking plaza and the front gate (either printed out or displayed from your phone). I’ve heard this process can back things up around park opening time, but I got there after opening and there was no line at the parking plaza (outside of 2-3 cars deep at any of the toll booths) and basically no line to go through security to enter the park.

Busch Gardens Parking Issues 

I arrived at noon and ran into one small hiccup right away. To give a little backstory, existing passholders for Busch Gardens were automatically upgraded by a pass tier level when the park reopened. I had a Silver level pass, which has now been upgraded to Gold for the rest of the year. One of the perks of the Gold level pass is free preferred parking in the old, original lot that’s right next to the park, across the street from the regular parking lot. The sign at the toll plaza stated preferred parking wasn’t available, but the booth worker gave me a preferred parking pass. So I headed to the preferred parking area…. to find no parking spaces available. And I wasn’t the only one who encountered this as several cars ahead of and behind me discovered this too. But since the park is operating at a lower capacity right now, the regular parking lot had plenty of spaces near the tram stop available. I hope Busch Gardens addresses this and keeps better track of how many preferred parking passes they give out so this doesn’t happen again.

A Return to Busch Gardens . . .

Once in the park, the crowds were very light. The state of Florida is allowing theme parks to operate at up to 50% capacity during this phase of reopening. Busch Gardens has a capacity of around 33,000. I don’t know what percentage capacity the park is operating at, but as you can see in the photos below, the park felt empty in many areas.

This however didn’t translate to low ride wait times. Due to social distancing and increased cleaning/sanitizing procedures, wait times looked to be about normal for a summer Friday afternoon. Here’s a breakdown of wait times I saw posted for the most popular rides:

• Cheetah Hunt: 50 minutes
• Cobra’s Curse: 65 minutes
• Montu: 50 minutes
• Tigris: 35 minutes (this is usually higher since it’s the current newest ride)
• Kumba: 25 minutes (not bad for a summer Friday actually)
• Falcon’s Fury: 10 minutes (shortest wait! And no, I did not ride it)

After each ride, staff would wipe down the trains, then send the empty train through a ride cycle to dry/sanitize before loading more guests, and then guests were seated in every other row (which is why wait times were so high despite the very low crowds). I also spotted an employee wiping down every horse on the carousel after each ride. Fantastic sanitation procedures, terrible loading capacity. 

Some rides were not operating, such as the Skyride, Ubanga Banga bumper cars (it needs more fog and zombies anyway), and Stanley Falls log flume. Congo River Rapids was operating (with a 50 minute wait), but the popular water canons (where guests can soak riders as they pass by, similar to the ones at Islands of Adventure at the Popeye raft ride and Dudley Do-Right log flume) were sadly closed. It was a bummer because that’s one of my favorite things to do at the park. But that was just one of many things currently closed: 

Most of the Sesame Street area was blocked off (the climbing areas, splash zone), with the exception of a few rides.

Most shows were also not operating, with the exception of the Sesame Street show and storytime, which had a few performances throughout the day.

You will find plenty of opportunities to clean your hands. In addition to lots of hand sanitizer stations around the park, they also have several handwashing stations.

Animal Exhibits

Most animal exhibits were open and the animals were out to welcome guests back. They’ve probably been wondering where all the people have been. It was great to see the lions, tigers, elephants, meerkats, giraffes, zebras, parrots… even the resident squirrels seemed happy guests were back as I had an encounter with a very friendly little one looking for a handout (they came right up to my shoes – sadly I didn’t have any snacks to share).

There were a few animal exhibits that were closed due to being high-contact areas. Notably, the Lorry Landing bird aviary (full of lorikeets you can feed and other free-flying birds) and the kangaroo habitat, Kangaloom.

Dining Options

Most of the major dining locations were open, with a few exceptions (Bengal Bistro, Garden Gate Cafe & Serengeti Overlook Restaurant are all temporarily not operating). Restaurants that were open had modifications to include more grab & go options along with a limited menu of their normal offerings. I grabbed a Bacon Pretzel Fury from Twisted Tails Pretzels (my favorite snack in the park and actually big enough to be its own meal). Also, if you had a refillable bottle with you that was previously purchased at the park, they were requiring you to use a paper cup to fill up your bottle (the bottle itself could not touch the drink dispensers).

Shopping

There where some new merchandise options to bring a little lightheartedness to the social distancing requirements.

As well as some new “welcome back” shirts.

Looks like Busch Gardens has jumped on the spirit jersey bandwagon as I spotted three different designs.

Iron Gwazi

Before you ask, no, it’s not open yet. Busch Gardens has not yet announced an opening date for its newest roller coaster. It had begun testing just days before the shutdown happened. So before Iron Gwazi can open to the public, they need to finish testing. It will Hopefully be ready later this summer. In the meantime, it’s sure looking pretty behind the walls!

Face Coverings & Physical Distancing

From what I saw, most guests were abiding by the face mask/covering requirement. However, I did spot some who had their mask below their nose or even below their mouth… and even a few without one on at all. If you’re eating/drinking, then that’s fine and the park’s safety guidelines allow that. While walking through the park, when I wanted to take a drink, I’d quickly pull my face covering down (I wore my neck gaiter, which is actually quite breathable, and more lightweight and more comfortable than a normal face mask and also doesn’t partially block my peripheral vision), and then put it back in place. I did see a security guard tell a couple he passed to pull their masks back up, but just kept walking and didn’t even wait to see if they did it or not (the lady did, but the guy didn’t). That… needs some work. If Busch Gardens is going to have a mask requirement, they need to enforce it better. That said, it is private property so guests must comply with the rules and regulations, even if mask-wearing has lightened or diminished elsewhere.

They do have “relaxation areas” set up around the park where you can take off your mask for a break. And of course, you don’t have to wear a mask while dining either.

I also had a couple encounters where groups were not practicing safe physical distancing, coming up right behind me as I was walking or waiting in line. I actually had to ask a couple people to please back up a bit and stand where the ground was marked. But outside of those two incidents, most seemed to follow physical distancing pretty well since the crowds were light.

Overall, it was a nice day at Busch Gardens. It felt really good to be back after an almost 3-month closure. I was only there for a little over 3 hours. It was hot and humid, but I never felt overly uncomfortable with my face covering on. I took breaks when I could and stayed hydrated. There’s a little work to be done regarding enforcing the new rules, but Busch Gardens is doing alright so far. I’m sure they’ll continue to work on procedures and ride load times will improve as the reopening goes on.