Key West & Busch Gardens, Tampa (Roller Coasters!)

Our next destination, Key West, was our "relax" location. Every once in a while, even while on vacation, you need a break from traveling, planning, rushing. So here we just had a few days of doing very little except sit by the pool, have drinks, stroll on Duval St, eat and watch our shows. We had one day where I booked a snorkel tour on a catamaran in the morning from 9.30 - 12.30. But that counts as relaxing in my book too!

Below is a video of the unique drive all the way down to Key West.

We saw a large cruise ship had docked for the night.

Dinner at Caroline's, with a "Tropical Storm" for me (it was strong!).

Fish sandwich.

Prawn sandwich for Simone.

Key Lime Pie of course!

Strolling around, checking out the nice old houses. This one had Halloween deco already up.

The cats at the Hemingway home. A lot of them have six toes....

Back home, this wouldn't fly....broken tree right in the power lines....ugh.

Trip to the reef with Fury on one of their catamarans. Photos not mine!

On the boat on the way back from the reef from snorkeling. Just in time before it got a bit cloudy.
At the beginning of the trip the captain told us that it was gonna be a "bit choppy" - it wasn't. I've seen choppy when going out on a boat back home....this was flat.

Grabbing a cheeseburger at The Cheeseburger Place.

And Simone got a tattoo :)

Only henna though :))

On our 7.5 hour drive to Tampa we passed through a little bit of rain...it doesn't really come through in the video, but it was a downpour!

Today we spent the day at Busch Gardens Tampa Bay. It's a mixture of animal park and roller coaster park - we were mainly interested in the roller coasters :) According to my research beforehand, this is the number 3 roller coaster park in the world behind Six Flags Magic Mountain and Cedar Point, Ohio (source). It contains 4 "good" coasters, 4 "elite" coasters, with its flagship coaster being Sheikra.

We left without any bags so as to save time not having to put bags into lockers at every ride. It also turned out that being off-season, there was no need to buy the "quick queue" passes because there was virtually no waiting required at any ride. Which was very cool.

I haven't taken many pictures, but I took some video and also linked to ride videos for every ride we went on. Now, I present the rides! I have linked the names to their info pages so you can check out some stats on these.

Cheetah Hunt

 

Montu

 

 Gwazi

This is the wooden coaster! Man this was a shaky ride...but for a wooden ride the twists and turns were really cool.

 

Kumba

 

Sheikra

This was my favourite ride. A huge 90 degree vertical drop, and a second almost 90 degree drop. The twist: on the first drop the suspend the vehicle so the first row stares down the drop for a few seconds! Then it just falls down!!! Second video is by me and shows the two drops from a bystander point of view.

On the first go we were at the back, but afterwards we immediately went again and went into the front row. Altogether we did this ride three times :) Cheetah Hunt twice, that was Simone's favourite. The second time we did Cheetah Hunt in the front row as well, it was wicked.

Simone had her first funnel cake. She approves.

 We had a great time at Busch Gardens and would recommend this to anyone looking for some thrills and animals. The park is open from 10am to 6pm and you can easily fit all rides and a few other attractions into one day, as long as it's not in peak season. Then you'd have to buy the quick queue passes that allow you to skip the main queues to each ride. The park is well laid out and you can get around on foot fairly quickly. You can also take a train ride around the park, there are three stops and a full loop takes about 40 mins.

There are plenty of food and drink places, and prices are higher but not outrageous. Parking is $14 a day for cars.

If you visit Sea World in Orlando, you can actually get a two park deal that includes transport to Tampa, because Busch Gardens is owned by the same company that runs Sea World. Well worth a trip if you enjoy coasters.