February 28, 2025 Tampa

After a short refreshing sleep, we went to the hotel’s complimentary buffet breakfast in the large breakfast room, which included oatmeal, yogurt, pre-made omelettes, turkey or pork sausage patties, bagels, muffins, bananas, oranges, bread to toast, juices and coffee. There was a group of young teenagers and chaperons, about 30, wearing bright green T-shirts that read “Army Base K-8 Center Safety Patrols”. They spent their day at Busch Gardens as we did.

The Tampa airport temperature at 9 a.m. was 66°F (18.8°C). It was a sunny day with a little bit of a breeze. The day’s high temperature reached 76°F (24.4°C).

After enquiring about ordering a taxi for tomorrow, to the cruise terminal, we were informed that taxis do not service the area. It is an Uber/Lyft area or a limousine could be ordered to take us to the cruise terminal for US$60. Downloading and accessing the Uber app was an exercise in frustration. There was an error message but no information on the error. After half an hour of trying to figure out the Uber’s app, Larry gave up. The Lyft app proved less frustrating. Registering and booking tomorrow’s ride took less than five minutes.

The hotel was less than a 30 minute walk from Busch Gardens, straight along East Busch Blvd. The parking lot, just before 11 a.m., was about half full, but when we left five hours later it had reached capacity and the overflow across the road was half full, even though many of the earlier cars had left the main parking lot. There were thousands of people in the 335 acre (136 hectacre) park.

Busch Gardens is part African themed zoo, part entertainment venue and part amusement park with rides like roller coasters plus many food kiosks, restaurants, souvenir shops and plentiful bathrooms. It reminded me just a little of Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen, but Tivoli Gardens doesn’t have a zoo or as many rides. We had bought our tickets months ago which included an “All Day Dining” voucher. You could go to one of the sponsoring restaurants every 90 minutes, if you were very hungry, and receive an entrée, soft drink & dessert during the day from opening at 10 a.m. to closing at 8 p.m.

It took five minutes to cross the parking lot to the entrance, where many people were streaming in. First thing we did after entering the park was to go to Guest Services to get our “All Day Dining” wristband and then find a map. Our first stop was Myombe Reserve where we saw several alligators basking in the sun, further along there was a Chimpanzee enclosure and one of the chimps was entertaining a toddler on the other side of the glass wall. Following that, we passed the gorilla enclosure followed by the penguin enclosure. Once back on the main perimeter we heard the train whistle and got in line for the Serengeti Express narrow gauge train, fuelled by liquid gas, that circles the African “plain” section slowly on a 15 to 20 minutes circuit. There are crossing signals and arms that block the pedestrian paths when the train approaches. While waiting for the next train, we watched the bright yellow Montu roller coaster doing empty warm up circuits. It is the largest of the roller coasters on sited it includes seven inversions, twisting drops and several loops. There are more than half a dozen different roller coaster rides in various areas of the park.

The train passed about 50 hectacres of gently hilly area with grass, trees and small ponds. We saw Impalas, Giraffes, Zebras, Antelopes, Rhinoceroses, Sable Antelopes, an Ostrich, White Rhinoceroses and Nyalas, a small striped deer.

We next walked over to the Moroccan Palace Theatre to see “Rhythm of Nature, A Magical Journey on Ice”. It was a 30 minute high energy skating show with a dozen performers, who could easily be part of any Cirque du Soliel ice skating troupe. It includes aerial lifts by several skaters being raised 5 or 6 meters above the ice. The show is on Youtube at https://www.orlandoparksnews.com/2024/05/video-new-rhythm-of-nature-ice-show.html

After the show we wandered over to the Serengeti Outlook, a three storey building where at the top you can see part of the Serengeti section of the park. From the “All Day Dining” menu we ordered Caesar salads, a Coca-Cola soda and shared garlic bread knots and chocolate chip cheesecake at the Oasis Pizza restaurant.

We continued exploring over at Morocco, then the Bird Green stopping at Walkabout Way to see the Kangaroos and wallabies Continuing our wander we found a pond surrounded by dozens of orange flamingoes, making quite a racket, even less appealing than a Canada goose honk. Flamingoes get their colour from their diet of carotenoid pigments in Algae and some of the crustaceans that they eat.

Next we were near the Festival Walkway area where a Mardi Gras theme was featuring alcoholic cocktails for US$15 and a variety of Mardi Gras favourite foods. There was a lovely garden featuring a topiary butterfly with yellow and purple flowers and a greenish silver border plant. We waited for the Mardi Gras Parade with stilt walkers and cyclists in flashy costumes. While waiting for the parade we saw a keeper carrying a large grey Palm Cockatoo.

There was just the Jungala, Kunba and Pantopia rides area left to explore. There were people enjoying the various rides and restaurants. At Jungala there was a tiger enclosure and an orangutan enclosure, but the animals there taking an afternoon nap. However, the tortoises were out in their enclosure and the elephants were out in their enclosure. We stopped for an early dinner at Chick-Fil-A. From their “All Day Dining” menu we ordered a spicy chicken sandwich, chicken nuggets, a drink each and a soft serve ice cream cone. It was almost five hours since we had arrived and our feet were a little tired from walking almost 15,000 steps so far.

We walked back to the hotel. When we got to our room we turned on the air conditioner to cool off and put our feet up. Later we had a snack of potato chips and chocolate chip cookies before bed.

Total steps 19,128