Busch Gardens Again!

 Busch Gardens! It seems like I was just here. Last time I got a ticket that was good thru the whole summer, so of course on my trip to Virginia, I'd try to go for a day, since I wouldn't have to pay for another ticket. And if I'm going, let's get some pictures!

Always good to get a simple cover picture with a logo on it. Can you tell this is the Busch Gardens logo? I'm not sure, either. Is there a "B" and "G" hidden in it? Is it supposed to be a tree for the garden? Loops of a roller coaster? Well, this is the logo, whatever it's supposed to be.

It was the end of August, but already they were putting up the Halloween decorations. So it's a little tiny bit of weird rude-ness as we are trying to enjoy the Summer and they are shoving Halloween at us. Turns out it was not too much, we saw this at the entrance and expected it to be worse.

There were friends here who did need tickets, and rather than wait in the line at guest services, we went over to the auto-kiosks. That was not being very "user-friendly" but eventually we had some emails that we were pretty-sure-would-be-okay, and that got us all in the park. Whew!

Here's a nice waterfall at the entrance of the park near the kiosks. So if you park in the regular parking lot, you'll get this nice view on the walk in.

Giant flower! Can you tell I was wasting time while they tried to figure out the ticket thing? Even before you get into the gate, Busch Gardens is earning it's reputation as "most beautiful theme park".

Heat Alert! This sounds like the type of "hot coffee is HOT" ad that they were lawyer'd into displaying. Of course it's hot! You've been properly legally warned. Kidding aside, and pun intended, it's "cool" that they offer some tips, even if it does sound like common sense.

Another sign that sounds like it was crafted by lawyers. BIER FEST is not the same as Beer Fest? Because they spelled Beer as Bier. Sounds like it's still all about BEER, but now I'm not sure.

RIDE! Our first stop of the day was Finnegan's Flyer. We had not yet been on this one, but it was here the last few times we visited the park. It's basically a giant swing except it swings you over the bridge near Ireland, which is already very high up.

Just when I was commenting on the building the line queue goes through, and how it cleverly hides the view of the ride, it screams over top of the whole thing! You can see the ride from the bridge though, so it's really hard to avoid any "spoilers" anyway. It's a giant swing!

Yeah, your seat is wet because they spray them to keep them cool, not because the person who was in it just pee'd themselves! But... they might have! I gotta say, another home-run ride for Busch Gardens. When you look at it, it seems like "just a giant swing" but it was shockingly intense. Make sure you get a seat on the side facing the queue building, so when you are up in the air, you will look down into the river. It's a long way down into that river! So much fun!

Grogan's Grill was, once again, not serving it's typical meals. My friend has fond memories of the giant baked potato stuffed with Irish stew, but today it was good 'ole American hot dogs. The sign claimed an insanely low price of $1 each!

We were in the mood to run through a gift shop or two, the last time we went, we didn't properly scout out the gift shops and wound up not getting much. Is that a good thing? Hey, it's cool to get some souvenirs.

On the way in, I snapped a pic of the flowers in front of the door. How many people pass by these flowers without properly appreciating them?

This particular shop has a bunch of magical-themed goodies. There are shops in the malls back home that sell this kind of faerie and dragon statues, but they are still neat to see in the middle of the theme park.

Those wooden skeleton puppets up there were creepy enough to get a picture of. Here come Halloween, soon enough.

There were a few magic wands. You think you'd pick one, but actually the wand picks you. Oh wait, no... that's Harry Potter. Here you'd have to pick the wand yourself.

My friend had a conversation a few days ago about how he likes cool rocks, along with all the other cool things he likes, and maybe he just likes collecting "cool-anythings" even if it's simply rocks. And then... we see these cool rocks in the gift shop!

There was a bunch of these types of resin figures, I was about to gather them all together for a picture, but we were running through the shop so there wasn't time for that. I guess you can look them up on the Internet if you want to see more of them.

The connected shop used to be nothing but stuffed animals, but over the years it's changed to have other things in it, too. But it also has plushies like these cute narwhals.

Check out this Red Panda. According to its shirt, its got a Season Pass, so it can get in every day for free!

There's a section of the park that is Sesame Street, but you can find the merchandise all around. Like these cute head bands. Yeah, it looks like "mean eyes" but it's still cute.

I wonder if there is a better way to display the plushie snakes, so they don't look quite so... dead? I'm sure they are fine, but at the very least they look like they are not comfortable hanging like that.

Hawk! The sign next to it says this is Dianne, and she's been here for over 10 years. Hawks are known as "wolves of the air" because they hunt in packs. Does this make her a "lone wolf"?

Lorikeet Glen was a highlight for a few of us. That might sound like a made-up fantasy world, but that's just the types of birds in the place.

Nectar is also a fancy word. Nobody wants to feed the birds juice. It's much cooler to call it nectar.

There was a fill-a-bag thing with rocks in this gift shop. I stopped in for a picture while everybody else was getting the nectar cups. More with the cool rocks haha.

Birds may land on you! You do realize you are going into a big net area filled with tons of birds, right? Birds like shiny things, so protect your stuff! Hold on to your Minty's!

There are some ground-birds in here. We were warned that they wander into the paths so please don't step on them!

I'm not too keen on the bird names, but here's a Big Red Hat bird. Can we make up names if we don't know them?

Kissies! That bird in the back just likes to watch. We spent a lot of time in here taking picture of us feeding the birds. My friend got a few good pictures with the bird on his shoulder like he was a pirate. Yaaaarrrrrr!