A very Hot, Happy Birthday to you!

East Coast Driving Trip 2015 - Day 11

Yes, Today was a birthday for us. Our sweet lady turned a year older today.
She was prepared with a birthday pin from a cruise several years ago. And actually got a few "Happy Birthday!" from strangers... not many, but more than she thought she would.

Anyway. We spent this momentous day at Busch Gardens Williamsburg.

Busch Gardens Williamsburg is celebrating 40 years... Aww, me to ;)

They claim to be the most beautiful park.. and they are very green and lush. Which translated into a nice amount of shade, for which I was thankful.
Today was 93 here in beautiful Williamsburg, but with humidity etc... it felt like 103. That comes straight from my weather app.. and I agree.. 103 = too hot.

The park is themed after European Countries... Obviously this section is the UK

Horse :)

Bridge towards the Ireland area 

Our official pic... ain't we cute :)

But the heat didn't stop us (ok, it slowed some of us down a bit, but didn't stop us).  Hubby got on all the big coasters at least once today and the kids and I all rode rides as well. More along the classic amusement park rides for the kids today. This park didn't really have any small or medium coasters... all big, BIG coasters.

Cooling off on the Rapids raid with Dad

Le Catapult... or as we Americans call it... the Scrambler

Bumper cars are always a hit.. get it ;)

That's hubby waving... how is it that I can get this pic... but not the Welcome to sign pictures?

Hubby and the birthday girl... on the rapids... again. 

Woohoo, look at those big rides.  

enjoying the train around the park

Crowds were wonderfully light, with short lines - I think we waited the longest for the train... and it was about 12 minutes [Editor's note: The train wasn't really a line, just a wait. The longest "line" we waited in was probably for the SkyRide.]

See... crowds were fairly light. 

Apparently this is hubby's ride photo look... our boy wasn't so sure about the drop. 

We treated ourselves to a Cabana at the park, which was lovely - I will put a review of the cabana at the end.

Neat view of Loch Ness Monster coaster.

We left the park a little after 6:00 to come back and make dinner in the room. After dinner we ran down to the recreation center here at the resort and spent a bit of time bowling.

Happy birthday to our girl, it was a great day!!




Cabana Review - Busch Gardens Williamsburg.

Walking up to cabana area.
Ours was the one directly ahead. 

A extra like this usually seems like a splurge - at $150 for the day, you have to wonder what price to put on a small bit of space to have all to yourself.
Well for us it was well worth it, and here is why.
The obvious things you get... use of a cabana (ie shade!), inside you find a nice teak table and four teak arm chairs. There were two smaller tables (which we didn't use) and a lockable cabinet. Inside the cabinet a shelf and a mini fridge. We got to select 8 bottled drinks to go in the fridge... we picked 6 waters and 2 sprites.
The cabana was made of a brown canvas tenting type material and had two covered sides and two open sides. OH! and the cabana has a fan... A FAN!!!  (sorry, it was HOT today)
So, you are thinking, "Really? for $150... 8 drinks and some shade... but wait, there's more!

In the cabana, cooling off... yes they are sitting in front of the fan :)

Four Lorikeet feedings were included. So food to feed the birds 4 times - are you still not convinced?

And a PhotoKey for the day...This gives you the opportunity to have all the pics taken of you for the day... by park photographers and ride photos. This value is about $50.

And lastly you get QuickQueue for the whole party... which is front of the passes for 4 people. Good on all the big rides - It would have cost us $100 to buy this... its $25 per person. [Editor's note: we probably wouldn't have bought those for the day, since the crowds were light, but it was a nice bonus to have and saved us a bit of time.]

They have 4 cabanas total. They are located off a small path that has a small barrier to indicate its not a public area. Each cabana has a sign noting if its occupied and a small chain across the front open side.

So all in all it wasn't as big of a splurge as I thought it would be... if you are planning to get the QuickQueue and the PhotoKey.... it's like the Cabana is free ;) (see how I think)

Stats:

Miles today: 30

Miles total: 1093

States Total: 7

[Roller coasters total: 17 (+6 from Busch Gardens)]