Tampa, USA

After a mildly disappointing Miami, there was no doubt an injection of roller coasters would heighten the USA experience. The bad timing by me when taking this whole trip meant that the theme parks in Florida were pretty much the only major ones open in the USA at this time of year (You have no idea the how hard its been driving past so many 6 Flag theme parks and seeing that they’re all closed – glub!). So the plan was to drive up to Tampa for Busche Gardens then across to Orlando for the evening for further theme parkage.

After our monster 800 mile, 18 hour drive down to Miami, the drive up to Tampa would be a veritable slide down the Dutchman’s pole. However it just took forever and we didn’t get to the theme park until 2pm. It was at this point I was close to a child, sulking at the pure frustration at the thought of not being able to go on all the rides.

But we gambled that 4 hours should be enough to cover it all. And thank Bellamy it was! Me and Terry were pretty much running around from ride to ride, making up for lost ground. Suffice to say all the coasters (and there were bloody loads of them) were all fantastic especially the hang-you-over-a-vertical-drop-before-dropping-you-into-loads-of-loop-the-loops one and surprisingly the old fashioned wooden one. Probably because it felt like you were about to come off at anytime so you laugh like a madman on acid (not that I know what that’s like or anything).

A great theme park and filled with a surprisingly large amount of people going around on electric buggies provided by the park. Not that they were disabled (disabled people have the common sense to bring their own transport), no these people were simply too fat to walk so they buzzed around the park with they’re spewing mounds of excess flesh resting in the basket. Delicious eh? Why they paid 60 dollars to go around looking at rides that they would have no hope in hell of riding is beyond me. I guess they were there to see the pink flamingoes. Beautiful, but not worth 60 bucks.

Off next to my 4th visit to Orlando.