Busch Gardens

Our next day was the day that a lot of us had been extremely excited for and had been awaiting it with eager anticipation. We spent the entire day at the amazingly fun Busch Gardens!! I didn't know a lot about this amusement park before our adventures there, but it may be my new favorite theme park, well, besides Disneyland, obviously.

The park is divided up into different European countries and everything from the architecture to the music to the food changes from country to country. We couldn't have hit the park at a better time of year since it was all decked out for Halloween. Busch Gardens does Halloween decor RIGHT. Every country had a different spooky theme, like Italy's decorations were centered around pirates, and France was invaded by Vampires. It was so much fun and the perfect way to get in the Halloween spirit.

I didn't feel it was safe to bring my SLR to the park with me, so all of these photos are from my phone, thus are not of the highest quality.  I was trying to walk, not get separated from the group and take pictures of every single decoration all at the same time. So.. they are what they are...

I made the boys ride the pirate boat ride with me, like the one at Lagoon. They weren't super excited about it, but they could tell I really wanted to ride it. However, by the end, they all had big smiles on their faces.

Busch Gardens has some pretty intense and HUGE roller coasters, Ben was the most excited about these. Tempesto was one of the first ones he wanted to ride. He loved it!

Then we headed over to Germany where older boys, Ricky and I took a tour through the cursed DarKastle while Karin took the littles to a fun playground close by. While we were in line, we were gearing ourselves up for a super spooky haunted castle tour. I thought it was pretty intense, it involved 3D videos of us being chased by the cursed prince of DarKastle.

We stopped to have a bavarian lunch of big, thick, warm pretzels and root beer.

We took a ride on the train just for Jamesies who loves choo choos. Look at that big smile on his adorable face.

The Alpengeist in Switzerland was one of everyones favorite rides, we rode it a few times.

Then we all met up and took a boat ride all together. It was nice to have a relaxing cruise in the middle of the day and it turned out to have some gorgeous views and reflections of the first few fall leaves of the season.

The Griffon is known to be one of the most intense rides in the park. We had been building up the courage for this ride all day. Andrew couldn't wait to get on it, that kid has no fear! Ben was pretty excited to check it out as well. Karin turned out to be more of a roller coaster fan then I thought she was which was a fun discovery for me! I knew I would be sad if I didn't go but, admittedly I was kind of nervous... It turned out to be super fun! We really wanted to ride it again but it had the longest line in the park so we were glad we got to ride it at least once!

By now it was starting to get late in the afternoon which means the creepy crawlers were about to come out and scare the guests in the park. Karin and Ricky took the littles and the tired boys home while I stayed in the park with Ben and John. I was super excited to see what the park looked like all lit up at night. While we were making our way to the exit of the park for the little kids, we passed by a crepe stand that was serving pumpkin and apple pie crepes and we just could not resist stopping to get some. They were so delicious! I love fall treats!

The park is AMAZING at night! Each country had different creepy crawlers that would come out of the shadows and spook people as they walked passed. We encountered vampires, pirates, army officers, zombies with chainsaws, and even victorian ladies without heads. We were jumping and screaming all over the place, which I thought was fun and made me laugh. John and Ben on the other hand... well they kind of hated it. But they did love riding the rides at night and seeing all the fun decorations lit up. We stayed closed together and traveled as a pack from country to country, riding all the big coasters.

Whew, what a fun packed day! Busch Gardens made all of my Halloween dreams come true all while riding some of the most fun roller coasters I have ever been on. I loved sharing this experience with my nephews and sister!