Roller coaster fun in Tampa

As the six of you who still read my too-occasional postings here may already know, I'm speaking on a Geek Cruise this week, on a ship sailing through the western Caribbean. When I found out that I would be doing this, my wife and I decided to try to turn it into a bit of a working vacation. We arranged to have our children spend the week with family, which let us book our first trip together sans kids in 3.5 years.

Marian and I are both roller coaster fans, and living in the Pacific northwest, we're frustrated roller coaster fans. There aren't any full-size amusement parks in Oregon, and precious few anywhere in the northwest. The closest "real" roller coaster park, at least by my definition, lies 600 miles south in San Jose, California. As such, it had been over six years since she and I had been able to go ride coasters together. But this Geek Cruise, which leaves out of Tampa, Florida, gave us the chance. Tampa is the home of Busch Gardens, Tampa, and they have six separate coasters.

So when we booked our tickets, we left a day earlier than necessary, using a vacation day yesterday to go ride the coasters at Busch Gardens. It wasn't a cheap day, given that we had to take a cab to and from the park, but since it will probably be another five years before this chance comes up again, that's OK. Overall, it was a fun day at the park, though we both felt that only three of the six coasters were worth repeat ride activity.

On the "once was more than enough" list, we have Scorpion, Python, and Gawazi. Scorpion and Python are older steel coasters, and both very short (maybe a 60 second ride, including the initial climb). Python is the oldest coaster in the park, and it does nothing more than climb a small hill, drop and turn, and run through two barrel rolls. Scorpion is more interesting, with a loop and some seriously banked high-speed corners, but it's still very short.

The fact that Gawazi is on our "bad" list is a bit of surprise. It's a new wooden roller coaster, and it looks the beast from the ground. However, the actual ride was (again) too short, and the initial drop wasn't anywhere near memorable. Thankfully, there were basically no lines yesterday--if we had waited in long lines for any of these, we would have been greatly disappointed.

Our three favorite coasters were Kumba, Montu, and SheiKra. All three are steel coasters, with Montu being of the hanging (track overhead) variety, Kumba being the traditional "cars on track" variety, and SheiKra being well, different (more on that in a bit).

Kumba was my third place finisher, though it was only narrowly behind Montu. Kumba features loops, rolls, and track twists, many of which come up by surprise. It was also of a decent length, unlike those on our "bad" list.

Montu was a blast to ride, which is odd as I usually don't enjoy hanging coasters all that much. But we made the decision to wait in our longest line of the day (a whole 15 minutes!) to get a seat in the frontmost car--if I'm going to ride a hanging coaster, I feel that that front row is (by far) the best seat in the house. Out front, there's absolutely nothing in front of you--no track, no people, just air. It really does add to the sensation of flying, especially when you're inverted. In the other rows of flying coasters, it seems that all you see are the backs and legs of the people seated in front of you.

Montu had a unique track design, featuring an impressive first drop, and tons of loops and rolls that you just never saw coming. It also had two or three spots where it descended into holes that had been dug into the ground. There was just something really interesting about zooming down below ground level at high speed. And because the track is above you, and there's nothing in front of you on the first car of a hanging coaster, it was really difficult to tell exactly what was coming next. More than once we were surprised by loops, barrel rolls, or other such track twists.

So that leaves one coaster, SheiKra, as my personal favorite. Amazingly, I picked this one even though the ride is quite short--two main drops, a loop, and one big turn and you're pretty much done. But my-oh-my those drops! I'll provide some pictures first, then a more detailed description. (Click on any image below for an 800x600 version.)

The first unique thing about SheiKra is the size--it looks like someone took a set of steel coaster plans and blew them up 150% before building the thing. The track is very wide--well over six feet wide, as you can see in some of the images. And you're not sitting in car, but rather on a platform with three rows of eight seats. Like a good theater, the seats are set up "stadium style," so that row two is higher than row one, and row three higher than that. This means that, regardless of your row, you're going to have a good view. And what a view...

SheiKra's high point is 200 feet up, and you climb a very steep gradient to get there. After a mostly-flat U-turn, you approach the first drop (the leftmost image above), which has a section that's truly vertical. What the image doesn't show, however, is what happens before the drop: the platform stops. And it stops right where I've snapped it in the first picture, pointing straight down the drop. After a few seconds, the brakes are released and you plummet straight down. (So even though all three rows have a great view, the front row is the place to be--absolutely nothing in front of you, pointing straight down from 200' above the ground, and just hanging there!).

After that first drop (what a rush!), there are some twists and turns (and maybe even a loop), and then you're dropped down again, nearly straight down (the second and third pictures above) into a hole, you pop out the other side, make a big sweeping turn, and then splash down through a pool of water (the rightmost image above). The water spray isn't for the riders--you don't get wet at all. But the splash does soak any guest who happens to be standing too close to the pool's edges. And you don't just get a bit damp; you can get soaked. Snapping that last image required a bit of a sprint after the shutter clicked so that I'd clear the splash zone!

Overall, we had a great day at Busch Gardens, and would highly recommend Kumba, Montu, and especially SheiKra to any fellow coaster enthusiasts out there. They were a blast to ride, with SheiKra taking home the "favorite" title due to its unique design and jaw-dropping vertical descent. And now after a day of high-speed thrills, I'm off to board a massive vessel that will spend the next seven days puttering about at something around 20mph!