We drove out towards Tampa to Busch Gardens, which was about 90 minutes away making it the furthest we’ve traveled to date.
Journey pretty good, you just have to continually watch the three lanes of I4 (interstate 4) carefully, as they under and over take. We saw one guy undertake two lorries skip into the fast lane to then overtake a car, undertake another car and finally return to the fast lane. All this high speed action made motorways like M25 seem very orderly. The lorries are all huge and are not allowed in the “fast lane” but they under and over take as they please too…..

Matty loved Busch Gardens as there were lots of big fast coasters. Luke wasn’t so keen and quickly became Matty’s official ride photographer taking some great little pics and some thrilling action shots. Due to the distance from our digs we decided to go for a dining deal at Busch Gardens. The Dining deal entitled us all to “All you can eat food and drink all day”. Matty hated this as you can imagine! You couldn’t eat just anywhere but could go and get a meal, drink and either a side or dessert at anytime. Mains included rack ribs, pull pork sandwich, pizza, hot dog, KFC strips or club sandwiches just to name a few. Matty was in a spin, he wanted all of it. If this had been a cartoon his eyes would have been on stalks to the sound of one of those old fashioned car horns!!

We rode one ride Cheetah Chase, after quite a long wait and then headed for lunch. After lunch we queued for the Congo rapids thinking this would be a good thing to do while our lunch went down. Whilst in the queue line down came the rain and due to “thunderstorms in the area”, the entire park closed down. We sat and sat and sat, for two and a half hours. Loads of people abandoned ship after only an hour and a half but this only proved that Brits are more patient and have more resolve than all the Mexicans queuing around us. Even when they pumped the water out of the ride we still stood in the line, tough upper lip and manned our spot patiently. At 5.30pm we gave up and went to get some more food. Whilst we were eating the park reopened and we managed many more rides, as it was largely empty due to many coaches and lots of cars having already left. We headed back to the rapids keen not to have waited so long and not actually ridden it. Given the late hour and the fact the sun wasn’t very hot by now we opted for ponchos, not wanting to sit in wet things in the car. Cocky Matty refused a poncho and put his feet up on the central bars and folded his arms defying the waves to get him wet. Poor Luke got wet feet and Liz and I ended up with wet shirts and socks. When the ride ended Matty crowed for the next 30 minutes because he’d had no poncho and stayed dry, until he annoyed all of us and we told him to pack it in. Matty and I then rode a massive corkscrew type ride twice in 15 mins and then onto another fast ride. Luke took some great pics. This helped dry me off as the ride acted like a massive spin dryer with the G-force pushing the water out of my clothes and the wind blasting through helping to carry off the moisture.

The drive home wasn’t too bad, on the way back we paused at wallmart to pick up some rolls for lunch the next day. You’d have thought it was 10 am on Saturday morning, the place was packed and the checkouts were on full capacity. This stunned us because it was 10:20pm !! We eventually rolled into bed at 11pm having agreed we’d be up by 7:15am for another day of jam packed fun.