East Coast Trip Day 10: Busch Gardens Williamsburg

Another early day today. The alarm went off at 5:30am so we could get ready and drive three hours to Busch Gardens Williamsburg.

This is post our Starbucks stop. :)

 Virginia has a tourism slogan, "Virginia is for Lovers." I saw this sign as we passed one of the rest areas along I-64.

We arrived at Busch Gardens around 10:45am. Kerrie's family met us in the parking lot, then we boarded the tram and headed to the park. We printed our tickets last night so we were able to go right to the gates.

There's too many of us to all look at the camera at the same time it seems. ;)

Welcome to...

...The prettiest theme park in America. Or, something like that. I don't remember exactly what the signs around the park said.

The park is divided into different countries: England, Scotland, Ireland, France, New France, Germany and Italy.

You enter the park in England!

We headed to Scotland right away to ride The Loch Ness Monster. Kerrie and I loved this roller coaster as kids. As we made our way there, we spotted Clydesdales and I had to get a picture for Alora.

"Rollercoaster Selfie," as we waited in line to ride The Loch Ness Monster, our first ride of the day.

Hello Griffon and Alpengeist. We'll be meeting you shortly! Take a look at the video of Griffon below.

"We're going on that?" The Mach Tower took us 240 feet in the air and let us plunge to our death the bottom.

The ring with white around the top and red (the seats) on it, rises to the top and drops the riders to the ground. Good times, good times.

Next up, Alpengeist. You guys aren't really dressed for skiing...

Adam, Kylin, Tom and Kerrie brave the cold!

Griffon line groupie. I've decided if there is more than one person in the picture, it should be a groupie. Those are Alora's hands helping Andrew smile so nicely.

The Griffon seats 30 riders above the track. It suspends riders over the edge of the first, highest and steepest drop. Just enough time to think about how stupid it was to get on the ride in the first place. Just kidding! Kerrie and I were able to ride in the front row = Thrill Ride Perfection! That's what you saw in the video above.

At one point, we took it down a notch and snapped a picture with some childhood friends. Bert really liked Andrew's JMU shirt. :)

This was the first time we used the amusement park railroad and skyrides to get from place to place. It was a brilliant plan and saved our feet from a lot of extraneous walking.

We loved the name of the train we rode. :) Kerrie and Todd lived 30 minutes from Aberdeen, Scotland while Tom grew up in Aberdeen, WA. Tom and I also loved seeing the engineers driving the trains and thought it would be a great retirement job for his dad who was an Amtrak Engineer.

The train ride gave us some time...and a Mama-razzi with time on her hands is bound to...

We're going on a train ride!

Yup, take pictures!

Serious.

Funny faces.

Our prettiest faces.

Who let her on? ;)

After lunch, we let the four younger kids go off on their own. Avery wanted to stay with the adults.

Rhine River Cruise

The Rhine River had a bunch of turtles and Asian Carp swimming around.

At 6:00pm, we went to the Celtic Fyre show. It was FANTASTIC! It had been drizzling on and off all day. When we exited the theater, it was full on raining. We went on one more ride with the Barneys then they were ready to head to Todd's brothers' house for the night. We stayed at the park a little longer.

Playing in the rain? You bet! We're from Washington!

We decided to ride Verbolten one more time. It was raining pretty hard at this point and we got S.O.A.K.E.D. to say the least. The rain drops felt like we were getting hit in the face with pebbles during the outside portions of the ride. That was our last ride.

Making our way to the exit, Alora had one last request. If you look closely, you will see the puddles in The Land of Dragons. Alora loved that the eggs were empty and eagerly jumped in for a picture.

It was a long, wet ride back to Massanutten, but we made it back around 11:30pm. I think today is one that girls will remember for a very, very long time.