Florida, USA: Striking gold on Treasure Island and Busch Gardens

Beached on Treasure Island

If you are looking for some relaxing beach time on Florida’s gulf coast you could do worse than Treasure Island. We certainly hadn’t heard of it before and simply came across it in our quest for a place to stay outside Tampa after leaving the Everglades, and before visiting Busch Gardens. We came away enchanted, vowing to return. It is a characterful town with one foot still in the 60’s with a Beach Boys soundtrack, and blessed with one of widest as well as longest beaches we’ve seen anywhere.

Speaking to the locals, early May when we were there is something of a shoulder season for Treasure Island. It gets busy from fall onwards with overwinterers who come down from the chillier northern states to get warm. They tend to head back up in May before a more traditional holidaying crowd picks up the reins mid to late May.

Rafe and Odessa enjoyed the time here doing kids stuff on the beach as pods of dolphins leapt their way lazily south down the coast. It’s that sort of place. Naturally though there was time for some playground action at the park next to the library and tennis courts – which mercifully was equipped with the crucial monkey bars.

Riding everything at Busch Gardens

For the unitiated, Busch Gardens in Tampa is roller coaster central. It certainly has animals in its zoo / safari park, but it’s really all about the rides. It used to be owned and run by Anheuser-Busch, brewers of Budweiser and other cooking lagers. They sold it in 2009. But that’s not important, it is about the rides and here it excels.

Dessa wasn’t keen on some of the bigger and faster coasters but that was ok as there are plenty of rides designed for the younger audience – it was a job prising her off the Sand Serpent, or deterring her from another go on the log flume. Rafe on the other hand (in typical completer-finisher fashion for him) wanted to ride everything, preferably more than once. And with several quieter local schooldays at the park available to us, that is exactly what he did. That includes the Iron Gwazi (apparently the tallest and steepest hybrid coaster in North America, whatever that means), the Tigris and Cheetah Hunt ‘launch’ coasters, the 200ft 90 degree dropping SheiKra and several inverted rides. Often he would bound off a ride exclaiming ‘again again!’ and run back round for another go. Overall we all had a great time, with Busch Gardens providing the thrill rides before we then went across to Orlando and Disney for a different kind of excitement.

How we did it

Treasure Island was a simple case of finding a good value AirBnB for a few days, settling in and relaxing. As for Busch Gardens, in the end we chose a package through Busch Gardens itself which included tickets, parking and a hotel (very average, but also a stones-throw from the park) bundled in. This saved us a bit compared to separate purchases, but the main thing was that the park tickets we got in the bundle were valid for 14 consecutive days from the first night at the hotel. So although we were only at the hotel for a couple of nights and only paid the price for a couple of days tickets, we were able to visit the theme park on the day of check in, the day of check out and had the option to visit days after too. So in short, we spent a lot of time at Busch Gardens.

There has already been plenty written online about Busch Gardens tactics. We tended to go early so as to be parked up and ready at the gateline for the start of each day. This gave us a good hour or two of solid riding before any real queues built up – except for Iron Gwazi which always had a decent queue. Monday was the quietest day for sure, with Rafe and Jim able to take three rides in a row on some of the biggest coasters such as Cheetah Hunt and Montu with no queuing whatsoever. As is standard procedure for many families, we took plenty of drinks and snacks to avoid the overpriced and not great food in the park, and on a couple of days left the park mid-afternoon for a late lunch / dinner nearby.