Busch Gardens Tampa has changed quite a bit over the years, and not for the better …
Back when I first began coming here, in 1997 when I moved to Tampa Bay from Pennsylvania, this park was owned by the Annheuser-Busch brewing company. It was a rather odd combination of a zoo and an amusement park. I’m not a “rides” person so I didn’t much care for that part (and I have only ever been on a handful of the rides). But I liked the animal collection and displays, especially the large “Plains of Africa”. My first summer here I got a yearly pass to the park, and got one every year after that until I left Tampa Bay in 2015 to begin van-traveling around the country. When I gave up van-traveling this past spring, I got myself another yearly pass.
The place is a lot different now. When Annheuser-Busch was bought by InBev years ago, the two Busch Gardens parks (the other one is in Williamsburg VA) went along with it. InBev in turn sold it to some Wall Street investment firm, and then it got sold to some Chinese holding company. While A-B had treated the park as a promotion for their beer and didn’t expect it to make a profit, the new owners did, and they began squeezing out every dime they could. They dropped many of the things that made the park nice, such as the wandering performers and the stage shows, they cut a lot of the staff, and they reduced the animal displays. Today, the park focuses mostly on attracting teenagers with thrill rides. Meanwhile, the price has almost tripled.
I still like coming here to see the animals that remain, but it’s no longer the same place I’ve been to before.
Some photos from an afternoon at the park.