Last year, in early December, a few crew members met up at Busch Gardens Williamsburg (BGW) for their Christmas Celebration event. While still enjoyable, it was a down-scaled version of their annual Christmas Town event. They did the best they could with the limitations placed on them due to the Covid pandemic.
During last year’s visit, Chris D. mentioned that we have to come back for the full Christmas Town event once it returns. Well, just over one year later, and two days after Christmas, we were able to make that happen with another crew meet up. And this time it was quite a bit warmer too!
Filming Lots of Content
Obviously my main focus of any trip to an amusement park is riding roller coasters. BGW, however, is one of the parks where I can get pre-approved to use my chest-mounted GoPro to film on-ride content. I did this back in October, getting point of view (POV) footage while riding InvadR, Griffon, Alpengeist, and Apollo’s Chariot. I would of also had Verbolten, but the camera batteries shortly after the ride dispatched. I didn’t get a chance to re-ride that day.
On this visit, Verbolten was my aim and if I could get some other on-ride footage, I’d consider it a bonus. With the park decorated for the holidays, I also took the opportunity to film some vlog content for YouTube. Check out Part 2 of the vlog covering BGW above. Part 1 covers our trip down to the park and a gift exchange between Sam and I.
Poster Pins & Mystery Box Pick-Ups
Busch Gardens parks have some of the best ride pins in the business. One of their more recent series consists large art deco poster pins. They’ve quickly become my favorite series Busch Gardens has released. Check them out and the ones from Busch Gardens Tampa (BGT) inside my pin collection.
Since my Howl-O-Scream visit on Halloween, the park has since released the Big Bad Wolf and Pantheon designs in the series. I wanted to get my hands on those, but low and behold, I found a nice surprise. While in one of the shops, just before leaving, Sam saw a Verbolten design for this same series. Neither Chris or I knew that this pin existed and had been talking earlier in the day how they needed to make one.
To top off things off, I grabbed myself four of the Under Construction mystery boxes, which I thought were sold out. These boxes contain two hard hat pins each, with seven standard pins and one chaser. These pins include: Alpengeist, Apollo’s Chariot, Big Bad Wolf (chaser), Griffon, InvadR, Loch Ness Monster, Tempesto, and Verbolten. Out of my four boxes, I pulled the following:
- (1) Alpengeist
- (1) Apollo’s Chariot
- (1) Big Bad Wolf
- (3) InvadR
- (1) Tempesto
- (1) Verbolten
Just a Handful of Rides on the Day
Our stop at BGW wasn’t one that saw us riding a bunch of different rides, or even re-riding the ones we did. We managed only six total rides combined with not all of us riding most of them. Between all the filming, shopping, crowd levels, leaving early, and Chris having to deal with an insurance company on the phone, we did the best we could. It wasn’t a bad trip by any means though. It was just one of those days spent with friends relaxing at one of our favorite parks. Here is a small recap of some of those rides:
Verbolten
This was the first ride I wanted to visit after getting my GoPro approved. Chris, Carrie, Hannah, and Grace had beat us to the park and managed to squeeze in a ride on InvadR. Thankfully, after the entire group met up and we made our way across the bridge from Italy to Germany, the line for Verbolten was pretty much a station wait. That didn’t last long, so it was a good thing we didn’t wait.
As you can see above, and in the gallery below, Sam and I got a front row ride for the POV. Even with the long hood on the front of the train and fake windshield, the footage turned out nicely. The still images in this blog and the park’s photo gallery will have to serve as sneak peaks of that POV for now. I promise that the footage will join the other previously filmed BGW coasters on YouTube soon. I want to publish the vlog series first with all the Christmas-themed footage, especially since we visited the park after Christmas to begin with.
Nacht Tower (Mach Tower)
After Verbolten, Chris got his first of several phone calls from the insurance company. During the downtime, I jumped on the nearby Nacht Tower, which most of you probably know as Mach Tower. During the park’s winter events, the drop tower is turned into an observation tower. I know the park would look beautiful if I had waited until night to film, but I had another idea. Film during the day and see what I could pick up of Pantheon’s layout across the river.
You can view a couple photo stills from my ride in the gallery. Like Verbolten’s, I’ll be adding this on-ride footage to YouTube once the vlogs are finished. You can, however, see a few seconds footage from both rides previewed in the vlog shown above.
Apollo's Chariot
There was no way we were going to skip out on riding Apollo’s Chariot during Monday’s visit. The entire crew managed to ride, although we didn’t all ride together. My ride came with Sam, Chris, and Hannah, who we managed to get to ride the back row for her first time. Just like with back row ride on Alpengeist on Halloween, she had a great time and noticed the extra airtime.
Speaking of airtime, it was pretty good, but with all the Bolliger & Mabillard (B&M) hypers, colder weather usually means slower speeds. That was the case for Apollo’s as was it for Candymonium and Nitro in my most recent visits to their parks.
Apollo’s does offer amazing night rides, but we were clean on the other side of the park once the sun went down. Sam and I didn’t have enough time to head back over for a re-ride if we wanted to give ourselves some time to try to catch a few rides on Twisted Timbers at Kings Dominion on our way back home. That was a last minute idea I came up with brushing my teeth that morning and Sam was all in on the idea. I figured she would be. I know I was.
Final Ride Counts
Apollo’s Chariot (1)
Battering Ram (1: Ca, Gr)
Busch Gardens Railway (1: Ch, Pa, Sa)
InvadR (1: Ca, Ch, Gr, Ha)
Nacht Tower (1: Pa)
Verbolten (1)
Show: Up on the Haustop (1)
Show: Twas that Night (1: Ca, Ch, Gr, Ha)
Ca = Carrie | Ch = Chris | Gr – Grace | Ha – Hannah | Pa = Patrick | Sa = Sam
Busch Gardens - Beautiful as Always
Seeing BGW in its full Christmas Town glory was a sight to behold. While Christmas Celebration last year was good for what they were able to do, I’m glad I got to finally visit the park during Christmas Town. Like Howl-O-Scream, which I’ve attended numerous times over the years, the park really does put some serious effort into their decorations, festivities, and shows. Sadly not everyone appreciates those efforts online, but that’s just the world we seem to live in anymore. If any of the park staff happens to read this, just know that I’ve never had a bad visit and hope you all have a great New Year.
Oh… and I almost forgot! BGW is in the midst of repaints on Griffon and Alpengeist, with both keeping the same color schemes. So many parks have been giving their coasters a fresh coat of paint in 2021 and I’m glad to see BGW doing the same. I can’t wait to ride Alpengeist next year looking all clean and bright. I have a funny feeling, however, that it might take me a while to work my way back to my current number one coaster at the park. Something two years in the making will probably be up and running the next time I’m able to visit.
Busch Gardens Williamsburg Photo Gallery - December 27, 2021
If you would like to use any of the images in the gallery above for your commercial and/or non-commercial projects, feel free to do so. I ask that you credit We Were Inverted whenever they’re used. I also ask that you do not alter the image or remove the watermarks. If you need any images/video resized or without the watermarks, please contact me directly.
CREW MANIFEST
The following flight crew members attended this park, & earned the respective credits below:
Patrick
CAG
New Credit(s): n/a
Sam
Admiral
New Credit(s): n/a
Carrie
Ensign
New Credit(s): n/a
Chris D.
Ensign
New Credit(s): n/a
