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Comprehensive Review of Busch Gardens Williamsburg's 2024 Food & Wine Festival

Reviews, Ratings, and Photos of Every Dish at the Park's Annual Culinary-Focused Special Event

The booths are built, the menus are posted, and the tasting cards are on sale. Busch Gardens Williamsburg’s annual foodie event has begun, and that means it is time for the BGWFans team to taste and rate every dish to help our readers plan their own culinary adventures. Once again Zachary, Gavin, Renee, and I […]

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Our Comprehensive Review of Busch Gardens Williamsburg's 2023 Food & Wine Festival

Reviews, Ratings, and Photos of Every Dish at the Park's Annual Culinary-Focused Special Event

It is the 10th anniversary of Busch Gardens Williamsburg’s Food & Wine Festival, and BGWFans’ 7th comprehensive review since we started in 2014. Looking back, it is interesting to see how the event has evolved over the past decade, for good and bad. While we miss some aspects of the early years, this event remains […]

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Our Comprehensive Review of Busch Gardens Williamsburg's 2022 Food & Wine Festival

Reviews, Ratings, and Photos of Every Dish at the Park's Annual Culinary-Focused Special Event

Today’s article is a bit of a milestone: today we are publishing the first comprehensive Food & Wine Festival review, since Busch Gardens Williamsburg returned to normal, post-COVID lockdown operations. 2021 was still a limited event, and of course, 2020 was canceled completely and replaced with the Taste of Busch Gardens mini-event in the Fall. […]

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Food & Wine's 2022 Lineup Reveals Encouraging Trends

It Appears Busch Gardens Williamsburg's Signature Culinary Festival Has Largely Recovered from COVID

Before Busch Gardens Williamsburg’s annual Food & Wine Festival opens on April 28th, we thought it would be interesting to compare the published booths and menus to last year’s options. Because of the sheer number of beverage options, we will focus primarily on the event’s savory and sweet dishes, rather than its specialty drinks and […]

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Busch Gardens Williamsburg Mardi Gras 2022 Food Review

What do you do, when you realize it is going to snow the first weekend of Busch Gardens Williamsburg’s Mardi Gras event? Do you postpone your review of the 19 themed dishes until the following Saturday? Do you decide no one really needs your opinions of this entirely custard and balsamic free event anyway? Well, […]

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Comparing All Three East Coast 2021 Howl-O-Scream Events

Our Thoughts After Visiting Howl-O-Scream Williamsburg, Tampa, and Orlando in One Weekend

Last weekend Zachary and I flew to Florida and back so that we could experience Universal Studios Orlando’s Halloween Horror Nights and the opening weekends of all three east coast Howl-O-Scream events (Busch Gardens Williamsburg, Busch Gardens Tampa, and SeaWorld Orlando). Initially, we had considered evaluating all four together, but have decided the HHN is […]

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Our Comprehensive Review of Busch Gardens Williamsburg's 2021 Food & Wine Festival

We Sampled, Rated, and Photographed Every Dish & Non-Alcoholic Beverage at BGW's Annual Food Event

It is that time again: BGWFans’ annual foodie adventure. For the 2021 “Light at the End of the COVID Tunnel” edition, Zachary and I were joined by my friend Renee and ParkFans Co-Admin Gavin. In one hectic afternoon, we sampled every dish and non-alcoholic beverage at Busch Gardens Williamsburg’s annual Food & Wine Festival. The […]

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What If... Threadneedle Faire Became a Seasonal Event

Why Busch Gardens Williamsburg Should Resurrect a Long-Secret, Internal Event Concept to Replace Mardi Gras Next Season

Ever since Busch Gardens Williamsburg reopened, we have been able to experience a variety of limited-capacity special events ranging from the food-inspired Taste of Busch Gardens to the animal-focused Winter Weekends. Given the park’s resource and time constraints, these offerings have varied in quality and creativity. Of all of them, however, last month’s Mardi Gras […]

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Taste of Busch Gardens Review

Our Comprehensive Review of Every Dish at Busch Gardens Williamsburg's Taste of Busch Gardens Event

Unique Conditions 2020 has been a horrible year in a variety of ways. It has gifted us a pandemic, massive wildfires, hurricanes, killer hornets, and nationwide protests. I am writing this article in September instead of May, however, because 2020 also closed our theme parks and postponed and reduced Busch Gardens Williamsburg’s Food & Wine […]

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The Curious Case of Water Country USA's Unlimited Splash Pass

A Confounding Dive into Busch Gardens Williamsburg's Weirdest, Most-Broken Membership Offering

DISCLAIMER: The chances that this pass will act as advertised are essentially zero. Good luck arguing your case at Guest Services—you’re unlikely to prevail. You’ve been warned. BGWFans has discovered the deal of a lifetime and we are sharing this opportunity exclusively with you, our loyal readers! A deal like this can’t last long, and […]

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COVID Compensation Complications

Busch Gardens Williamsburg's New Coronavirus Membership Upgrade Plan Introduces Issues

In this weird pandemic-induced dystopia, I was not expecting to find myself sitting down to write an article about park passes for BGWFans. Everyone in the world is self-isolating, deaths across the country continue to climb, and theme parks are ghost towns. But this week, some interesting news arrived in our inboxes, setting off a […]

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Food & Wine Festival 2019: The Comprehensive Review

A week has passed since we published part one of our annual Food & Wine Festival Review, and in that time BGWFans has visited the park a second time and reconfirmed our observation that the events biggest weakness is its lack of consistency. Wow.  That sounds unnecessarily negative.  Let me start again. BGWFans has now […]

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Food & Wine Festival 2019: Impressions & Highlights

It is May and that means Busch Gardens Williamsburg’s 7th annual Food & Wine Festival is upon us. As has become our tradition, the BGWFans Tasting Team spent opening weekend trying every food and non-alcoholic drink option on the menu. This two-part article will highlight our recommendations and share our scores for everything by booth. […]

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Too Pretty to be Overlooked

“Forgot this was a thing.” — @thatcoasternerd That was a comment in response to our Instagram post Thursday about Water Country USA’s Cutback Water Coaster, and it was hardly out of the norm. Busch Gardens Williamsburg is currently building and designing two thrill rides—Finnegan’s Flyer and Project 2020—that are large enough to overshadow Cutback, their sister […]

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New Membership Program Gets a Substantial Overhaul

I have been pondering what to say about the new membership program, announced by Busch Gardens Williamsburg on Monday. My initial response was surprise, followed by confusion, and rounded out by concern. Before I go any further, I want to highlight the fact that both Zachary and I supported the original introduction of the Membership […]

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Food & Wine Festival 2018: The Comprehensive Review

As we promised in part one, we have compiled a comprehensive, dish-by-dish review of Busch Gardens Williamsburg’s 2018 Food & Wine Festival. Please keep in mind that these ratings reflect what we tasted on Memorial Day weekend.  Historically, the food at the event can vary dramatically throughout the day and across the weeks. Below you […]

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Food & Wine Festival 2018: Impressions & Highlights

It is that time of year again: the season when BGWFans and our Band of Merry Foodies head to the park to try every dish at the annual Food & Wine Festival. Last weekend Zachary, Thomas, Luke, Zimmy, and I, accompanied by our friends Renee and Meri, spent Saturday and Sunday exploring the 2018 event. […]

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"Summer Rewards"

So, Zachary and I had been considering when and if we were going to write a front page article on Busch Gardens Williamsburg’s newest ride, Battle for Eire. It seems like a reasonable topic, and we have been asked for a formal review. Unfortunately, that discussion has, again, been completely derailed—this time by the park’s […]

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Sesame Place Williamsburg: Pros & Cons

Yesterday, Zachary reported on a recent survey soliciting feedback on a new, proposed SEAS theme park in Virginia, which we are calling “Sesame Place Williamsburg.” While his extensive analysis of the included site plan and concept art focused on the How, When, Where, and What in depth, we decided to address the Why separately, because it is such a complex […]

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Busch Gardens Williamsburg Unveils Membership Program

February 9th Update: Because we have been adding information to this post regularly over the past two days, we decided our article needed to be completely restructured to better present everything we know about the recently announced Membership program. Hopefully this version is more user-friendly. BGWFans learned yesterday (February 7) that the long-rumored, new Membership Plan will […]

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