It has been nearly nine months since we first broke the news that Busch Gardens Williamsburg was planning to construct what we believe to be a custom, dual-lift, Bolliger & Mabillard, family, inverted roller coaster on the former site of Drachen Fire, Festhaus Park. If you missed that story or feel like you need a […]
Per a collection of recently-obtained documentation, Water Country USA is planning the addition of a new water play structure for the 2025 season. These new documents detail the park’s plan to demolish the existing H2O UFO splash pad and its pair of associated kiddie tube slides in order to make way for a fresh, notably-larger […]
Tipping Comes to United Parks Quick Service Dining
Busch Gardens Williamsburg’s parent company, United Parks (formerly SeaWorld Parks), rolled out a new tipping system at their flagship property, SeaWorld Orlando, last month. United Parks properties with table service restaurants and/or full-service bars have long offered tipping for waitstaff (as is traditional for similar establishments throughout much of the United States). This newly-debuted tipping […]
Disclaimers The following reporting is based upon actively in-development plans. Subsequent revisions could change many of the details described below. The following should be viewed as a description of what Busch Gardens Williamsburg is likely, currently planning on constructing in 2025—not as an infallible depiction of what Busch Gardens Williamsburg will construct. Journalists, content creators, […]
DarKoaster: Escape the Storm Debuting at Busch Gardens Williamsburg in 2023
DarKoaster Basics Busch Gardens Williamsburg’s newest coaster, DarKoaster: Escape the Storm, is a spiritual successor to the park’s legendary, defunct dark ride, Curse of DarKastle. This Intamin-made, steel, family roller coaster has been constructed entirely within the walls of Curse of DarKastle’s original show building and will reuse much of the previous tenant’s infrastructure (queue, […]
FAA Height Waiver Filed for Busch Gardens Williamsburg's Project 2024
We’re just a handful of days away from Project DarKoaster‘s official announcement, but the flow of news dictates that we continue to look forward. We’ve known for many years now that Busch Gardens Williamsburg has big plans for the previous home of Drachen Fire, Festhaus Park. In the mid-2010s, the site was rumored to be […]
“BGWFans is Always Right” Writing about rumors is remarkably uncomfortable for us. We typically try our best to stick to stories for which we have some amount of actual evidence—whether we can share that underlying data with our readers or not. The only reason many of those stories work is because of our reputation. Without […]
Website Leak Includes 2022 Howl-O-Scream House Lineup
Anyone who happened to be searching for Busch Gardens Williamsburg Quick Queues on Google recently may have stumbled upon quite a treat: The park’s publicly-accessible-and-searchable Howl-O-Scream Quick Queue page was updated with what appears to be the Busch Gardens Williamsburg’s 2022 Howl-O-Scream house lineup! While there’s some chance this listing could be some sort of […]
Roman Rapids Encounters Rough Waters
Yikes. That’s a good way to summarize the current situation surrounding Busch Gardens Williamsburg’s 1988 Intamin rapids ride, Roman Rapids. For anyone who hasn’t kept up with the attraction lately, Roman Rapids hasn’t operated since Labor Day 2019. The capacity limitations imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 simply made spinning up a staff-hungry attraction […]
Howl-O-Scream 2022 Information Begins to Ooze to the Surface
Now that we’re just over a month away from the September 9th start of this year’s Busch Gardens Williamsburg Howl-O-Scream, it seems high time that we begin sharing what we expect to see out of this year’s event. Since May, we’ve actually known the basic skeletal outline of this year’s Halloween event. That said, with […]
Digging up graves is typically more of a Halloween activity, but it looks like Busch Gardens Williamsburg may be getting an early start on the festivities this year. Two months ago we wrote about a shocking occurrence at Busch Gardens Williamsburg: A pair of height balloons were flown in Festhaus Park. At the time, we […]
Our Comprehensive Review of Busch Gardens Williamsburg's 2022 Food & Wine Festival
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. […]
Here’s a wild twist: There was a height survey in Festhaus Park today. Wilder yet, there were two different balloons flown. Oh, and it gets weirder: We don’t think this is Drachen Spire. Before we get to that though, here are a few photos showing both of the height survey balloons in the air earlier […]
Food & Wine's 2022 Lineup Reveals Encouraging Trends
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 […]
Drachen Spire Height Waiver Extension Details
Just over a week ago, we reported on the renewal of the notorious 355 foot Festhaus Park height waiver that was originally requested for the controversial, Intamin-made, multi-launch, giga, shuttle coaster we’ve dubbed Drachen Spire. In last week’s article, we were very careful to leave the door open for a currently anticipated opening in either […]
The Battle for Eire Appears Lost
We’ve assumed this day was coming for a while now, but that doesn’t make it any less newsworthy. After less than two seasons of operation, Busch Gardens Williamsburg’s first of its kind, Falcons Creative Group-produced, virtual reality, simulator attraction, Battle for Eire, appears to be no more. Guests attending Busch Gardens Williamsburg this weekend arrived […]
Late February 2022 Attraction Status Update
As promised in our general photo update on Tuesday, we’re circling back today to provide status and maintenance updates on all of the park’s main attractions. This is especially important right now given the recent delays in ride reopenings that have plagued Busch Gardens Williamsburg. When the park originally announced their March attraction lineup a […]
Don’t Say We Didn’t Warn You Back in November, we wrote about Project Drachen Spire’s COVID-induced slumber. In that article, we discussed the history of Busch Gardens Williamsburg’s thoroughly-leaked, Intamin-made, multi-launch, shuttle, giga coaster that was originally slated to debut just one year after Pantheon in 2021. As described in our November piece, COVID derailed […]
Late February 2022 General Photo Update
Given the overwhelmingly positive response to last month’s photo update, it seems that our readers may still be interested in this sort of broad, general park changes-focused, Busch Gardens Williamsburg content. We still don’t plan to post updates like this on any set schedule, but whenever there’s a plethora of small projects ongoing, we’ll be […]
Go-Karts Plus Planning Multi-Level Track
We’ve never written about Go-Karts Plus here on BGWFans, but our partner community, ParkFans, has long had a corner of the forum dedicated to the park’s discussion. For anyone who may be unaware, Go-Karts Plus is a family entertainment center located about 20 minutes west of Busch Gardens Williamsburg. It features a small roller coaster, […]
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