The State of the Park: Busch Gardens Williamsburg

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I work for a company that does not keep the card number on file because of stuff like that. But that being said - there’s a number of times those “alerts” are actually phishing scams. The easiest way to get those numbers is in real times usage (because of how your bank/credit cards route those numbers). So the phishing scam is to get you to log into your account, update the card numbers, then steal the information while it transmits.

I’ve had it happen and BOA has explained it to me that way.
 
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The husband and I played hookie from work today and went to the park since most of the schools are done with spring break and to cash in our BG Bucks.

We wanted to rope drop Pantheon but unfortunately it was closed so we did Apollos a few times. It was a little disappointing considering most of the groups were going straight to Pantheon and it was closed.

Most coasters through the day were running short lines. The park was not crowded, but there were 6 buses of school groups that came today. Loch Ness and Tempesto were closed all day. Pantheon finally opened about 2 but was painfully slow due to one train ops.

Fries and drinks were good at Les Frites and Celtic Fire was amazing. They had a ‘Scarlet’ and ‘Violet’ duo of Americans that were amazing!!!!

Staffing was a bit limited but not bad. Seems they are getting their international help early this year. We noticed a bunch of team members from Ecuador and several others from other countries. That’s a good sign moving forward for summer ops!!!!

All in all it was a good day!!!
 
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RKRCC said:
The husband and I played hookie from work today and went to the park since most of the schools are done with spring break and to cash in our BG Bucks.

We wanted to rope drop Pantheon but unfortunately it was closed so we did Apollos a few times. It was a little disappointing considering most of the groups were going straight to Pantheon and it was closed.

Most coasters through the day were running short lines. The park was not crowded, but there were 6 buses of school groups that came today. Loch Ness and Tempesto were closed all day. Pantheon finally opened about 2 but was painfully slow due to one train ops.

Fries and drinks were good at Les Frites and Celtic Fire was amazing. They had a ‘Scarlet’ and ‘Violet’ duo of Americans that were amazing!!!!

Staffing was a bit limited but not bad. Seems they are getting their international help early this year. We noticed a bunch of team members from Ecuador and several others from other countries. That’s a good sign moving forward for summer ops!!!!

All in all it was a good day!!!
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Pantheon opened in the afternoon after having technical issues earlier in the day.

My understanding is that BGW did bring in internationals early but the flip side of that is they will lose this batch earlier to and there is some concern that they might not be able to recruit as large of a group later in the year.
 
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So this is anecdotal, just one I noticed over the weekend that I'd love to spark some discussion on.

Below are images of food items, not all from BGW. Will be pretty obvious which aren't, especially to those of you who know what two restaurants I am directly pitting against each other here, but I would like to float this out there. In the spoiler section will be the prices before tax of these items based off what I just saw on menus.

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1. Trapper's mac and cheese SIDE, $10.50

2. Trapper's sampler, $26.23

3. Flame Tree BBQ mac and cheese topped with pulled pork onion rings and cole slaw ENTREE, $12.50

4. Flame Tree BBQ sampler, $18.99

They are charging outrageous prices for food at this point considering the dogshit quality, and it is expecially shocking when you realize you can't even write it off as "that is just how expensive theme park food is". They are taking what is considered "expensive theme park food" and either nuking the quality relative to that price point or maintaining a similar quality to competition and just shooting the price up relative to others. It is insane.

Now I understand directly comparing these two parks is unfair, as one can charge less due to volume of people, but this isn't something that always existed. I never used to feel like BGW was the expensive place to spend a day when compared to WDW, and I have previously raised this point, but putting these specific numbers on my screen it just makes me feel so sad that the state of the park is so bad that I never want to pay more than the bare minimum to go in. Used to get excited to get food and whatnot, now I just feel shafted.
 
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Yeah I remember when the sampler was roughly $10 less……yeah I feel so oddly “relieved” that my platinum membership is no longer active.
 
Zachary said:
And this is why I don't eat meals at BGW anymore. Okay, well that, and the surcharge, and the horrible quality, and the slow service, and the disinterested staff, and the filthy dining areas... But also the prices.
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I only get the pretzel sandwich at pretzel world anymore.
 
Not Busch, but was pleasantly surprised to see that KD had Dining Room attendants in just about every dine in restaurant. For quite the busy Wednesday the whole park was really clean. Including bathrooms.

This is another flip flop from something that I thought BGW was a winner on in the past…
 
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While I’ll start with repeating something I’ve said before, that as long as one-day tickets keep coming and non-locals don’t know there’s better food just without the convenience of in park, SEAS will continue to get rid of this.

But additionally, there’s actual reasons stuff like McD’s, Applebees, etc are “flavorless” while local restaurants are so much more flavorful - the big chains do that to remain consistent no matter where you go. If you go to Alabama, Montana, NYC or LA you know your Applebees BBQ ribs will be the same. But go to local places on all of that and they will be so wildly different.

I feel like in terms of flavor, SEAS is trying to be as un-offensive as possible so anyone from anywhere will eat it. KD being a more regional park is able to tailor tastes a little more to the area (I say this because I’ve been to Dorney and CP in the last week, Dorney was flavorful and CP was kinda bland).

And before anyone jumps on my post, NO I’m not defending this decision. NO I’m not defending the pricing at all. NO I’m not ok with it. But a little more than just “haha let’s be cheap” goes into this. That might be the biggest factor but it’s not always the only one.
 
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You can't tell me that there are people who prefer bland and bad BBQ to actually good BBQ, regardless of the region.

You make your food accessible by having variety and approachable dishes, not by dumbing down the flavor. Those chains keep it simple to keep it consistent, BGW's biggest weakness over the low food quality is still somehow consistency. So consistency they surely aren't targeting. They want to make their food cost as low as possible while charging as much as possible for it, and you can't convince me anything else goes into it.
 
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warfelg said:
While I’ll start with repeating something I’ve said before, that as long as one-day tickets keep coming and non-locals don’t know there’s better food just without the convenience of in park, SEAS will continue to get rid of this.

But additionally, there’s actual reasons stuff like McD’s, Applebees, etc are “flavorless” while local restaurants are so much more flavorful - the big chains do that to remain consistent no matter where you go. If you go to Alabama, Montana, NYC or LA you know your Applebees BBQ ribs will be the same. But go to local places on all of that and they will be so wildly different.

I feel like in terms of flavor, SEAS is trying to be as un-offensive as possible so anyone from anywhere will eat it. KD being a more regional park is able to tailor tastes a little more to the area (I say this because I’ve been to Dorney and CP in the last week, Dorney was flavorful and CP was kinda bland).

And before anyone jumps on my post, NO I’m not defending this decision. NO I’m not defending the pricing at all. NO I’m not ok with it. But a little more than just “haha let’s be cheap” goes into this. That might be the biggest factor but it’s not always the only one.
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If the market is one or two day visitors, then food quality barely matters. I've lost count of all the zoo, aquarium, museum, etc visits I've made where the food is basically overpriced garbage. The reality is it doesn't deter occasional visits because the food isn't the draw.
 
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The market isn't one or two day visitors though. I've seen numbers for what percentage of attendance is coming from season-long tickets and it's an ENORMOUS.

This is where SEAS is out of their depth. Orlando and BGT have far more runway before being shitty really catches up to them. The same isn't true in Williamsburg.
 
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All of these parks push season passes or memberships because they want people to come back and spend money at the park. Bad food service does not accomplish this. If someone has a season pass, it’s much easier for them to eat outside of the park because they don’t always feel they have to spend a full day in the park.
 
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I had some ice cream by Apollo's two weeks ago and it was, bar none, the absolute worst ice cream I've ever had.

The Dole whip (which isn't even real Dole whip anymore, simply just generic pineapple whip) was not very sweet and tasty dusty/stale. The vanilla icecream tasted like some godawful soy milk artifically flavored lightly sweetened watery abomination. I didn't know icecream could taste so unnatural and unfilling.

And I paid over $25 for the pleasure!
 
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