Vacation Week: SURPRISE! A trip to Buch Gardens

My mom graciously agreed to give us our Christmas presents early and bought us a family pass to Busch Gardens till the end of the year!!  The boys had never been to a Florida theme park, so we were pretty excited.  We kept it a secret from the boys so that we wouldn't be asked 1,000 times a day how many more days it would be till we went to Busch Gardens.

On the Wednesday of Daddy's vacation, we woke the boys up and told them to get ready for a road trip!  They had no idea where we were going.  I had printed off maps of Busch Gardens and presented them to the boys and told them.  They were pretty excited!  Then they were a little bummed to hear that we'd have to drive almost 3 hours to get there. But, still super excited!

We stopped at Subway to get a quick breakfast and then we were off.

Hunter and Nathanael enjoyed playing on Mommy's new Ipad on the way there. 

This was their face when they saw the Busch Gardens sign. 

We got there around 11 am, parked right away and headed out.  We got to ride from the parking lot on a tram to the front entrance.  Levi wasn't sure at first, but then really liked it. I think this was his favorite ride.  Haha! 

 We made it!

 First stop was checking out the Gorillas. 

After hanging out with the gorillas we hopped on the sky tram ride to get to the other side of the park.  Daddy, Levi, and Hunter rode in one and Mommy and Nathanael rode in the other.

 Hi guys!!

Then we headed to the Madagascar show!

This show was Levi's favorite!

One of the reasons we were most excited about going to Busch Gardens was for their Sesame Street play area.  It did not disappoint.

Here are the boys and mommy on the Grover roller coaster.  It was a kiddie roller coaster that was a good prep for the boys for going on the REAL roller coasters the next day.

Water play area!

Nathanael loved riding in these cars.

Hunter, Mommy, and Levi in the tree house area.

Dragon boat water ride.

Mommy and Levi rode the flying elephants.  Levi was not impressed.

After we left the Sesame Street area we pass by THIS roller coaster a couple of times.  It's called the SheiKra and it is the most intense-looking roller coaster I've ever seen!  It does a 90 degree drop and then loops all around the place and through the park. 

Then, it goes through this water-pond area that splashes everyone walking nearby.

The boys hung out waiting for this to happen over and over and over and over again.
They loved getting drenched by this roller coaster!!  Nathanael wanted to ride it, but was too short.  Hunter wanted nothing to do with the idea of riding it.  :)

We finished up our first day at Busch Gardens at a really cool ice skating show called Iceploration.  It was kind of like a Cirque du Soleil on ice.  We all really enjoyed it and Nathanael decided he wanted to have his picture taken with some of the stars afterwards.  :)

One thing that I want to remember is that Levi did SUCH a great job at Busch Gardens.  He had about an hour nap on the way there.  We got there at 11am and stayed till 5:30 or so and he was chipper, happy, and never gave us one bit of trouble.  He has such an easy-going personality and is just a joy to be around!