Busch Gardens VIP tour and schedule questions

[kungaloosh22]

Has anyone taken the private BG VIP tour? We're considering splurging on this in October, but would love to learn more before committing that kind of cash. The web site says it's front-of-the-line and front row seats for the rides, plus "animal interactions," but they're very vague about what those animal interactions are. Also, how much of an advantage is front-of-the-line in late October, mid-week? Would it save hours of waiting, or only a few minutes here and there?

I'd also like to hear about the group VIP tours.

Finally, these tours are offered only Mon-Wed in Oct. Is that because of the Halloween nights? If we don't do a tour and are not interested in the Halloween night, should we avoid Thursdays? Thursday might work out to be our best day to go there, in terms of scheduling, so we might change our plans to Thursday if we don't do a tour. But I don't want to do that if Mon-Wed are better days due to the Halloween nights.

Thanks for any insights! I'm getting very excited about our first trip to BG!

 

[tarrbear]

The fact they are offered Monday-Wednesday is probably due to the fact the other nights are Howl-O-Scream nights, on a weekday in October, front of the line will really only save a few minutes here and there.

Now a few years back my family was able to do the tour at no cost to us. (I was going to one of their 'sleepovers,' it ended up getting cancelled and we were never contacted about it being cancelled, so Busch gave our family a certificate for a free VIP tour, we were pleasantly surprised that they did such a thing.) Any who, the tour was great! It was just our family and the tour guide so I can't comment on group tours, but we learned a lot about the park, our guide was friendly and had a answer for any question we had!

For the 'animal interactions' we went out on a serengeti safari and we got to feed giraffes which was cool, this was a about 4 years ago so I don't know how much has changed but the VIP tour was quite enjoyable.

 

[kungaloosh22]

Thanks tarrbear! I appreciate your reply. It sounds like Busch Gardens has great customer service.

The tour does sound very interesting! I'm now reconsidering whether it's worth the $199 cost though, at least during a low-crowd time like mid-week October. Now I'm thinking we may sign up for the Serengeti tour and maybe get the QuickQueue passes, if necessary.

Thanks again for sharing your experience!