The VIP Tour at Busch Gardens Tampa's Howl-O-Scream: Worth every penny

[BarryHom]

On 9/27, I took the 8 pm Howl-O-Scream VIP tour at BGT and it was well worth the money. By 8 pm, the haunted houses looked like at least a 45 minute wait. With the VIP tour, our small group of 8 people finished all 6 of the haunted houses and the two shows in about 3 1/2 hours. We got to cut through the line and headed straight to the front! You get two very friendly tour guides. One is in the front and the other in the back. They both hold blinking skulls on posts.

As the night went on, the lines got very long. The line at the last house our tour group visited looked like a 60-90 minute wait!

Best of all, the tour was reasonably priced: $24.95 per person in advance or $29.95 per person on the day of the event. Park admission to the event is separate.

Another way to minimize your wait time is to arrive before the park closes and stay in the park so you can get a jump on the houses. You can also do the special dinner and get a jump too. I think the dinner is $16.95. I think it would be hard to do all the houses without having a long wait on at least a few of them. The haunted houses were all over the park! There is no other way to cut the lines throughout the event other than the VIP tour.

You can book a VIP tour by calling 813-984-4043, Monday - Friday 9 am to 3 pm.

I will write a Howl-O-Scream trip report soon. My overall impressions: it has improved greatly since I visited it 2 years ago, but Universal still does a better job.

 

[robvia]

Thanks for the info. Sounds like you had fun.
Lines must have been long because it was opening night.
Last year, I didn't have to wait that long for anything.

 

[rangebob]

The park was mobbed with people. I went on Sat the 28th and I saw lines for Escape from Insanity for 1 1.2 hours and Tortured was also the came wait time. We decided to catch a ride on Montu and it had a 2 hour wait. At 11:30 we decided to leave we were able to hit 4 of the houses. On the way in at 7 pm I had to wait about 20 minutes on McKinley due to the traffic jam of people trying to get into the park. I also heard from somebody else in the group that I met up with that they opened the park at 6:45 due to the size of the croud waiting to get in.