TW, Justin, and I had the opportunity to take in the Busch Gardens experience on Saturday. Joined by our new friend Jamie, we forked over the $56 admission fee for a chance to get Justin started on his summer of 50 roller coasters AKA 50 hours of waiting in line and 45 minutes of fun.

At this point, for fairness, I will note that for the same $56 charge, TW and Jamie bought season passes (needing only to weakly verify their Virginia residency by punching in their zip code into the automated ticket machine). Justin and I paid full price, a situation we hope not to soon repeat.

All we had time for was to ride the park's four coasters, the fifth, Griffon, opens May 25th.

1. Apollo's Chariot (***) - A fun ride, longer than most, but with no loops. Not bad to get the ball rolling, but nothing special.

2. Big Bad Wolf (**) - A hanging coaster with limited thrills, although it is interesting because it pulls you up two separate main hills, adding a lot of time to the ride length. This is one of the older rides there and it can cause some brutal whiplash.

3. Loch Ness Monster (***) - Another bumpy ride, pretty standard experience for a looping coaster. Has a bit of a curveball with an indoor cave portion which makes a few fast turns in completely darkness... this could have been used to better effect if perhaps the coaster dropped down a hill immediately after coming out of the darkness.

4. Alpengeist (****) - The best of the day was this hanging, foot dangling coaster. It was a very fast and very smooth ride with some loops and about 3 corkscrews. A lot of fun all around and it felt like the fastest ride of the day. I will also note that it had, by far, the longest line.