Busch Gardens

We took the girls to the aquarium for a family field trip this week.  It was a quick field trip - we were only there about two or so hours.  Since we had already driven over to Tampa, we decided to take advantage of our Busch Gardens season passes.  It was a fun, spontaneous trip.  We only stayed there a couple of hours as well, but we enjoyed every minute of it!

We saw the new cheetah exhibit.  We learned that cheetahs are not classified as a LARGE cat like a lion would be.  This is because females typically top out at 100 lbs and males top out at 120 lbs.  Cheetah's cannot roar.  Typically, only half a litter survives. These cubs will live with their mother for about a year and a half.  Then, the cubs all leave and live together.  Eventually, the females leave and the males will live together for the rest of their lives.  The females wander on their own. 

We only saw female cheetahs while we were at the display.  These females are only about 80 lbs and not old enough for breeding yet.  Also, the cats know their names and are called over at feeding time.  We saw them eat an afternoon snack of ground meat and organs.  Yum!  They are also fed whole, dead rabbits, whole, dead chickens, chicken breasts, steaks, etc., but we did not see any of that.

Andy rode the new Cheetah Hunt roller coaster.  It launches you in three different places and is a three-minute ride. He LOVED it and can't wait to go on it again.  The girls had so much fun in the kiddie area.  Because it had rained all morning, the outside kiddie area was closed at the aquarium while we were there, so I was happy that they were able to enjoy their time at Busch Gardens.

The girls were especially excited that I had packed their bathing suits, so they could take advantage of the new water area.  There's another water area too, but this particular spot was not opened the last time we were at the park.