Cobra's Curse - Busch Gardens Tampa

Cobra's Curse was introduced to much pomp at the booth for Mack Rides at last year's IAAPA conference, complete with Chris Gray's to-scale model. Replacing the old Tut's Tomb, Cobra's Curse was constructed to counter the existing high-intensity adult rides at the park, namely the Egypt section (Curse lies right in between Montu and Cheetah Hunt).

Busch Gardens Tampa is doing this incredible deal for annual passholders where you get ERT on Cobra's Curse an hour before the park opens (8:30-9:30) so I decided to head over the morning of July 3rd. Of course, I got there at 10 with traffic on I-4, but what difference will a half hour make? The result: 75 minute wait time. So I decided to hit up Montu first just to get my feet wet. Totally forgot how great Montu is, just a pleasant but fast, smooth twisting ride with a ton of feet chopping action. Anyway, walk back to Cobra and head in.

It was approximately 5,000 degrees Celsius, but luckily I read on multiple outlets that the queue for Cobra was 'mostly indoors.' This relates in real life to 60% indoors, which is still excellent, but the problem with Media Days is that you can never really grasp the queue effectiveness when there's no line. Bring a bottle of water for this one and here's why: after the ride, I measured the rough ride capacity. Because Busch still doesn't utilize a single rider line, the average ridership for my sample was 7.25 riders. A train hits its mark every 32 seconds. That puts us at an abysmal 815 riders / hour (Busch says its designed for 1100. Bah.). So remember that when you're standing in the queue. If you're in the sun, you may be there for a while.

Back to the queue itself. After a few back and forths outside the entrance sign, you make your way into a hallway with excavation equipment. Stay here before you move outside, the line isn't going anywhere. Once outside again, you do a wrap-around that takes you parallel to the final brake-run of the ride, so you get to see everyone's excited reaction. More equipment out here, talking about some acronym called VISE. We head into the next building. Notably, this is the snake chamber, complete with a viper. I thought there were supposed to be hundreds of snakes in this queue, but this chamber was the only one. The room houses some artifacts and a schedule and notes, showing us what VISE is. Viper International Survey and Excavation found the remains of this temple and the pieces of the legendary Snake King statue, which they're reassembling (sounds like a bad idea). Down a dark hallway and into the next room.

This is the final room before the ride itself. There's a screen with hieroglyphics on it with the prominent Snake King in the center. The hieroglyphics periodically move to do funny stuff (dance, fall down, whatever it's a kid's ride, people). Every so often, lightning strikes and the screen turns into a movie almost and we see the story of the Snake King. He gave the Egyptians everything until he got so infatuated with himself, that he would forget to help out the people with their crops. This led the people to turn against him, Snake King got pissed and poisoned their soil and water. The Egyptians demolished the Snake King idol statue and laid a curse on the temple: that if the Snake King's head were to be put back in its place, the power of the King would be unleashed... oh wait a second, VISE what are you thinking?! And now we're on the moving walkway, ready to ride.

Two cars per train, four people in each car for 8 riders per train. There is one track, but two tracks used on the elevator-cable lift, which awesomely sways into place as you get to the top. At the top, you get a nice view of the Serengeti Plain; of course, you're not supposed to be looking at that as there's a giant Cobra head staring back at you. You turn to the left, but outbank to the right (so that you're leaning towards the Cobra) and head down the first drop. Drop is 70-feet, 40mph, banking right. Another hill and we go up into a continuous trim, where our cars slowly spin into the backwards position ("Turn, turn and face your fear!"). Go up and down a series of small hills backwards before we head up a mechanical lift. Missed what the King says here, but your car is tripped and you head down the drop backwards ready to spin uncontrollably. You hit the first overbanked turn that provides some serious air time for a kid's ride, and then a couple more less banked turns, which is still plenty of fun. Make sure you put more weight in the back of your car for maximizing the effect. You head under the Serengeti Railway and spin back into the final brake run, past all those people waiting in line from before.

I think Busch has a winner with Cobra's Curse. The storyline is great for the section of the park and not too scary for the kids. Once Gwazi was shut down, the park needed something that appealed to families. They have that Wild Mouse over near Kumba, but everyone has one of those nowadays. I'll give this 7/10, 7.5 if they can get the ride capacity up to what it's advertised as.

Some aside things I took away from this quick trip to Busch. 1.) Time to catch up to the other parks, let's get single rider lines on the big attractions. No more of this yelling back to people in line and waiting for them to come up front. 2.) Really need to do something with the left side of the park. The right is jam packed, with Cheetah, Cobra and Montu. Then you make your way to back right with Kumba and Falcon's Fury. And even Sheikra is over in that area. Go to the left where Gwazi is and there's nothing... and I mean, nothing. Stores are empty or even closed. Have so much land over there to turn it into something big. 3.) Speaking of Falcon's Fury, has anyone ever ridden that? Sunday was my first time, and I can say it was one of the scariest things ever. As your entire weight shifts onto the harnesses as you lean forward, all I kept thinking about was 'man I need to hit the gym more'. Totally awesome ride.

Anyway, that's it for me. Hope everyone has a nice Fourth. Fireworks on the lake for me, looking forward to it.