The Funny part of our visit to Busch Gardens

At Busch Gardens after walking around for what later felt like miles and after standing in lines which mentally seemed like miles long, we realized we were getting tired and our stomachs were screaming, Feed Me!

We found a very large restaurant serving food cafeteria style. The menu looked great so again we stood in line, but this time the reward would be a much anticipated relaxing rest and a meal.

Like I said, this was a real large building, enclosed, temperature controlled with maybe hundreds of long wooden picnic style tables and benches. There was Christmas music playing softly over the sound system. The line moved along quickly and before we knew it we were heading for one of those tables with trays piled up with wonderful looking food.

We sat down, placed our array of food on the table and took a deep relaxed breath as we prepared to leisurely enjoy our meal. Then something happened. We noticed that a whole lot of people had come into the dining area and they were all facing the opposite direction than we were facing. They were all facing us. All of a sudden the lights went down to almost dark. The music stopped playing on the sound system. We looked at one another in the almost dark room with a WTF? expression on our faces.

Out of nowhere we hear blasted by a deep male voice, “Welcome Ladies and Gentlemen to Busch Gardens grand presentation of the Holiday Season!” A large stage lit up behind us and a cast of singers and dancers appeared. The sound was turned up so loud it about blasted us off our wooden bench as just about every Christmas song ever written was forced into our ears.

So there we sat in the almost dark and now very hot room, due to all the people who had crowded in to see the show. We took about two or three bites of food and realized the bass from the speakers made it almost impossible to swallow as the noise throbbed against our stomachs. The room was too crowded to try to take our food and escape outside.

What do you do at a miserable time such as this? It was one of those times that you feel like you are being filmed to see just how much punishment two people can take. We endured the entire twenty or thirty minutes of the songs and dances. Had it not been the day before Thanksgiving and instead been a little closer to the actual Christmas season, maybe this whole ordeal would have been less trying. In retrospect this whole thing seems funny but at the time, not so much.