Sunken Gardens... its like Busch Gardens but without the rides and everything else.

Ah, random Real Florida at its finest

Sunken Gardens, or......

"what to do with a sink hole in the middle of St. Petersburg, Florida!"

 Sunken Gardens, a 110 year old botanical garden....

is not ADA compliant.

But sure is pretty.

They have over 500 species of tropical and subtropical plants.

There's also a network of waterfalls and Koi  ponds

(Sadly, none with ducks)

But lots of Koi.....

All built in and around a sinkhole downtown.

They had some badass flowering lily pads

And some bigass lily pads too!

Like, big enough to sit in.....

And.... lots of flowers. (Who knew!)

And this thing too! Some of the plants were labeled but not all, sadly.

(They also lacked air plants :( )

But its still really pretty looking.

annddd

Currently they have a pair of Chilean flamingos in the gardens...

But....

They wanna get a few more with donations.

Yaayyy, flamingos need friends.

So yeah, Sunken Gardens is pretty neat although much smaller than say, Bok Tower. Its still worth a short visit to stroll the garden and its semi-historically relevant in a state where it seems most things are from the 1970's or newer.... Oh, and while on the subject of 1970, there's this neat little fact about the gardens......... Sunken Gardens were popular from the 1950s through 1970 and were also ranked in Florida’s top 10 commercial attractions.... 

Hmmmmmm I WONDER what happened in 1971!

Oh, right.

Lions, and Hippos, and Bears..... Oh my?

Ah, taking a trip back home..... That could only mean more Zoo's and an Aquarium visit!
So I took a weekend trip back to Melrose to visit my family for the holidays... and made sure to make some time to visit Franklin Park Zoo,  New England Aquarium, and Stone Zoo. Woo, ANIMALS! I hadn't been to Franklin since the year before I moved, and NEAQ I hadn't been since the year I did (Stone was in fact the last blog post I made :X)

So... onto the photos! yaayyy.

Day 1?

 Franklin Park Zoo, Boston's Zoo, wooooo

Over the summer of 2009 the move Zookeeper was filmed here, although it wasn't released until 2011.

And as most Zoo's should.... there are animals here :O... 

Like this Wildebeest

And this Lion!!

And this crazy-ass-Vulture! (Ka-Kawwww)

The Capybararara was not amused. Moving on.

!!!

(((Sleeeeeeepy Hippo!!!!!!)))

And we'll leave the zoo with this photo of the beautiful Wood Duck!

quack quack quack

Uh... Day 2.

Ok, next stop on my whirlwind Boston Adventure!.... NEAQ!

Woo, the New England Aquarium!

So much had changed here in the past few years since my last visit. I had no idea about two of the biggest changes.... The first being this.

They now have a Ray and Shark touch pool where the Jellyfish wing had been.

Its pretty big and seemed popular.

Although down stairs where the rest of the Jellies had been is now kinda depressed.

Not much going down here anymore, they even removed the color changing light tank. my favorite part down there... Oh well.

Back upstairs the Penguins were doing their things... Like swimming, squawking, being majestic on the rocks... You know, Penguin things.

EPIC BLUE LOBSTER!

Out back is where I found the other new expansions/revamp

The Sea Lions now have a pretty big area, although it seems the River/Sea Otters have been removed? The area still looks great, much like the new Touch Tank area. So I guess Way to go NEAQ.... 

(although you should bring back the color changing jellyfish tank)

So yeah... Now its the last day of my trip and I have an afternoon flight some.. So once again I find myself taking a short trip to the Stone Zoo before heading back to Homelando

Day....three

Wasn't I just here like... 3 months ago? Well, whatever.. Its all good, they have bears here!!! :D :D :D

Don't harass the animals?

:3 Rawwrrrr :3

(When you type "Rawwrrrr" Firefox spellchecker asks if you meant "Strawberry")

<3 bears <3

Hey look!

It's a Puma, I mean.. Mountain Lion, I mean... Cougar.

(Eh, same animal, different regional name)

Although...........

This one is named Zeus :)

And with that it was time to head over to the airport and head Ho-Ho-Home... But first we have time for just two more......

BONUS DUCKS!!

So yeah, fun little trip home.. Got to see my friends and family, and some bears, ducks, a hippo...Woo.

(At some point I'll get around to posting my "Car Tribute", started over a month ago... And at some other point I'll toss up my year-end-review....thing. And coming in late January there may be an Atlanta post (or two, we'll see) )

quack quack.

VIP Party Crashers... Oh hey, and I rode Cheetah Hunt too.

So yeah, Cheetah Hunt media day... and stuff... Yeah...

First we had to get out 'Cheetah Hunt' wristbands, there let the staff know we were allowed into the ride/animal area. Didn't have one of these, didn't get past the fence....

 I wonder if they're gonna sell these now...

Look at me, look at me! Yeah.....

Bahaha, the first photo I happened to get of the coaster running... Had ROBB ALVEY on it. I guess he gets to complain about it before I can. :(

Yup, there he is...

During the media shoot the coaster only one train was running, although later in the night for the VIP party they ran three.

Uh,. sexy Intamin train with big-ass-camera mount...and big-ass-OTSRs

So here comes the part where there was massive downtime and lots of ACE'ers bitching and crying about not getting their ride... ZzZzz.. I enjoyed the time and looked at all the Cheetahs :D

Big pretty kitty's? I wish we could have had some EPT with them... But no petting was allowed.

Aww....

So yeah... Then we left the area and rode other things in the park. Who knew Montu and Phoenix were still here? From the bitching of the roller-losers you would have thought Cheetah Hunt was the ONLY thing the park had.... Anyways, rant over...I'll skip right back to the Hunt.

After flashing our stylish wristbands again... And walking past the public begging to get in... And being told off by guests who didn't think we were 'VIP', we had time to watch the 3o'clock parade. 

And there it goes....

So after a whole bunch of snacking on candy and hanging around watching Cheetahs being freaking-adorable for hours... Somehow we got some of these....

Yeah, Hi.

Wouldn't have been a coaster event without free food // a Buffet! But way to go Busch Gardens and make it ultra-classy

Eww, fruit.

Oh hey, yeah.. The Coasters open and it was ridden many times.

But back at the VIP party... They had many animals walking around to pet and touch and just get up close to without any cage,windows,screaming kids.....I had to make nice with the Rock Hyrax for a bit because it was so GD-Cute... But then the 6o'Clock parade happened.....

Apparently, I'm terrified of Flamingos.

Busch also had this kinda neat art group on hand... Splash! Animals. They'd kinda dance around and toss paint around and smudge it with their hands until it became a painting of a Cheetah.... or the promo-artwork for the ride itself. I wonder what they did with it all once they were done.. Cause they could have so given me one for free... you know, if they wanted... 

Yeah, pretty ballin' if I do say so myself... (I'll take the top half, thanks)

And now back to the coaster itself... Cheetah Hunt is pretty fantastic. Not a top 10 ride.. But its damn fun, amazingly smooth, has speed, turns, airtime, the roll... Just an all around good coaster and great addition to the amazing coaster line-up at Busch Gardens (well, not Gwazi... but that's a different rant all together) The canyon run is the highlight of the ride for me, although I wish the mid-course wasn't as hard (or on at all...). The only things I found myself not liking about the ride was the first launch being so short... You kinda lag in the banked turn and while that may be what they wanted the ride to do, it felt kinda awkward to me... And there's also this turn/dip at the very end of the ride that bugged me each lap.. But it may just be a tall person issue as Jeff didn't seem to have a problem with it.

Woo, the sun goes down... Almost time for night rides!

Ah, here we go.. Front row, in the dark, with lightning flashing all around... Amazing.

Such a perfect event... And to top it off, Jeff and I got the front row (second front row ride of the night) of the last train of the night....around 10.30pm. A good 4 hours after the park closed and Media Event ended. :D

And now I can say nah-nah-nahhh I rode it BEFORE YOU DID!!!! ALL OF YOU!.. Well, all of you but Robb Alvey.....

Yeaahhhh....

Oh hey! AND we got gift bags on the way out!

So yeah, big thanks to Busch Gardens Tampa for putting on an AMAZING event with great food, animals, rides on Cheetah Hunt, and everything else the park did all day long. Fantastic