In late April, Busch Gardens Williamsburg debuted their newest roller coaster, Tempesto. This Premier Rides multi-launch roller coaster was unexpected for Busch Gardens Williamsburg, which is home to three great B&Ms a classic arrow roller coaster, and finally the one of a kind Verbolten. All of their roller coasters are unique, original, and impressive rides. Then, Busch Gardens built Tempesto, a cloned, Premier Rides, compact roller coaster. Nobody was expecting for this from Busch Gardens, who had put so many original rides into their park. People were disappointed, including myself, but after going to the park last Saturday, things changed!
Tempesto is short, compact, and it looks as if it’s a flat ride. The queue wraps around a large portion of the ride, giving you a view that shows its entire compact layout. The ride reminds me of a Larson Giant Loop. After the queue, which was a surprisingly short thirty minutes for a new ride with a terrible capacity, we boarded the cars. In the station there’s a little bit of fun theming in order to help enhance the ride experience, but there’s also a gum drop for those who chewed gum in the queue (Yep, I’m not lying about that). On Tempesto, there are three cars, which each have three rows. I’m not too tall, but there wasn’t too much legroom. Also, the restraints are essentially a lap bar with a leg bar with a vest that you pull down and clip into the lap bar. The vest and the leg bar are simply annoying, they do absolutely nothing for the ride and make you feel a little bit claustrophobic. The vest also makes sitting down in the car a complex task. I forgot to grab the shoulder harness and sat down over it on the seat. I had to get back up and put it back on. The restraints aren’t the best to put on, but during the ride they aren’t too annoying. The lap bar feels good, but the shoulder restraints and leg bar are both useless. There was no point in putting them on the ride, the shoulder bars are literally like six inches in front of your chest.
Next, it was time to launch. First, you have a slow launch forwards and out of the station. The launch isn’t forceful, but it’s fun. You go up the track, stall, and come down backwards. Then, as you pass through the station, you launch again, but this time it’s backwards. This launch was great. It takes you up a curved hill backwards and the stall above the curve is a highlight of the ride. The combination of moving so slowly and facing at a steep downwards angle makes this memorable. You head down the hill so slowly that it is nothing like anything else you will find in a theme park. After you launch through the station, you go to the top of the ride and ascend the peak at a very slow pace. When you reach the top, you slowly move into the barrel roll, which is probably one of my favorite inversions on any ride. You move over it so slowly that you get time to experience the upside down movement, unlike a large amount of coasters that move quickly through a loop de loop. Then, you head over some brakes, which help hang you over the edge as you dive down and through the non-inverting loop. This drop is the speed of Tempesto. It passes too quickly, but it’s a great moment of the ride. Following this, you pass through the station, which slows down the car significantly, up the hill, and backwards into the station. Tempesto is a very unique ride.
To sum it all up, Tempesto is a very good ride. I’d give it a 3.5 out of 5. It has unique and fun moments (such as the slow barrel roll and backwards stall), a fun theme, but it feels as if the ride is a flat ride, not something that lives up to Busch Gardens Williamsburg’s reputation for innovative and unique roller coasters. Tempesto exceeded the expectations I had for it, but it’s not in the same category as its sister coasters Griffon and Apollo’s Chariot.
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To finish off, below are more awesome pictures of Tempesto: