Iron Gwazi Breaks The Ice Breaker: Busch Gardens Tampa Overtakes SeaWorld Orlando!

Iron Gwazi, North America’s tallest and the world’s fastest and steepest hybrid coaster, has

helped Busch Gardens Tampa overtake SeaWorld Orlando's popularity the first time ever!

Iron Gwazi which has just been awarded the Golden Ticket Award for the Best New Roller Coaster in 2022, appears to have been a huge draw for the Tampa theme park, so much so that the latest estimated attendance figures show that Busch Gardens Tampa attracted has more guests than it sister park in Central Florida, SeaWorld Orlando.

Orlando's SeaWorld Parks & Entertainment which owns both SeaWorld Orlando AND Busch Gardens Tampa Bay, launched new coaster in both parks earlier this year at the same time in direct competition to each other.

Over at Busch Gardens Tampa, North America's tallest and world's fastest & steepest hybrid coaste Iron Gwazi takes thrills to new heights, plunging riders from a 206 foot-tall peak into a 91-degree drop and reaching top speeds of 76 miles per hour.

Riders on Iron Gwazi experience a dozen airtime moments, including three inversions, as they sink their teeth into crocodile-inspired thrills.

Manufactured by Rocky Mountain Construction, the newest addition at Busch Gardens is a wood and steel hybrid coaster design, combining the innovation of a steel coaster and the nostalgia of a wooden coaster.

Here in Orlando, SeaWorld launched the parks first launch coaster, a brand new family friendly coaster called Ice breaker.

Ice Breaker features four airtime filled launches, both backwards and forwards, culminating in a reverse launch into the steepest beyond vertical drop in Florida – a 93 feet tall spike with 100 degree angle. The thrills continue as riders fly over a near vertical top hat manoeuvre into a series of exciting twists, turns, and airtime hills.

The new coaster was voted the best in the country for 2022 by readers in the 10Best Readers Choice Awards.

The annual report from Themed Entertainment Association continued to see park attendance throughout the country begin to recover, though not back to its pre-pandemic levels.

The report, which contains estimated attendance figures, is regarded as the industry standard on attendance when many theme park operators don’t release such figures.

Here is the figures for Central Florida's theme parks showing Busch Gardens now attracting more visitors than SeaWorld Orlando the first time.

Busch Gardens Tampa Bay: 3,210,000 (12)

SeaWorld Orlando: 3,051,000 (10)

As you can see, previously, SeaWorld Orlando was in 10th place while Busch Gardens Tampa was in 12th place.

The latest figures now show that Busch Gardens has leap frogged SeaWorld Orlando.

It will be interesting to see if Busch Gardens Tampa can maintain its newly found dominate over its sister park SeaWorld Orlando in the coming years.

Currently, both parks are busy building new attractions that are due to open next year in 2023 to keep the visitors flocking into both parks.

Busch Gardens Tampa is building Serengeti Flyer, the world’s tallest and fastest ride of its kind, a screamin’ swing, while SeaWorld Orlando is building a yet unnamed surf coaster by Swiss coaster firm B & M, who have built three other coasters at SeaWorld Orlando: Kraken, Mako and Manta.