Gwazi

The beer-brewing Anheuser-Busch company originally owned this park as well as a couple other theme parks.  In 1979, the Busch Entertainment Corporation was started.  The SeaWorld theme parks were purchased by the company in 1989.  The entire Anheuser-Busch company was sold to Belgian beverage giant InBev NV in 2008.  A year later, InBev divested their interest in the Busch Entertainment Corporation and sold it to the Blackstone Group for over $2.5 billion.  Blackstone, which also operates a variety of other attractions such as Madame Tussauds and some LegoLand theme parks, renamed their newly acquired division SeaWorld Parks & Entertainment.  The new group's main properties are Busch Gardens Williamsburg, Busch Gardens Tampa, three SeaWorld parks, four water parks, Pennsylvania's Sesame Place and Florida's Discovery Cove.  The famous Anheuser-Busch Clydesdale horses have left the park, as has nearly every reference to Busch beer. (Yes, this is a statue of a horse, but real Clydesdales used to live at the park!)  In 2013, the newly renamed SeaWorld Entertainment company went public and began trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

The two Gwazi coasters had a combined length of 6,800 feet and took one million feet of lumber to build.  The new steel track on Iron Gwazi is 4,075 feet long.

©2020 by Joel A. Rogers.