Aerial Antics: Cheetah Hunt at Busch Gardens Tampa

Busch Gardens Tampa was featured in Aerial Antics quite a long time ago, and since then the park has added a major Intamin coaster we're all aware of: Cheetah Hunt.  The unique ride stretches across a big section of the park, making it an interesting look from above.

Cheetah Hunt's station is actually wrapped by the coaster, as seen above.  The refurbished building fits the dispatch area and much of the queue nicely and all under cover from the Florida sun.  Right out of dispatch the trains are launched up and around the helix in the upper right.  After a dive down below ground level the trains hit a second, much stronger launch, and then flies up into the one-of-a-kind aerial-figure eight seen in the center bottom.

A quick drop out of that sends trains down and over the landscape, including a jump over the park's skyride.

The middle of the ride is a series of low hills and curves, following the landscape closely.  This section is to represent a Cheetah running along and hunting its prey, I would assume.  It's not as intense as it might appear but a lot of fun.  I also liked in this shot how they captured a train zooming along!

The far end of the ride utilizes the former river section of Rhino Rally.  The trains barrel through an elevated corkscrew then dive down into a canyon complete with waterfalls.  Soon there's the ride's 3rd launch which gives the trains the energy to cross the park back toward the station.

Cheetah Hunt is quite impressive from the air, I stitched together this large aerial of the complete ride for you guys to check out.  A lot of zig and a bunch of zag later the trains make it back to the station and sadly, the ride is over.  The coaster is a great family ride, much less intense that it would appear with all those launches, really a lot of solid fun overall.

These images came from Google's 45 degree views, you can click over to them here.