SeaWorld Orlando and Busch Gardens Tampa will reopen to guests next week, and the parks today announced a new advance reservation system for guests to book a date and time to visit.
When SeaWorld presented its reopening plans last month, they did not include an advance reservation system. Now the parks are introducing the online system to "help manage capacity so that guests can enjoy a safe and fun experience while maintaining physical distancing."
The reservation will go live at 10am on June 8 at the following websites for the company's Orlando and Tampa theme and water parks:
The parks today also posted their new operating hours. Both SeaWorld Orlando and Busch Gardens Tampa will open from 10am through 6pm once they return on June 11, with SeaWorld Orlando closed on subsequent Tuesdays and Thursdays and Busch Gardens Tampa closed Tuesdays and Wednesday through August. There will be extended hours at both parks on the Fourth of July holiday weekend, and SeaWorld will begin extending its hours on Fridays through Sundays when its Craft Beer Festival begins on August 14.
All parks will require temperature screenings and face coverings to enter and will be supporting physical distancing and enhanced cleaning and sanitation procedures. If you want the details you can read them on the parks' websites.
"We thank Governor DeSantis, Orange County Mayor Demings, Orlando Mayor Dyer, and the members of the Orange County Economic Recovery Task Force for their support of tourism in Central Florida as we prepare to reopen our Orlando parks to the public on June 11," SeaWorld Entertainment Interim CEO Marc Swanson said. "Over the past two months, we have worked with state and local health officials, third party medical and epidemiology experts, and attraction industry leaders to enhance our strict health, safety, and cleanliness standards. We are committed to the health and safety of our guests, employees, and animals in our care, and will continue to follow the guidance of health officials as conditions evolve."
In case you were wondering, neither Busch Gardens' Iron Gwazi nor SeaWorld's Icebreaker will be open when the parks return. Openings dates for these new roller coasters will be announced later, the parks said.
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It also seems Ice Breaker, the new coaster at Sea World will not open this year.
@Manny - I'm not surprised about Ice Breaker as it had yet to enter the testing phase, but Iron Gwazi is the real elephant in the room, because they had begun initial testing of the RMC just after the park closed for the pandemic. The BGT website no longer shows Iron Gwazi on the front page, but it's still present on the "What to Do" page with 2020 still listed as the anticipated debut. It's possible that they haven't updated all of the individual pages on the website, but it will be interesting to see if they will try to debut this highly anticipated roller coaster despite significant capacity restrictions and decreased operations to meet new operational procedures (cleaning, empty rows, and slower dispatch times).
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The links will cause confusion, as the verbiage says nothing about visitors with memberships making reservations, yet states at the bottom that all visitors need a reservation.