We are visiting Bush gardens and Seaworld next July each for 2 days. Does anyone have a touringplan for those parks? We have 2 children (8 year: 52’’ and 10 year: 57"). What are the best attractions to start with? (the busiest attractions) We will be there 30 min before opening hours. And tips for lunch at each park? Thanks, Corne
Go to the big coasters first is the general rule for those parks.
I can’t give you much specific help with Sea World as I have not been there in years, but I’m pretty current on Bush Gardens.
With two days (and presumably 2 RDs), you could split the coasters by which side of the park they are located. Montu (my favorite), Cobra’s Curse, and Cheetah Hunt on one day, and SheiKra, Kumba, and Scorpion on the other day. Falcon’s Fury, a very intense drop tower would also go well on the second day. A new coaster called Tigris is scheduled to open in 2019, but I’m not sure when. As the newest coaster it will have the biggest draw, so if it’s open when you’re there, I would definitely make it my first stop. That being said, BG sometimes uses phased openings; some sections of the park may not open until an hour or two after the official park opening. I don’t remember if BGT does this, but BGW definitely does.
Another thing to consider is that BG has about a dozen different add-on tours that you can do, ranging from 30 minute animal meets to 7 hour whole park guided tours. These are offered at specific times during the day, so if any of them sound interesting you will have to take them into consideration. Likewise shows; there are a limited number of shows per day at set times, so if you want to see them, that also has to be figured into your schedule.
I highly recommend that you study the website closely; it gives info on all of the above. I also find BGT to be very disorienting to navigate. It started as a small garden with free beer and a bird show and over the next 50 years more and more was added on a bit at a time, so there is no overall flow to the park. Study the map before you go! Even having studied it, and referencing it in the park, I still got turned around several times - and the4 signage in the park is minimal and not always clear.
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Thanks for your message. Then we will start with the coasters. We don’t know yet what we want to see, but I think we don’t have time to do all the extra guided tours. Maybe we go for a third day is we didn’t see all.
According to your map the new coaster is coming spring 2019.
Any special shows we really need to see?
Thanks, Corne.
I haven’t been to either in over 8 years, but operations on Sea World’s coasters are notoriously slow. Mako is supposed to be the best pure coaster in Florida, so maybe head there first? I did love Manta when I rode it and Kraken is also quite good.
JtA has really bad capacity but is old and not that interesting. Kraken is supposed to have really good capacity, but is run really apathetically so it actually doesn’t. That said, it’s also kind of old at this point, so the demand just isn’t there.
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Ok, so this is usually my local theme park advice, but it might work here. I go onto Yelp and Trip Advisor and see what rides people complain the most about waiting for, and I go there first! It served me quite well at Thomasland!
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I agree. I also found we had to more-or-less walk through some dining area to access part of BGT.
SeaWorld is my favorite. Manta and Mako would be good RD strategies and so is Empire/Penguins. The thing with SW is deciding which shows you want to see and trying to work around them.
Also - we loved the all-day-dining in 2014. If at least suggest you look into it. IIRC @bswan26 doesn’t love their food, but we thought it was ok in 2014 and liked the plan. YMMV…
(I like buffets with kids)
I’ve been looking for a seaworld TP or at least a decent map
There is a poster on DIS named GinaGinaBoBina or something like that. She is consistently on the their SeaWorld pages and is extremely helpful. She might be able to point you in the right direction. 
Also - SeaWorld had an app in 2014 when we went that included a helpful park map.