Kings Dominion & Busch Gardens at Christmas

The Adventuring Abbeys visit Kings Dominion & Busch Gardens for Christmas Family Vlog

Well, we can now officially say that in 2021 – we did something we have NEVER done before!

As roller coaster enthusiasts – this might come as a surprise, BUT before this past weekend, we have NEVER visited a theme park (outside of our own home park of Kennywood) in the month of December.

It’s kind of funny to think about, because we LOVE Kennywood’s Christmas event: Holiday Lights – we look forward to it every year & visit at least 3 or 4 times. But, we’ve never traveled to go to any other parks at Christmas. (There are always excuses, right? The month of December is busy – especially with Leander’s birthday & Christmas parties & events and all the prep for the holidays.)
But, the weekend before Christmas, we pushed all of that aside & decided to take a little mini-trip down to Virginia to visit Kings Dominion & Busch Gardens Williamsburg.

When we originally started talking about the idea of visiting a few Virginia parks in December, we had “high hopes” that it would be warmer there than it is here in Pennsylvania. And, if we had visited just a few days before or a few days after our trip – it would have been warmer (in fact, the forecast for Christmas Day in Williamsburg was 70º!!)
HOWEVER – that was not the case when we were there! The high temperature on both days that we were there barely got up into the 40’s. We figured: that’s okay! We know how to bundle up & still enjoy ourselves (after all, that’s what we do when we visit Kennywood!) PLUS, we hoped that the parks wouldn’t be as busy with the cold-snap – we hoped that people would look at the forecast & decide to stay home the handful of cold days, in favor of going out during the much warmer days to come.

And while Kings Dominion was busy – it didn’t feel like it was OVERLY busy. The lines weren’t that long, we were still able to get food & drinks & ride the rides that were open without too much of a wait at all.
Busch Gardens was a COMPLETELY different story. I think everyone & their brother visited Busch Gardens on the same day that we did. The park was packed out the wazoo. There were lines, to get into lines. It literally felt like Walt Disney World in peak summer season – the midways were wall-to-wall people – it was “hold on to your people because if you get separated, you’ll never find them again” season. Absolutely nuts.

To be honest: we were expecting crowds though – it was the week before Christmas & we knew parks are at their very busiest then!
We still had a wonderful (albeit really cold) time.

Kings Dominion was by far our favorite experience (there was just so much more to do & see & their light displays were better – sorry Busch Gardens, we still love you – just in the summer, not the winter). The kids enjoyed themselves & Derrick & I got on our last roller coaster of 2021: Verbolten (which, thankfully we made it on – because it turns out – the train that ran right after I got off was the very last train of the entire day!)