Gwazi

Gwazi was a dueling wooden roller coaster at Busch Gardens Tampa Bay in Florida. The name Gwazi originates from a fabled creature with the head of a tiger and the body of a lion. Accordingly, the two sides are named "Lion" and "Tiger". Often, the two tracks are called "yellow" and "blue", (yellow being the primary color of the Lion trains and blue being the primary color of the Tiger trains). It included almost 7,016 feet of combined track and reached speeds of 51 miles per hour. Both tracks have similar but nonidentical track layouts.

History

Gwazi began construction sometime after the closure of the Busch Brewery which closed in 1995. Gwazi soon after opened on June 18, 1999 as Florida's first dueling wooden roller coaster constructed by Great Coasters International (GCI) and operated with Philadelphia Toboggan Coaster's trains starting with six of them. At the time the Dueling Dragons (now Dragon Challenge) at Universal Studios' Islands of Adventure and Gwazi at Busch Gardens Tampa Bay were the only dueling coasters in Florida just opening a month apart.