Summer’s coming, and nice weather and vacation days may land you in an amusement park very soon. I’ve come to accept the high cost of admission but still grumble at the food and drink prices. Tired, thirsty, hungry, and captive audiences are ripe, it seems, for gouging. Perhaps the rationale is that if you can afford the ticket price, you can afford a $3.00 hot dog and a $2.00 cola.

In the interest of frugality and safety (I assume all of you need hydration and some of you may also bring along children who also need fluids), I will pass along a tip that I received from a waitress when my family and I were visiting Williamsburg. She rightly divined that my husband, my sons, and I had come to visit Busch Gardens and advised us that free water inside the park was always available. Apparently, it is a rule (law?) that patrons who ask (for water) shall receive. I suppose it could be bad for business if a visitor fainted from dehydration just because he or she didn’t bring some extra cash or had spent it on souvenirs.

At any rate, the waitress was right and you can get free water at Busch Gardens. In hindsight, we should have tipped her even more than the typical 20%.

Since then, I have tested my don’t-let-the-customers-get-dehydrated-or-we-will-look-exceedingly-greedy theory at one of the large water parks in North Carolina. The kid behind the ice cream counter wanted to hide the transaction but, yes, he did pass me a cup of free water (tap, not bottled) that quenched my thirst.

Try it sometime and let me know what happens.

Photo by Luza.