Sand Serpent

This wild mouse coaster is one of the most well-traveled rides in the SeaWorld Parks portfolio, having operated under three names at two different Busch Gardens properties. Mack Rides built it for Busch Gardens Williamsburg's Oktoberfest section, where it opened April 12, 1996 as Wild Izzy — named for the mascot of that year's Atlanta Summer Olympics, which Busch Gardens sponsored. The following season the park dropped the Olympic tie-in and rebranded it Wild Maus with generic European styling.

Wild Maus closed in Williamsburg after the 2003 season to make way for the dark ride Curse of DarKastle, and Busch Gardens Tampa Bay shipped the disassembled coaster south, reopening it in the Timbuktu section as Cheetah Chase on February 28, 2004. It ran under that name for seven years until the park's 2011 debut of the much larger Cheetah Hunt coaster created an obvious naming conflict; Tampa rebranded the wild mouse Sand Serpent that year, and it continued running with tight switchbacks and strong lateral forces through the renamed Pantopia section.

Busch Gardens Tampa Bay announced in June 2023 that Sand Serpent would close the following month to clear space for a new family inverted coaster; the ride's last day of operation was July 9, 2023, and it was subsequently demolished.

Sand Serpent's three-name, two-park history makes it a small footnote in SeaWorld Parks lore — a modest wild mouse that quietly outlasted several flashier attractions built after it, until finally giving way to Phoenix Rising in 2024.