The brewery and gardens officially opened to the public for tours on June 1, 1959, as an admission-free facility with 250 attending the opening ceremony and around 1,000 attendees to Busch Gardens. Busch Gardens opened on 15-acre (6.1 ha) of land southwest of the brewery at the cost of around $500,000.

When Busch Gardens Tampa Bay first opened in 1959, it was a relatively modest 15-acre attraction located next to an Anheuser-Busch brewery. The initial development of the "Gardens" portion cost approximately $500,000 (roughly $5 million in today's currency). However, the broader brewery complex it was attached to cost about $20 million to construct. Over the decades, the park has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on massive expansions to transform from a bird sanctuary into a world-class theme park. For example, the "Serengeti Plain" expansion in the 1960s and the continuous addition of record-breaking roller coasters like Iron Gwazi (estimated at over $10 million for the conversion alone) and Pantheon have significantly increased the total capital investment. Modern "mega-attractions" in the park typically cost between $15 million and $30 million each. When accounting for 65+ years of infrastructure, animal habitats, and high-tech ride systems, the total cumulative value of the park's development is estimated to be well into the hundreds of millions of dollars.