Having never heard of Buc-ee's prior to the year-long hype that preceded this location's grand…read moreopening a few months ago, we had to see why all the hype about a (super)-glorified gas station. To avoid having to deal with the massive grand-opening crowds, we postponed our visit by a few months, and waited until I had a day off work so that we could go in mid-day on a weekday, further reducing the risk of massive crowds. It was a bit of a haul, but not undoable, as we live in Scottsdale in the northeast Valley and Goodyear is waaaay out west to the southwest.
The place was still bustling, but manageable. My wife was primarily interested in checking out the barbecue food, and got herself both a pulled pork sandwich AND a brisket sandwich as well as a coconut pudding cup. I'm currently restricting my diet a bit in the interest of weight control, so I limited my selection to a single chicken burrito. We were both very pleased with the quality of our selections, albeit we found it somewhat pricey (but not out of line with the overall over-pricy-ness of virtually ALL "fast" food establishments these days. And this food, though "grab-n-go" was definitely a significant cut above typical "fast" food.
The one irksome aspect of Buc-ee's is that for all the good food served and sold, they provide no indoor (or outdoor, for that matter) seating. You have to take your food out back out to the parking lot and eat it in your vehicle - and we saw several other families doing just that. A parking lot full of quasi-tailgate parties! And messy - no napkins provided, also no utensils save for plastic spoons for the pudding cups - if you manage to find the food area at which they are located. So if you visit for the food - and the food IS certainly good quality and worth trying - keep all this in mind. Bring napkins, bring at least plastic utensils if you feel you will need them, and be aware that you're going to have to eat those juicy, potentially messy barbecue sandwiches in your vehicle, and plan accordingly for handling any drippage.
As far as the merchandise - well it's definitely interesting, and they've got a wide variety of it, from clothing to plushes to scented candles to fragrances to hillbilly knick-knacks to spices to hot sauces, but we didn't make any purchases.
Finally, we did both get to use the famously acclaimed restrooms and found them definitely impressive and worthy of the reputation which they have gained.
We're glad we made the trip, and would definitely say that anyone remotely curious should definitely experience a trip to Buc-ee's at least once. As for us, though, while it was a good experience, it's not one that either my wife or I feel any need to repeat. Our curiosity has been satisfied. In a good way, but, still...satisfied. We won't need to return.
