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Melbourne area parks for +3

Gazza

Giga Poster
I'm in the process of trying to pick up the remaining coasters in Australia, with the added degree of difficulty of including carnival ones in that figure.

Some enthusiast friends from overseas meant it was easy to arrange a weekend trip to visit Adventure Park, Gumbaya World and Funfields, with a brief stop off at Luna Park and a carnival for good measure.

Friday I actually had to go to Melbourne for work reasons, with a horrid 4:30am alarm for a 6am flight.

So late in the day once I'd done all I had to I thought I'd jump on a tram to St. Kilda and pop in and re-ride the scenic railway at Luna Park Melbourne. I've been before a few times, The park has aways been a bit crappy. Mostly carnival rides set up on a permanent basis and a hodge podge of random theming. The scenic railway forms the park boundary, so it's tiny.

Nothing has really changed other than there is a $2 fee to walk in the gates, with a big new ticket box built just inside the "mouth" entrance of the park, which is a shame because it blocks the view you'd get of the rides beyond.
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But the weather was crap despite being the height of summer....low 20s and rainy, so I just took photos and left.
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The next day we headed down to Geelong for Adventure Park. Adventure park is just east of Geelong, on the Bellarine Peninsular, so is an hour and bit drive from Melbourne. Apparently possible via public transport too if you catch a train to Geelong and a local bus past the park.

It's a nice, tidy family park set around a lake, with a small water park area at the front, a couple of mini golf courses on an island, and flat rides at the front.
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The coaster is a 3 loop version of those SBF family spinners. I've never done one before.
Wasn't bad, decent spinning, but there was an overreliance on kicker wheels, would have been better with one curved lift, then a steady up and downhill for the rest of the layout, building up speed.
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Trainload of Holiday park ACE members :
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With that out of the way we had a go at the paddle boats. So for a ride that is so ubiquitous, ive never been on any. They were ok, felt like you were pedalling madly, with little resistance, but not going very fast. Cool.
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2 mini golf courses would take ages, so we just did the "Skeleton Creek" one. I quite liked the thunderbox hole where you'd hit it under the door and it would get "flushed" out the other side.
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The park recently added a Proslide Tornado 45. This is the 7th Tornado in Australia, so we're clearly winning in terms of Tornados per capita reckon. This one didn't dissapoint, with a couple of fun helices to pad out the ride time. It's nice they have made provision for a 2nd big slide next season too.
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From there we worked our way around main loop pathway through the rest of the water park area.
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and had a go at the ferris wheel for some piccies, and the wave swinger before moving on to the next park....
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Will

Strata Poster
Again, nice to see a report from somewhere a bit out of the ordinary.
Luna Park looks like Dreamland in Margate, which is moreorless exactly how I imagined it - still quite looking forward to getting those creds, that park's giving me somewhere to run away too when I get fed up of F1 track!
 

Gazza

Giga Poster
After Adventure park we did the longest and most ridiculous drive of the trip, around to the town of Lakes Entrance in Gippsland, a 5 hour, 400km drive....why?

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^This.


We arrived around 6:30pm. The weather had deteriorated since the overcast morning, but despite that they were open, and we weren't even the only ones there.
The other Pinfari looper in the country is one which can only be ridden about 10 days per year, at the Adelaide show, since it only appears there.
This one moves around a bit more, but has still been elusive for me, and I probably wouldn't have had my next opportunity till September, and that would have required another trip down to Victoria.
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It actually wasn't that bad. The Adelaide one is a torture device, but this one ran really smoothly. Yes the transitions are a bit bad in parts, but we elected to re-ride which is saying something! The back seat had a couple of strong moments of airtime.
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There were other flats but we didnt ride
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There was a ferris wheel though, so we went on that
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And the dodgems provided a good way to use up a few spare tickets. Nice long cycle.
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After a visit of no more than an hour we turned around and headed back in the direction, stopping off in Bairnsdale for Chinese, and staying the night in the town of Sale.

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Everyone else was sleeping and I had woken up early so I went for an early morning stroll around Sale, which turned out to be one of the nicest country towns I've visited.
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Anyway, we set off about 8:30, our destination Gumbaya World, a park in Tynong just beyond the eastern reaches of Melbourne.
I don't think any buses go to the park, but if you were travelling without a car a visit would be possible by catching a train to Tynong and walking 3km.
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Gumbaya World was previously known as Gumbaya Park, a very small place with paddle boats, a toboggan run, native animals, mini golf and the like.
A consortium of investors bought the place recently, and in the space of about 6 months in the 2nd half of 2017, spent $42m AUD on improvements and new attractions in an effort to make it a big league attraction, revamping the wildlife area, building a small water park, and adding a few flats, including a coaster. Yay!
The sad part though is all the old rides at the back of the park are fenced off, so no toboggans.

They've spent their money well, and the place felt very polished, and clearly has had some thought into the way it will expand. Already they have hoardings up for the next round of things, including a dinosaur exhibit and a conference center.

We met up with an enthusiast friend of mine who lives in Melbourne and had been keen to check the place out.
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Inside the gates is a mini main street leading into a hub, and the themed lands. Sort of like a mini Disneyland, except the first thing in the "main street" is a Macaw exhibit:

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The themed lands:
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And in the middle of the hub is a splash pad. Nice touch.
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Onto the coaster:
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It had theming:
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I don't care what anyone else or RCDB says, i think this is what Ferrari World is getting. It's an SBF Visa "Race Coaster" according to the plate on the ride.
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Basically a big s bend type lift hill, into a helix that gets tighter, then a short uphill section, mag brakes on the downhill and a slow turn into the station. We got about 5 laps on it during our cycle. I had to laugh that they clearly have no confidence in their calculations, judging by the unused kicker wheels on the small 2nd incline. It was "okay", better than a Wacky Worm anyway.

The rest of that bit was just more SBF rides.
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Citroen!!!!
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I didn't mind "Tree Swing"...went fast and had a bit of force, and it felt a bit like a flying scooter without the scooter.
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Next we went down the Wildlife trail. Well presented, with all the usual Australian suspects.
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Parrots

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Goats
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Blue tongues
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Cockys
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Emus
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Kangas
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Wombats
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Wallaby towards the left
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Drop bear
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The sulphur cockatoo bit was the best because most of them would just talk random words. Most of them would just say hello, another made mobile phone noises, and another was creepy and said "come here".

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Here we split off, and my Melbourne friend and I did the water park whilst the others made their way to the airport.

The water park probably needed more slides, since it only had two majors, plus the lazy river, flow rider and rain fortress. A good start, but I hope they flesh it out soon.
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The slide on the left was Taipan. It had a couple of "Constrictor" type helixes, where the diameter of the slide increases, but the turn becomes tighter, causing the raft to get a bit of sustained wall time on the way around. Eventually after a few more turns you get washed out into the drum, where you oscillate like you are in a halfpipe before washing out the drop into the pool.
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See on the right helix, you can see the diameter change.
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The other slide was a family boomerango = big drop and airtime.
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A nice modern facility.
We were done around 1:30pm, so it was time for the last park of the trip....
 
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Gazza

Giga Poster
Time to finish this.
By about 1:30 were done with the water park bit of Gumbaya so we hopped in the car and drove to the northern outskirts of Melbourne for Funfields.
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Previously this place had the rather bland name "Alpine Toboggan Park", but a few years ago rebranded themselves, and started adding new rides, including a couple of hand me downs from the Gold Coast parks.

Such as this
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and this
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No coasters, but it does of course have the Wiegand toboggan, and a few water slide creds I wanted.
The last time I'd been here was around about age 9, and all it had then was water slides, go karts, the toboggan and mini golf.

First up was Typhoon, which is apparently the longest Cannon Bowl in the world....Easy enough record to get, all they did was add a couple of extra turns to the in run.
Great fun, given it really picked up speed and you could get a couple of full laps in the bowl.
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Next we hit up Kraken, which, funnily enough is a Proslide Kraken Racer. The lanes provided slightly different experiences. The outside ones seemed to give a moment of sustained floater on the last half of the tunnel, the inside lanes were a bit more turbulent. It really was a quick slide, and as you emerge from the tunnel your wake can splatter the people trailing you, as I discovered when my mate was in the lead by about 3 meters.
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The grand daddy is the creatively named, and new for 2017 Gravity Wave, a prosldie Tornado Wave, and the world's longest and tallest one.
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I was advised to leave the launch point in the corner of the raft facing backwards on the left. Good advice because you end up going down the drop backwards and end up highest on the wave part. The first part of the ride is a bit meh, but quickly picks up speed in the spiralling drop, and then bam, a huge moment of sustained floater up on the wall.
Probably my favourite slide now.
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We did a couple of re-rides and circled back to Wipeout and Blackout, which are a couple of fairly conventional raft slides.
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I liked Blackout because it was properly dark and they didn't drill any lights in the tunnel, so no sense of direction. Wipeout was the better slide though.

Remember how I said I'd never done paddle boats. Same goes for bumper boats too. These were fun and had a squirty water jet, which you could hit the attendant with by accident. They were very slow though, so I entertained myself by just turning the steering one way and seeing how fast I could spin it.
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Putting clothes back on, we went on the other new addition for 2017, Voodoo, a nicely themed Zamperla 360 swing thingy.
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It doesn't look that much, but I really liked it, and it's as entertaining as the Intamin Gyro swings...The extra height it gains by going 360 makes up for the smaller height of the support structure and lower pivot point.
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The last thing we did was the toboggan run. Unfortunately they have put governors on it, so even with the stick all the way down it was a bit sedate, and you didn't even really need to lean into the turns.
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It also had an interesting feature where you would press a green button to acknowledge you understood the safety rules, and it would take your photo.
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Overall, its one of the neatest little parks anywhere, they have made a bold move by putting in Gravity wave, so it'll be good to see them continue to expand their water park area, and hopefully get a coaster like the other smaller parks in Melbourne......A few more pics of the place.
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After the park closed at 5:30 my mate was kind enough to drop me off at Melbourne Airport.
 
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