Spite Down Under – Australia and New Zealand 2024

[witchfinder]

My wife and I took a three week trip to Australia and New Zealand in September and October this year. This was our third time in that part of the world and was intended to be a kind of “mop up” of the areas in NZ that we hadn’t visited before, along with spending some time in Sydney and Brisbane. This resulted in using flights to skip over certain areas and over the duration of the holiday we took a total of 8 flights, rented 4 different cars, drove over 2200 miles, stayed in 11 different accommodations, saw the southern-most point of NZ’s South Island and the most northerly point on the North Island, ate loads of incredible food and saw many amazing sights. None of which you necessarily care about, so I’ll move on to the part you probably are interested in.

This was never meant to predominantly be a cred-focussed trip but both countries do have some coasters, so it would have been silly not to ride them while I was there. As the title of this report suggests, there was quite a bit of spite, some of which was expected and some of which definitely wasn’t!

Luna Park, Sydney

Our trip began by flying to Sydney via Hong Kong with Cathay Pacific. Hands-down the best long haul economy flight I have ever had, so they are highly recommended if you’re travelling to Asia or beyond from Europe.

After 26 hours of travelling we arrived in the evening of Saturday 21st September and went straight to bed. I was initially hoping to visit Luna Park on the Monday but they were only opening the major rides at the weekend, so that meant Sunday was my only option. With the fear of jetlag kicking in, we decided to head there early and get it over with before we got too exhausted.

Side note: we actually suffered no jetlag at all – evening arrivals FTW!

By sheer good fortune, the weekend we were in Sydney they were giving free public transport on trains, metro and buses, so we decided to approach Luna Park by train, which meant travelling over the iconic harbour bridge. The alternative option is to go by public ferry, which is not expensive and we did use that later on when we left, as it departs from right outside the park.

The park is free to enter but you must buy a wristband to ride anything. There is currently no pay-per-ride.

Hot tip: Luna Park increases their wristband price the closer it gets to the data you wish to visit, so book online and book early for the best deal.

Anna was sitting this one out, so upon arrival I grabbed my wristband, walked through the park and headed for the main attraction – Big Dipper, the prototype Intamin Hot Racer.

The queue was short, just a couple of trains wait, and I managed to get the back row on the seven seat, single file train.

This is billed as the world’s first double launch single rail coaster, or words to that effect. Technically it’s not really a single rail, actually two rails joined by a solid steel plate, and the first launch serves little purpose as it just sends you into a bend before you hit the second one.

Anyway, it was a pretty fun ride – a bit bouncy through the tyre-driven launches and rattly in places, but not unpleasant, and there’s a good variety of banked curves, inversions and some nice airtime pops. Nothing spectacular but this model is a decent choice for a small park – the capacity would be diabolical for a larger one though!

Quite a view from those apartments!

Across the midway from Big Dipper was my first spite of the trip, the classic wooden Wild Mouse. This was fully expected as the park has been refurbishing the ride for over a year and Vlogs from earlier this year showed it was completely dismantled. It looks to be almost rebuilt now, with most of the track installed, and had been advertised as reopening late 2024. I was hoping it may have been ready as I was a huge fan of Blackpool’s wooden mouse and I’d have loved to ride this version, but sadly it was not to be.

On to creds that were open though, and next up was Boomerang, which is - shockingly - a junior boomerang. Not a Vekoma one though, this one instead being manufactured by Gerstlauer.

Just in case you weren't sure, no dogs allowed!

This had a much longer queue than Big Dipper, probably about 20 minutes, as it was evident that the majority of visitors to the park were families with small kids. I got back row again but there’s not much to say about this – it’s similar to the Vekoma ones other than the unusual lift hill that flattens out for the riders at the back of the train. It was a decent enough family ride, but one and done.

The third and final cred was Little Nipper, a shark-themed kiddie cred whose name is a clever twist on the Hot Racer’s. This again had a 20 minute queue and when it came to my turn, I was bizarrely batched to the front row even though I was the last person to board. Always a bit awkward riding these things alone, and even more so when you’re at the front with a bunch of families behind you.

Shame completed, it was time to check out the rest of the park. The other big attraction here is Coney island, which is reminiscent of Blackpool’s old Fun House, which I spent a lot of time in as a kid. It had a long queue to get into and I didn’t really fancy being spun around on various contraptions though, so I gave it a miss.

I also wasn’t interested in the majority of flat rides, so I grabbed a second ride on Big Dipper. Once again I got the back row and with the weather rapidly heating up, this ride felt wilder and more forceful than the earlier one, and consequently a bit more rough. Still perfectly bearable though, unless you’re a big wimp

Making my way back towards the front of the park, my final ride of this quick visit was Hair Raiser, the 50m tall Larson drop tower. I really love these – they may be my favourite type of drop tower as they drop you forcefully as soon as you reach the top, giving loads of airtime. I also lucked out with a great seat that gave me a view of the midway and the harbour bridge as I travelled to the top.

That did it for my first park visit in the Southern hemisphere. It was never going to be a long stay with loads of re-rides, as we had plenty of other stuff to do in Sydney. I’m happy to have spent an hour or so in this iconic seaside park, which has a lot in common with Blackpool Pleasure Beach, despite its much smaller size. The rides I rode were fun and the operations weren’t too bad, the park was clean and well presented, so no real complaints.

It was a shame to miss out on the Wild Mouse, but cool to ride the original Hot Racer model, which I understand has been improved on significantly with the recent installation at Walibi Rhone-Alps. Overall, a good start to the trip that was just about worth the money I paid.

As previously mentioned, we used the public ferry to move elsewhere in Sydney after my visit, which allowed for some nice views of the harbour bridge and the park as it went past. We also passed the park again on another ferry trip the following evening, which allowed us to see it all lit up, even though it had closed at 4pm that day

Not at all creepy!

 

[Graeme]

The old Wooden Big Dipper looked so, so good. Also those giant slides in the Fun House. I remember watching a Clive James documentary years ago, in which he revealed he was terrified of them as a kid, and finally rode them in the programme. They've always fascinated me since then. There's just something about a giant slide.

 

[Gazza]

Yeah I think LPS is decent enough now. Previously it felt a bit naff but now with the expansion, the fun house, the rotor its a decent little lineup. Even better once the mouse is up and running.

 

[witchfinder]

After a couple of brilliant days in the Sydney sunshine, we took our next flight to New Zealand’s South Island. You may be wondering where Brisbane/Gold Coast comes into this trip and to that I will simply say – later

The South Island has no theme parks or permanent rollercoasters, so there’s not a lot for you hardcore enthusiasts that don’t care about scenery and stuff here. For those that do, here are a few highlights of the 7 days we spent on the island.

We saw the peculiar Moeraki Boulders on the East coast.

We went to Slope Point, the most southerly point of the South Island. Pretty bleak!

We climbed Mount Sunday (again, we’ve been before) which is best known as the filming location for Edoras in the Lord of the Rings. They bult an entire set here and then took it all away again!

View from the top:

We flew to Nelson at the top of the South Island, visited Cable Bay Adventure Park and rode the Skywire, a zipline suspended over 300 metres in the air over a forest canopy, with the cable being over 1.5km long. You do the whole thing forwards and backwards!

We also went to Wharariki beach to get a photo that anyone using a Windows computer in the last decade should be familiar with

Anyway, enough of that, on to the creds...

Rainbow’s End

On Tuesday 1st October we flew from Nelson to Auckland (flight number 5 of 8 if you’re keeping count) and after picking up our rental car we headed to New Zealand’s only proper theme park.

Due to it being school holidays, the park was handily open in the evenings that week, with a discount twilight ticket available for NZ$44 (roughly £22) to cover the 5-9pm time slot. This was ideal as usually it costs $65 to get in, which is a bit steep for such a small park.

We arrived just after 5pm and there was a moderate number of people queuing to get in. Having been up since 7am that day, done a few hours driving in the morning and then the flight, our hope was to get in the park, get the rides done as quickly as possible and get to our B&B the other side of the city. Any concerns we had about the park being busy were quickly dispatched when we arrived at the first cred.

Gold Rush is a mine train that was built in-house and uses 4-person, wild mouse style cars. There were only a handful of people ahead of us in the queue and we were on in less than 5 minutes.

It begins with a dark ride style sequence through a gold mine, with some reasonable theming, animatronics and lighting for a park of this level. There’s also a half-decent “broken track ahead” effect before the car veers around a corner and goes up the lift hill to the outdoor section. This winds around with a few small drops and corners before running alongside the log flume and returning to the station and hitting some brutal brakes. For an in-house effort at a small park it was pretty good, without really doing anything amazing. The profiling of the track is hilariously bad in places but that just made for exactly the kind of janky ride you’d expect an old mine train to be.

Next up was New Zealand’s only inverting coaster, the imaginatively-named Corkscrew Coaster. This was at the far end of the park, which necessitated a walk of approximately 4 minutes to reach. This had no queue at all so we walked straight on for our one and only ride.

As an old Arrow loopscrew with the original trains, I was expecting to get bashed around on this, but it was surprisingly quite smooth! A couple of rough moments through the two corkscrews, but otherwise absolutely fine. On another day I might even have ridden it again, but I’ve done enough of these now that one lap will do.

Walking back towards the front of the park, we eyed up the log flume. The weather was relatively warm, but overcast, and having seen a few groups coming off not looking too wet, we decided to go for it.

This turned out to be a lot better than we expected, as your log travels through several themed areas featuring everything from gnomes and fairies to pirates, dragons and more. It went on for ages, with a small drop mid-way through, interacting with the mine train at times, before eventually going through an indoor section culminating in the final large drop. At the bottom there was a big splash, but the log kind of skimmed across the water and very little of it ended up splashing us. It really was very good!

Next up was another unexpectedly delightful themed experience – the toilets

After that we grabbed a second ride on Gold Rush as we walked past, before seeking out the park’s final cred in the indoor Kids Kingdom area.

Choco Express is an SBF Visa junior coaster. We arrived to find it unmanned, but after a short wait one of the ride operators came over from one of the other rides and asked us where our child was. When we said we didn’t have any kids, we were told we couldn’t ride. Spite number 2 of the trip, despite my protestations that I’d travelled halfway across the world to ride every coaster in New Zealand. OK, I didn’t protest that much but it was still annoying.

Spitey McSpiteface

The park has a few other attractions, such as go-karts (which may have been an upcharge), a 4D cinema and some vomit-inducing flat rides, but the only other ride of interest to me was their Intamin drop tower, Fear Fall.

This is described as being 18 stories tall on their website – I guess it’s around 200ft? Anyway, Anna sat this one out and I headed for the entrance, saying I would only ride if it had a relatively short queue. Well it did, as I ended up being the only person in the queue and riding it alone. Not often you get a zen ride on a drop tower!

With no other rides of interest, that brought our time at Rainbow’s End to, well, an end. We left through the shop, which had some quite nice merch that was really overpriced. T-shirts were about £30!

Just as with Luna Park, this was never going to be a long visit and having spent little more than an hour in the park, it was job done. The spite on the kiddie cred was disappointing, but otherwise I was pleasantly surprised by this place. It is very small and the ride selection is limited, but both Gold Rush and the log flume were really fun, unique attractions with better theming than expected. The Corkscrew and drop tower were both decent enough thrill rides, and the overall vibe of the park was pleasant, despite its location between a retail park and the motorway.

If I lived in New Zealand and this was my one and only place for thrill rides, I’d probably be pretty depressed and praying for a new thrill coaster. For a one-off visit though, it was pleasant enough, and again I didn’t begrudge the entry fee, which roughly averaged out at £4 per ride.

Random park pics of note:

 

[witchfinder]

The following day we spent the morning in Auckland and did the WETA Workshop Unleashed tour. For the unaware, WETA is the special effects company that worked on the Lord of the Rings/Hobbit movies and tons of other stuff. I won’t bog this post down with a ton of pictures but if you’re into movie SFX or animatronics then it’s well worth a visit as there’s loads to see and play around with on a 90-ish minute tour. There's even a mini scare maze!

After that we had lunch and began our journey to the northern tip of the North Island. As we left Auckland, it started to rain quite heavily, which didn’t bode well for our first stop.

Crystal Mountain

About 30 minutes out of the city is this small park with a variety of things to do, and most significantly for me, New Zealand’s only other permanent roller coaster, called Gonzales.

As we arrived at around 2pm it was pouring with rain and a lot of people were leaving. The chances of getting this cred seemed slim but I headed to the café to enquire whether it was running. The staff advised me that it was, but only on a 30 minute schedule and then only if there were enough people wanting to ride it. The next time slot was coming up but there were so few people around that they reckoned it would be very unlikely it would run.

Given I had already lost out on my chance to ride all the creds in the country with the previous day’s spite, and with several hours of driving ahead of us, I decided not to stick around and effectively “self-spited” this one. Here’s the only shot I got of it.

The next few days were spent in the Northlands and as previously mentioned, we visited the most northerly point on the North Island, Cape Reinga. They made much more of an effort here than at the opposite end of the country!

We returned to Auckland after a few days and that brought our 12 day adventure in New Zealand to an end. Missing out on two creds was annoying, but this part of the trip was never really about coasters and we had an amazing time seeing all the sights.

Next stop – Brisbane, the Gold Coast and some serious parks and coasters!

 

[witchfinder]

We flew from Auckland to Brisbane on Sunday 6th October, arriving late afternoon. After picking up our hire car we checked into our AirBnB, which at 5 nights would be the longest time we stayed in any accommodation on the whole trip

First order of business was meeting Anna’s friend that she had made on Instagram a few years ago for the first time in real life. Luckily it wasn’t weird in any way and we spent a lot of time with her and her husband over the next few days, as they took us to a number of great places to eat as well as doing a bit of sightseeing.

Speaking of great places to eat, our first dining destination was Eat Street, a huge street food and live music venue on Brisbane’s north shore. They had every kind of food you could imagine, and then seemingly made up a bunch that you would never think of too!

The next day was a public holiday in Australia, so obviously we weren’t going to hit a park then, but on Tuesday 8th we made the 50 minute journey down to the Gold Coast for our first major park of the trip.

Warner Brothers Movie World

This is what you see when you get off the motorway to approach the park.

WBMW is owned by the Village Roadshow chain, which also runs SeaWorld, Wet & Wild and other attractions in the area. We’d bought 3-day passes that allowed entry into all of those parks on 3 days over a 5 day period. These cost less than the price of two days entry and allow park-hopping each day too.

We had no idea how busy the park was going to be, as school holidays had recently ended in Queensland but were still ongoing in neighbouring NSW. With this in mind we arrived half an hour before park opening, only to find huge queues outside the front gate already.

The gates opened at 10am and it took about 20 minutes for us to get into the park. What we found out later was that there were a lot of Kiwis there, taking a sunshine break to the Gold Coast during New Zealand’s school holidays. That was something I’d never thought about up front, but there was nothing we could do anyway other than join the huge queues and hope for the best.

The Fright Nights event was on, but only on weekends and as a separate evening ticket, so no scares for us.

My plan had always been to get on the low capacity Green Lantern coaster first, even though it was at the front of the park. I stuck to that plan as I figured no matter how long the queue was, it was only going to get longer as the day went on (and I was right about that!)

I joined the queue and waited about 30 minutes, with the highlight being the chance to see some huge lizards in some nearby green space, although there are some nice theming elements too.

This S&S El Loco differs from the majority of this ride model by having four-across, two row trains with lapbars. They definitely made the ride more comfortable than the OTSRs that are usually on these, but in the end it was still just an El Loco so one ride was enough.

While I was queueing for Green Lantern, I’d noticed on the park app that DC Rivals was closed, and hadn’t seen a single test train go around, so presumed it was having early morning issues like a lot of Macks seem to *cough* Hyperia

With the biggest attraction closed and Superman Escape having an hour-long queue already, we decided to try and knock off the rides towards the back of the park before their queues got any longer. We therefore headed to the Looney Tunes themed kids area and the Road Runner coaster.

This Vekoma junior coaster runs two trains and only had a 15-20 minute wait. Again, this got a lot longer later in the day so we hit it at the right time. This is the same layout as Flight of the Hippogriff at Universal Orlando and obviously you only get one lap because of the two trains. Nice theming and quite a bit of force on a couple of the turns made for a fun, if unmemorable ride.

I haven’t mentioned it yet but this was the hottest day we’d experienced so far on our trip with it being over 30 degrees at 11am, so our next stop was the park’s water ride, Wild West Falls. This is located in a really nicely themed wild west area (surprise!) and had a 60 minute queue, but at this point so did almost everything else in the park and at least there was shade in the queue line and the promise of a splashing at the end.

Another thing I haven’t mentioned yet is the operations at Australian parks. They are abysmal, and for a country where you can be killed by all manner of wildlife, they are very strict about health and safety. I’ll get into this more later but on this ride, every batch of riders is given a briefing by the host before they are allowed to board the ride, which of course means there are empty boats sitting in the station and returning ones waiting to unload, all of which slows things down more.

Anyway, once we got on it, Wild West Falls was really good, with a couple of good drops (one with airtime!) and a great themed section in the middle of the ride. Seriously, watch a YouTube video – it is very good.

That brought us to lunchtime and surprisingly, the queues for food weren’t long at all. Probably because everyone was in a queue for a ride. Afterwards I took some photos around the nicely-themed DC area before we headed back to the front of the park.

DC Rivals was still closed, so we went to see what was going on and were confronted by this ominous sign.

That didn’t sound like a temporary closure, so I headed to guest services to find out what was going on. They advised that the ride was waiting on a part and the earliest possible reopening date would be Thursday 10th October. That was our final day in Australia before flying home.

The next two days were going to be tense!

There were still other creds to get of course, and we noticed that Superman Escape had just reopened after some downtime, so that seemed like the best chance of a short-ish queue.

This is where the park’s horrendous ops really came into their own. For all of the thrill rides, you’re not allowed to take any loose articles on. That means bags, phones, wallets and keys must all be left in a storage area. They don’t even let you wear glasses on-ride, even if you have a secure strap to hold them on.

On Superman, those restrictions are taken a step further. You cannot take any loose articles into the queue and must put them all in a free locker at the entrance. That means no phones to look at whilst waiting and no bottles of water either. Glasses are the only exception, as they are collected from you and put in a tray when you board the ride, which is a good job because my wife is basically blind without her specs.

The queue line is all indoors but there is no air-con, so essentially you’re waiting in a metal box subjected to 30 degree heat. I managed to convince the staff member at the entrance to let me take a bottle of water in, but was advised that I would have to bin it when we got to the front of the line. Absolutely ridiculous.

I also asked how long the queue was at that point and was told approximately 30 minutes, but it actually turned out to be over an hour. The ops were atrocious. Two trains were in operation, with a separate offload platform as with the likes of Rita and Stealth. However, the ops would not even start batching people into the station entry gates (not airgates, actual doors on to the station platform) until an empty train was in the station, so there was virtually no point having two trains. They also gave huge priority to the fast pass queue, at one point filling three successive trains with fast pass holders, meaning the standby queue did not move at all for about 10 minutes. It was absolutely shocking, even making Parque Warner Madrid’s ops look efficient!

Sorry, that was a very long rant about the ops, but still not as long as we waited in that oppressive queue. After that horrendous wait, we luckily got batched to the back row.

The journey begins with a slow dark ride section through a subway, with light and water effects along with a voiceover in places. Eventually the train comes to a stop and Superman tells you he’ll get you out of there, and then the hydraulic launch propels you to 62mph in 2 seconds and out of the building. The big shock for us was that it was raining when we got out there!

From the launch to the brake run, the ride is short, but this is an excellent old school Intamin accelerator with a great top hat after the launch and a couple of very good airtime moments. The restraints are the hard plastic ones so you do have to brace to avoid a bit of neck bashing, but overall this was a really good ride, packed with the aggression you expect from this model. It was just a shame about those awful, awful operations.

It was approaching 3pm and having done just four rides in five hours, huge queues across the park and with a return visit inevitable, we’d had enough of Movie World for one day and decided to drive down to Sea World for the last couple of hours of their operating day. On the way out, we did see a little bit of the parade.

Quick side note, there was a lot of guaranteed spite at Move World. Their Scooby-Doo indoor coaster was undergoing planned refurbishment for a year.

There were also three creds under construction in a new Wizard of Oz themed area. I already knew these weren’t going to be open in time for our visit, despite the land having been under construction for a good six months, but that’s four potential creds in one park that all spited. Add the DC Rivals closure into that and this wasn’t looking to be a good haul.

Anyway, we arrived at Sea World at around 3:30, which gave us 90 minutes to do as much as possible. Yes, despite the many hours of dry, sunny weather, these parks close at 5pm most of the year

The weather wasn’t actually that sunny at this point as a lot of cloud had come over and there had been some light showers, though it was still very warm and humid. As a result of that though, the park was pretty quiet. First stop of course was the relatively new Atlantis themed area and the monstrous woodie, Leviathan.

This has an interesting queue line right in the middle of the ride’s footprint, where you work around in a spiral until you eventually get to the front. You’re then batched into a tunnel before eventually being sent through the indoor queue line, up a flight of stairs and into the station. As predicted, this is a load of operation faff and slows down dispatches, especially as you then have to dump your loose articles and glasses before riding. This was further exacerbated by there only being one train in operation of course.

None of this mattered too much at that point because the queue was only about 20 minutes, and we managed to grab the “back row” which is actually the second-to-last forward facing one because the train has a backwards-facing back row that is an upcharge.

The station is awesome by the way

This was a really good woodie, packed with airtime and whippy laterals. Definitely the best Gravity Group coaster I’ve ridden so far and comfortably in my top ten woodies. It was a wild ride, but not really rough, though I suspect it will get that way in the future.

Crap pics I know, better is to come from our later visit.

Next up was the next closest cred, which was in the Nickelodeon themed kids area. SpongeBob's Boating School Blast is one of those standard Zamperla family gravity coasters with some reasonable attempts at theming.

Queue time for this was about 15 minutes due to more ridiculous operations. The loose articles policy reached new levels of stupidity here as you were allowed to take bags on the ride, but if you wore glasses you couldn’t keep them on. Instead you had to take them off and hold them in your hand during the ride, because that’s much less likely to cause you to lose them than just keeping them on your head isn’t it?

Two laps done on the kiddie cred, we then made our way towards the back of the park to find one of the other two creds, took a couple of wrong turns and then finally ended up at Storm coaster about 10 minutes before the park closed.

This Mack water coaster was walk-on and has some great theming in the station and around the ride. It’s the same layout as the one at Djurs Sommerland, which we rode last year. Not a lot more to say about the ride really, other than we did get wet on the final drop but it was still warm enough for us not to care.

That rounded off our time at SeaWorld and it was definitely a good decision to head down there and get three of the four creds, as that meant that on our return visit later in the week there was only one left to get and we could focus on some of the wildlife attractions.

A frustrating day at Movie World was tempered somewhat by that last couple of hours, so we went back to our AirBnB reasonably satisfied, though the disappointment of DC Rivals being closed was a sour point. The next 36 hours were going to be anxious as I waited to see if it would reopen on our final day in Australia

 

[davidm]

Ooooh spite-drama, such tension.

Aus-parks glasses policy is ridiculous - wear contacts if you have them!

 

[witchfinder]

Ooooh spite-drama, such tension.

Aus-parks glasses policy is ridiculous - wear contacts if you have them!

I'm actually OK without them, but my wife can't really see anything and also can't wear contacts so she really struggled.

As for the spite drama, it will keep people coming back until I finish the report

 

[TilenB]

Oh, the joy, Warner Bros. Movie World is sitting comfortably near the bottom of my park rank list, purely due to their abysmal operations and asinine policies. When we went, the lockers for Superman were even a 1 AUD upcharge and they wouldn't let us in the queue with our glasses on. I found it lowkey hilarious that they still made you go through the giftshop before you could even reach your stored belongings.

 

[witchfinder]

Oh, the joy, Warner Bros. Movie World is sitting comfortably near the bottom of my park rank list, purely due to their abysmal operations and asinine policies. When we went, the lockers for Superman were even a 1 AUD upcharge and they wouldn't let us in the queue with our glasses on. I found it lowkey hilarious that they still made you go through the giftshop before you could even reach your stored belongings.

Well things have change a little since then. The lockers are free now, and there's no gift shop anymore, just a big empty space

 

[Matt N]

I’m surprised to hear that Warner Bros Movie World has such in-depth loose article and safety policies, I must admit.

Do they scan you through a metal detector, or are you still able to take loose articles into the queue if you have zip pockets (e.g. cargo pockets)?

On another note, it sounds like you’ve had some rather poor luck in terms of spites so far… I hope DC Rivals opened later in your trip!

 

[witchfinder]

I’m surprised to hear that Warner Bros Movie World has such in-depth loose article and safety policies, I must admit.

Do they scan you through a metal detector, or are you still able to take loose articles into the queue if you have zip pockets (e.g. cargo pockets)?

They don't have metal detectors, but even items secured in pockets aren't allowed. Would they spot everything? Probably not, but they did look people over as they wre getting on rides so it wasn't worth the risk of keeping anything, given how slow the ops were.

 

[witchfinder]

The following day Anna was going to spend the day with her friend, so that left me free to do some solo park trips. It had rained heavily overnight and the forecast for the day wasn’t too promising either. I was hoping this would mean the parks would be quieter, but I wasn’t taking any chances as I hit the road nice and early to get to my first destination about 45 minutes before it opened.

Dreamworld

This park isn’t part of the Village Roadshow chain, so I just bought a standalone one day ticket, finding the best deal on GetYourGuide. It’s not cheap, with the gate price being over AU$100 (£50) and no discounts for early purchase, though there are multi-day or multi-attraction passes available.

I arrived to find the car park virtually empty and nobody at all waiting at the entrance, so things were looking good as I took my spot right by the entrance doors and waited for them to open.

At 10am, open they did and I immediately made a beeline for one of the lower capacity creds, though I initially went the wrong way

Kenny’s Forest Flyer has had a bunch of names over the years and at least one repaint. None of that hides that fact that this is an early Vekoma “Hang and bang” SFC. Being alone at the park meant I could move at my pace, and that pace is fast when I want it to be. Consequently I was the first to enter the queue for this ride and nobody else was even close to entering the queue when I got to the station. I joked with the ride op that I was the test subject for the day and he dispatched me for a zen front row ride to kick off my day.

The cred was alright I suppose. A bit of headbanging, but not that bad. SFCs have certainly come a long way since this was built though. I was just glad to get it ticked off nice and early to be honest, and immediately headed to the next low-capacity kids cred which was nearby.

This was the park’s newest cred (for now) and was predictably terrible, but at least I didn’t have to wait for it as I got it out of the way before most people had even reached the area. Neer managed to get a pic of it in operation though as every time I went past later in the day it was taking an interminable time to load.

In my masterplan to tackle the park as quickly as possible, the next low-capacity ride I headed for was The Giant Drop, the park’s legendary drop tower that also used to be the structure for the Tower of Terror coaster. Unfortunately, I was greeted by what was becoming a regular fixture on this trip.

Yet another spite, as it was closed all day. Here's a pic anyway though.

Speaking of spites, next to it was another one.

In the lead up to this trip I had noted that Motocoaster was due to be closed for scheduled maintenance the day after my visit. However, at some point during the preceding couple of weeks they had decided to close it early, so I knew I wasn’t going to get on it. More frustration, but nothing I could have done about it.

Navigation around the park is a little tricky at the moment because they are in the process of building a new area called Rivertown, which will host their new coaster Jungle Rush. That’s another one due to open in 2024 by the way, though I knew full well I wasn’t going to get it. The issue is that the construction site prevented circular navigation of the park, so there are a number of annoying dead ends.

By now I’d realised that crowd levels were very low so I could slow my pace a little, though there were some ominous clouds around and I wasn’t sure how they might affect operations. Time for some more intense creds then, and I trekked across the park to their oldest operating coaster.

First up, let’s talk about the queue line for this thing. You will certainly get a workout making your way up this huge spiralling structure, though I did later discover you can use regular staircases at the sides for a more direct route.

By the time I made it through that mess, I found that the cred was essentially walk-on and got my first ride on the back row. Like Superman at Movie World, this is another one with weird doors blocking access to the station.

This custom Arrow looper began its life where I began this trip, at Sydney’s Luna Park, being relocated in 2001. We all know how rough these can be, especially when they’ve been moved about, so I was pleasantly surprised that it was relatively smooth, helped no doubt by newer Vekoma trains that have vest restraints.

On the back row, this thing is also damned intense, with some serious force exerted through the two inversions and an overall fun ride as it passes above the waterpark. Having enjoyed the ride and with no wait, I went around for a second go while I was there, riding the back again. Two was enough though, as the intensity level really was pretty extreme.

Just after completing my second ride, the first rain shower of the day hit the park so I headed for some cover, deciding to go and try out the park’s flying theatre, Sky Voyager.

Having not seen much of Australia’s natural wonders on this trip, a virtual tour of the country by air seemed like a great idea. However, for some inexplicable reason they were showing a tour of the USA in the morning

I still went into the building though, waited about 15 minutes and the queue didn’t move at all, so something was obviously wrong and I decided to bail as I could see the rain had passed over and I had one big cred still to get.

Steel Taipan was the park’s last major investment and as I’m sure you know, is essentially a clone of Blue Fire but with a swing launch that goes backwards into a twisted spike. The setting for the ride is really impressive, but what really got me pumped was the queue size

This was taken backwards from the station entry gate, and at this point there was just one person in front of me. The ride ops assumed we were together and batched us to the front row. Conversation then ensued and they turned out to be a Brazilian theme park fan who had been working in Australia for about 6 months. Eventually there were enough riders to make it worth sending a train out, and away we went.

I rode Blue Fire for the first time earlier this year and found it fun, but nothing outstanding. Steel Taipan is more of the same, unsurprisingly. The swing launch doesn’t really add a lot, as the transition into the twisted spike is quite jerky. The launches are intentionally quite tame to facilitate the swing, and after that the layout offers the same mix of airtime and inversions that Europa Park’s original does, which are generally just OK.

When we got back to the station, there was still almost nobody waiting so we were offered a re-ride on a different row, but then the ride had a technical issue so we had to leave in the end. I then headed to have a look at the native animal exhibits until the ride re-opened.

When I returned to Steel Taipan, the queue had grown to be almost an entire train’s wait. Disgraceful I grabbed two more rides, one mid-train and the final one on the “back row” (again, not really the back row due to the upcharge spinning car) and enjoyed them both, without being blown away. The reverse spike on the back row was an interesting experience though.

Going on the standards of most coasters in the country, Steel Taipan is an excellent ride and certainly boosts the profile and appeal of Dreamworld, but on the worldwide stage it’s nothing special. Would it end up being the best Mack I rode in Australia though? You’ll have to wait and see

It was approaching lunchtime and I felt that I’d done everything I wanted to in the park, so rather than shell out big money for average food, I decided to end my visit to Dreamworld at that point and head elsewhere. One thing worth noting, and they are very upfront about it, is that you are not allowed back into the park once you’ve left, so make sure you’re sure when you do leave!

Overall I had a great morning at the park. Yes, as usual there was some spite annoyance, but I was delighted to have got all the creds I was expecting, including re-rides, and also have a look around the wildlife areas. There was even the bonus of seeing some Ibis pestering other park-goers for food. These birds might look exotic to us but they are considered no more exciting than a pigeon here, with locals referring to them as “bin chickens”

It was hard to judge due to how quiet it was, but the operations seemed better here than at Movie World, though the same draconian loose article policies apply. The staff were friendly and helpful, the landscaping and mild theming was all good, and despite the average weather, I had fun. Once they get the new area open and the pathways are reopened, this may be the nicest park in the region, if not the entire country.

My day was far from over though, as after grabbing a cheap lunch from a nearby bakery, I made the short journey down the road for what I hoped was going to be a much quieter afternoon than the previous day.

Movie World (Part 2)

Just as I was driving to the park, the heavens opened and as I entered the car park, I could see guests leaving in their droves. Ideal

Cool green fountain for fright nights!

I headed in and checked the app to find that every single ride in the park was closed aside from the two indoor ones. One of these is a kids driving school attraction, and the other was the Justice League dark ride, so obviously I headed to that.

Unsurprisingly the majority of guests had joined the queue for this, which was advertised at 30 minutes. Then it broke down, leaving absolutely nothing for adults to do in the park. For a place that experiences very high temperatures but also quite a lot of storms, the lack of indoor attractions is a real problem.

Thankfully it wasn’t long before a tannoy announcement advised that the storm was passing over and that outdoor rides would be reopening soon. This was the moment I’d been gambling on, so I headed to the one operating cred that I hadn’t picked up the previous day, which was also something I did not want to queue more than 10 minutes for.

This had been relocated from the nearby Wet & Wild water park, plonked within the footprint of Superman and rethemed earlier in the year so is classed as a new attraction. It would be the only one of five possible “New for 2024” creds I would get on this trip.

After hanging around the entrance for about 5 minutes the ride re-opened and I got on the first train. I don’t really like spinning cars and I don’t like repetitive back and forth motion, so I was expecting this to make me want to puke, but actually it was quite fun. The only issue was that just as the ride cycle began, the rain returned and I got absolutely drenched. I think that meant the ride duration was shortened, but I got the cred so that’s what mattered.

Despite the rain, the outdoor rides were still running but I didn’t fancy getting soaked any more so headed back to Justice League, which had reopened and now had just a 10 minute queue.

On the face of it, this looks like the ones at the Six Flags parks, with similar theming, but the tech is not as good. The ride vehicles move on a track and you shoot at a mixture of screens and physical targets. However, I found it really hard to hit the screen-based targets and at the end of the ride the guns broke completely and we never got to see out final scores. So, meh.

Now my original plan for this solo day was to spend the afternoon whoring DC Rivals, but obviously that wasn’t going to happen so my only alternative was to whore the next best ride in the park.

Of course, based on the previous day’s experience, the idea of being able to get loads of rides on this coaster seemed unlikely, but thanks to the weather and perhaps slightly better operations, the queue time was averaging 10-15 minutes and I managed four rides in about an hour.

I got another back row ride and one on the second row, so got to ride it in different places and enjoyed them all, though after four rides my aging body had taken a beating. For all the operational problems, it really is an excellent ride and given how these hydraulic launch coasters are dropping like flies at the moment, I was very happy to get multiple rides. With the dark ride section and near-misses, it’s not only a thrilling coaster but a great themed experience too.

There really was nothing else I wanted to do in the park, so at about 4pm I called it a day and drove back to the AirBnB to dry off before going out for some lovely Malaysian food. All in all, a much more satisfying day than the previous one and with everything else at Movie World done, I could focus on one thing and one thing only there the next day… if it opened!