The stupidiest tour ever conceived - Dubai, Australia, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Tokyo

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So, to share my experiences (and also get some points for this years LOG), I decided to try making a trip report for my crazy tour this October/November.

First, some backstory.
I originally planned to finally head over the pond to visit the US East-Coast. After postponing this trip since 2020 for variying reasons, I was dedicated to finally get it working this year. Until my company launched a new project, which had me in a pivotal role and a deadline right when my Giga-Trip was planned to end.
So, what should I do? I decided that the only worthy replacement for my dream vacation, would be a trip so stupid, that I wouldn't care about the States anymore. Australia was an obvious choice, with the weather towards the latter half of the year being comfortable and it also being quite literally on the other side of the world.
Over the course of planning, some additional stopovers came and went. Indonesia, Singapore and Taiwan where just a few of my considerations. I finally settled for an itenerary starting in Dubai (where I went last year, but my friend accompanying me has never been there), heading to Brisbane, followed by Sydney and then going for Shanghai Disneyland, Hong Kong Disneyland and Tokyo Disneyland + DisneySea. It actually escalated a bit more, but the other parks are not worth a compelete individual report.

So, let's start with the very first leg of the trip, Dubai. I would like to note that due to the sheer amount of parks, I may not recall everything correctly, or simply do some reviews instead.

After arriving the evening before and having another ride on Storm Coaster, the first day was planned to include Motiongate and Real Madrid World - a park that I missed last year due to its transition from Bollywood park.

Motiongate was signifantly more crowded then last year. We actually had up to 15 minutes worth of queue at maximum - but this was more of an outlier and most of the outdoor attractions were still walk-on.
After having to wait until 11 o'clock to get our tickets (we used the GoCity Unlimited pass for most park admissions), we decided to get the outdoor credits first.

Capitol Bullet Train is a launched Mack Megacoaster with a switchtrack and pendulum launch. And the ride is... there. It really doesn't do much at all. It isn't bad by any means, but it also has little going for it. It is there, and was a decent +1

Now You See Me: High Roller, a Maurer spinning coaster and remnant of Six Flags Dubai is actually a decent spinning coaster. Thanks to it unusual start, it is actually a fairly fun experience. Nothing special, but for sure one of the better Maurer spinning coasters.

John Wick: Open Contract was one of the creds that I missed out on last year. I was actually looking forward to it as it is was my first S&S free spin. Well, my conclusion: It is better than the Intamin Zac-Spins. That's all that I can really say about it. It wasn't really fun, it wasn't really pleasant, but it was better than a Zac-Spin, so at least a +1 that doesn't cause me to question all my descisions in live that brought me to this point.

Green Hornet is also one of those rides, that are just there and don't really stay in memory for long. I recall getting into the car, I recall getting out of it, but I have little to no recollection about the ride itself. I think this tells you quite a lot, and fits into the theme of this park.

Smurf Village Express is a Gerstlauer Family coaster. NEXT.

We then headed for the Smurfs Studio Tour. This dark ride is certainly not the best, but I still do enjoy it. This ride is one of 3 trackless darkrides in the park, all of the very same type. I guess they got a decent deal on them, so they decided to get the same ride 3 times. I like the idea of the smurfs making a movie, and the storytelling is actually fine.

Another ride I missed out on last year was their rafting, themed to Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. I got warned that this would be the dryest rafting out there, but it was actually alright. I did dislike that it often times went very slow in places, but the quicker parts were decent fun and I got a decent sprinkle over the course of the right. The thing that was really messing with me was the water temperature. I am used to the water being cold and kind of unpleasant, but with the temperatures in Dubai, it was actually really warm. Just an unsual sensation, but it certainly isn't a bad one.

Motiongate is also home to a Hotel Transilvania Darkride. I do like the idea of it, with it being centered arround a large room with some smaller rooms at the sides, but it just feels so bare in many places. It is ok, but certainly not a ride I would wait 30 minutes to go on.

Ghostbusters hits a similar note. I do like my shooters, and it does feel better executed than the one at Heide Park, but it is still not a darkride to write home about.

We then headed for the longest queue of the day: Madagascar Mad Pursuit, an indoor Gerstlauer Infinity coaster and the star of the park. But before that, we actually had to wait in a line for 15 minutes. Apparently, we got there at the worst timing, as all of our repeat rides were pretty much walk-ons, but this first ride did require some patience. The S-Bends after the launch can actually be a bit painful as you don't expect this kind of sudden movement, but the ride itself is actually pretty good. It has a few nice airtime moments and tells a nice story throughout its layout. It looses a bit of speed after the MCBR, but it is still easily the best coaster in the park. Having known nothing about it in 2023, I was suprised that this one is airtime and turn focussed and feautres no inversions.

Dragon Gliders is a nice use of the Mack inverted powered coaster and for me superior to the original at Europa-Park. It features a nice story and it's coaster part feels more natural than the one on Arthur.

We also did the KungFu Panda Simulator ride, which could actually be a fun experience. But with us sitting in the last row, several of the movements were just too jolty and we didn't get thee feel of riding a boat at any moment.

Overall Motiongate isn't a bad park, but you really see that they are struggling with low attendance. I guess they expected Dubai to grow a bit more towards their park, which would make them easily accessible from the city, but as of now it requires at least 30 minutes via car to get there. Luckily for us, the taxis in Dubai aren't that expensive, but I feel like the location is the biggest issue for all of the parks at the resort.

I will skip ofer Real Madrid World and Legoland; We basicly just got there for the creds, and left quickly for that reason. Legolands kiddy coaster a one notable issue, as it's seats are black and exposed to the sun, so the ride was actually closed until 4pm due to the seats being to hot for anyone to sit on - talking of design fails.
Real Madrid world is actually not included in the pass, and cost about 80$ with the cheapest offer I could find. And this park is nothing but a ripoff. You pay that much money just to be bombarded with cheap ads for Real Madrid, in a park that utilises half it's area and clearly shows that it used to be a different park. Hala Madrid, their GCI wooden coaster was my only beakon of hope, and it managed to beat Joris en de Draak as the weakest GCI for me. Yes, it has a great start, but after 2 elements it is just doing nothing. Well not quite, it *tries* to do something, but never really achieves it. Maybe it wasn't a great idea to build an airtime focussed coaster with trains that are not suited for negative Gs.
We got 2 creds, and that is the best I can tell about this park. If you're not a hardcore counter, just ignore this one. It is empty for a reason, even Motiongate felt like Magic Kingdom on Memorial day compared to this.

Next Part: Ferrari World, Warner Bros and SeaWorld Abu Dhabi on one day - running from ride to ride.

 

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Ferrari World, Warner Bros and SeaWorld Abu Dhabi on one day - running from ride to ride.

Day 2 was originally just intended to be for Ferrari World, However, I knew that there is an option to upgrade our Ferrari World Ticket from the GoCity pass to a multipark ticket and did hope that we'd be able to experience Sea World as well. Turned out that Ferrari World had me covered, with Mission Ferrari spontanously extrending it's planned maintenance (it was orginally scheduled to be open again 2 days before our arrival), and Formula Rossa out of order since January, the park really did not had that much to offer.
After getting rejected at Flying Aces because the ride had some technical issues, went for Fiorano GT challenge. Luckily for me, the other track was opened, so I could at least grab a +1 here. The ride is quite interesting, as it is focussed on laterals, but with just one track and little to no theming on the outside, there is little race feeling to come up.
After a brief car ride which was fine, Flying Aces did finally open, so we went into the pretty queue-line, just for it to having problems again after 2 trains. This took about 15 minutes to resolve, in which we had plenty of time to see the pre-show over and over again.
The ride itself is somewhat overhyped in my opinion. Don't get me wrong, it is a really good coaster, but it feels like it is trying to accomplish just a bit too much during the layout. The super-fast lift and the Non-Inverting loop are crazy, but afterwards it starts loosing speed and also looses intensity. It still has good airtime in places, but nothing too crazy. I also dislike some of the wonky transitions, but I guess that is a personal issue.

Turbo Track was up next, and it is still one of the most boring thrill coasters I've ever experienced. The launch isn't really intense, it's airtime isn't strong and the spike doesn't achieve too much either. It looks cool and appears to be of interested for the GP for looking cool, but as an enthusiast, there is little fun I have upon riding it.

With my guilty pleasure, Formula Rossa out of order, we figured we just grabbed a few dark rides, have a re-ride on Flying Aces (we got the last row) and then get our tickets upgraded. First the dark-rides: They all consist mostly of screens, and feel fairly bare in between. And none of them is really good, including the flying theatre. It isn't the worst I've done, but that's all I can say about it.

I have to admit, that I was quite happy that we'd be going to leave Ferrari World. I did enjoy the park during my original visit, but mostly due to me loving that crazy sense of speed you're getting in the Front Row of Formula Rossa. Whilst Flying Aces is a very good coaster, it is not that great, that it's keeping me in that park. Most other attractions feel like an add for Ferrari, were the brand came first and the fun second. One might argue that that is exactly the point of the park.

After a brief discussusion, we concluded that we'd be trying to hit Movie World and Sea World on that day. The upgrade was pricy, but with 80€ per person still cheaper than any other option. Although there are free shuttle busses available, we opted for a Taxi, which was about 3€ (which is the minimum fare) for the 5 minute drive - not too bad. We started at Movie World, knowing that we'd had to hurry up. The park was significantly more crowded than Ferrari World, but that only meant 20 minutes of queue at most. The counts are nothing special, a Zamperla Spinning coaster and an Intamin inverter. The latter one had some nice Road-Runner "Mep mep" sounds in 2023, but they were not working this time. The Intamin is actuallly a fine coaster, and has a cool theme overall.

The theming at Warner is without a doubt its large strenght. They really took advantage of it being completely indoors, and created some great worlds on the inside. Especially the Gotham area has an amazing atmosphere, but the other areas aren't bad by any means.

We used the lower crowd levels to also get a ride on their Scooby-Dooh darkride - a fun one, that I'd love to have another go on, as well as the Flintstones log-flume. The log flume caused us some headache, as it went down 2 boats before we'd be getting in. Anyway, the problems were solved within 15 minutes, so we got a ride in. It was pleasantly wet, and thanks to everything being indoors the water was as cold as you'd expect.

That actually concluded WB Movie World for us. We both agreed, that we'd be going to spend more time here for a future trip, as we didn't really do much and mostly ran from attraction to attraction. On the other hand, this saved us some time for the main attraction of Yas Island:

Sea World. This park is nothing short of amazing. It is huge, multi level and feels like a labyrinth in places. The amount of exhibits is high, and the exhibits themselves vary between really large up until "OMG, did they bring a whole ocean in here?". We had 4 hours here, and that just wasn't enough. We focussed on the counts first, which weren't that easy to find as the place isn't really easy to navigate. I originally missed out on this park, as I visited 3 weeks before its opening. But looking at other counts I missed on this trip, I do have a habit of having a bad timing.
Anyway, lets get to the counts:
Electric Eel is a family coaster, and it is fun for the smaller ones. As a thoosie, it is a +1. It goes a bit around the other family rides, which improves it quite a lot. Worst thing here was the queue, with about 20 minutes due to it being popular and doing 2 laps at a time.
Manta on the other hand turned out to be my favourite ride in Dubai and one of my favourites on the whole trip. What an amazing coaster, wow. The launches aren't the most intense, it's speed isn't really fast, but with 3 launches on a 1.2km track, it manages to keep its speed. The theming during the ride works quite well, especially the S-Bends towards the second launch. It also has some amazing airtime moments, that I didn't expect. Overall a very pleasant suprise, surspassing Flying Aces as the best coaster in Abu Dhabi. Last row was in my opinion the best one, allthough the S-Bends worked amazing in the front. But the airtime in the last row was just better in my opinion to make up for it.

I won't go too much into details for the animal exhibits, most of them are so large that you really have to experience it yourself. I do have to shoutout the antarctic area. Picture this: You are in the middle of the desert, and go into a freezer to stand next to penguins. Yes, their arctic exhibit has you walking through it, with a temperature in the negatives. Crazy thing, and I was happy to have left the exhibit because I was so cold.

Overall, my ranking of the 3 parks looks like this:
- Sea World
- Warner Bros
- Ferrari World

With Formula Rossa hopefully reoping soon, this might chance to to it being my guilty pleasure. But objectively, Warner and Sea World just have the better experiences compared to Ferrari World. Of course, the most amount of creds are to be gathered at the Ferrari Park, but if you are into more than just advancing your count, I highly recommend the other 2 theme parks.

I did realise that I skipped over Motiongate, that was done in the evening of the first day. But as we more or less just ran through it, grabbing the creds and leave again, there is really not much to tell you about this one.

Next: Heading Down Under - Dreamworld Australia