East Coast Stop Four - Surfers Paradise


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Oceania » Australia » Queensland » Surfers Paradise
July 1st 2013
Published: July 4th 2013
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On the 19th June we left Byron Bay and drove up the coast towards Surfer’s Paradise, where we had booked a one bedroom apartment for 13 nights at ‘The Shore Apartments’, a high rise building (as a lot of the buildings are in the Gold Coast), right opposite the ocean. However, as the drive was only just over an hour (crossing the barrier from New South Wales into Queensland!), we decided that we would make the most of the day and spend the day at Dreamworld theme park! We arrived just before the park opened and got into the short queue that had formed. Our tickets that we had bought and printed out were scanned and we were told to later go to the pass centre to pick up our passes with our photos on them.



We were in and headed straight for one of the main rides – a backwards launch roller coaster that shot up a big tower before dropping you back down face-first. We really enjoyed this and rode this again later in the day. I won’t bore you by going through every single ride in order – mainly because I just don’t remember but the highlights of the day included the second tallest drop tower in the world (we will be visiting the tallest later in our trip in LA!) which also served as the tower for the first roller coaster explained above, and a top-spin ride (like Ripsaw at Alton Towers for those of you that have been!) that also dropped diagonally, which was a bit of a shock for us as we hadn’t watched it before so it was completely unexpected! There was also a ride called ‘Pandamonium’, which was themed around the film ‘Kung Fu Panda’ (the park was associated with Dreamworks so had a lot of rides and attractions based on various Dreamworks characters), which had a bunch of cars spinning around in a circle, but then also rotating on arms upside down – hard to explain but it was pretty crazy and not one that you would want to ride multiple times in a row! Another ride was a rotating swinging arm (like Maelstrom at Drayton Manor) which are always good fun. There were a few other roller coasters – one that required you to sit on a motorbike and almost lying on your front as it shot around the track, and another that was an older-style corkscrew roller coaster that was pretty painful on the head and ears – not the smoothest ride that we’ve ever been on! The final roller coaster was one which slowly pulled you vertical and upside down into a corkscrew before dropping down the other side and looping back around and then dropping you backwards – again hard to explain but hopefully the pictures will help! We also rode their rapids ride – short but fun and thankfully didn’t get too wet!



As well as the rides there were also some animal enclosures at the park – one area was completely dedicated to Australian wildlife, so lots of kangaroos hopping around, koalas hanging about in trees and others such as wombats, dingoes, crocodiles, birds and snakes. There was also a tiger area, where the tigers were lazing around in the sun, although one of them did seem to be eyeing up the gap between them and some kids that were watching them! We also found out that the Australian Big Brother house is located in the theme park, although no one is in there just yet this year.



We had a really good day and had fun riding and re-riding all of the rides and loved the fact that there were hardly any queues – at one point we had to wait for a few other people to show up as they couldn’t send it with so few people on it! Unfortunately it was not a sign of things to come – unbeknownst to us the Queensland school terms were ending the following day which meant that the theme parks were about to get a whole lot busier! We left the park later that afternoon and drove the short distance to our apartment at Surfers Paradise. Once we were checked in we moved the car down to the underground car park and went up to our room on the 12th floor. WOW! The apartment was huge and was right on the corner of the building facing the ocean, meaning that we had huge windows on both sides of the main living room/kitchen with amazing views of the ocean, beach and esplanade below. We could literally see the water from every single room, and we later found out that we could see the migrating whales splashing around out there from our great vantage point, so spent a fair amount of time staring out of the window trying to spot them every now and again!



The following day we visited the second of the parks, which was Seaworld. Rather than being a park dedicated to rides like Dreamworld was, this park is more about the marine animals that they rescue and care for. Our day was mainly spent walking around watching the dolphins, sea lions and penguins splashing around in their pools, and we also watched the dolphin show which was pretty impressive, with the dolphins doing some huge jumps, pushing around their trainers and of course being fed lots of fish! There was also a polar bear enclosure, where a couple of male polar bears were sleeping – their female polar bear had recently given birth and mother and baby were still hidden away from the public until the cub gets a little older. We enjoyed our day at the park although we did notice that it seemed a lot busier that day even though it was only Friday and the schools wouldn’t technically be on holiday until the following Monday.



The weekend was spent exploring Surfers Paradise and walking around the shops around the area. Unfortunately it looks like a bit of a building site at the minute, with a lot of roadwork going on in the area. Even the beach there was closed off some days as the recent king tides had caused the beach to be majorly eroded, so they were constantly trying to dump more sand on there – although this did seem to be in vain as every night the tide would come right in and just erode it away some more – thanks ‘super-moon’ (although it did look pretty cool!). We visited the town a few times over the time that we were there and enjoyed two desserts from Movenpick with some Groupon vouchers that we had bought – we went for some waffles with Belgian chocolate and vanilla ice cream first time and then the following week went back for pancakes – Emma’s with hazelnut and chocolate ice cream and Craig’s with strawberry and cream ice cream. Both were delicious, although we forgot to take photos of the waffles unfortunately!



We also discovered a HUGE arcade called Timezone – this place was on the second floor of a shopping centre and pretty much covered the whole floor – it was massive and had sooo many different games! We spent a good couple of hours here after loading a card with 10 bucks each, playing a couple of 3D simulation shooter games that were really fun and pretty scary, pinball machines, a monopoly-style coin-pusher game that we were playing for ages, a couple of games of pool, Deal or No Deal, Doodle Jump (yeah they have this in arcades now!), and a few others.



Our first waterpark of our stay was Wet ‘N’ Wild, which we visited during our first week. Although the weather was sunny and warm (for English standards – 23 degrees or so which felt hotter in the sun, not bad for winter!), both waterparks that we visited were pretty much empty! This meant that we were able to run/slide around all day without waiting in any queues, which was great! Wet ‘N’ Wild had a few really good slides – one of them was called ‘Aqualoop’ and required you to put on what we can only describe as a body board backpack?! Once at the top of the slide you stood in a little chamber, they shut the door, count down and then the floor drops below you as you shoot down the slide and around an almost vertical loop! Pretty crazy for a waterslide and apparently not everyone makes the loop!! They have to weigh you before just in case you are too light or too heavy to make it! Thankfully we both made it down (almost drowning on the way down as the water just gushes in your face) and in our shell-shocked state agreed that it was pretty awesome!



There were various other slides, some that required you to sit on an inflatable tube and a couple of body slides, although we always find that we catch our shoulder blades on the ridges of these so didn’t really enjoy them too much – we think that you should be given a body board backpack for all of these slides to make it much more enjoyable, and also much faster! The tube rides were a lot more fun, although it was quite exhausting hauling them up the steps to the top, not that it stopped us from running to the next slide and doing it all again! One of the slides was like a half-pipe, so you were dropped almost vertically on your tube then shot up the other side and back down again until you finally slowed to a stop in the middle. There was also a bowl-style slide that you shoot around before dropping through the hole in the middle – a bit like being flushed in a giant toilet bowl! There was also a wave pool which we took a couple of dips in when we fancied a bit of a rest from all of those steps!



Regrettably, we didn’t actually take any pictures at Wet ‘N’ Wild – I don’t think I took the camera with us, but you can always have a look at the website I guess if you really want to – I’m sure our photos would have looked fairly similar?!



The other theme park that we had tickets for was Warner Brothers Movie World, and it was here that we found out just how busy the parks got when it was school holidays! Now anyone that knows us knows that we avoid theme parks during school holidays as much as we possibly can – why go to a theme park to stand in queues all day with screaming kids when you can just go during term time and walk on everything – it’s one of the perks of being an adult (unless you’re a teacher of course)! Unfortunately as we pulled up to the car park just before opening, the queues were already forming at the turnstiles, and we knew that we were in for a busy day. Determined to at least get on everything at least once, we went first to what we thought would be one of the busiest rides – the Superman roller coaster. As it was still early we didn’t have to wait too long (although WHY they only had one train on was beyond us – they had the capacity to load one train and run another, but no!), and were soon on the ride. This one was a launch coaster that had us shoot out of a tunnel and around a track, with a figure of Superman on the back of the train ‘pushing’ us around and saving us from what was about to be a subway disaster! We got the back seat and so had a great ride (everyone knows that the back seat is the fastest seat!) and were quite impressed with the length of the ride – we were not expecting the little subway part at the beginning which gave it a bit more of story and background than most other roller coasters.



Once off the ride we ran around to the Batman ride – an inverted roller coaster (like Nemesis at Alton Towers) that twisted over the top of Arkham Asylum in various inversions. It was starting to get a lot busier as we then headed over to the Green Lantern roller coaster – the final one of the main three that they have at this park. We were waiting for quite a while for this one but were finally on. This was a little slower than the others, but it was pretty fun, with a more-than vertical drop to start with before going around almost a ‘wild mouse’ style track with a few inversions and twists thrown in for good measure!



Just opposite the Green Lantern ride was the Justice League 4D ride, so we joined the back of the queue. Again there was a fairly long wait, but really enjoyed the ride once we were on there - armed with some laser guns we rode around shooting aliens and aiding the Justice League of America in saving the world from impending doom! Once off the ride we had decided that we were done with the park for the day as we were a bit sick of standing in queues and that we would come back to do all of the other rides that we missed. We ended up driving to Seaworld, where we watched the Jet Ski show that we missed last time we were there and also to walk around the indoor penguin enclosure which we had somehow bypassed last time! We also watched the sea lion show that we had missed before, which was cute and funny!



White Water World was the final park that we had tickets for, which is the water park owned by Dreamworld. We visited on another lovely sunny day, yet luckily for us again the park was empty! Although this park was smaller than Wet ‘N’ Wild we actually found that we enjoyed the slides more here. Our favourite was a slide that you rode in an inflatable dinghy, but instead of just sliding down it also propelled you upwards using magnets. I actually lost count of the number of times that we went on this during the day but we just loved it, and it was different to any other waterslides that we had been on! There was another bowl-style slide and also a funnel shaped one that you kind of slid down and rocked up and down the sides as you went – again we loved these and rode both of these multiple times. There was also a multi-lane slide that you slid down on a mat face-first – there was one of these at Wet-N-Wild but this one just went straight down over a few bumps as most slides of this type do – however the one at White Water World twisted around a tunnel first before spitting you out onto the straight bumpy slides – we also rode this one loads over the course of the day! There were a couple of other tube slides and also a wave pool, and we really enjoyed our day there – although it was smaller it meant that everything was much closer together so it was hard to get bored when you could just keep running around again!



The weather took a bit of a turn for the worst during our last few days at Surfers Paradise – for the first time since we left Sydney it became overcast and rained! A lot! This meant that a couple of days were just spent in the apartment, reading books and playing games on the netbook and DS. It was quite nice to have a few lazy days though in between visiting the theme parks! On one of the colder days we visited the Skypoint observation deck that was included on our Dreamworld ticket, which is basically the 77th floor of the tallest tower in Surfers Paradise, giving us a great view of the beach and surround areas.



We also made sure to return to Movie World a couple of times to ride everything that we missed first time, and also to take the camera in with us – we didn’t take it first time as we had heard that they try to make you pay for a locker for every ride as you can’t just leave your bag on the side like most other theme parks! Our first stop was the Scooby Doo Spooky Coaster – we had actually got in the queue for this just before we left last time but soon realised that at the rate that we were moving, it would be at least 2 hours before we got on the ride and it just wasn’t worth it! Thankfully this time we were at the front of the crowd, where we were held back for about 15 minutes waiting for the area to open. The ride, although a ‘family/kiddie’ ride, was actually really fun. The first part was kind of like a ghost train, and then we ended up in a huge room on a wild mouse style roller coaster – very twisty and we were thrown all over the place as it shot around the corners and up and down the bumps – loved it! Once off the ride we went to the Batman Spaceshot ride – a tower ride that shoots you up instead of dropping you down. We also watched the Hollywood Stunt Show, a great show consisting of cars drifting around a set and performing various stunts as they ‘shot’ a movie. The driving was really impressive and there were a few moments where you really thought they were going to crash into each other or the barriers surrounding them.



All in all, we had a pretty busy couple of weeks at Surfers Paradise, and we loved all of the parks that we visited on the Gold Coast – it was just a shame that we hadn’t arrived the week before to enjoy the parks whilst they were a lot emptier! We were really impressed with the apartment that we stayed in, especially as it was so cheap to stay there – it was way better than expected! Our theme park and roller coaster craving had been satisfied for now (until we get to the USA anyway!) so our trip up the East Coast would continue with our next stop at Noosa Heads!


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