Days 307-308 Thursday-Friday February 21-22, 2008 – Surfer’s Paradise, Gold Coast, Australia
Theme parks, theme parks, theme parks!!! With our two very sad and depressing days behind us, we were ready to get out and have some fun. We awoke very early on Thursday to head over to Warner Brother’s Movie World on the Gold Coast. Door to door it was about a forty five minute drive from where we were staying to the theme park.
The Gold Coast is famous for housing three theme parks and two large water parks. During our visit we decided to concentrate on the two largest theme parks, Movie World & Dreamworld. In doing my research I concluded that Movie World was kind of a mix between a Six Flags park and Universal Studios, while Dreamworld was sort of a typical amusement park with rides, but little theming.
Since Movie World was the theme park we wanted to see more, we opted to visit it on Thursday. We had left a little earlier than needed and pulled up to the gates of Movie World around 9:30am. With the park not opening until 10am, this gave us plenty of time to get our tickets before catching the opening ceremony.
Movie World really surprised me. Everything in the park is well themed and tells a story. The park has four coasters in total, with the best one being Superman Escape. Another surprise was the Scooby Doo Spooky Coaster which is a heavily themed indoor wild mouse coaster. We must have ridden it five or six times and it got better every time!
To be honest, since it uses the same Warner Brothers license that Six Flags does in the US, I kept drawing comparisons between the typical Six Flags park and Movie World. I think Movie World is what a Six Flags park should be. It doesn’t have a ton of rides, but what it does have delivers in a good way. Oh yah and they have Shrek 4D! Every time we rode something new it was a big surprise. It is safe to say that this was one of my favorite parks in a while.
Our day at Movie World was a success and we left around 5pm to check into our cabin. Fortunately this time the cabin we booked was only a five minute drive from the park. On Friday morning we repeated the routine of getting up early and headed this time to Dreamworld which sits an additional five minutes north of Movie World.
As mentioned before, Dreamworld is a more traditional theme park in that it has more traditional theming, a train and is very run down in spots. This park also has four coasters, including a brand new coaster called Mick Doohan’s Motocoaster. I had been excited because this is a new style of coaster simulating riding on a motorcycle. After finally riding it, I left very disappointed.
In Dreamworld, we rode most of the rides, but our favorite part had to be the animal enclosures. In the back of the park we finally were able to feed some kangaroos and found it to be a lot of fun. They also had an IMAX theater with a film about the outback which I found very interesting. Perhaps the most unique ride in the park is the Giant Drop. This drop tower is the tallest in the world and stands almost 400 feet tall! As for coasters, not one of them impressed me, but I did like visiting The Big Red Car ride in Wiggle’s World!
By the time we left Dreamworld, the two very hot sunny days (YAY!) had left us tired. We had gotten our theme park fix and felt it was time to head north to the Sunshine Coast with the hope that the weather would continue to be good so we could actually spend a little time on the beach!
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The Coomer Family
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Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed or approved by any of these entities.
Great report, its always interesting to hear what people from overseas thing of our local parks (I found this blog via TPR)
Interesting you should note that the Motocoaster was a bit of a disappointment, since this ride was generally a big flop in the eyes of the Australian enthusiast community, why didn’t you like it?
Your thoughts on the parks pretty much mirror my views (and a lot of others), MW is the nicer place to visit, and has more quality rather than quantity.
DW has declined a bit in recent years, and doesn’t seem to have the polish, good rides and good operations.
I recently came accross your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I dont know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog.
Tim Ramsey