Well, as it turns out, a lot! I apologise in advance for a long and rambling post, but it made sense to put it all in one…
Week 2 on The Gold Coast, and it’s gearing up to be a solid week of fun, fun, fun. For the kids at least. Ah who am I kidding, it’ll probably be pretty fun for me too! This area is known as the place to come in Australia if you’re after some theme park thrills, so I looked into getting some tickets. Dreamworld is the big one, in fact it’s the biggest one in Australia and is also a pretty good bet for families as there’s a good variety of rides and experiences on offer. It did have some bad press about six years ago when four people were tragically killed on the water raft ride due to malfunction. The bad press associated with that tragedy along with the recent Covid pandemic allowed its competitor Village Roadshow to muscle in and provide a solid alternative for thrill seekers on the Gold Coast. Village Roadshow owns three other theme parks in the area, and offers an amazing package (The Escape Pass) whereby you can can have three days unlimited access to all three parks over a five day period for the bargain price of 179 bucks (about £105 at the time of writing).
This seemed like the package to go for. We figured we could go to a park on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and fill up the in-between days with surfing lessons for the kids. Now it feels worthwhile that we got all that schoolwork done last week, and what a fun way for the kids to spend their last full week in Oz.
First up on Monday was Sea World. As the name suggests, Sea World is first and foremost a park dedicated to marine animals, and is also heavily involved in rescue, rehabilitation and conservation programs.
The animal displays here are excellent, and before long we had seen the emperor penguins in their refrigerated habitat, the amazing sea jellies exhibition, and the awesome (if extremely sedentary) resident polar bears.
Next we came across ray reef where you can come face to face with the most misunderstood of sea creatures, the manta rays. These guys get a bad rap for being dangerous, but they are actually gentle and inquisitive creatures. Despite having a huge tank to roam about in, they seem genuinely interested in swimming near the edges and being “stroked” (for want of a better word) by the eager onlookers. I know this isn’t the wild, and it’s a manipulated situation, but it’s still a pretty magical experience to stare into the eyes of these 6 foot wide beasts as they glide beneath your fingertips. At certain times of the day you can also purchase small tubs of fish and prawns to hand feed them with. The amount of food is limited for obvious reasons, but I would highly recommend it as the kids loved it! It’s a pretty bizarre feeling as they hoover the food from your fingertips.
Other experiences here include glass bottom boat rides across sharks, turtles and rays; the fantastic sea-lion show; an epic dolphin display; as well as more intense experiences like swimming with dolphins and cage diving in the shark tank.
We found a quiet spot to tuck into our packed lunch like the cheapskates we are. Well, the bloody tickets, photos and drinks etc are expensive enough for the week, I don’t feel too bad about saving eighty bucks at lunchtime every day! Guess who walked past as I was half way through my sausage roll – only the weird wheezy guy in the ill fitting t-shirt from the cat cafe last week! I nearly choked on my sausage roll! Was he following us? Why is he still wearing the same clothes? So many questions! “DON’T MAKE EYE CONTACT” I thought to myself as he stumbled by muttering to himself, leaving a trail of cat hairballs in his wake. I wonder if that’s the last we’ll see of him…
You could easily spend the whole day simply enjoying the wildlife, but that’s not all that’s on offer here because this is also a bonafide theme park with some genuinely good rides. There were plenty of smaller rides that little kids could enjoy in Nickelodeon Land and Castaway Bay, as well as a few bigger rides for the thrill seekers. Height is always a theme-park stumbling block for the younger kids, but luckily we could all go on Storm coaster, and Hunter and I even managed a few cheeky goes on the awesome new wooden rollercoaster, Leviathan.
It’s also worth noting that you can buy a digital photo pass that works in all three of these parks for the whole week, which works out much better value than buying individual pictures. And also there’s a refillable soft drinks cup which works across all three parks as well. The only downside was that some of the rides weren’t operational on our visit as it was school holidays. A bit of a con really. I mean it’s not like they’ve charged us less because they knew some of the rides weren’t going to be on, they just don’t operate them if the crowds aren’t big enough.
Tuesday morning was spent down at Currumbin Alley Beach where the kids enjoyed a surf lesson under the watchful eye of Ollie from Currumbin Alley Surf School.
The waters of Surfers Paradise, and in fact most of the Gold Coast are great for more experienced surfers, but can be rather perilous for the younger or more uninitiated. This beach is perfect for learners, and the kids had a great time while I captured their antics with my GoPro.
The same company that owns the theme parks also operates another attraction which is not to be missed. The Australian Outback Spectacular is a live entertainment show and dinner package almost unlike any other. I say almost because we attended a virtually identical (but American not Australian) venue and show at Disneyland Paris a few years back – Buffalo Bills Wild West Show. That show now sadly no longer exists, having permanently fallen victim to the recent pandemic, so I guess you now have to come all the way to Australia to get the same experience.
Essentially, you are seated in an indoor auditorium surrounding an arena where you are treated to a three course dinner while watching an action packed show full of live actors, vehicles, stunts and livestock. The incredible roof-mounted projection mapping system creates a stunning animated environment transporting you through different times and locations. You are each given a cowboy hat as you enter to add to the already perfect atmosphere, and there is pre-show entertainment in “Bazza’s Bar”, comprising live singers and meeting some of the cast – human and animals! The actual show, Heartland, lasts an hour and 45 minutes and tells a tale of hard community life in the rural outback during the recent droughts. It is a sometimes sad but ultimately uplifting tale of comaradery comprising amazing thundering horse riding, cattle driving and acrobatics.
All the while you get to enjoy a meticulously well served steak or chicken dinner and bottomless beer, wine or soft drinks. The four kitchens here manage to churn out and serve 800 main courses in around nine minutes, pretty impressive!
All in all, it is a well priced and highly enjoyable night out, and a great Australian experience.
Time for the next theme park, and Wednesday brought us to Wet’n’Wild, the ultimate aqua park (in Australia anyway). Think thrill rides, but crossed with flumes. There are some truly brilliant flumes here, and it is a welcome way to cool down in the 31 degree sunshine. Some of these rides are truly terrifying and have height and weight restrictions precluding Bam and Hunter from the bigger ones, but there is more than enough to keep them occupied all day, including several large inflatable ring rides for multiple riders.
I couldn’t resist having a go on Aqualoop on my own, featuring a trap door release system. You can’t underestimate the terror of being locked in an airlock style delivery tube, standing on a trap door that you know is about to disappear on the count of three before you reach 2.5g as it fires you around the loop and into the pool below. When you’ve had enough of the high octane thrills, you can relax on the lazy Calypso Beach ring ride, or chill out on the beach of the giant wave pool. There is also a kiddie area with mini versions of the bigger rides so the young’uns don’t feel left out. I guess it’s normal for Australians, but we were all fascinated by the hoards of Goanas (Iguanas to the rest of the world) which were hanging around all over the park, scavenging for left over food. Much more interesting than pigeons.
Thursday was another surfing lesson for the kids with Ollie in Currumbin Alley. They were really starting to get into it by this point, both managing to get longer rides and Hunter even managing to land a few 180 jumps on his board. I have never known Bam to last this long in a surfing lesson before, but she was really relishing being able to paddle back out after riding a wave, maybe we’ll make a surf bum of her yet. I guess the warm water temperatures make it a lot easier for her to last the distance. Surfing back home, she would get cold and tired within half an hour every time even with a wetsuit on.
As if we hadn’t had enough fun in the water, we managed to squeeze in a few hours back in the pool before dinner. Then a good nights sleep before our final theme park the next day.
For our GC theme park finale we headed to Warner Bros. Movie World. This park had a different feel again to the previous two – it was almost like a smaller Disney World in the way it was set up with full on movie sets, fake streets and regular character photo ops and parades.
Again, there is plenty here to keep the whole family happy all day. The only slightly annoying thing is the random height restrictions on the bigger rides. We had been waiting for several years for Bam to hit the 120cm ride height which adds a new level to theme park enjoyment across Europe – and she finally has on this trip. But it seemed like 120 isn’t quite good enough here, and many of the rides had a totally random 122cm limit, meaning Bam was once again left out of the bigger thrills. Hunter was happy that he got to go on his biggest coaster to date, the DC Rivals Hypercoaster (which is amazing by the way), and I was happy because I managed to quietly slope off and have a go on the awesome Green Lantern coaster on my own. And I do mean completely on my own, there was absolutely nobody else in the queue by 15 minutes before closing. It was just me, screaming like a little girl, all by myself!
We had one more day to waste on the Gold Coast, and it was set to be a scorcher. Avid readers of this blog (all three of you) might remember that when we were in St. Lucia a few months back, the kids spent an inordinate amount of time monkeying about on the floating aqua assault course. And whaddaya know, there’s only one here as well, and just 10 minutes up the beach. Perfect, how could we resist! Unlike the Caribbean though, this one requires an adult to do the course as well as the kids. Of course Kate wasn’t volunteering, it was always gonna be muggins here that would have to spend two hours ungracefully heaving his recently expanded frame up and over this sadistic inflatable obstacle course. I’m perhaps being slightly hard on it, it was definitely fun, just bloody hard work! Especially with a damaged shoulder that I had managed to partially dislocate in a rock pool a few weeks back (what an idiot, as my wife would say), but to be fair I could do with the exercise.
The course was noticeably newer and more up together than the St. Lucian one, and featured many more slides and options for launching yourself perilously into the warm sea below. It was also (thankfully) much less slippery underfoot, meaning far fewer spine-jarring comedy falls on my behalf as I chase after the kids. The downside however was that it was infinitely more busy than the last one we visited. We did attend on a weekend of course, but still. Some days it was only us and 2 or 3 others in the Caribbean. Here on the Gold Coast, I was literally shoulder to shoulder with at least a few hundred screaming, mullet-toting kids and a handful of similarly knackered looking parents. Maybe we should have done one hour, rather than two? Ah well, the kids had a great time, I just resigned myself to aching a bit the next day!
That’s it. All that was left to do was get back to the apartment, have one last swim in the pool and pack our bags ready to leave in the morning. It’s been a great couple of weeks chilling out in Surfer’s Paradise. I shall miss waking up every morning and enjoying my coffee looking out over our balcony at this view. I can really imagine spending more time on this coast. One day maybe? Although I say that every time we leave anywhere, there’s just so many beautiful and enticing places to be!
Anyway, next stop Brisbane for a few days to bring our Aussie adventure to an end…
