Wednesday, October 15, 2003

 
Day #4, Wednesday

So, I went to get my annual roller coaster fix to Warner Brother Movie World, which is about 45 minutes to the south of Brisbane. Thanks to Australian Day Tours, for 79AUD I was picked up from the Hotel and also got the admission ticket ... Ride was smooth, I even dozed off, not much to see on the way.

We arrived quite early, 15 minutes before the ticket offices opened ... after that another wait of 10 minutes to get into the park .. and then another 15 till they opened the barrier on main street. It was actually fun that today they were filming the opening, having a director around (Steve Stevenson?) .. but then again, maybe this was just another elaborate trick to make the day feel more special.

Compared to american theme parks, this one was much smaller. Had fewer rides, actually 'only' 3 rollercoasters. I compared it later to the Sushi situation we face ... much better than in Fiji, but not great compared to the US :)

I think I did pretty much all rides, some of them twice. Notable was the new "Scooby Doo" coaster, a fun indoor ride. Not super high, but some fun twists. One of them being that you first ride pretty much on the bottom level through a hounted house setup, then the car stops, facing the wall, and you realize you are on an elevator, which brings the car upstairs in a slight s-curve movement. And out the car goes BACKwards! yeah .. a fun drop and then up again and then the car is turned and the actual roller coaster ride begins, in a fairly dark / disco light environment, with the scooby doo song blaring all over.

I really enjoyed the water log ride, which somehow felt taller than others i know ... it too employs that "going backward" trick at some point. I shot some video, which I will put up later.

The main coaster "Lethel Weapon" reminds me a lot of the "Batman" ride back in New Jersey, but it rattles a lot and I hurt my shoulders on the harnesses ... but still fun. The last coaster is something Road Runner themed and very smooth. Not really high and no scary drop though.

I actually visited some of the shows: Marvin the Martion and the 3rd Dimension, one of the first CGI 3D movies I recall having read about and always wanted to see ... it was actually a lot of fun, it does still have the hand-drawn touch of classic cell animation, but looks great and is very entertaining for the 15 minutes or so .. the 3D effects are 'right in your face' so that even the lil' ones get the idea.

There was a bat attack show on main street which started out as a dance number by Poison Ivy and her gang and then some fight between the good ones (Bat, Rob and B-Girl) and bad ones (Freeze, with a schwarzeneggerish accent, Poison Ivy and Catwoman) ... no question who one, but Robin was made to be such a sissy ... fun.

While the Police Academy movies are long time gone (and will hopefully NOT ever revived), the Stunt show based on this movie series is hilarious and highly entertaining.

Some last thoughts? Bring sunscreen and a hat ... australian sun is cruel .. going alone as a 36 year old man is kinda weird. People treat you like a dad who lost his family or like a paedophile. Waiting in line alone is not much fun either ... Tip for lunch: there is a bakery on main street that has "normal" sandwiches ... I wish i had found that place earlier ... every other place wants at least 10$ for some greasy looking combo plate. What is really nice compared to US parks: 2 of the restaurants where actually selling beer (for the bored dads ... i spotted some of them)

Later I heard from our bus driver that Dreamworld (5 minutes away) probably has more rides. Well, I will try that one next time then.



Dinner was a bit chaotic. First we wanted to take the ferry to Brett's Wharf, but realized that we are already a bit late and decided to check out the restaurants around riverside. We then decided that we liked "Fish Restaurant" so much that we wanted to go again. Too bad that they had JUST changed their menu (different from 2 days ago). All the items that we remembered as "wanna try next" were gone, prices were up, and no waitress came to see us for 10 minutes .. so we left .. getting more tired and more hungry. As we approached the japanese Restaurant we thought about trying, Ritsu realized that she left her handbag at the Fish Restaurant, which gave me some unexpected evening workout, sprinting back to ensure it is still there (with all the money and credit cards) ... turns out that the new couple sitting at the table had not even noticed the bag.

Tired and my foot hurting like hell, we ended up going to Sushi Station again, and it was very nice again. Though it was a bit late, few people, thus less new stuff on the train, we knew what to order this time around and had some great stuff. We really enjoy their squid-ball yakitori. And their salmon is very tasty too.
posted by Peter 6:11 PM