Australia 01/18 – Sea World
I’m always in Singapore at this time of year, which serves as a great base to head for creds in the further reaches. A certain new ride made this year the perfect time to tick Australia off the list.
Flew out with Scoot who have a terrible reputation online, which is mostly false and from people expecting too much out of their dirt cheap economy ticket. Most of the arguments out there can be beaten down with a simple ‘you get what you pay for.’
If you don’t pay for meals, there’s supposedly a no food and drink policy and people get screamed abuse at for trying to eat on an 8 hour flight. In reality they don’t care. There was a man eating a footlong sandwich in plain sight before we had even taken off, but we had some good fun out of jokingly being very subtle and hiding our eating from the attendants.
Nice little lighting celebration upon landing.
Picked up the hire car and trundled towards the park. The roads were very congested along the built up bit of the coast with a million traffic lights and it took an age.
In a very welcome change, we were in no rush at all for this leg of the trip. Research this time suggested all the parks were suffering after the Dreamworld incident, but I still allowed some extra days just in case.
I had been putting off this trip for a few years now (thankfully), because it was always going to have to be at this time of year, in the height of their summer holidays. In my mind that would always mean busy as anything, hot as hell and generally not very fun.
Research also suggested that it should have been a cool 20°C, but we still got the hot as hell part with every day being 30+ and most of the country making the news for mega heatwaves. This seems to plague me wherever I go at the moment.
Day 1 – Sea World
The Sea World car park was very busy and turning up half way through the day put us well into the overflow section. Being a park that isn’t primarily about the rides however, crowds weren’t an issue.
Started strong on a Zamperla 80STD. Not sure if their 1 adult per car policy makes you look more or less cool.
Highlight: +1
Lowlight: Lack of shade
Moved onto the Intamin famiyl launch coaster with some excitement. Queue was a bit of an arse as they were only running one train and there’s some nasty locker faff. Didn’t have any coinage yet for the lockers, so managed to harness the power of the easy-going ride staff and perform a bag swap at the batch point.
The ride is packed from start to finish with very fast and forceful turns. It doesn’t feel like it even needs the second launch for its size, but that keeps it going strong right until the end which I respect a lot. You also get to ‘save the sealion’ by riding. Bonus points for morality.
Highlight: Pacing
Lowlight: Locker faff
Had to locker up for Storm Force 20. Another not particularly pleasant queue, very hot and sweaty inside black shipping containers to start with, eventually opening out into a rather well themed shipping area.
Quite enjoyed it for a Skatteøen clone. Coaster section is dull of course, but redeemed by the misty air time hill into an indoor splash with bonus theming and effects going off.
Highlight: Indoor section
Lowlight: Outdoor section
All the flumes and rapids in this part of the world are still down since a certain incident, so no other way to cool off for now.
Jet Rescue stopped itself on the second launch halfway through queueing for our next lap and people got evacuated out of the tunnel. This resulted in a hilarious uproar from the locals who all vocally decided “we don’t need theme parks, lets drink and have a barbeque instead.”
Ditched it ourselves to see some animals for a while and returned later.
Good place to kill a few hours overall. Could probably make a full day out of it if you were into the shows and other animal based frivolity. An overnight flight with no sleep meant I was drifting in and out of consciousness by mid afternoon, so I may not have appreciated everything fully. Got a frozen Fanta in a souvenir cup and called it a day.
Bit of a teaser on the drive to the hotel. They should put a warning sign up. Nearly caused a crash.
Day 2