Australia 01/18 – Warner Bros. Movie World
Bit of a teaser on the drive to the car park. Nearly caused a crash.
Day 2 – Warner Bros. Movie World
Rocked up at opening time to find it reasonably busy.
Headed straight in to find an excited rabble of a queue to the entrance of the very reason we were here.
First impressions of the park is that it’s a bit squashed in places. 2 major coasters and the dark ride are all packed in just inside the entrance.
Staff and managers were hanging around this area advising that morning checks were running a bit behind and the queue wasn’t open yet, but we persisted with the rest of the crowd.
El loco ride hosts were leaning over the fence and asking people to ride. “Only 5 minute queues guys.” They were ignored.
Maybe should have taken them up on the offer in hindsight, as it also got pretty busy later on, but like I said, no rush.
Eventually the main queue was opened and the crowd just about filled the length of it.
Asked the man with the sign about backwards on the way past. $10 a pop, timeslotted fastrack. Cool.
Took about an hour from where we started to get on. I’d sort of zoned out what we were about to ride at this stage and it didn’t really hit me until the lift.
It’s very good overall. Fantastic start with the crazy twisted drop, huge airtime hill and the non-inverting loop that would make Soaring with Dragon blush.
Middle section is decent but not amazing, the big banked corner doesn’t do much and is followed by a very long section of twisty turns and strong positives just on the right side of intense. I wouldn’t go as far as calling them deadspots, like my issues with Expedition GeForce and the like but if I’m looking for perfection, that’s where this ride falls short a smidge. Putting on my picky hat it doesn’t quite feel as well flowing or deliberate enough as a sequence of elements for this third of the ride.
The ending is back to fantastic again with the two very intense hills and another funky one halfway through a corner. I felt the airtime through my teeth here, which I’ll take as a good thing. It also joins the very exclusive club of rides where I instinctively use my hands to stop my head coming off.
Booked a slot for the backwards seats upon exiting and joined the queue for Justice League: Alien Invasion.
It has a nicely air-conned and themed building to queue inside. There’s talking going on from screens and an animatronic from the other side of the station, but you can’t really hear any of it in the queue. Don’t know much about this Batman stuff, but the gist of the story I got as the vehicle departed was ‘shoot Superman.’
Liked the ride quite a bit. One of those where you can shoot both the physical objects with lights on them as well as the interactive screens for your points. Shot Superman a lot, even when I wasn’t supposed to. Got the best score in Australasia. Good stuff.
Back to backwards. The time slot system got us on in about 10 minutes. Again I zoned out what we were doing until the very end of the lift hill. This was very clear on the on-ride video clip we watched at the end, which I rather regret not buying now. Calm conversation until the crest, followed by visible screams of terror and shouting down the drop and during the layout. Watching it back had us in hysterics.
Whoever cooked this idea up is a mad man. Completely out of your seat falling vertically backwards and then sideways to kick it all off. Really intense throughout the whole layout and it enhances that middle section as without any sense of direction you feel things that didn’t even seem to be there in the forwards transitions. Hit the brakes just breaking down laughing and crying at the same time. A ridiculously good experience.
There’s still a park to complete. Jumped in the queue for the S&S El Loco.
Spent about 45 minutes watching Australia’s crazy wildlife. Birds fighting. Big lizards chilling. Good entertainment.
It was weird seeing the 4 across seating and riding another lap bar edition means I still like these rides just a little bit. They’ve definitely reprofiled that last turn since Mumbo as well, rides nowhere near as poorly.
Hit me again how compact this part of the park is, as you’re exiting this ride and running parallel to the main park entrance.
Also hit us that half the day was gone and we still had quite a few rides to do. It was a little on the busy side so tactics might need to be deployed.
Walked to Superman – 60 minutes. Hmmm.
Walked to the SLC – 1 train and Virtual Reality. That ain’t happening.
Walked to Scooby – 90 minutes. Nope.
Roadrunner it is. A bog standard Vekoma Junior. Tick.
Sucked up the wait for Superman after that. It passed quicker than stated. Lockers are back in action but they’re free here, unlike the meanies at Sea World.
Had a bit of a rollercoaster of expectations with this one.
Came here with the phrase ‘Intamin launch full of air time hills’. Gonna be great.
Saw it in person with the phrase ‘that’s just Rita with a top hat’. Gonna be crap.
Quite liked it though. Powering through all the indoor theming section on endless kicker wheels at the start is rather fun.
“It’s SUPERMAN!” says the audio.
“Lets go lets go!” says the Australian.
Offride is deceiving as it looked like the train was stalling on the top hat, but there’s a decent kick to all of the hills here and I apologise for the Rita comparison.
Could have been really good but typically the shoulder restraints detract from most of the sensations.
Decided at this stage we weren’t going to achieve everything on that day and didn’t want to compromise on DC ridels.
The main queue was staying full all day, so we jumped in the single rider queue which we had seen working well earlier in the day as at least 1 seat was broken/closed off on both trains. It worked.
Saw from the top of the ride that the car park was now half empty. All the families seemed to have cleared off early.
Booked another backwards slot and headed off to Scooby which was now a more manageable 30 minutes.
Knew nothing about this indoor coaster until I was being told in the queue. More than just your average Wild Mouse, with a few tricks up its sleeve and a lot of fun for it.
Didn’t quite see it at its best as they were currently in the middle of retheming/refurbishing it.
There was a sign outside saying some scenery may be gone. Pretty much all the scenery was gone and the whole dark ride section was just a warehouse. Made it a bit off, but rather hilarious.
Back to backwards.
Amazing.
Back tomorrow.
Day 3