Gazza
Giga Poster
I'm in the process of trying to pick up the remaining coasters in Australia, with the added degree of difficulty of including carnival ones in that figure.
Some enthusiast friends from overseas meant it was easy to arrange a weekend trip to visit Adventure Park, Gumbaya World and Funfields, with a brief stop off at Luna Park and a carnival for good measure.
Friday I actually had to go to Melbourne for work reasons, with a horrid 4:30am alarm for a 6am flight.
So late in the day once I'd done all I had to I thought I'd jump on a tram to St. Kilda and pop in and re-ride the scenic railway at Luna Park Melbourne. I've been before a few times, The park has aways been a bit crappy. Mostly carnival rides set up on a permanent basis and a hodge podge of random theming. The scenic railway forms the park boundary, so it's tiny.
Nothing has really changed other than there is a $2 fee to walk in the gates, with a big new ticket box built just inside the "mouth" entrance of the park, which is a shame because it blocks the view you'd get of the rides beyond.
But the weather was crap despite being the height of summer....low 20s and rainy, so I just took photos and left.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
The next day we headed down to Geelong for Adventure Park. Adventure park is just east of Geelong, on the Bellarine Peninsular, so is an hour and bit drive from Melbourne. Apparently possible via public transport too if you catch a train to Geelong and a local bus past the park.
It's a nice, tidy family park set around a lake, with a small water park area at the front, a couple of mini golf courses on an island, and flat rides at the front.
The coaster is a 3 loop version of those SBF family spinners. I've never done one before.
Wasn't bad, decent spinning, but there was an overreliance on kicker wheels, would have been better with one curved lift, then a steady up and downhill for the rest of the layout, building up speed.
Trainload of Holiday park ACE members :
With that out of the way we had a go at the paddle boats. So for a ride that is so ubiquitous, ive never been on any. They were ok, felt like you were pedalling madly, with little resistance, but not going very fast. Cool.
2 mini golf courses would take ages, so we just did the "Skeleton Creek" one. I quite liked the thunderbox hole where you'd hit it under the door and it would get "flushed" out the other side.
The park recently added a Proslide Tornado 45. This is the 7th Tornado in Australia, so we're clearly winning in terms of Tornados per capita reckon. This one didn't dissapoint, with a couple of fun helices to pad out the ride time. It's nice they have made provision for a 2nd big slide next season too.
From there we worked our way around main loop pathway through the rest of the water park area.
and had a go at the ferris wheel for some piccies, and the wave swinger before moving on to the next park....
Some enthusiast friends from overseas meant it was easy to arrange a weekend trip to visit Adventure Park, Gumbaya World and Funfields, with a brief stop off at Luna Park and a carnival for good measure.
Friday I actually had to go to Melbourne for work reasons, with a horrid 4:30am alarm for a 6am flight.
So late in the day once I'd done all I had to I thought I'd jump on a tram to St. Kilda and pop in and re-ride the scenic railway at Luna Park Melbourne. I've been before a few times, The park has aways been a bit crappy. Mostly carnival rides set up on a permanent basis and a hodge podge of random theming. The scenic railway forms the park boundary, so it's tiny.
Nothing has really changed other than there is a $2 fee to walk in the gates, with a big new ticket box built just inside the "mouth" entrance of the park, which is a shame because it blocks the view you'd get of the rides beyond.
But the weather was crap despite being the height of summer....low 20s and rainy, so I just took photos and left.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
The next day we headed down to Geelong for Adventure Park. Adventure park is just east of Geelong, on the Bellarine Peninsular, so is an hour and bit drive from Melbourne. Apparently possible via public transport too if you catch a train to Geelong and a local bus past the park.
It's a nice, tidy family park set around a lake, with a small water park area at the front, a couple of mini golf courses on an island, and flat rides at the front.
The coaster is a 3 loop version of those SBF family spinners. I've never done one before.
Wasn't bad, decent spinning, but there was an overreliance on kicker wheels, would have been better with one curved lift, then a steady up and downhill for the rest of the layout, building up speed.
Trainload of Holiday park ACE members :
With that out of the way we had a go at the paddle boats. So for a ride that is so ubiquitous, ive never been on any. They were ok, felt like you were pedalling madly, with little resistance, but not going very fast. Cool.
2 mini golf courses would take ages, so we just did the "Skeleton Creek" one. I quite liked the thunderbox hole where you'd hit it under the door and it would get "flushed" out the other side.
The park recently added a Proslide Tornado 45. This is the 7th Tornado in Australia, so we're clearly winning in terms of Tornados per capita reckon. This one didn't dissapoint, with a couple of fun helices to pad out the ride time. It's nice they have made provision for a 2nd big slide next season too.
From there we worked our way around main loop pathway through the rest of the water park area.
and had a go at the ferris wheel for some piccies, and the wave swinger before moving on to the next park....