A few days in Sydney

[Gazza]

So, Wet n Wild opened in Sydney back in December, and I'd been wanting to check out out. The place had been slammed over the summer holiday period, but February means the kids are back in school, the park is quieter (But the weather is still nice) I saw that I had a few days off in a row. Probably too late for a cheap flight...but I felt like driving down to Sydney anyway.
I had to work till 2:30 on Wednesday, and left straight away, and did a pretty good run, covering the 900km/560 miles or so in 10.5 hours. Long journeys between major cities like this are very much a fact of life in a country the size of Australia.
No speeding since there are devilish point to point cameras at many points, and even more instantaneous cameras on top of that.


Things looked ok after leaving work.

But weather quickly turned crap crossing the border from Queensland into New South Wales.

The first part of the drive is normally pretty good. Really nice scenery in the Northern Rivers region (Some of the nicest in the country. A lot of hippies and organic farmers) , and the road is a bit of a blast. A high speed limit, sweeping turns, hills, tunnels, impressive cuttings and so on. Unfortunately it was still crap weather.

Things got a bit better around Ballina.

I took the Pacific Highway, which is a road of contrasts. Some parts are really well done.

But the government has sort of dragged its heels on parts of the upgrade, so there are still some sections where you are literally on a 2 lane road with low speed curves and farm houses meters from the road. Remember, this is the main highway between Brisbane and Sydney :roll:

There's even a **** zebra crossing at one point.

Still, a couple of new sections have just opened (This one just a month ago), like the Woolgoolga bypass, through the Banana plantations near Coffs harbour. Normally this was a fairly slow and congested stretch through a few seaside towns. Now plain sailing.

Anways...First stop was at Grafton, with its Bizzare 2 storey high McDonalds due to sitting on a floodplain. I got a bonus slice of cheese without paying (Which IMO is better than when you get 7 nuggets in a 6 pack), which set the tone for the rest of the drive.

Next stop was at Nambucca Heads a couple of hours south. Again, maccas again, having the other half of a meal to keep me going (And an excuse to break the drive and go for a walk)

And to make it a Trifecta, a midnight hot chocolate at Heatherbrae, just north of Newcastle before the final push into Sydney. This Maccas had an enormous sign which was hard to get the scale of in a photo.

The section from Newcastle to Sydney is another awesome bit of road through some quite rugged terrain (Sydney was built in a stupid spot historically). No traffic at 1am, and just a long downhill run.
I was staying in Redfern, right next to the Sydney CBD. To disappoint everyone, I crossed via the harbour tunnel rather than its more famous counterpart, the Sydney harbour bridge.

Around 11 hours after leaving work I was plopping into bed.

Next day was Wet n Wild.

Part 2 to follow.

 

[Gazza]

The next morning I rose late and headed to Wet n Wild, which is about a 35 min drive west of the city, not too far from the old Wonderland site. The place was dead, so had done everything once in 2.5 hours, but stuck around for re-rides.

The place is huge, the park bills itself as having 40 slides, but in enthusiast terms and in terms of slides most members here would use, its probably closer to 15 or so "unique layouts" (In furie terms) of interest. To get 40 they counted the 8 lanes of the racer, all the kids slides etc.

360 Rush is a Whitewater West aqualoop. I've been on the version at the Gold Coast, though I liked this one better because it seemed to get less water in your face, and the trapdoor was seethrough. You don't really feel like you are "looping", more like curving uphill and downhill...But the drop is great.

H2Go Racers is a Whitewater West Wizzard Twist, the braided section gives you a bit of initial speed for the helix. Only the last bit is open air, so no camel humps to jump off like on other racers. Still, it was good that they had a timing system. I was getting about 16 seconds each time.
Another cool feature in the enclosed section was a segment where there were translucent bands of colour, so it felt like you were in 2001 a space odyssey.

T5 is a proslide dark tornado. The first few turns are a bit sluggish, but a spiralling drop gives you plenty of speed into the main tornado section. Love these slides, tons of air. The only bad point is that they had translucent sections on the enclosing end of the tornado, so it wasnt that dark inside. I would have liked it more if it was fully dark with projections like Brain Wash in Orlando.
The ride has a funny design quirk which resulted in me falling out of the raft on my first ride (Not even on purpose :lol: ) Basically, the slow turns at the start mean water builds up behind the raft. When you drop into the funnel you leave this water behind, and dont catch up to it again until your 3rd or so oscillation in the funnel. The result is that you whack into a bit of standing water on the bottom of the slide, which can bump you out if you aren't careful. I had blister on my hand from gym so wasnt gripping properly with one hand, and ended up just having to hold the raft for dear life for the last bit of the ride

Bombora is a Tornado WAVE. All proslide did was cut a section off a full sized tornado, and call it a new slide type, which is pretty evident from this shot. Otherwise, it was still good, and the helix at the start was really cool. Again, tons of air as you go up the wall.

Tantrum is a Tantrum Tornado type ride (Imaginative hey). Basically its 3 mini tornados in a row. Rather than get heaps of air, you just rock back and forth in each "bulb a few times. It's pretty turbulent, but a lot of fun, and it went on for ages! At the throat of each bulb was a set of water outlets and a drain which creates a pool of awater, basically slowing each raft to a crawl before the next section. Still, you picked up a lot of speed in the turns and spirals. Quite good.

Double Bowlseye is a Proslide Bowling alley. In each bowl you dont really ride the walls due to centrifugal force like most bowl slides, but rather just spiral around once before going down the middle. It was ok, better than i thought it looked. You got more speed in enclosed sections TBH.

Riptide was a good one. Dark turns at the start, where you pick up a scary bit of speed, and then finish with a double dip to the pool, with a couple of good headchoppers under other slides

The Curler was a bit pedestrian...Helix, open air dip, helix, open air dip etc. Good family slide i guess.

At 12pm they opened the 2 man slide complex. I was there alone, but there were a few parents without kids there doing all the big slides they normally cant, so we kinda just formed an adhoc group and did everything.

Typhoon is a whitewater west rattler. Kinda similar in concept to tantrum, but it was a lot smoother, and you would glide up and down the walls of each chamber. The first chamber actually manages to turn every raft backwards, so reliably in fact that the ride photo camera actually points backwards! Pretty cool.

Aquatube is a standard raft slide. No lights and you blitz through literally in 10 seconds or so. Very fast!

Halfpipe is a Boomerango slide. You drop down, ride the wall, go over a bunny hill and come to a stop. As you go over the hill you sort of "drift" a bit and spin around. Decent, but i liked its bigger brother Bombora better.

Tropical Cyclone is a Whitewater West Constrictor slide. Basically the helixes bulge out, but are really tight, so you whip up onto the walls and bank really high. This slide was also in darkness the whole way, and bloody fast and dizzying...Great!

The breakers were a set of 4 master blasters, but each only had 1 uphill section. Probably the weakest slide in the park. The first uphill was good, and as you came off the uphill it was like being shot in the back with a fire hose. Then about halfway through the enclosed turn you lost speed, and then an average drop to the end. There was one with a big drop, and one with a double dip....Both were a bit meh.

The park also had a lazy river, which i did a single lap on.

And a wave pool, which i didnt bother with except to walk through. It had a padded floor which was nice.

All the food outlets were in a modern “surf club” type building.

Which was actually pretty accurate to how surf lifesaving club buildings tend to look in Australia these days.

You had to pay extra for the surf deck, a flowrider type ripoff made by a company called Latitube. Basically the surface has hydraulics underneath, so the operator can dynamically adjust the curvature of the wave. Didn’t pay for it though.

A few more pics

I stuck around the park for a couple more hours doing re-rides, but was a bit tired from the drive and left.


Part 3 to follow.

 

[_koppen]

Awesome photo report!

How would you say the mat racer holds up against a slide like the Octopus Racer at Whitewater world? Which one do you prefer?

 

[insanecoastervids]

Wet and wild looks like a very nice new water park.

 

[Gazza]

^^The mat racer at Whitewater World i do like because it has the camel humps you get air off, but I prefer the one in Sydney because of the timing system and better enclosed section (Which a racer is not complete without IMO)
The start tub design whitewater use is better than proslides because it's at waist height, so you don't have to jump down so far onto your stomach.

OK i should finish this...Photos aren't really organized, and i didnt take that many, but anyway.

Luna Park put in a new drop tower. They don't do single ride tickets any more, the cheapest you can get is a two ride sampler for $15 or so, so i did the drop tower and the ranger (did all the other stuff last time anyway)

The view from the tower was nice, i was the only one on it so asked to be seated facing the CBD. It felt higher than it looks too. As for the ride, it was ok, but basically crashes into the brakes.

I also did a tour of the Sydney Opera House...For $30 it was dissapointing. We didn't see much, nothing back of house, and 15 min was taken up watching a video about the architect Jorn Utzon and the history of its construction, I guess some visitors might want that as a background, but I've seen opera house docos at uni anyway, so it felt like it was wasting time.
Still, I got a few pics:

Much of the rest of my time in Sydney was spent exploring a few suburbs that I've never really had a chance to absorb before.

The drive home was fairly uneventful, but I stopped off in Kempsey to see this building by Glen Murcutt, a well known Australian Architect. Some people seem to fap over it due to its "regionalisim" but I couldn't see the fuss.

I also stopped in at Ballina and had fish n chips on the beach.

So yeah, that's it.