Gold Coast TR: Day 3 - Time for a breakup?

• Author: Mike
• Filed under: Geeky, Reports, Theme Parks
• Date: Tuesday, February 20, 2007

Note: This was originally written on Febuary 18. A lack of internet access prevented me from posting it at the time, so here it is now.

Another day with a familiar park. My dad was flying in Saturday morning so the plan was to pick him up from the airport, do a little shopping then stop by Sea World for a few rides. I ended up getting up around six o’clock, watching some television before getting dressed and leaving at eight. My dad’s flight arrived into Brisbane at nine, so we figured we had enough time to pick him up. Amazingly, the roads were packed up full of cars, it was like being on the Tulla on a Friday afternoon right after work. Turns out that there was an accident which slowed down the traffic quite a bit. We ended up getting to the airport at about 9:30, and then we were on our way to Harbour Town only stopping for some breakfast on the way.

Harbour Town is a shopping centre just near Southport. It’s half standard shopping centre, half factory outlet. Of course that doesn’t mean you’d find items any cheaper in half the stores there, but people seem to go nuts for the fact that it says factory outlet on the sign and figure it’s cheap. I went in a couple of the stores, finally grabbing a discounted jacket from the Nike store. While paying my brain had seemed to fall out of my ear so the conversation with the very bored checkout girl went like this:

“Pretty hot for a jacket today!”
”Uhh… yeah”
“Your not from around here?”
“No.”

I’m clearly the charmer, especially when brain dead.

We spent a couple of hours at Harbour Town before heading to Sea World, arriving at about 1:30. The car park was a bit fuller then on Thursday but people seemed to be leaving instead of going into the park. As my Dad was getting his ticket processed we noticed the person on the gate.. it was Michael from Shrek. I didn’t realise that they cross trained everyone – and actually let them do other jobs rather then sticking them on the same one. We went in and had a look around – the place was lacking people once again.

We decided to jump on Viking’s Revenge as our first ride of the day. While in line my sister saw a friend she went to school with.. what are the chances! The ride had about a five minute wait, not that long but it was worth it. Following the ride it was time for Bermuda Triangle. Bermuda was dead quiet, sending out empty boats quite a few times. For some reason the old women and her daughter seemed to get in a fight with the ride operator (I think they wanted to get their own boat instead of riding with others) and was forced to take the back seats of another boat. As for my ride? Meh.. it has a decent first drop but no working speaker so it was pointless to watch the pre-show video. The young kids behind me seemed to enjoy it and it got me thinking. It’s clear that Sea World tried to create a Disney like ride with Bermuda Triangle. But where as a Disney ride will entertain the entire family, Bermuda’s lame story will only entertain the younger crowd, and that may only be once.

After that it was time for a ride on Corkscrew. I went on as a single while my sister and dad went on together. Due to my speediness, I was able to jump on the ride straight away, getting myself a nice backseat ride. Just as I was done my sister and dad were getting on, but due to the lack of people I rode it again. As I have said previously, the ride is simple yet great. Following this there was a ride on the Pirate Ship with a few others which was enjoyable.

At about this time everyone was pretty tired. We took a small break to have a drink and share some fries before boarding the Sea World Eye where I managed to smash my head right into the cabin while climbing in. Real impressive. The ride again was something that’s good to go on once and that’s about it. My sister and I got in one more ride on Viking’s Revenge before we hit the road for the day.

We wanted to go back for a swim in the pool, but the afternoon rain prevented that. Instead we sat back and watched some television before heading out to Cav’s Steak House for dinner. The process was pretty simple, choose a menu item, then go up to the counter and choose your piece of meat and how you’d like it cooked. I got the Caribbean Rib Eye with king prawns and a spicy mash. The steak was great while everything else on the plate was just an afterthought. The wait staff were pretty lacking, bringing us a room temperature bottle of water when we weren’t sure of what we wanted to drink (I noticed that our drinks waitress did this for another table too), then screwing up our drinks entirely before offering us drinks from another table.

While leaving we noticed the couple behind us – the guy was breaking up with his girlfriend and she was not taking it well. I don’t mind a bit of people watching but we couldn’t get away from it this long. While heading to the car there was another couple having a fight outside, Cav’s – The Home of the Breakup? We headed back to the apartment where we watched Iron Chef. I went to bed at about 9:30 and I’d say I was lucky if I was awake fifteen minutes later.

Sunday – our Final Day. Warner Brother’s Movie World is on the menu with Wild West Falls, Batwing, Shrek 4D and hopefully Superman Escape. As I haven’t written it yet, expect it some time tomorrow.