Posts Tagged With: queensland

I travelled to regional Queensland for a conference last week and managed to arrange it so I had a few days in between when my flight got into Brisbane and when the next one left. B flew over to meet me on Friday afternoon for a Gold Coast long weekend.

We are staying at BreakFree Longbeach in surfers paradise which has an amazing view. It’s very noisy due to construction opposite though.

The drive from Brisbane airport to the Gold Coast was hell. I didn’t believe people when they told me how much worse it is at the moment…I should have listened. Almost 3hrs and it was all stop / start with brakes being constantly slammed on. We used Con-X-ion Shuttles so at least we were not driving! I am not looking forward to the return trip on Tuesday.

I was utterly exhausted on arrival after 5 days of a conference and in a crappy motel room so I basically went to bed with some icecream. B went out to catch up with his cousin who lives here.

Day 2 was a busy day! We started with Sea World! It was really not busy at all which was amazing for a Saturday. We didn’t queue for longer than 6 mins at anything.

While it wasn’t busy, we rode Leviathan which is a huge wooden rollercoaster. They have other rides and rollercoasters but unfortunately most of them were closed.

We went to multiple animal shows including the sea lions and the dolphins!

But the highlight of the day was doing a behind the scenes tour of polar bear shores! No phones allowed so no photos of that part but I stood a metre away from a 500kg polar bear. Amazing. The bear in these photos is Mishka and I also met her – she weighs 300kg.

We got back to the hotel around 4pm for a nap before dinner, drinks and a show at Draculas. It’s changed a bit from 20 years ago! The “ghost train” is definitely not as good now but probably a whole lot safer. We also agree that they have lost a lot of the characterisation that made the wait staff so much fun. They were just staff in weird makeup…no character identities.

We had VIP seats so got to enter first, ride the ghost train and then drink in the bar. It had amazing decorations.

We were the. Taken to our seats. I was glad we booked VIP as the lower level tables had one side facing the stage but the other side with their back to it. Not sure how that is meant to work! Our tables were like stadium seating. The food was average. Not terrible, not great. Drinks were yummy and prices were around $20 a cocktail.

The show was great. I love aerial performers and this show had silks, a double performance on nets and a male aerial artist. The lady leading the whole thing had an amazing voice as well.