Posts Tagged With: theme park

Gold Coast, Australia: Day 3-4 Ripleys believe it or not, Movie World

Posted on July 29, 2024 by Mel

Day 3

Following our draculas evening adventures we started day 3 with a sleep in. Then icecream for breakfast. We walked down the main stretch of Surfers and saw some very interesting characters.

From there we headed to the Gold Coast institution of Ripleys believe it or not – we chose to do the mirror maze and the museum. The mirror maze was trippy! And I struggled haha.

The museum was super interesting and a lot bigger than it was when I came here 20 years ago. B had never been before and found it interesting. The newer art section was cool!

We walked back along the beach and then had an afternoon rest. 6 weeks of travel is catching up with me and I’m starting to feel very run down with a sore throat. The sunset on the beach as we walked 5 mins back into Surfers Paradise central area to have laksa at Yum Cha Noodle Haus was beautiful.

Day 4

Movie World today! The website says the gates open at 9:30am but as we learnt on Saturday that’s a bit of a fib and it’s actually 10am. We also had a lot of trouble working out how to get there and back. Movie world is a 30min drive out of surfers but it’s a multi train / bus trip on public transport. The con-X-tion shuttles are the same price as an Uber and you’re locked into specific times. So we decided to Uber which was $40 there and $53 return.

Sadly, movie world was a bit of a disappointment. Nearly all the adults rides were closed with only the hyper coaster, super man roller coaster and batman jet drop thing operating. We went on both rollercoasters.

We also waited all day for the Wild West ride to open (it’s opening soon everyone, we promise x 57 times) but no luck. We got in at 10am and honestly we could have left at midday easily….like I said – disappointing. If I had known it would be so bad I would have also done dreamworld on the same day.

Dinner was at Montezuma’s Mexican around the corner from the hotel which was average. The $10 margaritas were good though.

Home time tomorrow! I am so ready for my own bed after almost 6 weeks of travelling. And to see my fur babies.

Categories: Australian Getaways | Tags: , , , , , | Leave a comment

Gold Coast, Australia: Day 1-2 at SeaWorld and Draculas

Posted on July 27, 2024 by Mel

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.

Categories: Australian Getaways | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Japan 2020 Day 4: Universal Studios, Osaka

Posted on January 9, 2020 by Mel

So for those who don’t know me….I’m a planner. It’s just who I am. Which B loves because it means everything on a holiday is organised, we are rarely late for stuff and I do things like get express passes at theme parks haha. I highly recommend the express passes by the way!

I pre-purchased our Universal Studio entry tickets online using klook as other travel blogs talked a lot about not queuing up at the gate and also getting a fast pass. I bought them four weeks in advance and the 7 ride fast passes were already sold out so I got us a 4 ride one. Just to be clear – if you buy a fast pass you ALSO need to get an entrance ticket separately, so at that point you are looking at around $200 AUD each adult. We consider the time vs cost ratio reasonable as you don’t have to line up for more than an hour for each ride – most express rides get you through in 15 mins or less.

The weather was not raining (phew!) but it was cloudy on/off and the wind chill was noticeable. We took one backpack with extra jumpers, tickets, water etc in it knowing we could buy a locker to put our things in for each ride so we could go on them together as this is what we did in Singapore at Universal Studios. It was a 5 min walk + 16 min JR Osaka loop train trip to get there from our accomodation in Umeda.

It’s worth noting entry here is not as smooth as in Singapore because they do mandatory bag checks. It took us about 20mins to make it to the gates (and we were not that far back) and then we made a beeline for Hollywood dream and space fantasy since we didn’t have express passes to them….but they were closed. Doh! So we went to Spider-Man which had no wait.

We then went on the flying dinosaur without our express pass (not timed until 2:30pm) which was AWESOME. We had to wait about 30mins to ride it. We went on it again at 2:30pm with our timed express pass and the wait time for us was about 8 mins vs 60 mins for everyone else.

Trying to work out where to meet for the Harry Potter timed entry was a bit of a clusterfuck so definitely allow an extra 10mins for that. We eventually worked out timed entry didn’t apply on this day due to low numbers so we could just walk over to the Harry Potter area and wander straight in. The butter beer was worth a 10min wait. The ride time when we entered was 60mins and we waited about 5 mins – those fast passes really do rock! It’s worth noting the Harry Potter ride is a mix of 3D and being moved around in a cart. We didn’t know that going in and neither of us felt great after due to motion sickness. We had a break for lunch and more kwells at this point.

We also gave Terminator 2 a go and while the first part is a bit meh because it’s all in Japanese and you have no idea what’s happening, the mixed stage show with 3D sections was very cool. Same with Backdraft – the final stage part was great but the bits before were lost on us as it was all in Japanese.

We also went on Jaws which was less roller coaster like but still good fun. The ride is all in Japanese but you get the idea pretty clearly – oh let’s go on a lovely boat ride in this quaint small town….SHARK!

We were at Universal for 7hrs in total (9am – 4pm) and went on every adult focused ride except for the two closed ones and the Jurassic ride. We skipped the Jurassic one because you get very wet and we were already freezing….plus we have done it before in Singapore. We skipped the kid ones because B was not coping with the children’s pitched music and squealing haha. We also skipped WaterWorld because we have seen it before and last time I got absolutely drenched. I do recommend fitting that in if you haven’t seen it before though.

We got back to the apartment around 4:45pm with very sore feet. We ventured just up the road for dinner and had okonomiyaki again, this time from the local place. While it was still yummy, it had nothing on my experience the other day!

Steps today: 18980

Japanese food eaten: nothing Japanese based at Universal (chips, onion rings, burgers) but dinner was okonomiyaki with Asahi beer and we got hot chocolate can from a vending machine!

Categories: Japan Snow Trip | Tags: , , , | Leave a comment

Singapore Day 7: review of Universal Studios Singapore!!

Posted on January 2, 2018 by Mel

We left the hotel at 8:30am after a small breakfast and walked 7 mins to Dhoby Ghaut MRT station. This is not the station we have typically been using (Fort Canning) but is handy because it is on the right line! The walk is fine in dry weather although very slippery in wet weather – I went ass over tit the other day trying to go down the there! We then caught the MRT to Harbourside and walked up to the Sentosa Monorail. We used our EZ Link cards to pay the slightly higher than usual fare (see day 2 post – can’t recommend getting these cards enough) and off we went! It only took about 25 mins in total to get from the hotel to Universal Studios. Coming home, the fares would have been $9.54 and given the pouring rain I opted to taxi….which was only $14!

First things first: buy an express pass and buy it online EARLY! We bought ours close to 2 months ago and it meant it was only $50. I believe they were $120 at the gate today. It was a lifesaver and significantly shortened the ride lengths today…not that our lines were that long! The longest we were in was sadly the one that was shut down due to rain – the express queue was 30mins when the normal queue was 1hr 30mins.

Rides we went on:

– battlestar galactica (human line)

– Jurassic rapids

– Canopy Flyer

– transformers

– puss in boots (for kids)

– Revenge of the Mummy

Rides we missed:

– battlestar galactica (cylon line) as it closed just before we got on due to poor weather

– the treasure hunter one (for kids)

– pretty much anything in Far Far Away Land and Madagascar as those are very much pitched at young kids

Other stuff we tried to do!

Waterworld: this actually a show but you get drenched if you sit near the front, even if you’re only in the “mild splashing”

Zone.

A photo with a (dancing) transformer!

The typical globe pic. Of course.

Things we learnt today:

1. See earlier comment on express pass purchasing and being there before 9:30am to avoid being at the back of the queue

2. Bring a damn poncho. We really needed one today. Also it turned out that coming in the wet season (jan) has advantages in smaller crowds but the rain does impact on the enjoyability of the experience and closed a few of the rides

3. Wear shoes and clothes you can cope with getting wet. Not just because of the rain! Multiple rides had the capacity to soak people

HFC perk 6: We ate dinner at the hotel tonight after 7+ hours of trekking around. It was delish! Laksa, dessert, Singapore slings and tiger beer.

Categories: Singapore | Tags: , , , , , | 2 Comments

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