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For a laugh, last weekend myself and @Luke did a "water slide crawl" around a few aquatic centers in Melbourne to try a few new proslide and whitewater attractions. We didn't do all the substantial aquatic centers, but still got to try a few unique ones. If you're a Victorian, and Funfields/Gumbuya just isn't enough, and want to kill a couple of hours one weekend, this is a cheap fun activity. We started at Aquapulse Werribee, which has a Proslide Pipeline , as well as a Tornado 24 / Behemoth Bowl 40 hybrid. The raft slide was pretty pedestrian...Cut Snake at WWW is more intense, though it did have a small drop at the end with a small pop of air. What you see is what you get, with a couple of figure 8s. The hybrid slide was much better. The Tornado section did seem to lose speed a lot quicker than other ones, it seemed to gather a lot more water at the bottom, which made it a little rough, and after a couple of oscillations you'd come to a near halt. The other half was better, particularly when riding backwards, with a bit of a head rush/dizziness in the helix, and more speed in the bowl compared to the quite frankly sluggish Double Bowlseye in Sydney. A steep drop out of the bowl makes for an exciting finish. I've ridden the double Tornado 24 at Watermarc in Greensbourough, and I thought that one had the better funnels. The next stop was Aquanation in Ringwood. This turned out to be the most expensive....All of the centres cost about $9 to get in, but this one charged another $8 or so to use the slides. This one has a Twister enclosed bodyslide, and a Skybox drop slide with a 360 helix. Both of theme were fairly comfortable., but we were getting some shoulder blade marks by the end. The skybox slide felt a little less intense than the wedgie. When you ride, it's bizzare, and you don't notice the steepness of the helix. When you ride it feels more like you are going around a flat turn. The body slide was good fun, but gets pretty wild towards the end, owing to a fairly short recovery distance between one turn and the next, so you'd be coming into the wall of the next turn at a somewhat oblique angle, causing some strong forces and a fair bit of water thrown across you. The final stop was Frankston PARC. We had to laugh when the promotional screens at reception, on their loop of media, had one screen that said something along the lines of "Sometimes staff make mistakes, we are only human, please do not yell at staff". Truly, we were in Frankston. This place has both a Constrictor slide, and an Aquasphere / Python fusion slide from Whitewater West (A Python is one size up from the Rattler seen at Gumubya/WnW Sydney) The Constrictor only had a couple of the actual constrictor elements, so it didn't stack up to the intensity of the one in Sydney. Just as it was picking up speed, it was over, nor was it as dark. The back seat is the better one on this, because you get a bit of a "flick"/drifting type sensation in the helices. The Python slide has had a chequered history. Originally it was three aquaspheres on this ride, but a number of injuries shortly after opening led to its closure. Now there is just one sphere, and the rest of the slide was rebuilt, with the Python element as the new ending. You can just see the aquasphere element below, sort of looking like a soccer ball. The operations here were a bit of a clusterf, with a single harried staff member trying to run both slides, with what was quite obviously a complex procedural process. Each rider had to be weighed every time, and the raft had to be secured with snap on carabiners and cables to hold it in place at the start tub, and then released for dispatch. Neither ride was anywhere near running at capacity. What was cool is that they had one of those vertical raft conveyors, so neither slide required you carry a raft up. So, the Python. This thing is unique. It's the most camp thing ever to start with, owing to being fitted with a control panel at the start where you can pick your sound track and lighting pattern We heard plenty of American surf guitar tunes, "it's raining men" and jingle bells during our rides. The lights were neither here nor there, just a few colour changing led spotlights. As for the slide, the aquasphere part is wild, and you practically go vertical on the first one. I can see how this would have been crazy if there were three in a row. On some rides, the water builds up behind you in the first tunnel, so when you drop into to the sphere and climb the wall, the water behind you rushes in just as you are coming back down, and whack! you get swamped. The following twists and turns are all in the dark and felt a little bumpy between the seams, so you get a bit of a bottom massage. The final python element is pretty wild too, with a steep drop in, and fairly sustained oscilations as you move down the chamber, right to the end. Again, the water that builds up behind your raft follows you into the main chamber, but instead what happens is that it the mass of water just misses you, goes up the wall and is thrown over itself in a tsunami, which is pretty spectacular to watch. So thats our day, to sum up the Werribee slides are quite and enjoyable and refined, the ones at Ringwood are good, but perhaps not the best value for money. The Frankston ones have that wild WTF factor about them.

Id even go so far as to say that most theme parks consist of disparate themes, and the ones that have the purity of an overriding one are the exception. Take Disneyland. A lot of the themed lands are NOT based around Disney movies or characters, and in fact its only been in recent years that management have decided to insert characters into them to make the most of cross promotion. Eg at Disneyland, Space Mountain, Autopia have no movie/character tie in. The submarine ride was previously just submarines, and it was only the 2007 relaunch when they added Finding Nemo. Over in New Orleans Square you have Haunted Mansion and Pirates of the Caribbean. Both of these rides pre-date their respective movies by quite a long period, and it wasnt until the Pirates of the Carribean Movies got released that they updated the animatronics to match Jack Sparrow etc. The Matterhorn? Big Thunder Mountain? Both non film/character related. Though Disneyland did appear to use some Disney characters as a starting point for the park (Eg in Fantasyland), they did branch out with other themes that are just themes that look good and are immersive.

Over the Summer I got to visit Abu Dhabi, and while unfortunately I didn't have enough time to enter the parks, I did make the stop to check out the entrance and foyer area for the park. The entrance I thought had a very good design and style to it, and I will definitely visit the park properly next trip over there. But for now, here are some photos:

Not sure what a "thrill ride" really is these days, seems DW's bought a few of them over the years with modest long-term success for the Park itself. "Sideshow" type rides belong in a sideshow themed setting. John Longhurst understood this, with the beautiful and easily achieved "Country Fair" setting, here the park could buy relatively affordable rides and use them to provide a fun area, which rested on the "foundation" of the Thunderbolt rolleroaster. DW your key word going forward should be making DW Beautiful again....thrills are great...Beauty is greatER! ToT is a thrill, nothing wrong with it. But, the noise it makes has dominated the park for years. The old train station, the gardens, the vintage cars drove through, the way it blended into Rivertown, with the paddle-wheeler - beautiful and for some weird reason, no-one can really explain, all butchered for mostly 3rd rate attractions. How in God's good name, was the "bike rollercoaster" thing monstrosity ever put there, where the vintage cars made perfect sense? Let's face it, we do know why, merchant bankers/accountants running a themepark! It'll take some years DW, but you need to understand, you can have it all, thrills and more thrills, but you have to treat the park layout with respect.

But not all theme parks have an overall theme, and often the park has it's name more out of marketing considerations, or because it's just a name that has stuck over the years. Alton Towers is an example, it's absolutely a theme park, and a good one at that, but you cant say that the park has some sort of overriding theme, nor can you say the park name suggests a theme, because it's just named after the old castle in the middle of the park, and the theming on rides like Galactica or Oblivion have nothing to do with that castle. Or Gardaland, it's just called that because it's next to Lake Garda. Or Efteling? Or Busch Gardens Tampa?

Can’t confirm the operating days 100%. But the steam train will make multiple appearances throughout each week 😏

Who cares if it isn't themed. I praise SW for seeing a problem and applying a temporary fix while they sorted out a solution. From what I've seen it's been a great success except for Alex's pins and needle but at least it gave Alex a new experience at SW.

Very interesting and very different to the Movie World parks in Australia, Madrid and previously Germany.