Just like everyone visits Surfers’ Paradise whilst in Gold Coast, you’ve GOTTA do a theme park whilst you’re there. Dream World, Movieworld, Seaworld, Waterworld ….the list seemingly doesn’t stop! I had not been to a theme park in years, and was quite excited in going to one. I picked Movieworld as it’s a cross between the different worlds – entertaining yet offering the more traditional theme park rides. Also, I love cartoons! Like actual ones with talking animals and stuff. Yeah, I still watch cartoons, so sue me

Up Movieworld’s version of Main st. Can you see bacon on the left struggling with my waterproof bag?

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The Shrek 4D show – absolutely loved it! I asked bacon what is the 4th dimension – he thought it was smell. However, it was water-squirted on our legs as an imitation of creepy crawley spiders!

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This was taken inside the Stunt Driver show – if you think Seaworld dolphin shows with cars, you wouldn’t be far off. Very cool though – very fast exploding cars splitting into half ect. Nice.

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Scooby Doo Spooky Hotel. Hmm. From the outside it looked like a fairly safe ride as you can’t actually see anything and it looked like an auditorium – I was expecting another Shrek-like ride. NOOO! This was a whiplash inducing roller coaster, with the coaster moving in unexpected directions…sharp right and left turns is definately bad for your neck! The forward and backwards motion got me very confused – it was definately my suprise ride of the day.

Bacon getting drenched at the Wild West log ride. I didn’t feel like it…..because I really had no inclination of getting drenched!

Bacon going up, up and up on the lethal weapon ride. You can almost see him clutching on to the sides…I’ve even circled him in red

Although his most favourite ride of them all was the Superman ride

I love meeting the characters…

Although bacon wasn’t so keen…hmm. Don’t know why….not like as if daffy bites!

We even manage to catch the ‘parade’….obviously no connection with the Disney parade whatsoever..heh.

I love Shrek..he was really funny, I had purchased a pair of shrek ears earlier on a hairband, and as he were going past me he actually waved, pointed to his own ears and showed me the thumbs up….let’s see you get that from Mickey!!

Daffy kicking Austin Power’s butt..

Bugs Bunny & Tweety..tweet tweet

The whole day seems slightly surreal – it was Chinese New Year and there were BUSLOADS of chinese tourists – so many that it looked like we were somewhere in China rather than in Gold Coast. The whole place was also understaffed, with a number of concessions and foodstores closed for the day – even some of the restaurants were closed. This gave the place a slightly fly-by-night operations feeling…or at the brink of bankruptcy. Because most of the restaurants were closed, the remaining kiosks selling food were doing a roaring business.

The cartoon characters also seemed to be slightly rushed off their feet – like as if they only had 30 minutes in one costume before needing to run off to change into another character….the Batman ride actually shuts down for three hours in what was already a very very short working day of only 7 hours….either that or the staff are super lazy….c’mon, it only opens from 10 and closes by 5, you’d think that they would work harder.

Concept-wise, I think this place has got it right, but execution wise it really feels and looks like a poor relation of Disneyland – it’s like as if they’ve tried their best, but yet still not got it quite right.

We headed home at around 4ish – and as you could probably imagine, dead tired. We took a nap before heading out for dinner, but not before I manage to snap views from our room:

View of the swimming pool…..nice huh

View of the swiming pool & Biggera Waters, the river that the hotel was next to.

View into the top end of Surfers’ Paradise – the hotel is unfortunately 10-15 mins walk away from the hub of surfer’s paradise…which was not made clear to us when we booked. I guess it’s alright – as we had a car to drive around with.

We drove into Surfers’ Paradise proper in search for dinner….and as proof of how tired we both were, not only did I not remember to snap any pictures of the broadwalk, the night market….I did not even make it to the restaurant that we were supposed to eat at, and ended up eating at a Korean place that we saw on the way. You know its bad when after all that, I don’t even remember snapping a picture of the name of the restaurant, only remembering that it was connected to the other Marriott hotel, the Marriot Courtyard Surfers Paradise.

But I did had yumms bibimbap, chicken and kimchee soup…

The last picture contained the side dishes (okazu in Japanese, not sure what is it in Korean) . One of it was sweet and sour SPAM – how weird and wonderful! We were also served kimchee, wakame salad, sliced konyakku ect. If I am Japanese-food deprived here, I’m even more deprived of Korean food – there are not even imitation Korean restaurants around here…SIGH. Oh well. Anyway, in case you think me strange, there is a MASSIVE Korean community in Gold Coast – lots of Korean convenience stores, restaurants and shops.

We headed back to bed pretty soon after dinner – hanging out with cartoons does that to you sometimes

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