Sunday, January 11, 2009

Welcome to the Wild Wild West


I was hunting around, hoping that I could finally find video of the themed section before the launch on Superman Escape at Warner Brothers Movie World on Australia's Gold Coast - but still to no avail. (if you ever see this, please let me know!)

I did, however, end up finding out a lot about the theme park's flume ride, currently named Wild West Falls Adventure Ride. I really didn't know that the ride existed before I started reading about it, and then after I did I wanted to know more and more!

Here she is, first of all, in all her glory:

The ride opened as the biggest expansion to Warner Brother Movie World in 1998, and was at that time named Wild Wild West to fit with the movie that had opened around then. Licensing issues later caused the ride to be renamed Wild West Falls.

The $18 million ride is a Hopkins log flume that features two 90 degree turntables and a backwards roller coaster style dip. The ride system sounds very similar to that of Disney's Splash Mountain, coaster dip included. While I can't find a length for the ride, it certainly seems like it would rank as one of the longest flumes out there.

While no good full POV movies are on YouTube, here's a good video of the midsection of the ride:
The level of theming is pretty neat, right! The ride then travels up onto the big lift and enters the top of the mountain, where sadly a fire in 2004 removed much of the original theming. From there it's down a 65ft. drop and into the main pool.

Parkz.com.au has a great gallery of the ride up that features photos of the attraction like this one:I've always loved log flumes, and with so many older ones being removed it's cool to see one that went in somewhat recently (relatively, anyway).


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