Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Aerial Antics: Dreamworld


The time has come for me to take Sabrina's suggestion to heart and make my ever present obsession with Live Local and Google's aerial photography a regular feature here on NewsPlusNotes.

And with that we'll call it Aerial Antics because I also enjoy alliteration. I'll try to publish one weekly and you can find them under the new Aerial Antics tag.

Dreamworld is located on the Gold Coast of Australia. I remember it obtaining most of it's notoriety by building the Tower of Terror back in 1997. The ToT is a clone of Superman at Six Flags Magic Mountain.

Speaking of the Tower of Terror, here it is in the above photo. Technically it opened before Superman at Magic Mountain, making it the first coaster to hit 100 m.p.h. The park slapped a free fall, named Giant Drop, on the tower in 1998 and then also had the world's tallest free fall at 390 ft or so.

But also in the above photo is the park's latest coaster: Mick Doohan's Motocoaster. Opened in 2007, the launched motorcycle seating style ride was built by Intamin. We can see that the ride's layout is pretty much a double figure eight.

The park also has a Nickelodeon Central section of the park, which is extremely similar to what was built at several of the former Paramount parks in the early 2000s. They even have a Rugrats Runaway Reptar jr. inverted coaster by Vekoma!

They also created a Wiggles World years before Six Flags built them at their U.S. parks. Again the design is similar, even down to the entrance sign you can see and the brightly colored pavement. The rides and attractions are quite similar, too - Big Red Car Ride, Captain Feathersword's Ship, etc.

Whitewater World is the park's huge water park, opened in 2006. Talk about an awesome selection of water slides! They've got one of everything it seems, a Tornado, a water coaster, Flowrider, and more!

Also you can see how the water park slides wrap around the theme park's Cyclone roller coaster. The ride was relocated from Luna Park where it was called the Big Dipper.

Here's a link to Google's images.


3 comments:

Unknown said...

Thanks for this great post. I just thought I would point out one main difference between the Wiggle's World in Dreamworld and the various versions in the Six Flags Parks. Dreamworld's Big Red Car Ride is actually a dark ride through the Wiggles House.

Thanks again for this great blog!

NewsPlusNotes said...

Really? I had no idea! That's very interesting, I'm going to have to look that one up on youtube!

Unknown said...

Yah it is a journey through the Wiggle's House where there are four rooms I believe. If I remember right you stop briefly in each room and do a sing along with the Wiggles.