Movie World

Today we went to Warner Brother's Movie World. This could have been a disaster for me, as I had succumbed to Gamblor last night. In a future post I will explain this more, but suffice to say that I had an evening of gambling at Jupiter’s Casino and didn’t get back to the resort room until after 1:00am. I ended up having around six hours sleep, so a day at Movie World, with a lack of slumber, would clearly be a challenge.

It was another hot day in paradise. Combined with a car park full of black bitumen, the heat levels when we arrived were nice and steamy. As we’d arrived at close to opening time, there were several hundred people waiting to line up.

Here is a curious fact. Whilst waiting in line, the woman who came up behind me, decided that she had in fact gotten in line before me. She proceeded to stand as close as possible to me, and as I moved, she put her foot just that little bit before me. Normally I’m as pig headed as the next guy, and more often than not, I would have been an arrogant ass and deliberately stood my ground. Perhaps it was the lack of sleep, perhaps it was the forethought of child battles to come, or perhaps I thought I’d be nice for a change – so I let her move in front of me. She then of course thought that one of the other lines was moving faster, so she dashed a few rows down dragging her kids with her. All of a sudden, the heavens must of shined on me because the group of about 20 kids in our line just up and left, and the queue shortened from a 15 minute wait to about 3! I bet if I had stuck to my usual guns not only would I have had a furious woman breathing down my neck, I would have had to endure it for a hell of a long time.

The kids were surprisingly good, and we somehow managed to avoid the main heat of the day by doing Air Conditioned activities – the Matrix exhibit, the Loonee Tunes Musical Revue, and lunch in Rics Bar and Restaurant. We also got to go on most of the rides we wanted to, except for the new Superman’s Escape rollercoaster, due to both technical difficulties and not wanting to leave Anthea with all three boys at a theme park. As you can see from this photo, we’re all not that cooperative.

The only slight hassle was three attempts to get on the Scooby Doo Spooky Coaster before actually riding. This was not due to any technical hitches. Rather, I fear my middle son Ethan has inherited my childhood fear of the dark and ghost trains. The ride is a “dark ride”, combining traditional ghost train like elements (skeletons/monsters that pop up out of nowhere, sharp turns, spooky music), with a “mad mouse” rollercoaster component. The theming is based on the first Scooby Doo movie, so it is more comic gothic than anything else. To a six year old, I can imagine it could be quite scary.

For the first two attempts, at about 30 minutes into each queue waiting time, Ethan decided that he needed to go to the toilet to “do poo.” The first time, we just left the queue, and of course at the toilet he said “Oh, poo’s not coming!”. The second time, I told him we were staying in line unless he really, really needed to go. This sufficed for an extra few minutes, when he said “I’m scared, and I really need to go to the toilet.” This time around the poo did come, and fortunately it was on the toilet. The third time, just Aidan and I went on the ride!

A note on Aidan, for anyone who does have an intellectually disabled child, you could consider letting them try out some of these activities. The first time we went to a theme park, and Aidan wanted to go on a ride which was something simpler than a carousel, I was petrified of it doing “more damage”. I now think he could almost go on anything, barring the height restrictions. He simply loves these fast and wild rides!

Ciao for Now, Angry Dad.