Sluffing School!!!

For Christmas, our kiddos got passes to the 3 theme parks on the Gold Coast: Seaworld, Wet n Wild and Movie World. We had crossed the first 2 off our list already, but Movie World was still waiting.  So we surprised them one morning as they were getting ready for school.  Lex called in "sick" (first time this year) and while the kids were getting dressed I said, "Why are you putting on your school uniform?  I don't think they require that at Movie World!!!"  They went crazy!  It was a really fun surprise.  We set off to see what all the hub bub was about.

It was a beautiful winter day!  Our first stop was the stunt man car show.  Look at this motorcycle man jumping the buildings on the movie set.  It was fun to see the cars spinning and speeding and doing figure 8's without crashing into each other.  The motorcycles were our favorite though!  Cool as.

Then it was off to try some rides!  Movie World is maybe half the size of Lagoon in Utah. It was really fun though.  Everything is themed around movie studios, making movies, and movie sets.  The characters you see walking the streets and standing for photos are Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn etc.  It was fun!

Oaks and I hit hit the Kiddie-Land while the other 3 went off to ride the dare devil stuff.  Poor Oaklee is as brave as any of them, but didn't quite meet the height requirements on all the coasters...even with a shoe-full of napkins :)

So we snagged a ride on the Road Runner instead.

Parker and Syd were awesome to join her on a few of the rides in between their speeding free falls and loop de loops.  What's a kiddie land without a train ride?

There was a fun kiddie-coaster and some good tilt-a-whirl Tweety bird cages.  But still....

We were all thankful to find a really fun roller coaster that Oaklee (with her deepest breath and very best posture and the nicest ride attendants) JUST qualified for!  It was Scooby Doo's Haunted Mansion Roller Coaster.  It was actually totally awesome.  Here they are in the haunted graveyard, just outside the ride.  The ride starts out really mundane, like a tour through a haunted mansion, but then you pass through a set of door and you are lifted, like an elevator up and then suddenly, you drop down a very steep roller coaster hill backward! And the rest of the ride is like a wild mouse coaster in the dark!  It was really fun and scary!  That Wild Mouse feeling of your front wheels going off the track and jerking you back on, lots of hills that lift you off your seat etc. etc.  Oaklee and Birdy went on this ride 6 times.  Nice to go during school when the lines are...well, non existent!  And nice of Lex to keep going with them.

Main street at Movie World

Zombies at Oaklee's favorite ride!

Part of Movie World is Wild West Town.  I thought this fake set was so fun.  I am dying laughing at how Oaklee is making an attempt at making this look real. (it's just a flat painting)  Syd actually looks like she's sitting on that bench, but Oaklee with her floating foot...not so much!

One ride we really loved was the log ride.  It was one of the better log rides I've been on.  It had a really good backward drop at the beginning and the end hill was crazy steep and crazy long!  It was a really fun ride.

For lunch we ate pies (meat pies, an Aussie staple), and the whole day was great.  You have to push hard at these parks because they all close up at 5!  Crazy right?  It's annoying because my favorite time at amusement parks is always night, when things cool off and everything is lit up.  But alas, Australia pretty much shuts down and goes to bed at 5. Luckily the parks aren't very big so you can squeeze it all in pretty easily, especially when you go on a school day!  Here is a pic of our favorite coaster-- Superman's Escape.  Only Lex, Park and I got to go because of height restrictions but man-- it was a good one.  Straight up that first hill and then...yah, straight down!  It was a fun day.  And "check" another one off the bucket list!