While bumper cars and teacup rides may not cut it anymore, these theme parks know exactly how to make us big kids squeal.
Families with school-age children might be their bread and butter, but to keep the kids coming back well into adulthood, it seems Australia’s leading theme parks have made it their mission to continually up the ante when it comes to adrenaline-pumping thrills. So why not grab some mates and try one of our favourite fun factories out for size – providing you’re not chicken that is.
Need for speed
If you feel like a break from the norm, there’s nothing like a day of white-knuckle rides to shake things up a bit. Dreamworld on the Gold Coast has made its name by practically scaring the pants off punters (in a good way). If you’re the timid type it’s probably not for you, but if the thought of eerie vertical climbs, stomach-churning weightlessness and insane high-speed inversions grabs your fancy, then you’re in for some serious fun. Take The Giant Drop, for instance. After being winched slowly to the top, you’ll literally have your heart in your mouth as you plummet 39 storeys, accelerating at the speed of gravity – and that’s just one of The Big9 Thrill Rides.
Me Tarzan…
To get a rough idea of what to expect at Treetop Adventure Park, imagine an army-training course suspended 20 metres in the air. Up here, the trees are definitely your friends – it’s the vertigo-inducing bits in between that are friggin’ scary. At each of the locations (Newcastle, Central Coast and Sydney), there are four colour-coded adult courses that gradually progress in difficulty. Test your balance on the very wobbly suspension bridges and channel your inner Tarzan (or Jane) as you swing through the trees on up to 17 fearsome flying foxes.
If the experience leaves you hankering for more, then head to sister attraction TreeTop Crazy Rider and sample the world’s longest rollercoaster zipline – at one-kilometre long and 18-metres high, The Xtreme boasts plenty of hair-raising surprises, including a few 360-degree turns thrown in for good measure.
Extreme water action
There’s something about careering down a slippery slide with water splashing in your face that’s guaranteed to have you grinning from ear to ear (no matter how much of the wet stuff you swallow). Well, at Wet’n’Wild, you can magnify that feeling tenfold, as they’ve taken the concept of water slides to a whole new level of crazy.
Whichever of the two venues you hit (Gold Coast or Sydney), you’ll find heart-stopping free-fall drops, massive looping slides and terrifying twists and turns. Feeling competitive? Challenge your pals on an eight-lane racing course, where you’ll reach speeds of up to 40km/h as you zoom down head first – just make sure your swimmers are secure.
And on “the mother of all slides”, the Constrictor, at Wet’n’Wild Gold Coast, you’ll experience not one, not two, but three 360-degree coils before you smash into the turbulent waters below (and walk away with a serious wedgie).
So next time you feel under the pump at uni or stuck in a rut at work, you know exactly where to head to let your inner child run wild.
This story first appeared in the Opinion section of former NRMA site Live4 in Feb, 2015.
