The boy that never liked Sea World... much
From when I was a tiny tot to the grand old age that I am now, I have never been a fan of Sea World. While I do believe that it is one of the better kept parks, if not, the best kept park on the coast, I always end up leaving the park wanting something more and this was more or less the case when I last visited the park a week ago.
The day started out by meeting Ash on the train down to Sea World with both of us in extreme anticipation to ride the new Jet Rescue. Reading the review of the ride beforehand gave me all the more reason to go to the park and experience the thrills that the new ride had to offer. This hype and excitement for the new ride was soon to be crushed upon arrival in the entry queue line. I was waiting patiently in the pre-paid line while Ash waited to purchase his ticket in another when I receive a call from him saying that there were signs displayed saying Jet Rescue would not be open today. At first I thought he was joking but I soon came across the very same signs he saw as I entered the Paradise Room. After discussing the down-time of the ride with some of the staff members, they explained that the ride will be open by midday that day and we decided to enter and enjoy the other attractions in the park while they tried to fix Jet Rescue.
After tedious minutes of trying to find enough loose change to pay for the giant locker to house Ash's camera gear, I suggested that we should first ride Bermuda Triangle. This was another ride that I had wanted to go on for some time, mainly due to the fact that I could barely remember the ride from the last two times I went on it: The first time being when I was five years old and having the crap scared out of me, and the second time being 14 and being stuck in a boat full of annoying girls screaming senselessly so I couldn't hear the dialogue. Now, being older and riding with a quiet group, I could experience the ride properly... and what a disappointment. This ride was cheesier than a Bega factory. The story was something that would've come out of a really bad 1950's science fiction film, but to be honest I actually didn't see it coming when the chick announced that she was really an alien although there were hardly any subtle hints to point out that she was an alien in the first place. Speaking of aliens, they look sooo stupid and I really expected the humans in suspended animation to look a bit more realistic than they did. I was also disappointed to find out that they removed the fire effects at the end of the ride and replaced them with randomly placed strings of LED lights for lava which I thought was kind of corny. What was impressive was the disappearing spaceship effect, although I remember that from the last time I went on the ride. Definitely still a great effect. Now some of you may be thinking "why are you criticising this ride? It was made in 1994!" Well that's exactly my point; it was made in 1994, so why haven't they replaced it with something better by now? Honestly, most of the effects I've seen (and correct me if I'm wrong about this) were actually recycled effects from Lassitor's Lost Mine, which originally opened in 1988 -- so really we are talking about a 20-year-old ride here. The Bermuda Triangle has served as the park's centrepiece ride for years and I think it's time they replaced it with something better.
After riding the Bermuda Triangle we soldiered onto the Flume. Now I actually quite enjoyed this ride, despite its age. In ways this ride is a lot better than the Log Ride at Dreamworld: it has a steeper drop, you get great views of the park from the top of the castle, it has an awesome tunnel and it has bad-ass Viking Longboats! However, what I did notice about this ride is that it goes under a few bridges which have extremely low clearance, so much so that they actually had to pad the sides of the bridges for taller guests. And after upon riding I noticed that throughout the park there were quite a few areas where they are some really low or close clearances. Was Sea World designed by dwarves or something? Even the railings in the queue line for the flume are placed extremely close together -- no more than a metre apart. Ash explained to me that this was actually a means of preventing disappointment to larger guests that wouldn't be able to fit in the boat, although I don't think he was serious.
By now it was just before midday and Jet Rescue was still not open. After monitoring the area for a while we noticed that we could not see anyone working on Jet Rescue which worried us as we suspected it might not even open by the end of the day. We walked across the bridge to then ride Corkscrew and the Pirate Ship. Corkscrew to my surprise, was still as smooth as it has always been. The train is still in great condition and hasn't been ruined by the park making a pathetic attempt to make the ride "safer" by adding seatbelts on the restraints with zip-ties. The only problem I have with Corkscrew is that it's just way too short, although this is easily remedied by re-rides and short queues.
After a couple of re-rides of Corkscrew we ventured onto the Pirate Ship. I can't say much about it to be honest because it's simply a pirate ship. It swings up and down and it makes you feel funny in your stomach and it's only good if you sit on one of the sides otherwise you don't get the same effect. It does, however, lead me on to think that Sea World needs more flat rides. This is the only major flat ride in the whole park excluding the flat rides found at Sesame Street Beach. This is probably because of Sea World's limited space, thus the lack of flat rides. (I don't really count Planet SOS as a ride either so don't comment about that).
Speaking of Planet SOS, this was the next thing that we did... after checking up on Jet Rescue about six times (and finding out what was wrong from a bunch of wandering employees), walking up to the back of the park (and finding a humorous flaw in the separation of the water park to the rest of the park), taking the monorail back to the front of the park (and making note of never travelling in that sauna again) and having lunch at the Tavern (go get their Nachos, they're really good!). I was quite excited to finally get the chance to see this film, after not getting the chance to the last time when I came with my school (this was again, the same time with the stupid girls on the Bermuda Triangle incident) but again I was disappointed by the results. The film felt very short, and is actually even shorter if you exclude the intro and outro of the film which doesn't even make use of the 3D glasses. The 3D effects used were also not as effective as they could've been, mainly because the seating arrangement of the cinema had kept peoples' heads in front of me in the line of the screen, although the part with the snake was very cool. They also make note that this film was made to raise awareness about the destruction of the environment in three different ways: global warming and the melting of the polar ice caps, ocean polluting and deforestation, although I personally didn't get any kind of impact from it whatsoever: the polar bears seem to enjoy escaping the block of ice they were living in by sliding through the holes in the iceberg and in the last scene, the only part where we see a tree get cut down is in the last five seconds of the film, with the rest of it just about apes monkey-ing around (forgive the pun). If they really wanted to make some impact about this they should've animated an entire chase scene of a whole bunch of animals fleeing from a giant logging machine rampaging through the Amazon controlled by a sadistic, ruthless maniac. That would've been a whole lot cooler and have much more impact on the kiddies.
Now with all the major rides pretty much ridden, we decided to finally look at some of the animal exhibits. Now this is where Sea World really shines, after all, it is a Marine Park so their animal exhibits should be fantastic -- which is what they are, fantastic. Polar Bear Shores, Shark Bay and even the little penguin and stingray exhibits are all great. Unfortunately we didn't have a chance to watch Imagine or Fish Detectives, but I do remember seeing the old dolphin show with my school and being completely enthralled by it. The Waterski Wipeout show was unfortunately a bit of a let down as we grew tired of it after about ten minutes, with nothing happening most of the time as they had a technical difficulty in the middle of the show.
By this time we had ridden everything in the park at least twice, seen all the attractions apart from the two shows and Jet Rescue was still closed! We even walked all the way to the lighthouse and walked on the Endeavour recreation. We were THAT bored! We finally decided that Jet Rescue was not going to be open that day and went to Guest Services to see what we could do for a return ticket only to find out that the $10 return deal was only valid two days after the original visit to the park! Being disappointed by this discovery and having the Guest Services lady lie to me by saying they do post information about what rides are not open on MyFun (which was later found to be false by Ash), we decided to leave the park, quite frustrated about the Jet Rescue situation.
All-in-all, it wasn't such a bad day and it's not as bad of a park as I remembered it to be. The park obviously has its flaws such as The Bermuda Triangle and being able to exhaust the park's attractions in a day (i.e. no come-back value), but it also has a lot of strong points, such as the Corkscrew, the amazing animal exhibits and just a plain good ol' atmosphere to the park. I personally believe that this trip report wouldn't have been as negative as it was if Jet Rescue had been open that day, which is unfair when judging the park as a whole because it was an unfortunate event to take place. For the park's next big project, I would personally like to see a replacement for the Bermuda Triangle as that desperately needs something fresh. I would also say that Planet SOS needs replacing too, but it's still relatively new and it still keeps the kids excited. Speaking of kids though, that's exactly what the park is -- a kid's park or a true family park at the most and because of that reason it is why it's not a park that I would get an annual pass to or be revved up about going to all the time. It is also for that reason it is probably a better park than I make it out to be but just don't see it. Nevertheless, excluding our next trip just to ride Jet Rescue, I think it will be another few years until I consider making another visit to Sea World.
Photo: Sea World
