I’m on the first holiday I’ve had in a year. The last time I actually managed to find some time for a holiday was in May last year when I went to New York with Shorty. Ever since that trip, I’ve still been traveling a lot but always for work. This time though I found myself in Gold Coast for a family trip.
It’s my first time to Gold Coast. I’ve heard loads about Gold Coast (probably a lot from the Air Asia ads I always see promoting it every now and then) but never been. My impression of it is …. lots of surfer dudes, nice beaches, loaaads of theme parks and great weather. So far that has more or less how it turned out to be. Shorty calls it an “Older and quiet version of Miami”. I have never been to Miami so I can’t tell you if that’s true or not.
Today we went to Warner Bros Movie World. It’s sort of like a smaller version of Universal Studios. The first thing I saw when I got there was this huge rollercoaster called The Superman Escape. You can see the track in the background.
Pay attention to the roller-coaster track. Notice how it goes up like a horse shoe and then dives down again? My sister totally wanted to go for it when she saw it at first but I chickened out. My sister on the other hand is this dare devil that would go sky diving if she could. So every ride to her is like… nothing.
Still, I hadn’t been on a roller-coaster for a while and hopping on to that one was too big a commitment too quick. So Shorty and I settled for taking a picture in front of the roller-coaster. She made her Y U NO GUY face so I think she meant to say “FATTY… Y U NO BRAVE LIKE SUPERMAN”.
Now I love roller-coasters but that one had such a strong vertical dive that even watching other people go on it destroyed whatever courage I had. So I spent the day going for some of the other rides and a smaller roller-coaster called The Scooby Doo. We even sat on this other small roller-coaster meant for kids where Shorty barely made the height restriction.
Based on her height, in order to get on that kiddie roller-coaster she had to be accompanied by an adult. Fortunately I was there to be the “adult”.
Now the other rides were all fun and all but I still thought that it wasn’t enough. So at the end of the day I decided to go for the other extreme roller-coaster in the park. It was called The Lethal Weapon. Let me describe Lethal Weapon to you.
This is how the track more or less looks like.
This picture was taken in an observation in the middle of the tracks (so to the left of the photo is a whole lot more track that we can’t see) where it was protected with a net, in case anything dropped out of the pockets of the people on the ride. The ride started with a drop, and then a couple of loops, then more drops and then a corkscrew and I think a few more drops. The only real twist for this one compared to the other roller-coasters I’ve been on before is that…it’s the type that leaves your legs hanging in the air. So you’re not really in a carriage but kinda just…. hanging from the tracks.
Still that’s something I figured I could handle since… well.. the only thing I’m really afraid of are the drops. You hardly feel the loops and the corkscrews.
I was a little wrong though. For some reason I totally felt the corkscrews in this roller-coaster. The whole ride was dropping, looping and corkscrewing all at one go it doesn’t give you much of a chance to recover. So I was shouting the entire ride until some 75% of the ride was done. By then I had run out of breath to scream or shout. But it was damn fun!
Shorty didn’t go for the ride because she said those days are behind her. So she was in the observation area watching me the whole time and took pictures of me while I was on the ride. So I think if you look closely at the previous pictures you might see me shouting away in fear for my life. My brother apparently took a video of me on the ride and said I was shouting the loudest (If I manage to get that video from him maybe I’ll post it up here ).
That’s what I learned about roller-coasters though. I used to hate them… and was too afraid to sit on many of the more extreme ones. Then one day instead of keeping it all in I decided to shout in fear and I found the ride a lot enjoyable then. So if you’re afraid of roller-coasters… try shouting or screaming… I think it’ll help you get over it a lot better.
Still.. this time I was shouting very very loud. So loud that while walking out of the ride in the end, the two Australian teenagers sitting in front of me said
“You shout really loud!!!”
After sitting on Lethal Weapon I was all pumped up to go for the Superman ride. In comparison it seemed a lot less stressful except for the big drop… but my parents wanted to go home by then. So we decided to call it a day.
Will be visiting a few more theme parks here in Gold Coast in the next few days. Will see which ones I can get on. I got back to our hotel just in time to see the sunset on the Gold Coast.
It was beautiful.
Being here in the Gold Coast feels like you’re far away from everything familiar to you in the world. Suddenly all my stress and problems seem to so far away. I think it’s good break that both Shorty and I needed for a long time.
Timothy Tiah – Co-Founder of Colony, Kuala Lumpur Co-Working Space