Get Back To Australasia

[Mega-Lite]

Missed me?

 

I've just returned from an almost 3 week trip to the shores of Australasia, a trip which covered Singapore, Australia, China and Hong Kong.

 

Our story begins with me and my friend boarding a Norwegian Air plane (bursting at the seems with the unwashed masses) destined for Singapore. The decision to fly with a budget airline, long distance, was forced upon us and not something I'd recommend, it wasn't too disgusting though.

 

Day 1

 

I physically cannot sleep or get at all comfortable on planes, so after a 12 hour flight of not sleeping and thinking why do I put myself through this crap, it was decided the first day was going to be nice and slow. We exchanged currency (much cheaper to change our useless currency to Singapore Dollars over there), raided some malls and got adjusted to the heat.

 

If you're anything like me (I hope for your sake you are not), then you're going to find the heat of Singapore a real struggle at first. Singapore is currently in it's colder season, but temperatures still float towards the 30 degree mark daily. I'm not a shorts guy, but I wore shorts in Singapore, that alone should warn you.

 

My hotel was located in the Indian quarter of Singapore, known as Little Indian, which meant several hilarious happenings were witnessed on route, my favourite being a man in tears blessing his car in the middle of the road.

 

This weird thing is at the airport and is known as kinetic rain, it amuses me, so I thought I'd share a picture.

 

Day 2

 

Now fully caught up on sleep, today we visited the Singapore Zoo, this zoo is meant to be World famous and I wont' deny it is very good for what it is.

 

Transportation in Singapore is reliable, safe, extremely clean and very cheap. Whoever shot me down the other month for saying I don't like the London Underground needs to experience the Singapore MRT to fully understand how laughable London's attempt is.

 

A pleasant train ride, followed by a lovely air conned bus ride later and we arrived at Singapore Zoo.

 

The Zoo is split into 3 sections (they are adding a 4th at the moment however), the main zoo, the river safari and the night safari. Today we opted to do the main zoo first, then the river safari, choosing to skip the night safari.

 

The main zoo is as you'd expect but contains some animals I'd never seen before.

 

It was so hot in Singapore I was contemplating joining the polar bear for a swim.

Komodo Dragon's are so cool.

I'm not sure why or how tree kangaroos exist, but they are so dumb that I love them.

 

After finishing up with the main zoo, we ventured on and did the river safari. This experience starts off similar to the main zoo, with animal enclosures and such, but ends with a splash boats style attraction, that takes you up close and personal with the animals, as well as providing some fun drop sections.

 

With Singapore Zoo cleared by 5pm, it was time for another mall crawl in search of food. Singapore is geared for eating out for all your meals, with hundreds of cheap food offerings at hundreds of malls.

 

Day 3

 

Our third day in Singapore was taken up by general tourist stuff and once again, more malls.

 

In the evening we went to watch Spectra, a light and water show that takes place in Marina Bay. This show is frankly outstanding. Water, lasers, incredible lighting and pounding music are all combined and timed perfectly to create this awe inspiring showcase. The best part is though, it's free, so you've got no excuse to miss it when you visit.

 

Most of the lighting effects are projected from Marina Bay Sands, a rather fetching building in itself.

 

Thanks for reading, check back next time for Universal Studios Singapore... 

[Mark9]

Thank god, I thought you were dead. I don't want to see any reviews of cloned rides in these trip reports, only original attractions. If I see even a hint of an SLC or Boomerang, I'll be calling for your account to be suspended. I don't want a repeat of your Japan trip report where you spoke about Diavlo. 

[Mega-Lite]

I didn't plan to wait so long for part 2 of this update, my computer decided it didn't want to be a computer anymore, I apologise.

 

Day 4

 

Universal Studios Singapore

 

From the first day of this trip being drawn up, it was my friend's decision to hit Universal on New Years Eve, a decision which at first looked to have come back to spite us.

 

Universal Studios is located on the resort island of Sentosa, which you can access via monorail, bus, cable car and even boat. We opted for the monorail idea and in less than 5 minutes we were standing infront of the famous spinning globe.

 

I wasn't really a fan of Universal Japan as a park, while Flying Dinosaur and Hollywood Dream are absolutely World class, the rest of the park left me a little flat. With that in mind I was very curious to find out how I'd view Singapore's version, I'll hit you with a spoiler, it's fantastic, let's move in.

 

My arrival in Singapore hadn't gone unnoticed and with that in mind, my Singaporean friend's mother, who as best as I understand was new to the theme park game, decided to join us. To break her in easy, we first rode Sesame Street Spaghetti Space Chase, a suspended dark ride themed to Sesame Street. While the ride system was really fun, the ride itself was not, though I suspect I'm probably too old to fully embrace it.

 

Next up was what I really came here for, Battlestar Galactica - https://rcdb.com/4328.htm

 

I've been intrigued by these 2 intertwined Vekoma monsters since I first heard of them.

 

Visually they are something very special, a twisted mess of track and supports with the occasional train soaring through.

 

First off we rode the Cylon inverted coaster and it's very good. I can't quite believe I'm going to say this, but Battlestar Galactica Cylon rides like a B&M invert and not just that, but it rides better than some B&M inverts I've ridden. While the LSM launch lift hill is almost pointless, owing to the fact the lift slows to a near crawl near the top, once you actually leave the lift and start flying, this thing is brilliant. B&M invert levels of positive G, smooth flowing inversions, several near misses and near perfect pacing, make Cylon a fantastic coaster in my books.

 

I only wish I could say the same for it's brother, Human. Human is the sit down coaster of the pair and to put it bluntly, it's crap. While I understand the idea was to have an intense inverted monster coupled with a more family friendly coaster, this thing rides far too tame to even be considered a decent family coaster.

 

To help keep balance in our varied group of riders, we decided to ride Treasure Hunters, this was a mistake.

 

Treasure Hunters is a slow moving car ride that minces past Egyptian theming, think Toadies meets Tomb Blaster. We entered the 40 minute queue and foolishly remarked how quickly it was moving, this was a mistake. Singapore can go from hot and sunny to torrential rain, then back to hot and sunny in a instant. When we were about 5 minutes away from boarding, the heavens opened and the ride ceased operation, no problem. About 5 minutes later the rain stopped and the sun came back out, however the ride did not reopen. We waited about 45 minutes of watching the ride team faff about with brooms and give vague estimations about when it would reopen again. Was it worth the wait then? F**k off was it!

 

After that life draining experience, it was time to experience my first highly anticipated coaster of this trip, Revenge of the Mummy - https://rcdb.com/4327.htm

 

Revenge of the Mummy (Singapore version at least) is incredible! Everything about this attraction is epic. The enormous entrance structure, the beautiful yet terrifying maze like queue through the tomb, the insane special effects, the level of detail in the theming throughout the ride, the soundtrack.... I could keep going and I still wouldn't be able to do the ride justice.

 

Referring back to my point earlier about maybe New Years Eve not being the best decision, we queued 60 minutes for Revenge of the Mummy and the park seemed to be getting busier.

 

We made our way over to Madagascar: A Crate Adventure next. I'm not a fan of Madagascar, but this boat based dark ride was so well done that I couldn't help but enjoy myself, great stuff.

 

For lunch we ventured out of the park and into the Univeral plaza outside, home to many different restaurants. As you may know by now, I'm a huge fan of all things Korean, so a Korean restaurant was the obvious choice. I opted for a kimchi pizza, which amounted to several tons of kimchi poured onto a pizza base. I was pleased to hear Kpop being played on the sound system, as I was certain this was going to be my last meal on earth.

 

Against all odds, the kimchi didn't kill me and soon enough I was in the queue for Transformers. I really enjoyed Spiderman in Japan and I like Transformers even more. This ride system is awesome and I spent the whole time laughing like an idiot.

 

Next up was Jurassic Park Rapids Adventure, take the beloved Jurassic Park river ride idea, but this time use a rapids ride system and what do you get? Perfection. Whilst I very much enjoyed the standard river ride in Japan, this is much better. As you'd expect from the manufacturer behind River Quest, this is one hell of an intense ride and you have a real chance of getting soaked. Insane rapid sections in quick succession, the usual dinosaur related goodness and a last drop that's guaranteed to make you shout "JESUS CHRIST!", this thing this wonderful.

 

Right next to Jurassic Park is Canopy Flyer - https://rcdb.com/8606.htm

 

This unique and utterly pointless cred was a laugh and nothing more.

 

We slithered over to Waterworld next, I skipped this show in Japan for time reasons but was excited to see it today and I was right to be, it's very good.

 

Puss in Boots was next - https://rcdb.com/12252.htm

 

This thing is unintentionally hilarious and that is literally all I can say about it.

 

It was about now my friend's idea of coming on New Years Eve started to make sense. The park had started to really die down now, as people left to go home/elsewhere to bring in the New Year.

 

Because of that, Enchanted Airways was walk on - https://rcdb.com/4326.htm

 

I'm getting sick of these damn things now, so I'm glad I had a frightened OAP losing her mind as my partner to make it more interesting!

 

 

After a quick churro break we watched Lights, Camera, Action!, a special effects showcase that was much better than the stupid Backdraft one in Japan.

 

By this point the park was deserted, we had finished everything and we still had 4 hours of opening time left. Time for many rerides on Mummy and Battlestar then!

 

 

To see in the New Year, there was a firework display, nothing too special, it just amused me the countdown and fireworks started 4 minutes past midnight, you had 1 job guys!

 

Universal Studios Singapore is a lovely little park and definitely has the Universal flavour that I felt was missing from Japan. Revenge of the Mummy, Battlestar Galactica, Jurassic Park and Transformers are fantastic attractions, which when combined with the other filler attractions, shows and the Universal atmosphere I was waiting to experience left me feeling very fond of the place.

 

Thanks for reading, next update (hopefully not so long this time) will be Sea World Gold Coast...

[Mega-Lite]

Day 5

 

After getting back past 1am from my day at Universal, it was a slow start to day 5. This day ended up being another day of visiting malls, trying to prove/disprove if Singapore really is "food heaven" and doing touristy stuff.

 

To end the day we made a special journey to visit a very important mythical creature, the Merlion! There are apparently 11 Merlions in Singapore, but this one is the original one, the one that guards the harbour.

 

I hope you'll all agree he/she is rather impressive.

 

Day 6

 

Today started with more skulking around Singapore, before our flight to Australia, which if I recall correctly was scheduled to take off at 10pm.

 

We opted to fly from Singapore to Gold Coast airport with Scoot, an ultra low budget Singaporean airline. After reading 90% complaints and seeing how low customers rated this airline, I was slightly worried I must be honest, however Scoot prices were a quarter of the cost of the other airlines, so really without this risk this holiday may not have been this ambitious.

 

Scoot have a rule where you aren't allowed outside food or drink on the plane, they don't check your bag when you board though, which means it creates an amazing game of ninjaing food and drink when the beautiful air hostesses aren't watching. I almost wanted to get caught, mostly to be put in my place by a beautiful woman, but I was also curious what the punishment would have been, pushed me out of the moving plane at 30,000 feet perhaps?

 

Day 7

 

We landed safely and ahead of schedule at Gold Coast airport at around 8am. So Scoot didn't kill us but the Australian border police might, or so I thought. After queuing in cattle pens for 15 minutes, looking at various signs saying "all food is banned", "no mobile phones" and "abandon all hope ye who enter here", I was rather nervous approaching the desk, needn't have been though. Content Australian woman took the p**s out of me for being in the wrong queue, telling me, "I know the English love to queue, but you could have skipped this". She then asked me about my trip as a whole, the shock on her face when I told her I'm going to be flying for near 50 hours over these 3 weeks, is something I'll never forget.

 

Once bags were collected, it was time to collect our hire car. The car we were given, while absolutely safe and mechanically sound, was in a right state, including huge dents, scratches and destroyed wheel covers. Over the next few days I'd come to learn that the Australian's don't really care for their cars, but standing there staring at the hire car at first was a shock.

 

While Singapore is hot as hell, it's a humid sort of heat, so you just sweat a lot and feel gross, Australia however is evil. No word of a lie, we got sunburnt in the car, despite having put sun lotion on, this was a sign of things to come.

 

Sea World

 

After over an hour of traffic, getting sunburnt and falling asleep after being awake for 24 hours, we finally made it to Sea World. 

 

Sea World Gold Coast is 95% what you'd expect, a zoo housing marine based animals, but we aren't here for that, we're here for the 3 creds the park offers!

 

Spongebob's Boating School Blast - https://rcdb.com/12755.htm

 

+1. The queue for this thing was memorable for the fact a large women was staring us down for about 15 minutes, clearly Australia doesn't see it's fair share of credit whores.

 

 

Storm - https://rcdb.com/11059.htm

 

A Skatteoen clone, with the splash down and pre lift sections housed within a show building. The whole experience was disgusting. Had to pay to store our items on a coaster I took my bag on in Denmark. Forced to queue in a badly looked after, hot as hell interior queue line, with some rowdy and awful park goers. Putting the pre lift and splash down indoors was utterly pointless as they didn't bother to really theme either, or add special effects. What hurts the most though is, I just looked it up and this piece of crap replaced the Australian version of Bermuda Triangle Alien Encounter...

 

 

Jet Rescue - https://rcdb.com/4293.htm

 

If it wasn't for this gem of a coaster I'd really let rip on how much of a disappointment this park was. Jet Rescue is a compact Intamin family launched coaster, like a baby Juvelen. Even though the layout is tiny and ride time is short, they've managed to pack alot of punch into such a small layout. This thing stays at the intensity Juvelen reaches after it's second launch for it's entire layout. I was taken completely by surprise by how enjoyable and intense this coaster is, I was expecting a scaled down, tamer Juvelen, but left with a big smile on my face.

 

 

Had a few rerides on Jet Rescue, then minced around the zoo for a while, I wasn't very impressed by it, I'll put that down to having done one of the best in the World in Singapore, oh and being awake for 30 odd hours now.

 

Sea World just really gave the impression the park was unloved, from the rides, to the animal exhibits, even the bathrooms, every thing just felt tired and worn out, much like me when I visited. If it wasn't for Jet Rescue I would of probably told those who'd listen not to bother with the park, but with Jet Rescue in mind, it probably justifies the entrance price, just.

 

I normally don't get affected by tiredness too badly, but this trip changed me forever in that department. Between leaving Sea World and going to sleep I remember things in vague bullet points. Hitting the curb so hard I thought we'd broken the car when exiting the Sea World car park. A grass hopper the size of my hand on the burger king window. A sketchy motel. Laying there thinking, will I be eaten by a spider or murdered in my sleep? Then falling asleep while trying to figure it out. The things I do for this hobby...

 

Thank you for reading, next round, Movie World and the outstanding DC Rivals...

[Mega-Lite]

Day 8

 

After having such a good sleep that I woke up confused where the hell I was or what the hell I was doing, I rolled out of bed to discover parts of my face that had never been burnt before were red raw and unbelievably painful, damn you Australia.

 

All the parks in Gold Coast (which is almost all of the parks in Australia) are located extremely closely to each other, Dreamworld is literally 5 minutes from Movie World and both are 45 minutes from Sea World. With that in mind it was a short drive past Dreamworld (seeing tomorrow's Skyloop waiting for me was haunting) to Movie World.

 

Movie World

 

About 5 minutes away from the park you first catch glimpses of DC Rivals, the closer you get, the sexier it becomes, until you are parked in the car park screaming in amazement at it, she's a stunner.

 

Although the same company who owns Sea World (Village Roadshow), also own Movie World, first impressions of this place were much more impressive. Friendly and enthusiastic staff members on the entrance, a well kept and quite impressive entrance area, oh and a huge pink hyper coaster towering over you.

 

Speaking of which, we immediately joined the queue of people who were waiting for the DC Rivals main queue to open. The ride team from Green Lantern (the El Loco) came over to tell us, "why wait for DC Rivals to open when Green Lantern is currently walk on?", many reasons...

 

DC Rivals - https://rcdb.com/13637.htm

 

After being welcomed back into the best seats in the industry, AKA Mack Mega seats, AAKA Helix seats, it was time to experience DC Rivals. So how was it? It's fantastic, truly a World class coaster and easily deserving of a spot in my top 10 list. The first drop is brilliant, launching you out of your seat and then leaving you floating in limbo until you level out. The air time hill which follows delivers some lovely strong ejector, it's not Helix strong but still kicks ass. Following this brilliant start is the non inverting loop, which rides a lot more intense than I expected, with weird forces and yet more ejector. What follow this is lots of high speed twisty stuff, with some of them being exceptionally intense and snappy. It would be fair to say this part of the coaster was a little disappointing, but it doesn't get anywhere near as tiresome as the middle section of GeForce. DC Rivals really picks up at the end though, with 4 insane air time hills in a row, all of them providing very intense bursts of that sweet ejector air.

 

Both the trains on DC Rivals (AKA the best trains in the World), have the back most car turned backwards and for the low cost of 5 pounds you can experience one of the World's best coasters backwards. This feature is unbelievable and I really hope it remains. DC Rivals features rider cam onboard recordings. Our first ride in the backwards seats is something that we wished we had purchased because it was one of the funniest things I've ever seen. I'll do my best to describe it... Going up the lift backwards, falling out of our seats, looking a little uneasy but otherwise unphased. Seconds before cresting the vertical drop you could clearly see my friend shout "OH F**K!". We hit the drop, which backwards isn't far off being one of the most intense coaster drops out there, with sheer fear on our faces. As we level out you could clearly see my shout "OH F**K!". From here on during EVERY air time moment (which when you can't see them coming are out of this World), my face was a mix of intense shock and unrivalled enjoyment.

 

Backwards or forwards DC Rivals is just such good fun. It's certainly going to put Australia on the map for a lot of us coaster nerds and I hope it will help mark a shift in the Australian theme park industry. 

 

 

Superman Escape - https://rcdb.com/2999.htm

 

Once we managed to stop riding DC Rivals for 10 minutes, it was time to experience the other coasters Movie World offers, the best of which is probably Superman Escape.

 

Superman is an Intamin hydraulic launch coaster (yawn), that features a rather long and quite impressive dark ride section before the launch. While I enjoyed the novelty of the dark ride section, the coaster section itself is rather disappointing. Although the layout is technically quite well done, the God awful trains with terrible restraints and being launched into the bright sun after half hour of darkness make what could have been a great coaster average at best.

 

 

Green Lantern - https://rcdb.com/10154.htm

 

An 8 person a car El Loco, what more can I say? It rides slightly better than Mumbo Jumbo... It's themed to Green Lantern... It's green...

 

 

Scooby Doo Spooky Coaster - https://rcdb.com/1652.htm

 

I was rather excited to ride this highly themed Mack Wild Mouse after seeing a POV of it years ago, however... When we got to the entrance of the ride there was a sign stating something along the lines of, "parts of this attraction may not be up to normal spec because we are refurbishing it". It turned out all of the coaster section theming was missing, meaning this was just an extended Mack Wild Mouse in the pitch black, which while quite fun still, wasn't what I wanted, oh well.

 

 

Road Runner Rollercoaster - https://rcdb.com/1121.htm

 

I was thinking about where to place DC Rivals in my top 10 while riding this thing so I'm afraid I can't give a truly honest review. Let's say it's somewhere between God awful and meh.

 

We also checked out the Justice League 3D shooting laser quest dark ride, which was really weird (like people with alien starfish stuck to their faces weird), but it was still quite good fun. You were rewarded for shooting superman when he's thanking you for helping at the end which is interesting.

 

Even though it was the middle of Australian summer and school holidays, all parks closed their doors at 5 or 6 and we concluded things weren't looking good for us time wise. It was at this point we had a tough decision to make. Do we forfeit much needed re-rerides backwards and forwards on DC Rivals in order to get the SLC cred? Do we miss the cred and get our DC Rivals goodness? Do we come back tomorrow? We opted for coming back again tomorrow morning, which meant we ended the day as we started it, riding a Mack masterpiece.

 

Movie World as a park is easily the best theme park on the Gold Coast (yes that's a bit of a spoiler for Dreamworld), the park is clearly well looked after, the staff were all brilliant, the facilities were on point and it made for a lovely day. Before DC Rivals existed, Movie World would have still had the best line up on the Gold Coast (though let's be honest that's not hard), but since it's opening this park should now be a must for anyone truly into this hobby.

 

Thanks for reading, next up, Dreamworld (oh God)...

[Benin]

I hope Turkey get a clone of DC rivals so we don't have to trapse halfway across the world where my worst nightmares live to ride it...

[Mark9]

7 hours ago, Benin said:

I hope Turkey get a clone of DC rivals so we don't have to trapse halfway across the world where my worst nightmares live to ride it...

 

Australians aren't that bad.

[Mega-Lite]

23 hours ago, Benin said:

I hope Turkey get a clone of DC rivals so we don't have to trapse halfway across the world where my worst nightmares live to ride it...

I'd rather traipse into an ocean of my worst nightmares before I visit Turkey...

[Mega-Lite]

Day 9

 

Today began with a quick blast up the motorway back to Movie World in order to get the missing cred and ride DC Rivals some more.

 

Arkham Asylum - https://rcdb.com/1122.htm

 

I'm sorry Mark! Though to be fair, it was my first ever SLC with a "BONUS HELIX!", so please don't hate me too much. This thing as expected was disgusting. This waste of steel featured weird fabric vest OTSR in order to stop headbanging I assume, the problem being, when you aren't spending the whole ride guarding your head and shouting in pain, it just highlights how s**t these things really are.

 

We then rode Superman again, still meh. Followed by forwards and "BACKWARDS!" again on DC Rivals, still outstanding.

 

Following this, I made an emotional farewell to DC Rivals and we got in the car and headed in the direction of awfulness.

 

Dreamworld

 

Before researching Australia and before DC Rivals was a thing, Dreamworld was the only park I knew of in Australia, partly because of their line up featuring an Intamin reverse freefall coaster and partly because of the horrible accident which shook the industry.

 

After entering the Movie World car park and being presented by DC Rivals in your face, things are a lot less exciting when you drive into Dreamworld, a Skyloop and an Arrow Looper staring at you, beautiful.

 

The staff on the desk were nice enough though, happily printing our entry tickets for us when the scanner wouldn't read our phones. It was from here on that things took a dive however.

 

Dreamworld is according to some, in serious money trouble at present, stemming from the aforementioned accident and it really shows. Firstly despite it being the peak of the summer holidays, the park was very quiet. Secondly and where my complaints stem from, a lot of the park looks worse for wear and in some places frankly disgusting.

 

Mick Doohan's Motocoaster - https://rcdb.com/3950.htm

 

The first coaster we stumbled on was Intamin's first attempt at a family launch coaster. It would be an understatement to say they have improve this product over the years, because this was f**king awful.

 

After walking through a queue line full of spiders webs and over grown weeds, we arrived at the most confusing coaster station I've ever seen. They prebatch you onto dots on the floor that don't line up with the air gates or even make any real sense. Talking of not making sense, while Jet Rescue and Juvelen have lovely lapbar restraints, Mick Doohan has one of the most complicated set ups in the world, this bit come down, this bit comes forward, this bit spins round, my balls get crushed. Then you wait, wedged in this awful mess of plastic and metal while they spend 100 years trying to crush everyone else to death with their restraints.

 

So after already being in pain before the stupid ride starts, I was thinking, this can't get worse, it did. It jolts and rattles like a b***h around the boring ass layout, repeatedly crushing my balls and breaking my legs. It's AWFUL! Mick Doohan made children cry and ruined my chances of ever having children. Apparently Mr Doohan himself "helped" Intamin design this piece of crap, for this input, he has made my list.

 

 

Tower Of Terror 2 -  https://rcdb.com/1127.htm

 

From 1 piece of Intamin trash to another...

 

I was rather excited to try an Intamin freefall coaster, mostly coming from the fact they were so rare and I had no idea what they would ride like, it turns out I shouldn't have been excited at all.

 

You enter the queue through a hilarious skull face thing, which I think perfectly summed up the ride to be honest. The queue consists of watching 10 year old tvs (which are wedged at crude angles into what 20 years ago may have been interesting theming) showing 10 year old music videos, way to build suspense there guys. You're then batched into a preshow bit, where no preshow happens. A member of staff said something along the lines of "make sure you lot check out the thing in the gift shop, it's f**king hilarious", then the doors open and you are told take your seats.

 

You take your seats (you lot will be pleased to know it has Stealth seats), some lighting effect happens and you start accelerating "BACKWARDS!" very slowly. Not only can my car get to 100mph faster than this ride, I'm almost certain I can finish this report quicker than ToT reaches it's top speed, it's laughable. So you keep accelerating, lights are doing something dumb, my ears are about to explode in this stupid tunnel, then suddenly you emerge into the light. You travel less than half way up the pointless tower, get no feeling of weightlessness at all, get views of a ride in half deconstruction, then start going down again. Almost as soon as you enter the tunnel, the brakes come on, which means you are left rolling slowly and vibrating hilariously for about 2 minutes to get back to the station. It then over shot the station amazingly and had to be rolled backwards.

 

Post ride everyone has to get into a lift to get back to the gift shop, a lift that does nothing at all, what a waste.

 

 

Escape From Madagascar -  https://rcdb.com/2166.htm

 

I've now ridden all of the model types of the Vekoma Family suspended coasters (aren't I an adventurous bastard?) and this is easily the worst one. Jolty, rough and utterly pointless.

 

 

 

Hot Wheels Sidewinder - https://rcdb.com/1415.htm

 

Knowing the Skyloop was going to be awful, in order to save Dreamworld from becoming the Drayton Manor of Australia, Hot Wheels Sidewinder had a lot resting on it's shoulders. Did it deliver? Of course not! But it was so bad I almost like it.

 

The queue for this thing makes modern Chessington look well looked after. Dusty models of cars, a wobbly canvas tent, a small piece of vibrating floor and the smell of s**t were the highlights of this 20 minute queue.

 

At the top of the lift I saw DC Rivals in the distance, that was easily the best part of the ride. What follows is hilarious track transitions, violent jolts and a general sense of what were Arrow thinking!

 

 

Resigning to the fact Dreamworld is indeed the Drayton Manor of Australia, no good creds and an over whelming sense of decay, it was time to ride the Australian G Force, which of course is the Skyloop.

 

Buzzsaw - https://rcdb.com/10048.htm

 

Not really much I can say about this without getting all sweary and angry. It's not as bad Insane or Abismal, but it's worse than G Force and that's damning enough I think. +1

 

 

With all the coasters ticked off, we took a walk around the rest of the park. Whether because of the accident or not, the park really is a mess at the moment. Attractions half demolished, rides SBNO, tons of crude metal sheet fences blocking you from seeing things and an overall sense of lack of care. Lack of care is something I also noticed in the staff, who were really just going through the motions and didn't seem at all interested in their jobs, unlike Movie World who really impressed me.

 

Dreamworld is a shambles at the moment and I really hope they can turn it around, though I wouldn't care at all if the place closed.

 

Day 10

 

Today started with another quick trip into Dreamworld, not to reride any of their awful coasters, but to see the animals. Having various Australian animals roaming free with the public just felt unpleasant to me. An extremely graphic exhibit in the nocturnal section of the zoo further rubbed me the wrong way. Turns out Dreamworld can't do theme parks or zoos right, noted.

 

Following this we did touristy stuff, like a scenic drive and an observation deck, was alright.

 

Day 11

 

Aussie World

 

Bug Run - https://rcdb.com/12287.htm

 

We told ourselves during the planning of this trip, we wouldn't drive 70 miles from our hotel to a wacky worm. After the boredom of yesterday and the realisation of how many rare points it might offer, we changed our mind. +1.

 

 

Afterwards we did more sightseeing and got ourselves prepared for China, which in this case means, buying lots and lots of snacks.

 

Thanks for reading, next time, Oriental Heritage Xiamen.

[Benin]

What was in the zoo nocturnal area? Need deets pls...

[Mega-Lite]

54 minutes ago, Benin said:

What was in the zoo nocturnal area? Need deets pls...

Really graphic and bloody depictions of what man is doing to animals in soft toy form, covered in blood and swimming in litter, out in the blue, in a building full of nocturnal animals. Really strange and off putting.

[Benin]

Sounds like what Chessie used to have about gorilla stuff in Trail of the Kings then...

[Mega-Lite]

Day 12

 

We started today by getting up stupidly early to get to Gold Coast airport for 6am for our 8am flight back to Singapore. A flight which is only memorable for Boeing's awful Dream Liner exploding my ears and causing insane amounts of pain during landing.

 

There was a 3 hour window of spare time between landing in Singapore and our plane to Shenzhen, which I used for purchasing medication to stop the pain, Dream Liners are terrible...

 

While Scoot had been very decent thus far on this trip, today would be their undoing, with our plane leaving Singapore 2 hours late and not arriving in Shenzhen untill after 1am, on the up side, the plane was an Airbus.

 

Day 13

 

Finding out as I write this, that today was day 13, make a lot of sense, I mean I'm not a man to believe in that sort of crap, but Christ today was testing.

 

As I said we landed at just after 1am and I'll be honest I was off to a good start. They collect your finger prints on self service machines before you get to immigration in China. I had a beautiful and very intense Chinese security women forcibly doing it for me, which I very much enjoyed. After how much of an ordeal it was to get my Chinese Visa I was slightly worried immigration staff were going to be all Chinese and deny me entry, but I flew through.

 

After collecting luggage, which seemed to take forever, probably because it was almost 2am, we made our way to the 5 star airport hotel. It was a beautiful hotel and it's such a shame we only had 1 night there, a very short night at that. We ended up getting a criminally low amount of sleep, probably 4 hours tops before having to leave and make our way to the hotel we were basing ourselves from for the rest of the China trip.

 

It was raining when we arrived at our second hotel and deep down I was already fearing the worse. To those of you reading about Chinese park trips for the first time, rain isn't a good thing at all. In fact, I've come to learn, the Chinese will use any excuse to not run their coasters.

 

After we checked in, it was time to make some phone calls, which my friend, whose visited a few times now, swears is the best way to do China.

 

The original plan for today was do Happy Valley and Knight Valley's Wood Coaster. My Singaporean friend who's fluent in Chinese, really earned her keep on this trip and made all these calls, without her, what we accomplished on this trip would not have been possible.

 

So it's raining, what I'd describe as mildly, let's see what the park's have to say about it.

 

Happy Valley: "It's raining, no coasters in the rain, IF it stops, we will need a period of sunny weather to dry the tracks before we think about testing them to open".

Knight Valley: "The wooden one isn't running, weather is bad and it's under maintenance today and tomorrow".

 

So we're f**ked then!

 

The plan for tomorrow had always been to travel 4 hours each way to Xiamen for Oriental Heritage, let's find out if they'll be running tomorrow.

 

Oriental Heritage: "Tracks have been wet for a few days now, if they dry, the coasters should be open".

 

These vague, almost guess work answers are apparently all the rage in the Chinese theme park World.

 

With today's rain appearing to be an all day affair, we decided to calm ourselves down with a trip into Hong Kong to buy Kpop.

 

We hopped on the Shenzhen Metro, which is fantastic. It's cheap, fast, very clean (which for China I wasn't expecting) and really well laid out. On entry to every station you have to put all your bags through a security scanner. At almost every station, the people running this security station are beautiful Chinese women with batons half their height, lovely stuff.

 

It's a short ride from Shenzhen to Luohu Port, which is where Shenzhen and Hong Kong Meet. This border online is described as "one of the most hostile borders in World", clearly those people have 1) not visited Luohu Port and 2) haven't heard of North/South Korea, it's more disgusting and dirty than hostile. Do some quick paper work, flash your passport, for the love of God bleach your hands, then you're in Hong Kong.

 

The Hong Kong Metro is awful. It's expensive, extremely slow, dirty and awfully laid out. On entry to every station you have to watch your back against asshole old people pushing you out the way. At almost every station you will stared down by some "better than you because I'm old" bastard, horrible stuff. While riding said metro you will notice out the window most of Hong Kong appears to be a 3rd World country, with collapsed buildings and fields full of rusting metal a common sight.

 

While Hong Kong as a country (from my short visit) was rather unpleasant, their Kpop availability, in their HMVs no less, is outstanding. It almost makes up for how uncomfortable Hong Kong is as a place, almost.

 

We thankfully made our way back into China with our haul, had the best Pizza Express of my life, then bought tomorrows bullet train tickets. It was decided, we only had 1 day that we could make Xiamen work and that was tomorrow, so whatever happens we will have to try. This decision, was masterful.

 

Day 14

 

Another early start and my first Chinese taxi experience, which sadly wasn't my last.

 

I had done a bullet train in Japan but of course China do it a bit differently. Firstly it's much cheaper, a near 600 mile round trip only cost us £36. Secondly there's over the top, almost airport levels of security checks to be done before boarding, with it being China, I'll have to agree it's probably a good idea.

 

The almost 4 hour journey went by quickly enough and more importantly the sun was shining!

 

Once we arrived in Xiamen, to avoid wasting any more time, on a day that was going to be close call, we opted for another Chinese taxi. If I thought the first one was bad, this one was awful. The Chinese way of driving is simply suicidal. There's no lane guidance, no signals, everyone's doing different speeds, motorbikes are driving into on coming traffic, everyone's on their phones, larger vehicles are cutting up smaller ones, no one's paying even a small amount of attention to what's happening around them, it's quite simply scary.

 

Oriental Heritage Xiamen

 

 

I'm so pleased to say no one died and I arrived at Oriental Heritage with a new appreciation for life.

 

Little bit of a history lesson about Oriental Heritage, if this is wrong, blame my friend, or me for not understanding him.

 

Fantawild are a theme park operator, who currently have 29 parks open, or under construction in China. They have 3 variants of parks they run. Oriental Heritage, which are the highly detailed parks themed around Chinese history. Fantawild Adventure parks, which are their bog standard theme parks. Fantawild Dreamlands, which are parks which feature elements of both. It's quite common to find 2 of the park variants open next to each other.

 

Why travel 4 hours from Shenzhen to Xiamen then? Well, all the Oriental Heritage parks feature Gravity woodies, all named Jungle Trailblazer.

 

After the spite of yesterday and the looming fear we may be spited again, as soon as we saw at the park entrance that Jungle Trailblazer was open today, we slammed our money on the desk and began powering towards the coaster.

 

This was one of the most surreal power walks of my life, the park was absolutely deserted. I bet you're thinking I'm twisting the truth, but I'm not, there was literally no other park guests at all on our long walk to Jungle Trailblazer. The most attractive Chinese Maiden I've ever seen in my life emerged from a photo studio and beckoned us inside, it took all our strength to whisper back, "later". I'll assume this was a test from the coaster Gods, but it failed, creds first, love later.

 

After turning down possibly the best experience of my life and shaving 10 years off my life with the intense walking, I am pleased to say Jungle Trailblazer was indeed open.

 

Jungle Trailblazer Xiamen - https://rcdb.com/13453.htm

 

As expected there was no one in the queue or even in the station, if it wasn't the 2 members of staff on the platform you probably could of convinced me the coaster wasn't running. I wasn't prepared to accept I was getting the cred until we left the lift, but once we did, I was in for a treat and a disappointment. The first 1/3 of this coaster is absolutely insane. A steep vicious first drop, into a 10 foot tall air time hill, is one of the most crazy starters to a coaster I can remember. Followed by an intense sideways air time hill, with yet another great air time hill following. Sadly it's here onward the problems start. For whatever reason, from here the ride really loses it head of steam and while the next 1/3 is taken at a decent pace, it's not enough speed for any of the air time moments to work. Sadly things get even worse in the last 1/3, as you are left mincing around on your way back to the brakes. If Jungle Trailblazer Xiamen had kept at the pace and intensity it started with, it would have easily been one of my favourite wooden coasters, sadly, it did not and for now I'll rate it lesser than Twister at Grona Lund, ouch.

 

 

Galaxy Express - https://rcdb.com/12786.htm

 

After that mild disappointment, it was time to experience another. Galaxy Express is a clone of Orkanen at Farup Sommerland, except while Orkanen is rather brilliant, this thing rides like crap, meh.

 

 

With the 2 creds done, it was time to experience the park's dark ride selection, this is where the park really shone. Fantawild parks through the medium of black magic, build in house versions of highly complicated preexisting dark ride technologies, how they haven't been sued yet amazes me.

 

The Legend Of Nuwa

 

This dark ride uses the "Spider Man/Transformers" ride system to take you on an adventure where you help Nuwa (a Chinese Goddess) protect a magical stone from some bad guys. It's fantastically done and while not as good as the rides it's based off, I still loved it.

 

 

The Flaming Mountains

 

I hate Harry Potter's Forbidden Journey but absolutely love this ride. Using the exact same technology, better utilised and with an actual story, this thing is beautiful. Basic premise is, you're with a golden monkey bloke, fighting a bull demon thing.

 

  

 

Rumble Under The Sea

 

This is the weakest of the dark rides at this Oriental Heritage. It's features a huge trackless dark ride vehicle, following a young warrior girl trying to get a pissed off dragon to unflood a city or something. It's very good, just not as good as the others.

 

 

The dark rides alone made it worth the trip to Oriental Heritage and while not as good as I was expecting, I enjoyed my few laps on Jungle Trailblazer. I've been bitten by the Oriental Heritage bug and look forward to my next.

 

 

Thanks for reading, next part, Fantawild Dreamland.

[Mega-Lite]

Still Day 14

 

This part of the trip report follows on where the last part left off...

 

As Oriental Heritage was deserted and we managed to ride everything we wanted (The History Of Chinese Opera being something we didn't), including rerides on Jungle Trailblazer, we decided to venture next door and into the Fantawild Dreamland park.

 

Speaking of rerides on Jungle Trailblazer... On our last ride, we got to the station (once again deserted) and found the operator on his own in the control box. He came out, said something in Chinese and pointed to the open front row of the coaster. We shook our heads, walked to the back and pointed to the back row. He followed, scratched his head, said something Chinese, sighed, flailed his arms, pointed to the front once more. We again shook our heads and pointed to the back row, he flailed even more, then walked off to the control box to play on his phone. About 5 minutes later his partner showed up and the cycle repeated. Loads of Chinese, shrugs, sighs, pointing. Then they open the air gates. My friend goes through but they close the gates before I can. The reaction of the operator to have to unlock the bars in the back row, pales in comparison to his reaction to have to open the air gates again, he quite literally dropped to his knees screaming. When we returned after another mediocre lap, the platform staff girl had wedged herself in one of the storage boxes and the operator was back to playing on his phone.

 

Let's get the f**k out of here...

 

Before leaving however, we forced our Chinese translator to phone Happy Valley and Knight Valley again, in regards to tomorrow.

 

Happy Valley: "All the coasters are running now, nothing's planned to be closed tomorrow, however wind, rain or cold temperatures may cause closures."

 

Knight Valley: "Maintenance."

 

Fantawild Dreamland Xiamen

 

 

We mostly made the park jump to mop up the crappy creds we knew Dreamland had, however to even my knowledgeable in China stuff friend's surprise, this park was packing yet more juicy dark rides, one of which may be new favourite.

 

The Wizard Academy

 

This dark ride, much like Legend of Nuwa, uses the Spiderman tech, however unlike Nuwa, this one's a bit crap. The story is, you show up at "the wizard academy", an evil(?) asshole wizard attempts to kill you many times, with loads of spells and monsters, then at the end, you get a certificate from him and you're now accepted in "the wizard academy". Dumb right? The ride features weird over the top graphic moments, like the car infront of you being exploded by a spell, not sure I needed to see that. It also has pacing problems, with far too many scenes of things slowly coming out of the screen at you. It's still good, but compared to the other greatness I witnessed today, didn't really leave a mark.

 

Mount Tanggula - https://rcdb.com/11069.htm

 

My first ever Golden Horse (Chinese manufacturer), absolutely awful, but one of the funniest coasters ever made at the same time. Jerky to the point of laughter.

 

 

Stress Express - https://rcdb.com/10177.htm

 

+1

 

 

Jinshan Temple Showdown

 

Where do I start with this thing... I think it would be my new favourite dark, if it wasn't debatable if it's a dark ride or not. Proceedings begin with a 50 person (at least) boat floating through easily some of the most authentic scenes you can imagine, while live actors, special effects and multimedia captivate you for the duration. The story being told is that of Madame White Snake, a story I was first sceptical of but as soon as the ride started I was enthralled. After the boat portion, you are treated to easily the most intense and gripping show I've ever witnessed. I've been buzzing about this thing since I got home and now I've got myself all excited about it again writing this, perfection.

 

Terror Twister - https://rcdb.com/10176.htm

 

+1

 

 

Qin Dynasty Adventure

 

This ride ended up being my 2nd favourite dark ride of the day and easily one of the best I've ever done. It uses Indiana Jones/Dinosaur dark ride tech, you know, the crazy violent jeep bouncing around the track. While I sadly haven't done either of those attractions, I'm even more excited to test them out after this. Qin Dynasty is brilliant. The story is based on you entering a tomb in your jeep and things going wrong. Huge fan of it.

 

Sadly at this point, despite having 1 more dark ride we wanted to try, we ran out of time, getting to said dark ride 1 minute after close, spite.

 

Fantawild Dreamland ended up being a bit of a surprise hit, we came in expecting to just add more creds to the count, but ended up riding 2 unforgettable dark rides, can't argue with that.

 

Despite staying till park close, there was no rush to get back to Xiamen for our bullet train back, so we opted to test the bus out.

 

While next quite as chancy as the taxi, it would be fair to say it was a nerve wrecking almost hour bus ride back to the station. 

 

Even though I told myself and my doctor, I wouldn't eat anything that has even the slightest chance of making me ill in China, at the station I found myself so hungry that I would have killed for some fries. Me and my translator went to 2 Burger Kings, who both told us, "this is a flame free station", China you're crazy.

 

The train ride back wasn't too bad, getting a taxi from Shenzhen station back to our hotel was. There's some weird colour coding going on in China, where certain colour taxis only go to certain places, talk about confusing what should be an extremely easy service.

 

Thank you for reading, next park, sadly the final, Happy Valley Shenzhen.

[Mega-Lite]

Day 15

 

An agreement was drawn up the night before in order to decide what to do on our last day in China. The plan was, wake up at 6am, look out the window, if it was raining meet each other within half an hour and travel to Hong Kong Disneyland, via the same Luhou Port metro madness as before. Or if it looked clear outside, go back to bed for 2 more hours, meet at half 9 and go to Happy Valley.

 

As though the World knew this was going to happen, I was exactly 1 floor below my friends, in the same position. So imagine the comedy when 6am comes and both of us are shining lights out the windows. Our rooms were facing a housing block who probably assumed this light show was the second coming of Mao. Either way all looked good outside, Bullet Coaster I'll see you soon.

 

Happy Valley Shenzhen

 

We got to Happy Valley about half hour after the park opened, walked straight up to the ticket counter and asked "are all the roller coasters open today?". The awful women replied, "read the sign", charming. Our human translator read the sign as demanded and told us the only things down today are the rapids and the waterpark, fantastic! We spunked the last of our Yuans on the tickets and made our way in.

 

Straight to Bullet Coaster was the plan, but it wasn't going to be easy. My friend had visited before and opted to take us the short cut route to Bullet Coaster, however there was a construction fence in the way. No big deal we thought, this path runs through the rapids area and they have just closed the rapids area off and the sign outside did allude to the rapids being down, fair enough. As we continued however, things started to get offensive. The fenced off area seemed to continue on forever and insult to injury, on our VERY long detoured route to Bullet we noticed many other attractions were also fenced off or in pieces... Well they lied to us, I feel robbed and this park looks a complete f**king state, I thought to myself, but still I remained in good spirits as we reached Bullet Coaster.

 

We powered straight into the queue line and reached the front in no time. There were 2 people in front of us, waiting behind the chain that stops you getting into the station before it's your turn. In the station there were 2 people sitting in the train and it appeared the staff were getting the coaster ready for dispatch. It was only after the staff were pissing about with the restraints for over 10 minutes that I started to get a sinking feeling. This was soon confirmed when the station and queue were evacuated and closed off. F**k...

 

If you've ever experienced major coaster spite then you'll know exactly how I was starting to feel, if however you haven't, lucky you, but I can't even begin to describe it.

 

Time to go get the other coasters while I wait on the verge of a meltdown for Bullet Coaster to do something.

 

Snow Mountain Flying Dragon - https://rcdb.com/1681.htm

 

A Kumali clone SLC, although this came first, so I guess that makes Kumali a clone? Either way both are s**t, but the Chinese one is a lot smoother strangely, I managed to spend the whole ride worrying about Bullet Coaster and didn't get a concussion or anything.

 

Next up we planned to go ride the park's Vekoma Mine Train, however...

 

As we made our way over to the path that leads you to the Mine Train, the all too familiar construction fence halted our progress, are you serious? It turned out an entire area of the park had been closed off for refurbishment and the Mine Train was in said area. So when the park told us on the phone "everything's currently open today" and the sign at the park entrance only mentioned the rapids and the waterpark, they were lying through their teeth, bastards.

 

Not only was half the park closed but what was open looked disgusting. This park is in a right state, yes even worse than Dreamworld! I'm not sure I can't explain just how s**t this place looked, so just picture this, half of it was in pieces or behind ugly construction fences, the other half of it looked filthy, broken and dangerous, it was terrible.

 

So Bullet Coaster is still closed, Mine Train is in pieces, done the SLC and the kiddie cred is on the other side of a stupid walk. Because of this we decided to camp out Bullet Coaster, sitting on a wall opposite the entrance. I sent the translator over to speak to the staff at the entrance gate and this is what they said, "restraints are loose, not a big issue, should be open in half hour", despite my sour mood this made me laugh. Half an hour came and went and still no sign of reopening.

 

I should point out now, because we had a plane to catch at 7pm in Hong Kong, at the very latest we had to leave at 1:30, things were getting extremely desperate now.

 

Baby Coaster - https://rcdb.com/4142.htm

 

We made the long walk to the wacky worm, because I wasn't leaving today after paying that much money for just an SLC. I was in too foul a mood to enjoy the worm...

 

North Pole Adventure

 

Even the sketchy as f**k shooting Santa dark ride couldn't lift my spirits.

 

We walked back over to Bullet Coaster, by the time we got there it was 1, so we had half an hour tops to wait for it to open, however....

 

IT WAS RUNNING!

 

Bullet Coaster - https://rcdb.com/9442.htm

 

I cannot explain the excitement I felt when I saw the queue had people in it, my mood changed from God awful to "OMG Bullet Coaster" in half a second.

 

Everything about this ride is so silly and it begins in the queueline. On a loop a video plays, listing everyone who can't ride, which apparently is everyone whoever lived, as I shall recall. You can't ride Bullet Coaster if you, are tired, are short sighted or get nosebleeds, well that's half the population excluded already! There's also a hilarious shot of a Chinese man bolting on the wheel of Bullet Coaster and doing a thumbs up, you're doing the Lord's work man, keep it up!

 

Batching on Bullet Coaster is a thing of pure beauty. I'll take you through the many stages. Despite having air gates, everyone waits behind the chain in the queue, until the entire station is cleared of the last people. They then batch you up to the station platform and insist you stand on a dot each behind the air gates. Here comes the best part, everyone must listen to a 2 minute Chinese only safety announcement over the PA, followed by a member of the ride team doing various full body exercises which you are expected to join in with. It's absolute madness but also brilliant at the same time. With how excited I was that the ride reopened, I was doing the exercises with double the intensity of the other guests and laughing my ass off as I went. Once everyone is limbered up, they open the air gates. It takes 2 or 3 minutes for the Chinese to take their seats, but once they do the restraints are locked and checked in the standard manner and you're off. Once the ride ends, they wait for EVERYONE to be off the coaster, collect EVERYTHING and give a sign of appreciation before they open the gate for you to all leave. I know it shouldn't but I'd say the whole strange experience added to the ride.

 

Enough about the hilarious batching, let's talk about the coaster, it's outstanding. You board the super comfy, yet also very free feeling trains and slowly make your way onto the launch track. I haven't been scared of a coaster in a while, so I'm glad to say this one got to me. As you sit there, lots of terrifying air releasing noises happen and you jiggle back and forth a bit, then suddenly... With an almighty noise, that makes Rush and Ice Blast sound like ASMRtists, you're off. Even though the top speed is reported to be around the same as Stealth, the time it takes Bullet to reach it's max speed makes Stealth look like it's not trying. It's rip your face off acceleration, in an extremely smooth and precise manner. No rattling around, slowly building speed like other launches, this thing just takes off, I can see where the name Bullet Coaster came from.

 

So the launch is life changing, but it's what follows that really makes Bullet Coaster have a place in my top 10 list. The first top hat element you reach before you even have time to comprehend what's happening and it rewards you with a nice burst of airtime. Following this all the way down the descent of the top hat you're out of your seat. From this point till almost the end Bullet Coaster is littered with crazy air time moments and a great sense of speed. The side ways hill needs a special mention for just how silly it is. Sadly the end of the coaster is a bit of a let down, a twisting spiral of jerkiness that leads into the brake run, bit of a shame.

 

I'm very lucky to say I managed to get 3 laps on Bullet Coaster before we had to run. With each lap I got more confident and less concerned that the launch was going to end me. On the last lap I even did a sneaky hands up, so I'm probably banned from this park now.

 

 

Happy Valley Shenzhen then... If it wasn't for Bullet Coaster I'd be quite happy to watch this place burn to the ground.

 

Content enough now we grabbed our bags from the hotel, jumped back on the metro to Luhou Port and sadly entered Hong Kong for the second time. This time we managed to snag some seats on the Hong Kong metro, a move so offensive, an old women stared, tutted and made what we assumed were phone calls to the police, Hong Kong man...

 

Despite being near enough on time when we left Happy Valley, we managed to lose over an hour to the awful metro, there just really isn't any logic to how it's all linked up, it's really frustrating. Thankfully we made our flight back to Singapore, a flight I can't recall at all.

 

I rested my head tonight in the 5 star Crown Plaza hotel in the airport, it was wonderful.

 

Day 16

 

Today we watched Insidious, as I mentioned in the movie thread, was s**t.

 

Day 17

 

All I recall doing today was eating at Vegan Burger, no I'm not a vegan, but I did enjoy the food here. I didn't enjoy the self righteous "vegans are saving the World" crap on the walls however, don't kid yourselves...

 

Day 18

 

We had a late start today, which meant I got to sleep for 13 hours, a well deserved 13 hours because I was destroyed.

 

On the way to my friend's house (where we spent almost all day), I bonded with a Singaporean estate agent, you know too well I'd love to live here, stop teasing me World!

 

Our plane was set to depart Singapore for Heathrow at 11:55pm and as though someone was watching out for me, our Dreamliner was replaced by the A380, sadly the flight was still with BA though... What followed was 14 hours of immense discomfort, only broken up by angry old ugly flight attendants shouting, sausage and omelette or vegetarian (omelette without the sausage), it was a real slog, but we made it.

 

Thanks for reading.