Day 2: Dreamworld

Dreamworld was the first theme park that we visited. The residents included Dora, Spongebob & Squarepants and other Nickelodeon characters. But truly, the children were beyond the age of enchantment with cartoon characters. I had to persuade Son No 3 to take a picture with Dora, "so that we could show Faidu what you were doing in Australia."

The two younger boys were more interested in the Australian Wildlife Experience.

The key attractions for all the children were the rides. Son No 2 was initially nervous but he managed to overcome his fear and in the end, asked to sit on the Spongebob Flypants ride (below) one more time .

Son No 3's favourite was the Swinger Zinger (below). It did not go quite as high as the one in Genting Highlands, which made it suitable for all ages.

Son No 3 on the Dora the Explorer Sea Plane Ride (see below).Son No 1 sat on this Reef Diver alone (below). He was fairly dizzy and disoriented after the ride. It was a spinning disc that moved gradually from a horizontal to a vertical position. Ugh :)

I wanted to sit on this ride, the Motocoaster (below) and Son No 1 accompanied me. This was the high speed ride, designed after the motorcycle F1, and we had to couch our body in a motorcycle-riding position. I enjoyed it very much because it was extremely fast but did not have any huge vertical drops. Just my type of roller coaster.

Unanimously, the best ride for the whole family was the Thunder River Rapids Ride. Son No 2 got fairly wet but wanted to do it again. We did it twice - it was fun!

Going home at 5pm (notice the long shadows)...

By the way, did I mention that lunch was a total catastrophe? We ordered chicken nuggets, fish and fried chicken and what we had was a whole lot of fries and very little of what we did order. The Aussies were evidently very big on fries.

For dinner that night, we went to a Chinese eatery which was just a 2-minute walk from our apartment. Though the shop was simply fitted, we had a scrumptious dinner with good value for money. We learnt that "long soup" meant "noodles with soup" while "short soup" meant "dumplings with soup". Interesting :)

The beef with black beans, sweet and sour pork and teriyaki chicken (above) were all gobbled up hungrily. Son No 2 said even the rice was better than what we had in Malaysia. Not sure if it was really the case, but it showed what a few days of deprivation could do!

This was definitely a place we would return to on another day.