Read post holiday post part 1 for the beginning.

For the holiday to the Gold Coast I’d bought a theme park fun pass to the three Warner Bros theme parks, Seaworld (which we’d just done), Wet’nWild and Movie World. The fun pass lasts for five days from the first day you use it so you can do each park with a rest day inbetween. This is what I’d recommend for sure as these parks are huge and involve a lot of walking.

After a rest day on Tuesday with watching Ice Age 3 in 3D we were up for theme park number two. The weather wasn’t looking that great  for the whole week so I just decided to get Wet’nWild out the way. It was a bit cool, about 17 degrees and overcast and fairly windy and I traipsed around the park in my wet bathers – after the first ride anyway. With no firm plan in mind we started off with the Tornado. This ride means you have to lug a large and fairly heavy raft thing up heaps of stairs and it’s hard to do with just one adult and one kid. We were really struggling but luckily someone came to our rescue and helped me carry it up.

JJ got on it and went down. I was in front off JJ as we backed down the last chute before we went into the main tornado bit and the scared look on his face was priceless – I wish I could have captured it on film. That feeling of not being in control of what comes next is what makes these rides so much fun in retrospect.

We went around the park and systematically did most of the rides with a  couple of spa visits inbetween to warm up as it was pretty chilly. It’s not really worth taking a towel around with you because it would just get wet and you wouldn’t be that warm with a wet towel either. We hired a locker to put all our stuff in and got the waterproof wristband with a bit of extra money on it to buy food. We ate a lot of chips on our holidays as these theme parks idea of healthy food is pretty non-existent and Wet’nWild had the best hot chips and we hooked into them like there was no tomorrow when we got them. All that climbing up numerous amounts of stairs made for two very hungry people.

The Black Hole was our favourite. It’s pitch black inside these tunnels but it wasn’t too scary and it was warm in there. I imagine in the heat of summer it’s too warm, but in winter it was perfect. We did it twice at the beginning and once or twice before I changed back into warm clothes.

A word of warning if you go down the slide that doesn’t require some sort of raft or mat to use, if you’re just wearing a normal bathing suit you go really fast. This happened to me and my legs and arms ended up flailing all over the place and I bruised both my elbows and wasn’t ready when I landed in the pool at the end and got water up my nose which wasn’t pleasant at all.

I was lucky that JJ is tall enough to go on all these rides – I can’t remember the height requirements but most of the rides need a pair of people as well. Like all the theme parks, there is a younger kids section too which we didn’t visit. Because of the weather though, there weren’t that many brave (stupid?) people there so we didn’t have long waits for the rides we did go on  which was a good thing. The cooler weather also meant that some of the rides alternated in their opening times.

After I got changed JJ went into the wave pool.

There were showers in the changeroom but there was no hot water. I couldn’t believe it. I was shivering and cold and couldn’t even warm up under a warm shower. I had to wait until I got back to the hotel for that.

With all this exercise during our days meant I had fairly early nights during our holiday. JJ went to bed about 9pm every night and because we were in the same room I just laid on my bed reading while he went to sleep. I knew that if I put the tv on he’d watch it and never get to sleep, although on the Wednesday night he went to bed at 8.30pm and was still awake at 9pm when The Chaser started. I watched it and had to muffle my laughter to not disturb him as he was going to sleep.

The one thing I liked about our resort was that they provided basic shared facilities for doing your own meals if you wanted. There was a toaster and a microwave so for breakfasts I could have my toast and JJ had his cereal and that was one meal a day we didn’t have to buy. I bought snacks and some fruit from the supermarket, but other than that JJ pretty much lived on fish and chips because that’s his favourite meal which just about every establishment we ate at provided. Oh well, when on holidays….

I think I’ve got two more parts left of this holiday tale. Any questions? Please ask in the comments.