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| That's Taz 3rd from the left. I'll never do it again! |
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| No issues with this ride. Loved it |
Ok this one's for Sally Gerden who sledged me for not doing the Giant Drop. Well Sally I did it. For those of you who haven't done it I'll do my best to do it justice. It was day five at Dreamworld and I had promised Tamsyn once again that I'd conquer the Drop. It was mid morning, enough time to see the Drop in action for a couple of hours, I rationalised that the brakes must be working well. We headed to the line, only 8 other people were lined up (indicating that you really have to be bloody nuts to go on). At this point I'm completely unnerved, I'm chatting constantly (as I do when I'm nervous), I try to drop a few witty little jokes about how scary this is when a young teenage girl looks to me and in her best condescending manner tells me that it's not that bad. As we wait a rather senior aged lady walks in alone and lines up behind me. I ask if she's done this before and she replies with a smile, "No dear but you just have to do it don't you. It looks so exciting." "No," I reply "You don't have to do it. I'm still considering bailing out." "Oh you'll be fine." She says as she pats my arm, obviously she was a psychotic, freaking nut bag. So the door opens and we're led into this industrial looking barrel. Eight seats are attached to the wall and were asked to take a seat. I glance up and feel completely ill, I'm talking vomit on my feet ill. We take our seats in line, senior lady, me, Chris, Tamsyn, random nut bag, random lunatic etc etc. The harness comes down, panic sets in and I say, "I don't want to be here." No one seems to hear me or is it, no one cares. The seatbelt gets checked and I say to the operator, "Nope, I really don't want to be here". He looks at me and smiles, what is he deaf from all the screaming or is he just cruel, I wanted off and I meant it! I'm absolutely frozen stiff, mouth dry, shaking hands, need to pee, totally terrified. Senior lady tells me I'll be fine as we start our climb. "!@?*!!" Yep I let the big one drop, out loud in front of senior lady and my own daughter. Tamsyn just laughed. I apologised to senior lady and closed my eyes. I opened my eyes to see that we were only about half way up, tears began to well so I closed them again. I started chanting a mantra to help settle myself, "I'm sorry there's going to be more swearing. I'm so sorry there's going to be more swearing." This continued for the remainder of the climb stopping only once to ask Tamsyn if she was OK, which of course she was, she was having a bloody ball. As the ride paused at the top I opened my eyes, hello, 120mts up. If I was unnerved earlier I was now a nervous wreck. They keep you sitting up top for 45secs with just the hum of the motor and the anticipation of dropping at 132km p/h. The hum stops and Chris says' "Here we go,". If I could have reached out and punched him in the face I would have but as the thought crossed my mind we dropped. And dropped, and dropped, and dropped. Not a sound left my lips. Complete silence across the entire ride other than the deafening roar of air whistling past your ears as you free fall. Finally after what seems like minutes I feel the cogs engage and we immediately start to slow. Still no words. I open my eyes and see that we're about 2/3 of the way down and we're still falling fast. With about 30mts to go the brakes grip and finally I'm assured that if we hit the ground death wont be instantaneous, permanent disability will be all that I suffer. Rapidly the brakes decrease our descent it's only now, with about 15mts to go that I believe I'll be walking off this ride without any permanent physical damage, permanent psychological damage is another prospect altogether. With the ride motionless and the harness lifting I burst into a fit of laughter. As I step onto the platform my legs are shaking and I have to physically hit my knees to get feeling back into them. Tamsyn's on an adrenalin high yelling, "again, again." I hate her right now. Chris has got the sways and tells me that he's feeling a bit strange. Then came the sense of pride, of achievement of accomplishment. Give me a dam trophy, I AM A LEGEND. I walk around to the front of the ride where Taj and Ry have been patiently waiting. As I tell them how terrible it was I'm interrupted by laughter. It's my senior friend and her husband, he invites the kids over to see how brave their mum was on the ride. He had taken photos on his huge fancy pants camera. Each of the kids looked and stepped back laughing. I ventured forward and their I was on the digital screen, clear as day, head thrown back, eyes rolling, white as a ghost, mouth agape with limp limbs. I don't recall passing out but it certainly looked like it. I thought maybe he had photo shopped the picture but at the end of the day we checked the official photo in the Dreamworld photo shop. It told the same story. The shop assistant kindly displayed it on the big screen so that everyone in the room could laugh at me. It was certainly laughable, Chris and I doubled over in the shop with tears. Oh well, I did, and I'll never do it again!
On a somewhat less exciting note we headed off from Jacobs Well after a disagreement on fee s. When we checked in we paid $30 per night, this is about the going rate that we've paid since leaving Melbourne, give or take $10. As we checked in I asked the lady if it was safe for the kids to swim here, I told her how happy Tamsyn would be because they had a book exchange. The kids waved to her as we passed through the boom gate. Three days later I went to extend our stay and was charged $60 per night and made to pay $30 per night for the previous three nights. No amount of arguing would rectify the situation. She was certain that I had failed to declare the kids and was making me pay! So people if you're ever up this way and in need of a nice caravan park this is not the one for you. That'll teach her!
After a few very relaxing days in the bush we headed into town to have our van repaired. Unfortunately the parts had taken an extra few days to arrive from Melb but the repairers were more than accommodating. In fact they were downright legends. When Malcolm the repairer couldn't fix everything on the spot he offered for us to stay in his caravan yard until Monday. Unbelievably hospitable. As it turned out he sent the faulty parts off and will send them to the nearest post office to our location when he gets them back. What a great service. So we hit the road yet again.
Off to the Sunshine Coast we go.
Until next week.
Love and miss you all, Kristy
I wish you got the photos so we could all have a great laugh just like you did with the photo of us on the ride, witch i might add was no where near as scarey as the one you went on.Glad your having a great time carn't wait to see you in Sept.
ReplyDeleteLove Amz