The Enchanting Existential Dread of Aussie Theme Parks: Chapter Three - The Hedgehog Came Down To Sydney
A scanned brochure map of Sega World Sydney, courtesy of SEGA super-fan, Cameron Hons.
I never loved Sega World the same way many of my generation do, but I do regret its brief flicker of relevance leading up to the Sydney Olympic Games even though I was traumatised by this indoor theme park whilst it was still open. Sega World Sydney was too loud and over-stimulating for me as an autistic growing up in the late nineties, and my wistful nostalgia for its outdoor playground equipment in Darling Harbour stems from me missing how colourful Sydney was back then - with IMAX theatre to boot it was an exciting time to be young. I’ll say right now to avoid controversy later, that my casual gaming self is no expert on SEGA properties, and most of my recollection of the park consists of Rail Chase and not much else. SEGA World deserves a eulogy befitting such a weird, obnoxious experiment which changed the shape of my city forever in our hearts, as well as a condemnation of the attitudes towards my autism special needs which made me hate the place when I was accompanied by day-care centre workers who had no idea how to handle me at the time. I have never beaten a Sonic the Hedgehog game, I’ve got The Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog cartoon box set tucked away in my garage somewhere, but my first exposure to Sonic proper was on the Game Boy Advance. I was a bit of a Nintendo junkie and collected games such as Sonic Advance and Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town plus The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past for my handheld console even though I was bad at playing them with my limited motor skills. I can count the number of games I’ve completed with one hand, and one of those is Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney. The Chaos Emerald mini-games have always frustrated me with the first Sonic the Hedgehog, which I played on my Playstation 3 I won from a Sydney Morning Herald blogging competition for my gonzo games journalism covering the Game On exhibition up in Queensland. I don’t consider myself a hardcore gamer by any stretch, but this literary prize I won is still cherished as one of the concrete examples of my writing prowess which got me a console I otherwise couldn’t afford that Christmas where I had to Charlie Bucket myself a prize or receive nothing. It’s not often you get to live out Juicy by Biggie Smalls, and although I might not be good at SEGA games, buying the SEGA Mega Drive Ultimate Collection for my PS3 to give it something to do besides play my Blu-Ray collection was a first serious step towards dipping my toe into gaming. It was there that SEGA’s bright and colourful game catalogue was exposed to me, and whatever criticisms I have of SEGA World Sydney do not apply to their games which for the most part brought me small glimmers of joy whenever I had friends over to enjoy those moments together. I got rather good at Valkyria Chronicles and I think I completed half the game, but never got around to finishing because I had to study for my HSC. Whilst I was trapped in my Pathways Program, my friends graduated without me, however a few of them stuck around to visit whenever we fired up my PS3 like we did when we were kids playing Super Ghouls N’ Ghosts on Dave’s brother’s hand-me-down Super Nintendo. There was a continuation of our companionship through these games, regardless of whether we sucked at the harder retro ones, we had DJ Hero at one point to play with and I recall enjoying that one a lot even if the controller was bizarre to handle. Now that the SNES Classic is a thing, I have my own copy of Super Ghouls N’ Ghosts to play whenever I want, and I bought the SEGA Mega Drive Classic Edition when it came out to complete my Notorious BIG fantasies. Sega might not be manufacturing consoles like they used to, but they still make great games as a third-party developer that are fun to play, and it’s been hard to write this Sega World Sydney part of my retrospective because writing down my reverse-devil’s advocate means letting go of a part of my past that is still a bit sore given how I was treated for my divergent opinions at the time. I was dismissed for my feelings about Rail Chase, and my blueprint I drew for a non-scary version of the ride was mocked by classmates I considered friends. Talking about SEGA World is painful for me because in hindsight I can see a lot of promise that was lost on me, because its attractions made me feel afraid and alone. I didn’t love Sega World nearly as much as I should’ve, due to the circumstances I was introduced to it. I wanted to love Sega World like the other boys, I was much more of a Wonderland Sydney kid, and over the years I’ve talked to my friends who remembered Sega World, and they wished they could’ve been allowed to play the games too which were the best feature of Sega World’s varied attractions. Sega World inhabited Sydney during a pre-Olympic age when the town looked like Oingo Boingo threw up on it, yet such awesome aesthetics were not sufficient to preserve the park for long.
Wreck-It Ralph makes me guaranteed to cry every time, because Vanellope and I had the same struggle.
You would go into the park through the Time Tunnel, into realms of Past, Present and Future.
The defunct monorail sign guiding you to the nineties Sydney childhood landmarks.
The beautiful Darling Harbour scenery circa 2000 with McDonald’s restaurant.
The entrance to Sega World Sydney, as many a Sydney resident passed through in 1998.
When you went inside the Blue Cone, an image of a sporty kid flying with Sonic was on the wall.
Sega World Sydney was tailor-made for children of the nineties who had no chill whatsoever, and the story of how and why Sega World was built is told in an article for PC World written back in 2012, and from here most of the gist can be divined about the core purpose of the park. It was designed to make money off the back of the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games with an almost guaranteed influx of tourists. Sega World was in many ways the last gasp of the Sega Saturn era of SEGA consoles, and several of the machines were hooked up within the premises to promote them, the problem is the two-tiered entry fee either let you ride unlimited rides or play the arcade games. I was there amid the confusion, parents were a bit intimidated by the proto-micro-transactions of the entry cards with Sonic the Hedgehog characters plastered onto them. You have to remember at the time that arcade machines were considered a mobster’s racket in Australia, and many Timezone arcades were nicknamed Crime-zone because of organised crime connections and muggings. The Nick Xenophon “arcade gaming is the same as gambling” mentality was in full effect because our parents barely understood our video game obsessions to begin with. The hostage negotiation it took to ease your Christmas present of a video game into the shopping basket at Toys R’ Us was bad enough if the game was rated above your station, now you had to deal with the intangible realm of carnival sideshow economies with credit cards which didn’t work anywhere else. It was a real shame because as terrifying as the prospect of riding Rail Chase or Ghost Hunters was to me, the arcade cavern dug into the side of the wall with an original Jurassic Park arcade cabinet on display would’ve been perfect for me to play even if I wasn’t any good at games back then. There were a lot of classic cabinets in the Past section of Sega World, and I regret never having the opportunity to try any of them due to circumstances out of my control. There was a lot of Sega World I didn’t get to see for myself, the first time I went Magic Motion Theatre was broken for example, but I never got to see the Sonic Live Stage Show when Sega World was still in its prime. Fortunately the live show has been preserved online through an audio CD which leaked onto YouTube, and the show from what I’ve heard is pretty dire. Something about Sonic the Hedgehog and pals calling the Sydney Harbour Bridge “the coat-hanger” encapsulates the tourist pandering nature of Sega World Sydney better than I could muster, and the less said about Dr Robotnik trying to seduce Sally with a “love potion” the better. The live show’s score is some premium nineties cheese with the tone on par with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Coming Out Of Our Shells tour. With such hits as What Are We Waiting For? dissing Dr. Robotnik’s bad-nik team, it’s a fossilised relic of Sega World Sydney which oozes with nostalgia and synth-lines. It has to be heard to be believed, and the Sonic Live In Sydney show is a treat among items I’ve had to research for my assessment of the park’s legacy. Dr. Robotnik’s villain song Give Me Chaos is egregious in its cartoonish proclamations of “I’m proud to be mean”, Sally Acorn’s ballad Thank You For Being You doesn’t hide the actress’s Australian accent as much as the other performers, serenading Sonic for his rescue of her, with a bit of an R&B flair distinct from the rest of the soundtrack. It’s not as good as the B-Sides on the Space Jam soundtrack, but it is a testament to the character’s role in Sonic lore during the late nineties before Amy showed up in Sonic canon. proper. Sally singing about how she wants to hold Sonic close and never letting him go is a bit more adult than the material allows, and is a memorable tune that sticks in your head. Australian accents in Australian theme park attractions are nice to see here, sadly the Sonic and Sally actors stick to a yank-cent contrasted against the Antipodean narrator.. Dr Robotnik’s master plan is to conquer Australia, which was a popular plan for super-villains in the eighties and nineties for some reason. Sound effects from the Saturday morning cartoon and the games are utilised by the soundtrack of this show, which veers into opera as Dr. Robotnik schemes to have Sydney under his control. He calls the Sydney Harbour Bridge a Meccano bridgey-thing, and goes full pantomime with audience participation. Sonic and pals fat-shaming Dr. Robotnik couldn’t be excused today, Miles Prower doesn’t know what dismember means, conveying his childlike nature. He’s a bit whiny in this show, and crashes an old biplane at the beginning of the performance. The gang save the world by finding the Chaos Emeralds, and the stage show concludes with a reprise of What Are We Waiting For?. Overall the show was meant to appeal to really little kids, the most G-rated attraction at the park besides the Nickelodeon play area. Most of the older kids who went with me to Sega World Sydney didn’t bother seeing this show, preferring the various rides.
Sonic The Hedgehog (2020) photoshopped into the Sega World Sydney Time Tunnel.
One of the Sega World Sydney entry passes, courtesy of Sega World Sydney Memoriam.
This right here is why the park failed, complicated micro-transactions with a Sonics cryptocurrency. Is it any wonder that our parents/accompanying adult guardians told us an emphatic “NO!” when we asked if we could play the games?
Newspaper ad for Sega World Sydney, courtesy of Sega World Sydney Memoriam on Twitter.
A rare photograph of the Sonic Live puppet show at Sega World Sydney.
Sega World’s major flaw was that it couldn’t somehow reconcile the arcade part with its expensive indoor theme park gimmick, which was done and dusted within an alarmingly short timespan of operating, People on Twitter are cracking jokes about stuff that lasted longer than the American Civil War Confederacy, yet I’d hesitate to add Sega World to that list, as it barely made it into the new millennium. It feels so long ago when Sega World was with us, but the sad truth is after the Olympics came and went, Sega World just couldn’t go the distance. It cost a fortune to keep running and according to who you ask regarding the construction of this place, we’re lucky we didn’t see a second Luna Park Ghost Train fire due to the rush-job of safety standards. I may be biased trash-talking Sega World like this, to me it was an overstimulating hell with no escape. It should’ve been my paradise on earth, but no, I didn’t care for it much whilst it was open, because of what Rail Chase did to me. Everybody’s got that one ride that scares the piss out of them as a kid, their John Wick Baba Yaga they mention in hushed tones for the rest of their lives, and Rail Chase at Sega World Sydney was mine. I figured I could steer clear of Ghost Hunters, a ride which was meant to be a little bit spooky, taking my chances with Rail Chase which promised to be a wholesome Indiana Jones adventure ride. What I got was a traumatising roller-coaster with Suspiria lighting that scared the crap out of me, I held my head down clicking the non-responsive gun-turret buttons for most of the attraction’s length, the pre-show area had human hands poking out the tops of chrysalises like Heart of Darkness for the Playstation, apparently there were spiders in this ride as well which was part of why I curled over in fear inside my little mine cart. I’d have cried out for my mother if she wasn’t on the ride with me for the first and final time I rode this wretched thing, One part of the ride that remains crystallised in my memory was the loud scream from a woman, then a descent down a hill as you went backwards through a chamber with hologram torches on each side of your cart that you were meant to extinguish with your water cannons. I still don’t know how the effect was accomplished as a child, because the ride doesn’t exist anymore, but as a kid it felt like witchcraft and it was a welcome respite after the unpleasantness of the rest of the attraction. The pre-show area had these Rocky Horror Picture Show lips on a flaming background reciting plagiarised William Blake poetry about “ancient evil, burning bright”, and to this day I remain confused about this aesthetic choice. The second time I went to Sega World, I was accompanied by two daycare workers instead of my parents, and to stop them shoving me onto Rail Chase or Ghost Hunters I had to pull out my best Rain Man impression by hitting my head so that the diagnosed autism would register with these two ladies instead of being ignored. Sega World will forever be associated with the first time I was betrayed by the adults in my life, and my concerns not taken seriously, there was no third time I went to Sega World because I spent the day in my father’s office instead due to this mistreatment I received. I wanted Sega World gone from my city so that nobody would try to force me to ride it again, and by some bizarre monkey’s paw crossed with The Secret logic my wish was granted when Sega World went bust. That was not the end of my reviled Rail Chase however. During the auctioning off of their attractions, Sega World sold Rail Chase as well as other assets to Haaland amusement park in India. I took a look at the difference between our Rail Chase and the new Haailand amusement park version, and the most prominent difference is… the rollercoaster has converted to Buddhism. Yes, gone are its violent water turrets, with either a Buddha or Bodhi figurine on the cart, it’s committed to its new faith better than most Western converts have managed. Hasn’t India suffered enough colonialism without the Commonwealth dumping our trash there? I thought Sega World had died completely, yet one part of it lives on as a dinky tourist trap far on the other side of the sea. Seeing this image was a lot like finding out your high school bully has taken up a spiritual path of mindfulness training since making your life miserable, I wish Rail Chase the best of luck in its ashram residence.
Ernie Dingo saying “My mate Sonic the Hedgehog” broke my brain a bit.
Ernie Dingo riding Rail Chase with the gun turrets clearly visible.
The trauma cocoons that continue to haunt my imagination.
Entrance to Magic Motion Theatre (Source for above four panels: Rlan3)
Reconstruction of the Rocky Horror lips from Rail Chase pre-show monitors.
Rail Chase at Haailand theme park in India, never thought I’d see you again.
The corridor of my nightmares, preserved as a photograph.
Ghost Hunters entrance with the green ghoul on top.
Entrance to Aqua Nova, which I preferred to Rail Chase.
The entrance to Mad Bazooka, courtesy of Sega World Sydney Memorium.
The AS-1 machine at its new home in Luna Park, Melbourne.
The VR-1 attraction at Sega World Sydney.
I have very vague memories of Aqua Nova, a motion simulator ride at Sega World which was underwhelming compared to the other rides like Mad Bazooka, basically you were in an underwater mine and you had to fight the CGI squid with your mining equipment lasers or something, I can’t remember. All I recall is that squid, it begins and ends there for me. I was a little spooked by the squid jumping out at me, other than that I don’t have much to say about the attraction which was dated as N64 graphics by today’s standards. I could rank the quality of the CGI as somewhere around Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie -impressive for the time but has deteriorated like milk over the years. There were other rides I never got the chance to try because I was so disorientated like VR-1 and AS-1 which implemented early virtual reality motion simulators, but all I can find of those are grainy VHS recordings of Australian lifestyle programs documenting the park’s interiors which you weren’t allowed to record with your own equipment. Part of the problem with reviewing Sega World is the lack of video material to work with, you’ve got two episodes of Healthy, Wealthy and Wise and The Great Outdoors and that’s about it. I should probably talk about Mad Bazooka, my favourite ride at Sega World, where you shot ball pit balls through a dodgem-car cannon at people, I wasn’t very good at aiming the gun turret but considering the scariness of some of the other rides in the park I was in no position to complain. Mad Bazooka was often touted in the commercials for Sega World Sydney, and was one of the most popular rides with kids, the ads for Sega World exemplified the nineties in-your-face attitude of the park itself which geared itself to energetic pre-teens running around the place on a sugar high. Sega World may be gone, but its adverts pushing unhealthy snacks remain on YouTube as a digital tombstone for the park. It truly was “TOTALLY OUT THERE” for a brief glimmer, a bright shining moment when Sydney was an interesting city to live in. The interiors of what once was Sega World became the home of a Chinese furniture warehouse and Commonwealth Bank offices respectively, The lease-holders of the park JacFun sued the latter for misleading conduct over what was left when the Japanese investors pulled out of Sega World after the Olympics were done and nobody cared anymore. For years there was silence, the Blue Cone had long been demolished, but then word got around that some of the statues of Sonic and Sally from Sega World were hidden inside an Australian junkyard. Brian from Since Spacies YouTube channel was the first to break the news, and he chronicled his attempts at saving Sonic and Sally which were then picked up by Kotaku. The story spread over the internet as gamers tried to negotiate the best way to obtain the statues from the junkyard, but to no avail, as the owner of the statues wasn’t willing to sell. There was a brief period where there was a possibility of trading the statues for a Castrol sign or nineteen-fifties petrol bowser, however not much hope was in that option either and the statues remain a victim of the elements for the moment. It’s a miracle that even this much of the statues survived, even in their terrible condition.
Free Sonic bag with an unlimited rides pass.
Contents of the unlimited rides pass offered Free Sonic Bag.
Roaring Skull is from Ghost Hunters, according to my friend Josh.
Mad Bazooka CGI promotional shot, probably from pre-show area.
Ghost Hunters augmented reality footage (Source for above five panels: Zampakid)
The horribly dated CGI Aqua Nova squid monster.
People riding Mad Bazooka in its prime. (Source for above two panels: Zampakid)
Not since the days of Howard Carter has such an exciting discovery been made by archaeologists.
Sonic the Hedgehog as a franchise has endured a lot of hardship, Sega World Sydney included in that vast canon of stuff associated with this blue creature, and people were dreading the then-upcoming Sonic the Hedgehog movie due to the trailer showing some ghastly animation of the iconic character with awful human teeth. I went to see the Sonic the Hedgehog movie with my twin brother this year and whilst he wasn’t impressed (film school graduates, am I right?) I found it fun and entertaining enough and I was participating in the meme surrounding the film’s release. SEGA’s glory days might be behind them, yet if the box office for Sonic the Hedgehog implies anything, interest in SEGA’s characters is far from dead. Perhaps Sega World Sydney as an indoor theme park was doomed from the start, yet I’m rediscovering SEGA’s classic games like Golden Axe and Dynamite Headdy on PS4 ports and I reckon they hold up. That’s what SEGA is to me, the games rather than the rides adapted from them. Struggling through Shinobi III’s learning curve appealed to me more than Rail Chase, not gonna lie, and I wouldn’t get used to the scarier theme park rides until my visits to Wonderland Sydney. It’s a shame Sega World wasn’t for me, it was irreplaceable even by my standards. The first time I visited with my mother, we walked out of Sega World near the fountain and the ibises and despite being disturbed by some of the attractions, I couldn’t deny there was magic and enchantment in the air then, a peace after the storm which I never again felt in Darling Harbour. Today the ibises, the sons of Thoth patrol the streets as bin chickens like they always have, and I’ve always liked them without knowing why. They’re the one part of Sega World that stuck around, apart from the aforementioned statues. It would be years until I’d see the great sphinx in Egypt with my own eyes, standing in awe of the ancient civilisation that persisted from antiquity. There would be no such monument for Sega World Sydney, a park scavenged for its valuables and left to rot. At least the Egyptians put their ancestor’s treasures in museums, Australians are far too short-sighted to preserve what’s important to us even if they are passing fads of the moment. Now that Super Nintendo World is opening in Universal Park Studios, Nintendo must take heed of its short-lived predecessor to survive in today’s climate. The mistakes and fumbles of the past make way for the future, however uncertain that future may be. Memento mori, I guess.
The ibis basking under the shadow of the colossal wreck that was Sega World Sydney.
The Enchanting Existential Dread of Aussie Theme Parks: Chapter Two - Hollywood On The Gold Coast
The Looney Tunes lineup outside Warner Bros. Movie World, in character costume.
Warner Bros. Movie World was built where Mickey Mouse feared to tread, and with no competition from the Disney parks whatsoever, tucked away safe in the southern hemisphere, Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck could reign supreme over Australia’s Gold Coast as one of the most popular parks in our fragile ecosystem. Village Roadshow poured its fortune from video rentals accumulated from video rentals into Warner Bros. Movie World in 1991, which is younger than I am by a year. The debut of Warner Bros. Movie World was feted by celebrities like Clint Eastwood, Mel Gibson, Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell arriving for its grand opening, and it was very glamorous to have so many Hollywood stars in town. The first ride I ever went on at Movie World was Batman: The Adventure Ride, which was hot on the heels after Batman Returns came out in 1992. I was a bit young to see it in theatres, but I was tall enough to go on the ride so my first taste of Tim Burton’s vision of Gotham City came from this attraction which was loud and imprinted on my memories as the big cat head launched towards me on the big screen. It’s been so long since I rode it that my recollection of the motion simulator has faded a bit, it’s all a nostalgic blur of giddy excitement to me now. It shook me around and pounded my senses, not much ride-through footage of it exists but what’s left of it indicates how sophisticated it was for the time with multiple screens conveying the experience.
This is from the Warner Bros. Movie World souvenir video.
Inside the Batcave, whooshing past at a fast pace.
One of the Batcave tunnels that you go through.
You can tell this is based on the two Tim Burton Batman films because of the trees and ice and snow, like it’s Edward Scissorhands.
A random snowplow appears to the left.
The Batmobile viewed from behind, approaching Gotham.
A duck-copter thingy flying into the distance.
An Oswalt Cobblepot Mayor sign!
Lots of sparks and explosions going on here.
Going through the icicle tunnel with the flight simulator.
The Batwing vehicle flies ahead as the duck plane zooms.
Explosions! (Source: Sunny Lin)
I didn’t go on the Gremlins ride when I was a kid, because Gremlins wasn’t a property I was familiar with at that age, yet I would be penalised for doing a Movie World retrospective without mentioning this little dark ride on our journey into Aussie theme parks. I missed out on The Great Gremlins Adventure when it was still operating. Considering my reaction to Rail Chase at Sega World Sydney, it probably would’ve frightened me, but looking back this was a neat little E-ticket to launch Movie World into the stratosphere of success with. What can you really say about Gremlins that hasn’t already been said? As a Taoist convert I guess the message about not tinkering with Chinese supernatural monsters you barely understand is a message I took to heart, the infamous “That’s how I found out there was no Santa Claus” scene is burned into the memories of people older than me, but if you asked me what my favourite Christmas movie was, I’d respond with either Elf or Gremlins. rather than Die Hard. Nobody really talks about how the Gremlins sing along to Snow White when it’s shown in the theatre, I always thought that was a neat little detail that the mogwai are big fans of Disney’s folly considering they’re from a rival studio’s IP. Unfortunately The Great Gremlins Adventure is only preserved in postage stamp sized video files and I have to annotate each picture to give you an idea of what’s going on, which is a shame about Australian theme park rides which go defunct because you really notice the improvements in camcorder technology as the years go by.
The mogwai tear up the projection booth in the pre-show area of the Gremlins ride.
A mogwai hangs from one of the lights.
Surprise appearance from Beetlejuice!
A wall of film reels teetering toward ruin.
The Horror Movies Film Vault.
Another mogwai hanging from a lamp.
A bunch of mogwai just hanging out.
A larger mogwai watching television.
More mogwai causing mayhem in the editor suite.
A mogwai wearing a jacket/hat combo.
A mogwai spinning to and fro in a booth.
Entering the prop dock through the ride.
I think this was supposed to be a hang-glider mogwai, but the 320p footage is too blurry to tell.
Some kind of snake-monster in the prop dock, I’m not sure what this is from.
A police car with blaring siren crashes.
Hey look! It’s Gizmo! Ain’t he adorable?
Laughing mogwai huddled in trash pile.
Another mogwai tangled in film equipment.
Mogwai tinkering with the plumbing.
The electrical wiring is malfunctioning.
End of the ride! (Source for above panels: Stellos Christakis)
A better view of one of the mogwai animatronics.
Many animatronics of Gremlins cavorted about, causing havoc amongst the built environments, it was a dark ride with lots of grimy character and charm throughout. I was born the year Gremlins 2: The New Batch came out, and thus the sequel film and its first entry were mushed together for this attraction’s theming and plot (however thin on the ground the ride’s plot was). Lots of Gremlins would leap out at you in the Warner film archive, flashing industrial lights cast shadows on the cackling mogwai as your vessel passed by through the tunnel. The Great Gremlins Adventure was part of the opening wave of Movie World attractions, its replacement Scooby Doo: Spooky Coaster was also an atmospheric dark ride that relied on scares to thrill the audience, although this one stuck around longer and operates to this day as Scooby Doo Spooky Coaster Next Generation. Scooby Doo Spooky Coaster was a souped-up ghost train attraction which slid you under sharp pendulum blades and put you next to snarling supernatural creatures, based on the two live action Scooby Doo movies I’ve never seen with Matthew Lillard. The theming of this ride was excellent for what it was, and it remains one of the most popular rides at the park for a reason. The ride propels backwards at one point, and takes you back to the beginning at the pre-show area.
The carts going into the Scooby Doo Spooky Coaster attraction.
Knights guarding the entrance to another chamber of horrors.
Random skeleton sitting on the floor.
Monster lunging at you from above the ceiling as you speed past below.
Skeleton locked in a gibbet cage in the spooky dungeon.
More monsters in the spooky dungeon, or are they crooks in disguise?
Another spooky monster in the spooky dungeon that leaps out at you.
Some Edgar Allan Poe tier bladed pendulums swiping down at your vehicle.
This guy appears to be doing the Thriller dance pose as he pops up.
Hey kids! It’s Scooby-doobie-doo!
A good quality shot of the Wild Mouse Coaster track Scooby Doo: Spooky Coaster uses.
What is it with Wild Mouse Coasters and spiders? Between this and Rail Chase I mean.
All I know about the two live-action Scooby Doo movies is that one of them takes place on a tropical island, hence this scenery evocative of the film it’s from.
There’s Scooby-Doo again! (Source for above panels: Theme Park Review)
Looney Tunes Studio Tour was my favourite dark ride at the Warner Bros. Movie World park when I rode it for the first and last time, I’m dismayed that it’s gone because it featured the most intricate set-pieces for animatronics Movie World ever built. There’s Elmer Fudd shooting at things, Bugs Bunny ducking from danger, and all manner of nonsense going on. So little footage of it remains that I’ve had to resort to using the souvenir video like I did with Batman: The Adventure Ride because I haven’t got much to work with otherwise. It features the Looney Tunes characters on a boat ride down towards a thrilling drop like Bermuda Triangle without the aliens, and I’d be hard pressed to find another ride of its kind in the Southern Hemisphere. It wasn’t too scary for young me, it had a perfect peaceful atmosphere and didn’t rough you up like Lethal Weapon often did, it was a fun ride for families of all ages and I miss it most of all among the defunct Movie World rides.
Elmer Fudd on the camera crew for this film set.
Bugs Bunny retreating from a hungry crocodile.
Elmer Fudd shooting his now-controversial gun at targets.
Foghorn Leghorn cutting down a tree by the river.
Porky Pig and Pepe Le Pew going fishing together. (Source for above five panels: Sunny Lin)
Lethal Weapon was a suspension loop rollercoaster I remember fondly, long since re-themed to Arkham Asylum now that DC superheroes are the prime source of IPs tapped for Movie World’s attractions, you were shown a clip from Lethal Weapon 2 in the lobby before you set upon the suspension loopers, and these things rattled you around like nobody’s business. It was one of the most iconic of Movie World’s rollercoasters for a long time and persisted as an E-ticket ride promoted in the commercials: RIDE LETHAL WEAPON was drilled into our skulls and so we did. It didn’t matter that the attraction itself had bugger-all to do with the Mel Gibson and Danny Glover buddy cop film franchise of the same name, or that the seating banged your head further than Quiet Riot-acceptable standards, it was once the best of the many rollercoasters the Gold Coast had to offer. One of the problems with Movie World’s specific theming is the attractions reflected the Warner Bros. Movie Studio’s hit films out at the time, which meant you wouldn’t get just superhero-flavoured rides because superhero movies weren’t the predominant genre at the time. Now everything at Movie World save the Fright Nights Halloween attractions has a bit of superheroes everywhere, because that’s what’s popular on the big screen. So instead of a rollercoaster themed after Shane Black tentpoles you get Justice League dark rides instead. Warner Bros. relies on its superhero properties a bit too much for my liking, what I wouldn’t give for an Enter The Dragon Bruce Lee attraction or a localised version of Harry Potter World but the rights for that are tied up with Universal. I like superheroes in moderation, but having them as the main course all the time isn’t a great source of variety, especially if you’re into anime or the Metal Hurlant comics. The lack of a Mad Max ride is criminal after the success of Fury Road, however George Miller did receive a Happy Feet live-show at some point. You used to have nods to hit movies at the time like the Maverick stage show or the Police Academy stunt show, but by and large as the years progressed Warner Bros. has been all over the place with its properties, I doubt we’re ever going to see a Jupiter Ascending motion simulator attraction at Movie World because that bombed at the box office. Wild West Falls used to be the Wild Wild West ride before that movie tanked, and henceforth became the generic Western themed attraction representing Westerns the studio made as a whole by proxy. I’ve never had the opportunity to ride Wild West Falls for myself, it could be great or it could suck, I don’t know. Most people who ride it seem to like it, and its unique theming makes it stand out amongst all those superhero rides like Superman: Escape and DC Rivals Hypercoaster. Movie World’s answer to Disneyland’s Splash Mountain was popular enough to remain in the park, so it can’t be that terrible.
I’ve always loved the Chinatown Lethal Weapon entrance theming, Arkham Asylum isn’t as cool.
The Wild West Falls ride is fairly basic when it comes to its theming, so I won’t cover it in detail like I did with Scooby Doo: Spooky Coaster, because like Storm Coaster at Sea World Nara Resort it’s a pretty simple attraction.
One property that Warner Bros. Movie World borrowed from Legoland is called The Lego Movie 4D: A New Adventure! - based on The LEGO Movie of course. There’s a lot I could say about The LEGO Movie which I’ll save for another time, but it’s one of my favourite movie franchises ever and any attraction derived from it sure has my attention. Sadly LEGO jumped ship to Universal and we may never see that LEGO Batman Movie sequel I was hoping for, and the repurposed 4D Legoland attraction is a reminder of just how fragile the relationship Animal Logic and Warner Bros. was. This is why I’m so peeved at the overexposed-ness of the superhero properties, they crowd out any other innovations the studio might have to offer as evidenced by Warner Bros. now trying to milk its Hanna-Barbera IPs like Scoob! for content. The LEGO Movie was this beautiful, idiosyncratic thing which the sequels may never have matched but I never missed a single one of them in theatres, I’ve seen the 4D film by clandestine means as I had no choice, and it’s pretty entertaining as a follow-up to The LEGO Movie for theme parks. I thought the mind-control plot was a bit silly in a good way, and considering this is for a theme park ride the animation wasn’t downgraded too much. It wasn’t originally built for Warner Bros. Movie World, the Legoland cross-branding is a bit distracting for the park immersion, however I’d rank this an eight out of ten due to my biased love for The LEGO Movie franchise because they do poke fun at the cheapness of hiring sound-alike voice actors in a way that feels very LEGO Movie. I’ve never been to LEGOLAND but according to my sources there’s not a lot of things for grown-ups to do there besides buy LEGO kits, and the Warner Bros. Movie World 4D attraction gives adults a chance to experience the ride without being hassled by LEGOLAND staff for being too tall or too old for certain rides at their park. That’s not a problem at Movie World, which bends over backwards to include attractions for all ages on top of their thrill rides for adults and teenagers.
The LEGO Movie stars mesmerised by Risky Business, Lord Business’ brother.
Warner Bros. Movie World is the youngest of the main theme parks, however It’s become an institution of its field and maintains dominance over the Australian theme park landscape as a survivor or hardships and attractions coming or going across the years. I haven’t had a reason to go back there in decades even if their rollercoasters are tempting to an older, braver me, and I suspect unless the attractions diversify from the superhero soup I’ll remain shaking my fist over the border in Sydney. I rag on Movie World a lot because I want it to create better rides which are suited to my taste, which in this millennium may be a pipe dream of its halcyon past. At least it’s still operating, which is more than you can say about its contemporaries like Wonderland Sydney or Sega World… the latter of which we’ll talk about next time.
The Enchanting Existential Dread of Aussie Theme Parks: Chapter One - Mount Tamborine Heaven
“I’M THE MAN ON THE SILVER MOUNTAIN!” - Ronnie James Dio
Queensland's where my story, and my first impression of theme parks begins, the Gold Coast's plethora of summer fun destinations wasn't a long road trip away like Disneyland often is for many Americans. I was born in Southport Hospital, a stone’s throw from Sea World Nara Resort. We had an advantage Floridians don't, you totally can move to Brisbane just for the theme parks, although the place where I learned to walk and talk was even more magical than that: Mt. Tamborine Heaven, also known as Yowie Country where it is said the hairy-men hide their movements under cover of thunderstorms in the mountain’s lush greenery. These frequent storms never frightened me much growing up despite loud crackling on the mountaintop, whenever it sizzles across the sky in Sydney it reminds me of chasing peacocks in the rain like the Jack McBrayer-esque hick I truly am, versus the city boy I pretended to be. My family were watching this indie comedy starring Michael Shannon called Pottersville on Netflix together at Christmastime, halfway through the film they name-dropped Mt. Tamborine when the fraudulent monster-hunting reality show character distinguished between their American Sasquatch and the Australian yowie, we damn near lost our minds seeing what might be the first ever acknowledgement of Tamborine Mountain in any overseas media to date. It was an enchanted mountain that raised me to wonder and imagine, full of scenic locations like Witches Falls and Thunderbird Park that made you feel you were living amongst un-written Ronnie James Dio lyrics. Ripley’s Believe It Or Not Odditorium sat at Surfer’s Paradise as a temple of the weird and wonderful, I went there once with my family who didn’t appreciate it as much as I did and thus I was unable to visit any overseas Odditoriums on our travels to the United States. It was more museum than amusement park, yet its various tributes in waxwork to torture chamber devices felt very The London Dungeon for this part of Queensland. My grandmother (who is no longer with us) drove us to Nerang to rent our VHS movies way back when, and I recall seeing the poster for Disney’s Hocus Pocus sitting in the window. Dracula’s Restaurant loomed over the Pacific Fair playground, which was a theme restaurant for adults I was intrigued with from its spooky exterior with decor you’d expect from Vampire Counts Warhammer sprue kits adorning its entrance. The early nineties were a great time to live in Queensland, new theme parks were springing out of the ground and there was plenty of magic to go around on a state level, a surplus of experiences to be had by a wee nipper whose life had just begun. I learned to read from a book called Dangerous Australians, which was filled with creatures that could murder me with a touch, and I went to wildlife parks where the rangers showed us venomous snakes and spiders in formaldehyde jars. You could make your own fun with the cow-skulls in the yard left behind in the mysterious past, and at one point when my father went to the Phillipines I assumed it was within walking distance so I took off looking for him down the street.
Witches Falls was a popular destination for locals and tourists alike…
…for reasons like this waterfall grotto in the Mount Tamborine area.
I don’t have much to say about the Wet N’ Wild Water Park at the Gold Coast, except that the Double Screamer waterslide was steep and scary and amazing when I was twelve years old. The other water slides like White Water Mountain kinda blur together in a damp haze of nostalgia.
Here’s the Catherine Wheel from the Ripley’s Believe It or Not! Odditorium, just as tacky as I remember it.
I’d love to go back to Ripley’s at Surfer’s Paradise someday, but I’m stymied by low funds and lack of a willing entourage.
Wet and Wild was a mainstay for us every summer, with its waterslides which felt like rollercoasters, but Sea World Nara Resort was where I encountered my first dark ride, the enigmatic Bermuda Triangle attraction had just opened in 1994 and I was just tall enough to experience it for myself. There was a lot of context to Bermuda Triangle which flew over my head as a kid, its mythos was built off of pre-Star Wars pulp sci-fi I wasn’t familiar with except through publications like The Usborne Book of the Haunted World, as an original IP attraction not based on any pre-existing franchises, it captured the paranormal atmosphere associated with the real-life location. Between this ride and the two Ghostbusters movies which were shown endlessly on TV, my interest in the supernatural started young and for the rest of my days I was curious about a lot of the ride’s theming which baffled me as a child but is now obvious cribbing from Chariots of the Gods?. The promotional materials for the ride showed an L. Ron Hubbard-ish vista of flying saucers orbiting near active volcanoes like the Dianetics book cover, yet as an adult I can’t help but notice this entire attraction espoused talking points from Ancient Aliens on The History Channel, long before Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull nuked the fridge, Bermuda Triangle was laying down some B-movie pseudo-science which works great as fiction but grates on the nerves of actual archaeologists when presented as fact. Bermuda as depicted by Bermuda Triangle might as well be Lovecraft’s Sunken R’lyeh or Robert E. Howard’s Hyperborean Age, it’s so divorced from the reality of its geographical location and setting, and rolled so deep with the pulp tradition it might just drown in it. It managed to borrow from very pernicious sources without racist depictions of natives, and was one of the more unique theme park rides up there with Rail Chase at Sega World in its ambition. The boat ride into the gaping maw of the gateway is a moment I’ll always remember, it was a little frightening but I loved it all the same even if my brother did not. The scene where pods containing human specimens from various historic eras in stasis as aliens tinkered with them was a haunting vista to behold, and the disappearing UFO was a stunning special effect for the time. The flooding of the terraformed temple made for an exciting escape, splashing through an ionic columned temple before rising up to the final drop zone.
Ancient Aliens draws this handy diagram of the Triangle itself, which is in better resolution than most Bermuda Triangle ads.
Fifteen minutes into Bermuda Triangle and chill and he gives you this look.
There’s smatterings of Oceanic inspired carvings throughout the ride to balance out the Mesoamerican influences, such as this figure here.
Some of the captured-by-aliens aircraft that have gone missing in the Triangle.
One of the aliens atop an aircraft vessel, tinkering with the machinery.
Now somebody’s slapped a Balinese mask’s teeth on Mesoamerican architecture!
Aliens have captured people from different time periods in capsules!
The captive humans have been segregated by gender, with women to the left.
A row of aliens attending to monitor screens, back in the CRT 4:3 days.
Flying saucers and volcanoes, together at last! No Scientology vibes at all.
Tesla coils and lightning bolts encapsulated in these weird devices.
Another alien beside a tribal mask with lightning in its eyes, spooky!
The volcano is erupting! What will happen to our alien invaders now?
The flooding of the ionic columns! The aliens are going to drown at this rate!
You can see the coils where the hellfire-place used to be, I promise you it was massive. (Source for above panels: 1 Sharky)
The disappearing UFO trick, now you see it, now you don’t!
I still don’t know how the disappearing UFO trick was done, probably with holograms.
I’m as surprised as anyone else that the fireplace lasted until at least circa 2006. (Source for above three panels: Charlton Hawkins)
Evidence of the lost Bermuda Triangle logs which descended from above. (Source: Charlton Hawkins)
The pillaging of Mesoamerican architecture for the ride’s theming was justified by the narrative, aliens were terraforming this structure out of thin air and the probe mission inside the volcano received radio transmissions from scientists as you went on your voyage of the damned, until you reached this incline leading to a Tony Jay-tier Hellfire-place close enough to the boat to singe your hair if you weren’t careful. I carry that hot flame in my heart whenever I need to feel brave or young again, and as you dropped down the slope the volcano would erupt. It was a rare breed of dark ride in Australia that was hard to maintain, closing in 2010. The landscape of 1994 was a beneficial era to debut such an esoteric attraction to the masses, as The X-Files hit TV screens and UFO culture would continue to be popular with blockbusters like Independence Day or Men In Black. The truth was out there, and Bermuda Triangle capitalised on this wave without even trying to chase trends because it was ahead of the curve. An active volcano you could explore was revelatory to me at four years old, and I drew pictures of it in crayon in some long-lost scrapbook. It captured my imagination, and there was very little like it in the Southern Hemisphere. Bermuda Triangle was replaced by a mediocre Storm Coaster attraction, which I never had the opportunity to ride myself but the ride-through footage looks disappointing. At some point Australia forgot how to build impressive new dark rides and put their emphasis on thrill rides like Six Flags in the States. So much of my Queensland childhood is gone, but there remains slivers of magic left like the dinosaurs at the Queensland museum and the national parks. I was yet to discover that Bermuda Triangle had one last secret to reveal to me as an adult, it was built atop the remains of an attraction called Lassiter’s Lost Mine which didn’t last long in terms of relative success, it was themed around a flooding mine and one of the main moving pieces was a cow being lifted up on a crane. Very little fragments are available of Lassiter’s Lost Mine, having been absorbed into the iconic Bermuda Triangle, and only a few snippets in eighties souvenir videos show the ride in operation. I was astounded at how lame the predecessor of Bermuda Triangle was, and was grateful to have experienced its superior upgrade in its most uncut form possible. Bermuda Triangle really put Sea World on the map, and allowed the park to compete with Warner Bros. Movie World in terms of excitement, and losing it in 2012 was disappointing to say the least. Sea World to date hasn’t recreated anything close to the enchantment Bermuda Triangle weaved over us in 1994, and for the most part its attractions are for really little kids like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles themed Turtle Power live show and the Spongebob Squarepants 3D film, with not much for the adults to do. Sea World has a bit of an image problem post-Blackfish, but it could solve a lot of headaches if they leaned into the yacht rock revival for the grown ups to enjoy themselves. At present, Sea World Nara Resort is building the New Atlantis themed area with a new wooden rollercoaster to replace the Sea Viper of old, which is the first step in the right direction Sea World has had for a while. The iconic flume ride Viking’s Revenge has been replaced by Jet Rescue, an educational attraction about rescuing sea animals that ties into Sea World’s mission statement, for the most part you come to Sea World for the dolphins and polar bears. Castaway Bay in 2010 added another children’s area to the park’s assortment of lands, which are perhaps over-represented. Somewhere in the eighties, the live shows at Sea World had an influx of clowns on jet-skis, and there was mention of the Sea World “family” which sounded like an underwater cult of initiates compared to the all too necessary update where Smash Mouth’s All Star played in their early 2000s adverts. If you want to communicate fun in the sun, accept no substitutes, Sea World made an excellent choice of soundtrack there. As a theme park, Sea World has a bright future ahead of it once the new revamps are completed and work-walls are torn down, and its animal attractions continue to draw in crowds to this day. It’s been around the longest out of the main Gold Coast theme parks for over forty-five years, and shows no sign of going away even if there isn’t enough to do there to warrant staying at the Nara Resort part of that moniker overnight at the moment. Sea World is limited to its specific ocean theme compared to the other Village Roadshow parks, and unfortunately this neglect of its attractions in equivalent investment has stagnated for a while. You can go see the fairy penguins and seals as expected, plus the Jet Stunt Extreme show, yet you won’t find the diversity of attractions it once had in the nineties when I first went. As of 2020, with Queensland’s borders in lockdown for the coronavirus recovery effort, the parks are shut and new developments are halted. The future looked promising before COVID-19 came along and scuttled Village Roadshow’s best laid plans, construction on the wooden Leviathan rollercoaster, and upcoming Vortex ride is halted and gates closed with no end in sight. New attractions are always good for a theme park in good need of replacement E-tickets, and whilst there may never be another Bermuda Triangle, that fibre-glass volcano will forever explode in our hearts. Sea World Nara Resort has attempted to shake off its perception as a glorified Free Willy zoo for aquatic animals, not everything they’ve done has been successful but I look forward to the post-plague reopening of Sea World once New Atlantis rises from the briny deep.
What little remains on YouTube of Lassiter’s Lost Mine isn’t much, but it’s interesting.
As you can see, it was a boat ride through what should’ve been a mine cart ride at any other park, but Sea World had to stick to its maritime theming somehow.
One of the animatronics on Lassiter’s Lost Mine, covered in mist for the ads.
Here’s the animatronic cow being lifted up into a steel bucket from disaster. (Source for above four panels: JozParks)
The new Leviathan rollercoaster in all of its wooden glory.
Queensland is who I root for every State of Origin, and outside of the parks there’s plenty to see and do, my last visit took me to Netherworld bar and arcade where my friend Rhys and I played X-Men and went to see a 35MM screening of Ralph Bakshi’s Wizards at GoMa. I love Queensland with all my heart and travelling back there reconfirmed my allegiance to the North despite living in Sydney half my life. The parks are long dead and buried here in New South Wales, so I look to the North for inspiration when all seems too dark and dismal. I came back from Brisbane and there was a sign saying Sydney is not the same, it sure isn’t. The roads make sense in Brisbane, and there’s enough green around that you can breathe, whereas in Sydney I often have to suppress an asthmatic cough. Sydney sucks the life out of you, like a New York without a Broadway to spice things up, it’s expensive yet soul-crushing. My mother had to leave Mount Tamborine heaven behind to find work as a Family Court solicitor, I guess there was too few divorce cases to find in paradise, so she had to go where the action was. My cat Wilbur, who I named after Wilbur from Charlotte’s Web because I rented that VHS tape all the time, ran away from me in the transition to Sydney, which is another thing this awful city took away from me. We lived at Glen Ormond Avenue in Abbotsford, where my brother’s cat Danny survived the trip south but was presumably stolen by a cat-burglar according to my mum. After our big move to Sydney, we did on the other hand get plenty of opportunities to revisit Queensland to go to the theme parks on the Gold Coast in the early two-thousands, and we’ll talk about Movie World’s early years next time.
Even Sydney airport admits that my current city of residence sucks, all we have left is Luna Park and dreadful parking lots.
The Enchanting Existential Dread of Aussie Theme Parks: Foreword
I photoshopped this to look like Mayhem’s Deathcrush EP album cover, because Aussie theme parks are kvlt.
Australian history is littered with the bones of its losers, however no matter how hard our Canberran overlords try to shift our national ethos over to Donald Trump's mean-spirited campaign platform, we'll always celebrate those losers for what they almost accomplished. If you asked me what it means to be Australian, by examining our Gallipoli ancestor-worship each ANZAC Day, Waltzing Matlida or our pop culture icons like Max Rockatansky and The Babadook... surviving a country that's eager to murder you is our noblest medal of honour. We've developed from a convict colony where citizenship was punishment for stealing, to a continent where we've become the cruel jailers of desperate refugees who fled war-torn hell. Bob Ellis claimed Australia doesn't deserve a future due to the way we treated Aborigines, which is quite a sour note to leave this world on, given I and thousands of other Millennials still have to live here burdened by terrible choices made by his generation preceding ours. Australia's volatile housing market plus negative gearing means a lot of young people can't afford to buy a home, yet few pundits have examined the impact real estate has on Aussie theme parks. Most suburban theme parks erected before I was born are now either rusty carcasses for urban explorers on YouTube to climb around their elephant graveyards, or scavenged by real estate agents hungry for new properties they can redevelop and sell to Chinese investors. The Pissweak Kids segments featured on ABC's The Late Show lampooned these lacklustre attractions by exaggerating their hokey lameness to absurdist extremes, wildlife sanctuaries became a cat locked in a carrier cage, Old West stagecoaches became dejected children sulking atop trailer utes. Conventional wisdom states our amusement resorts more often than not go out of business faster than John Hammond, an exception which proves the rule exists near Surfer's Paradise which shelters our nation's successful theme parks from the failure-vortex that is Sydney's very long list of defunct tourist traps. I don't begrudge talented video-essayists on my social media feed who post their charming selfies from their frequent Disneyland trips, it's difficult to feel homesick when visiting Los Angeles because Sydney's public transport is just as broken as whatever the City of Angels calls a subway. California's enormity can be daunting for a first-time tourist confronted by the street-hawkers and basketball-hoopers of Venice Beach, or taking shelter inside a Hot Topic after you've gatecrashed the BET Awards by accident. Little things Americans take for granted like The Getty Centre art museum having its own monorail can feel like you're Judy Hopps riding into Zootopia, you could almost hear Shakira's Oscar-nominated song playing as you boarded a space- age vessel your civic planners down under would've discouraged. I am not keen on Sydney cronyism which makes me lose sleep worrying about what national treasures are written off by greed next, acquired by foreign buyers without consultation like Martin Place's Post Office, or gentrified until it's unrecognisable like King's Cross. Don't get me wrong, the lack of regular mass- shootings grants me safety as a Sydney resident, but our pixie-dust deficit my city has endured since Wonderland's closure in 2004 damaged our economic confidence. It's no coincidence that youth unemployment is so high, many summer jobs provided by theme parks no longer exist, and several beloved attractions which were once super-popular never received proper eulogies befitting their legendary status. They live now, only in my memories, to quote The Road Warrior's Feral Kid custodian. There's an undercurrent of sadness inherent with Australian theme parks that's unique to our little corner of the world, I'm not trying to minimise disasters like King Kong Encounter burning down at Universal Studios, but Americans whinging about The Twilight Zone: Tower Of Terror getting its Guardians Of The Galaxy: Mission Breakout makeover need perspective. We survived a cataclysmic extinction level event, which I like to call the New South Wales Millennium Purge, where most of our domestic theme parks built south of Queensland's border went bankrupt around the turn of the century. By 2005, Luna Park Sydney would remain the last one standing, its only competition being the annual Royal Easter Show's temporary carnival rides and agricultural attractions such as its farm animal petting zoo. Village Roadshow announcing it's selling the land Warner Bros. Movie World is situated upon for a debt-reduction lease-back scheme doesn't fill me with a great deal of joy, I've seen this exact grift tear up Darling Harbour's once beautiful boardwalk plaza back when Sega World Sydney bit the dust, suggesting Queensland could succumb to the same fate. Ardent Leisure's financial losses following the White Water Rapids tragedy at Dreamworld have caused speculation over the park's future since the fatal accident in October, 2016, part of why this hit Queenslanders so hard is because until now theme park disasters of this magnitude were things of the distant past preserved on microfilm in libraries. We've entered a dark chapter in our nation's history we'd hoped would never repeat itself, where our children are afraid of rollercoasters again, and the spectre of Luna Park's 1979 Ghost Train Fire continues to haunt us despite our best efforts to exorcise it from our collective consciousness. The idea of a Gold Coast theme park attraction killing four Australians was unthinkable, interstate rivalries over State of Origin rugby matches (which we kept winning) and demonstrable superiority of our theme parks (which outlasted their New South Wales counterparts) fed our hubris and thus many Queenslanders (myself included) were rattled by our worst case scenario unfolding on the news before our very eyes. White Water Rapids was soon decommissioned like a condemned criminal, industrial manslaughter legislation (which can't be used to prosecute Dreamworld in this case) was introduced so a corporate offender can't get away with this next time, and we were reminded how fragile the Aussie theme park ecosystem can be. It's not all doom and gloom down under, Adventure World is Perth's self-proclaimed "only theme park", continuing our grand tradition of permanent rollercoasters we were so good at creating during our peak-neon-nineties gilded age when Olympic fever compelled rich benefactors to risk millions of dollars for our entertainment. I didn't take these strange architectural monotremes which filled me with deep enchanting existential dread when they got liquidated as proper serious art-forms, until Youtubers like David Ganssle (doggans), Tony Goldmark (Some Jerk With A Camera), Chris Nebergall (Please Remain Seated) Charlie and Haley Callahan (Spazz In General and The Philosofan), and Kevin Perjurer (Defunctland) opened my eyes to doing that for Australia's neglected little defunct amusement resorts which none of them have DeLorean time machines or Patreon money to cover on their respective channels. It's fascinating to see Americans swapping campfire stories about how the unadulterated Alien Encounter scarred them for life, yet Australians appear to have forgotten our freakiest contributions to the fairground arts, as childhood fades into the warm fuzziness of nostalgia divorced from context for the few photographs left behind. Australia's tyranny of distance held us back as a country pre-internet, but this unique circumstance of geography bred a lot of experimentation with what theme parks could and should be: sometimes it resulted in our mirror universe Disneyland with Warner Bros. Movie World's overlooked Looney Tunes themed rides, and other times history came alive at Old Sydney Town despite our preference that certain aspects of said history stay in its grave. Let's look back together at some of the greatest attractions we've ever bulldozed, and salute the parks who didn't make it, as well as the misfits who surpassed expectations.
Champagne Comedy throwing shade at the infamous Wobbies World adverts, in their classic Pissweak World skits which also parodied the suburban park's non-Disney affiliated rival Magic Kingdom, Lansvale.
Opening the Jade Crypt of Wonders
Welcome to the Jade Crypt of Wonders, new home for The Existential Dread of Aussie Theme Parks and other projects associated with me. This place is named after the palace-tomb in my unpublished novels, which you don’t know about yet, but it’s time I registered a new domain after six months absence 2020 has been a hard year for all of us, yet hopefully with the grand opening of Jade Crypt of Wonders my fortune may change. Jade Crypt of Wonders is a broad umbrella of stuff I’m interested in, from anime to Taoism to old movie soundtrack singles nobody talks about anymore.
This site is a dumping ground for my imagination, soon you may see some original fiction posted here as well as non-fiction works I’ve been stewing for quite some time. It is a place where monsters lurk and wizards enchant, here magic is very real indeed. There are deep, dark secrets kept in the Jade Crypt’s vaults, unearthed by curators of the Crypt when the stars align. Grave-robbers beware, for this place is blessed and cursed in equal measure, the great Guan Yu shrine guards its bounty and the Xi Wangmu shrine carved into the eldritch rock is a sacred monument to the Queen Mother of the West. In the Museum of Mistakes, the London Dungeon of the netherworld, man’s inhumanity to man is rendered in waxwork as a chamber of horrors condemning the war criminals of history for their atrocities. Portals built by djinn hired from Parramatta (where the Eels play footy) allow travellers to enter the tourist-trap section of the Jade Crypt during visiting hours.
In the Jade Crypt tomb lies the bodies of Eugene Kobia and Chie Zedong, a ghost-married couple whose remains are interred together for eternity, for their love cannot die as most mortals do. Descended from Vlad the Impaler and Mao Zedong respectively; the King and Queen of the Jade Crypt built the Museum of Mistakes in an attempt to get the metal bands of the world to surrender their Nazi memorabilia which belongs in a museum instead of Jeff Hanneman’s attic, and for descendants of war criminals to turn in their ancestors’ old junk to be displayed in a safe and sensible manner. The Jade Crypt is haunted beyond belief, like the fabled Winchester House of America, it was built for spirits rather than mere mortals to dwell.
ENTER THE JADE CRYPT, AND SEE FOR YOURSELF THE BOUNTY THAT AWAITS THEE IN ITS CATACOMBS, LONG LIVE OUR KING AND QUEEN WHO SLUMBER HERE.