Saturday 12 April 2014

13th April 2014-The Great Gold Coast

13th April 2014

The Gold Coast was always going to be a stopping point for us, we were here 3 years ago and I wouldn't miss the opportunity to go to the theme parks again.

We stayed in Helensvale, they have a dog friendly caravan park which was far above our expectations. This caravan park went above and beyond the call of duty to make the dogs welcome. They had recently installed an off leash/play area for dogs and it was amazing!!! It was full of activities for dogs to enjoy as well as a drinking area, a shade area and lots of tennis balls and Frisbees. The dog owners had the choice of seating areas and trees have been planted to provide even more shade in the future.
THE HELENSVALE DOG PLAY AREA
Little Sam loved wandering around and checking out all of the new things even though she was too small to use most of them.

The Caravan Park had recently undergone extensive renovations which included a fabulous new swimming pool....it had a water slide that I made good use of when there weren't too may people/witnesses around, it was situated right next to the cafĂ©/restaurant (which was also dog friendly) and it had plenty of lounge chairs and gazebos for our use. Oh and did I mention that the salt water pool was heated.....it was paradise!!!

Tuesday evening they always have a sausage sizzle and Sunday morning was Pancakes!!! Yep free and plentiful pancakes!!!!!
PANCAKE SUNDAY Yummmmmmmy

But lets not forget the theme parks. We were literally just across the road from Warner Bros Movie World which is our favourite theme park! We went there a few times to make sure we exhausted ourselves (I still have a sore hand from the new shooting ride Justice League 3D....) And we got totally saturated again and again on the Wild West Falls.
MY BRUSH WITH FAME....PORKY PIG. He kissed my hand when I turned to leave....sooooo cute!
And I don't care that I had to stand in a queue full of little kids to get this photo taken...no shame in that and totally worth it!

Twice a day they have a Stunt Drivers show. We made sure our timing was good on one of the days for us to attend.....I'm sometimes doubtful of shows like this...are they going to be worth the time or should we be hitting the rides while everyone else is at the Stunt Show?.....turns out this show was awesome!!!! There was stunt motorbikes, cars and drift utes. It was 30 mins of thrilling stunts and we all totally enjoyed ourselves.

We went on the Scooby Doo roller coaster,  (Translation-Les dragged me on whilst not listening to my protests) and I remembered why I hate that ride...it's very scary flying around in a tiny little roller coaster car...up high...in the dark!!!! I'm too old for that type of stuff!!!

The water parks are great fun and we chose the warmest days to go to them so it was always going to be a blast. I injured myself yet again because I kept wanting to see where I was going on the water slides so would do one big ab crunch the whole way down. By day 2 my stomach muscles really hated me, by day 3 I found it painful to even sit upright....but I soldiered on!!  Les came on lots of rides with me but did suffer a setback on the Mach 5 (Australia's fastest and steepest ride) I had been down it twice when Les decided that it looked simple enough and that he should give it a go. When we got to the top I said "I'll take the middle one"......"No" said Les "I want the middle one, you take an end one" So with no arguments from me, off we went. It was only after we hit the bottom that Les realised he had chosen the steepest slide of the three-tee he he, I did try to give him an easier one!
THE MACH 5-YOU CLIMB FIVE STORIES HIGH AND THEN SLIDE STRAIGHT DOWN..... VERY FAST!

Water slides are a great motivator to climb hundreds of steps over and over again, in fact my legs gave out before my enthusiasm did :(

We have now moved North to Golden Beach in Caloundra....the Sunshine Coast, and will settle here for a while.....it is paradise!!

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