Festival City

2 points - you forgot to mention the fabulous ‘woodchopping’ display - love the woodchopping!

And secondly, I thought ‘I’ was Brisbane’s best feature… ahem… I mean, you’ve heard about my lawn bowls skills, right?

SmartarseGing ps. And I elected NOT to skive off work to go to the film fest today - gonna do a celluloid marathon on Saturday…

I notice that you also forgot to mention the showbags. I cannot recommend the “Bertie Beatle” showbag highly enough.

I’m actually working on an article devoted to showbags, mate. So your recommendation will be noted.

Oh my lord, yes, Toby, you’re right! What an oversight! The Bertie ‘Beetle’ [unless they're suddenly made out of Lennon/Harrison ashes?!] showbag is STILL only a dollar after all these years! And I mean, where ELSE can you get a Bertie Beetle these days - those fabulous little honeycomb pieces?! Then of course there’s the STRAWBERRY ICE CREAMS! A must! Fortunately I don’t ‘do’ the ‘plastic’ dagwood dogs or the frighteningly ‘coloured’ fairy floss, but it is all part of ‘the show’!

Chris, can you profile all the rides too - I’m a bit of ride demon - I actually went last year for the first time in, well, eons, got the Bertie Beetle showbag, AND, my sister had a g’zillion free ride tickets, so of course I went on about a thousand and it actually got to the point where I was ’sick of’ [as opposed to sick 'on'] going on them - As a kid, I don’t remember that ever happening before! It was always, ‘oh, dad, can’t we go on the chair-o-plane/octopus/matterhorn ONE more time??!’

I was always dead scared of the Zipper. I remember going on the Hurricane for the first time and being so proud of myself cos I wasn’t even scared. It’s been one of my favs ever since. I refuse to go on the Loop of Death, or whatever it’s called. It looks older than my dead grandparents.

Agreed on The Zipper mainly cos of the horror stories/urban myths [?] about people falling out of the cages? And geez, it just looks so ‘rackety’! Hurricane = good! Never did the ‘Superloop?’ but LOVE the Enterprise! Remember being ‘proud’ of going on the Rock’n'Roll one year, but geez, it’d churn now I reckon… ALSO [yes, I do love my rides - told ya!], remember being ABSOLUTELY terrified when I was about 10/11? and my sister took me on the Spider? Kinda like the Octopus but very ‘unsafe’ feeling - thought my ’safety bar’ was loose, was so small I kept ’sliding’ out thinking I was gonna fall right out, so screamed/cried the whole time… ergh…

Relating back to the ‘travel’ side of things - when I was backpacking through Europe I made a concerted effort to, where possible, sample ‘amusement parks’ - not EuroDisneywhathaveyou, but the ‘local’ versions… Of course, the Copenhagen one [geez, what's it called?!] is open all-year-round I think - The Tivoli, that’s it! In Vienna ‘the show’ was on and I remember going on THE coolest ride ever - kinda like the Enterprise, but v. ‘new’/ergonomic feeling, w more twists and things - v. cool. Called the Somethingerator/starts w P? Will have to check my journal. ALSO, in Budapest, it was HYSTERICAL - how ‘old’ these things looked - went on a ‘wooden’ rollercoaster, the whole time thinking ‘this is gonna break!’ and a ‘tin’ equivalent of an outdoor ‘Gravitron’ - basically standing up, spinning around on a 60? degree angle? Tres amuson! Never did Blackpool, but of course went to the rural version of County Kerry, Ireland, for, ‘Puck Fair’ and it had just a few small rides [kinda like the 'Craggy Island Fair' episode of Father Ted!!!]

Plan to do many more in bizarre destinations…

Sideshow Alley Ging

This got me reminiscing so I decided to do some research… The Viennese one - http://www.wiener-prater.at/eng/ and the ride’s called the Imperator! P, I, similar!

Budapest: http://www.vidampark.hu/english/indexe.html The ‘tin’ ride’s gone, but there’s a video of the ‘wooden’ rollercoaster on the homepage - so still going strong!!!

Puck Fair is http://www.puckfair.ie - this weekend in fact!

And, the tivoli I guessed correctly to be http://www.tivoli.dk/

Oooh, I wanna go to the fair now!!!!!!!

EasilyamusedGing

the show sux,its a rip of.rather an oz….