Tailspin, Dreamworld’s newest addition to a now long lineage of big thrill rides, took me completely by surprise. In fact, I had my reservations. I’m not a big fan of spinning & spewing (a common terminology used for rides like this) and have avoided the park’s other big spin-machine, Pandamonium, for the entirety of its life thus far. However, with the aim of capturing onride footage at the park’s media event earlier in the week, it was time for me to man up a little and brave what was going to be my undoing.
Or so I thought. I climbed aboard and the minute Tailspin started to jump into full swing I realised I had this twenty-ish metre tall behemoth all wrong. You see, every seat guests use freely spins, and with the aid of a pair of wings which you can control, you can easily rig how intense, or mellow, the ride’s experience ultimately becomes. And that’s not an understatement either – with a bit of practice, you can roll your aeroplane-come-chair into an endless death-defying barrel roll that lasts for nearly a minute. This isn’t something I could handle – after half a dozen or so barrel rolls I had reached my vomit-induction threshold and opted instead to enjoy the sights.
This, I had realised, is an incredibly versatile thrill ride. From those who are young, or just young at heart to those who want to compete with their mates for most amount of barrel rolls, Tailspin is incredibly pliable. And along with a parent swap queue which allows parents to trade goes while the other parent watches on with their son/daughter who’s too young to ride, it shows that Dreamworld have really, really listened to what people want from a modern thrill ride.
Folks, this is a fun ride. If you don’t have a world pass, this is enough of a reason to make the jump. They’re quite reasonably priced, and along with the multitude of other things the park’s been doing to boost its reputation as Australia’s best theme park (Wipeout has had a big refresh along with a new waterslide next door and better food & coffee options) it’s now an incredibly great value for money prospect, especially when you’ve got a family and you’d like to keep the kids entertained for a day here and there.
Checkout the full gallery of photos over at Flickr.
