Thursday, November 15, 2012

Day 5 - Rotorua

On day 5 we travelled down to Rotorua.  It was a long drive - again mostly due to the regular toilet and food stops.  I swear the cold weather did not agree with my son's bladder. 

By the time we arrived in Rotorua it was almost 11am.  I really wanted to see a traditional Maori village and show.  Unfortunately, the one we found was a night time show only and it did not start until 6pm.  There was no way we could stay for that since the drive back to Auckland would be around 3-4 hours.  Instead we opted to go next door to experience the Skyline.  This was as fantastic idea!  Not only did we end up spending almost the rest of the afternoon here, but we basically missed out on seeing anything else in Rotorua at all.

The Skyline complex is relatively small but a stack of fun!  The first order of business was making it to the top - this is done via the enclosed Gondolas.  Almost as good as the ones in Cairns, but not quite.  The view is spectacular!  Plenty of photos. 



Before our ascent we purchased the deal which included the return Gondola ride, a ride on the very scary looking Sky Swing, and 2 Luge rides.  OMG - the Sky Swing was soooo scary!!! I can't believe I did it, but as usual I was blackmailed into it by my son.  You see on day 2 I made him take the elevator up to the top of SkyCity.  According to him he is afraid of heights - so this was a big deal for him.  Since he did it for me, I had to do the Sky Swing for him.  Needless to say my eyes were closed for almost the entire duration of the Swing - in hindsight its very embarrassing, but eyes closed or open I did it anyway.  Tick that off my bucket list!


Oh my goodness!  My heart's racing just watching this YouTube clip.

While there we also paid extra to sit through a 12 min 3D ride on Skyvue - this was fun and mild compared to the above!

To settle my nerves after the Sky Swing we went on the Luge.  As we were first timers we took the scenic route.  It was great!  So much fun.  For our next ride we decided to get a bit more adventurous and took the Intermediate course.  This was even more fun.  My son then decided that he also wanted to do the Advance course and since we were on holidays I let him.  An additional 2 rides cost me $17 but it was worth it.  I wasn't as adventurous as him and I decided to do the Scenic course again while he took the Advance course. 




 
I forgot to mention that after each course, we had to catch the open chairlift back up to the top.  Not so much fun, when you're afraid of heights, but we did it anyway.  It was tame compared to the Sky Swing.


Here is another one for the Sky Swing just in case you're not convinced.  Like I said my eyes were closed all the way up and all the way down, but now I regret that.  I was worried about losing my glasses, but that's no excuse.  I'll probably never do this again, so now I wish I had just watched because the experience was fantastic and very short and I SURVIVED!


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