16 July 2007

Winter Wonderland a dud!

| junkett
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Packed up the wife and kids for what we thought would be a fun morning at the winter wonderland. Of course it was freezing…which we expected that…but why? There was nothing worth keeping cold! The “snow” part of WW consisted of a pathetic little dribble that spurted out of the roof near the entry for half-a-second in every five minutes. The snow balls was some slushy ice somebody’s scrapped off the side of their freezer for the kids to throw at snow man cut out. My five year old gave up in disgust after three throws.

We can’t figure out why we were charged entry at all. Milo the Clown was the only decent thing as far as the kids were concerned, but $16 to see him is a bit much. Everything else you had to pay for. The toboggan slide was a sad sad joke.

Basically we paid our money to put up with dis-interested carnies and a morning in a freezer. It might have been a noble idea to get something happening in Canberra for winter – but it was a dud! Dodging the idiots on dirt bikes and heading back up to the little bit of snow at Bulls Head makes a lot more sense.

(ps – even the dedicated link to the “winter wonderland” from http://www.winterinthecapital.gov.au/events.asp?eventid=1 is dead…no shock really)

good luck keeping the kids amused for week 2 of the holidays!

Junkett

[ED (Ntp) – links all work fine for me…]

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junkett: This isn’t actually a local government venture, I believe it’s a brainchild of the (federal) NCA.

hairy nosed wombat8:20 pm 18 Jul 07

I have not been to the ice skating rink at the WW, but on paper it looks like a rip off compared to the Phillip rink.
WW, $18 for a skate session of 1hour 15 minutes)
Phillip, $15 for a skate session of 2 hours.
(both prices include skate hire, AND Phillip gives a $3 discount if you have your own skates).
Does the WW skate rink have a redeeming feature, Ie. Outdoors with a view of the lake?

I have just got back from winter crapland. I am a mother of three and once paying a cover charge for all of us. $5 for adults and $4 for children there was nothing for adults there, let alone my kids. Seems very unfair to charge adults. We tried to make the best of it. However I could not live with myself, knowing I was ripping people off like that. The look on all the carnies faces said it all……. this is a croc of —-. Save your pennies folks.

Thanks Ed – you might have given them the kick they needed re the link, it is now working – and my poison pen is ready
To everyone else who commented…in a sad way, it’s reassuring to know misery loves company! I hate to sound like a winger without justification!
Try again next winter Johnny Nohope, just don’t bring this lot back!!!

I had my kids all pumped up for this. Lucky I did some searching on the web before we wasted our money. I found this thread http://members.essentialbaby.com.au/index.php?showtopic=400793
on the Essential Baby forum and got my kids to read it. They decided to blow their money on Questacon instead (which from the looks of it last Wednesday so did every other kid in Canberra). At Questacon I overheard at least two women on their mobiles complaining about what a dud the winter wonderland was and how they had walked out and gone to Questacon instead. We ended up leaving Questacon after about two hours also as it was way too overcrowded – my 9 year old fainted in the middle of a crush of adults all trying to take photos of their kids on the g force jumping thing. Bah.

Not an original idea, so I wonder why Canberra got is so wrong. Years ago, Sydney did something like this where they converted one of the display halls at the Exhibition Centre into a snow play/indoor skiing and ice skating parlour. It was great, good value, realistic conditions and from what I hear it attracted huge numbers of tourists. Pity the organisers of this one didn’t take a few notes!

I’m with Thumper on this one…

zigzactly! snow is predicted to fall down to 500m – and ACT is located at elevation above sea level ranging from 550m-700m. so in theory snow should fall over the whole territory! i’m so excited 🙂

80% chance of snow in some canberra suburbs tonight kiddies!

Gungahlin Al9:21 am 17 Jul 07

Same comments on crappiness from several people in my workplace too. Glad to save my hard-earneds…
Here’s hoping we get the forecast snow day here tonight/tomorrow, so we can all enjoy the real thing, free of charge.

typical crappy Canberra execution of a brilliantly wonderful idea.

i did enjoy the ice skating, but that had more to do with the company than the ice/skates/location.

i hope it is successful enough for them to have another crack at it next year in hopes that they get it right.

Totally agree with Junkett. We’d been looking forward to it for ages. Seemed a great idea, something fun to do in Canberra in winter. A huge disappointment and unbelievably expensive. Don’t know what the entry fee was for. No clown when we were there. Had to buy separate tickets for rides – at $1.50 a pop. But it “cost” three tickets each for our little ones to have a ride on those whirling tea cups i.e. $4.50 per ride!! With 3 kids we pretty soon ran out of money. Very disappointing, and I’m sorry I recommended it to friends before going.

Hate to pimp another blog here, but joinpants visited and enjoyed. Yes it was lame, but in a lovely way.

Now here I was thinking that it would also consist of an ice skating rink.

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