Gold Coast Day 7

The good weather that we had been having for the holiday came to an end last night and the rain has set in. We headed down to the buffet for breakfast at about 8 o'clock to make sure that we had plenty of time to make sure that we made the checkout at 10.

I lucked out with the weather to go and get the car from the parking lot, with the rain breaking up with just enough to allow me to walk down to the car without getting wet, which was about the last time that was going to happen, until we hopped into the car at the end of the day, to start our trip home.

Once the bags were loaded, we headed off towards Movie World and Wet 'n' Wild for our last hurrah and for the girls to see if they could tick off the ride that they had not had the courage to complete in our visits so far. For Isabelle, that was the DC Villains Ride (or the Joker) at Movie World, and for Lilian, it was the Super 8 Aqua Racer at Wet 'n' Wild.

The girls decided last night that they would do Movie World first, as that way Isabelle did not have to do the Joker wet. Unfortunately, the world decided to rain on those plans, but unusually that worked into Isabelle's favour. When we arrived at Movie World, it was just past 11 o'clock, and it was pouring. But the line-up for the joker was short, it was being published with a 5-minute wait time. However, it worked in Isabelle's favour.

We rocked up at the Joker and the ride had just taken on a set of passengers and the line was short. Isabelle would have made the ride in the next five to ten minutes easily. They just happened to be looking for a single rider, as they had a single spot left on the ride. So within about 30 seconds of getting there, Isabelle was being strapped into the seat and being prepped to go. She had no time to overthink it or decide that she did not want to do it, and she was being taken up to the top of the ride.

What was great was that she had defeated her fear that she had built up that the thing was higher, faster and more scary than it ever could have been. And she found out that it was not any of these, and what blew her mind even more was that she did not realise that the ride did not take as long as she thought. She was that impressed with the ride and herself that she jumped at the chance to take another ride.

This was also a learning experience for Lilian as she was sucked into the middle of an autistic moment, as she knew that time was limited due to there being a finite amount of that we had left before the parks closed and felt that we were going to spend a lot of time at Movie World, and she was going to miss out on getting everything done at Wet 'n' Wild. But once we spoke about how it was only eleven-fifteen and the ride takes three minutes, and that she had until the park closed to get all her rides done. Lilian had thought that my intention was that we were just going to the park to smash out the rides as quickly as possible.

Once Isabelle had finished her turns on the Joker, I was soaked to the bone and I would not be dry until after we left. She just wanted to have another ride on the Flash, once again we turned up and the line was zero people long, and the ride was just about to finish.

On our way out of Movie World, we stopped by the merch stand and the girls both got Harley Quinn beach towels (as they needed to dry themselves), Isabelle also got Jumper, and Lilian got a misting Fan and a Harley Quinn Plushy. Lilian also found a magnet to get Emma, and a new Batman tool key ring (as Lilian thinks that we may have lost the old one). I can't wait until we can give them two he along with the massive bag of boiled lollies that we got her.

After we got to Wet 'n' Wild, the girls, and I had retreated to the covered picnic tables near the food court, the girls got changed and headed off into the weather to ride their favourite rides.

Lilian had completed all the rides that she wanted to complete today, as she had not been able to muster the courage to do it, despite multiple times attempting to do it, even with Isabelle trying to coax her along by doing it with her. At lunchtime Lilian was talking to me about how she was unable to do the ride, and we discussed the psychology of what was occurring.

Lilian has always had a fear of slides that she has not been able to see past the drop of it. From a young age she has been trying to do the slide at Mega Mania, but had not been able to. We discussed how she is a logical person, and the fear of the slide is an illogical fear. She logically knew that the slide had a start and an end, and that there were no cliffs. But once she got up there, her brain said nope, DANGERS.

We talked it over and that there was no amount of help that I could give her to try and help her out from a psychology angle other than once she got to the top, she needed to ignore her logical brain telling her to not and just push off and do it. She asked me to be at the bottom of the ride, to help her get the courage to do it.

After lunch, Isabelle asked if she could do the wake pool again, so after I had signed her up for a session, we left Isabelle at the wave pool and Lilian and I went back to the Super Aqua Racer to try once more. On the walk over, we discussed how she just needed to find the courage to push off, and that whatever her worst-case scenario was not going to happen. I told her that she will not be able to logic her way into going down the slide, and she just had t0 make herself just do it.

After a couple of other people's turns, Lilian was at the front of the line, and this time she did it. I could not have been more excited and proud of her than I was at that moment. And you could tell that Lilian was just as excited as me that she had done it, and to cement it in she went back up and did it a second time.

As there was still about 30 minutes until Isabelles wakeboard session, the girls had some downtime soaking up the sun and swimming around in the wave pool. I really enjoyed watching them have fun just being kids.

It was nearly time for Isabelle's wakeboard run, and we actually ended up with a nice break in the rain for the entire session. As this was the last session of the day, and due to the weather, Isabelle ended up sharing her session with only one other person, whereas yesterday in her session she was one in five. As the session is based on time and not a set number of runs, Isabelle had an absolute ball.

Isabelle's confidence and skills increased rapidly as she gained confidence on the board and she was soon able to kneel on the board, throw the board away and capture it, and there was even a couple of good wipeouts.

Once the session was over, both girls wanted to squeeze a couple of turns on the Super Aqua Racer so that they could celebrate in Lilian's success and more importantly, race each other.

Once the girls had their fill of the Super Aqua Racer, the girls got changed into their dry clothes that they were going to wear on the way home, and we said goodbye to the parks. We fuelled up the car at the nearest Petrol Station, pointed the car south and drove off into the approaching darkness.

After about four hours, we arrived at Coffs Harbour where we stopped for a driver break, and then we continued into the darkness. Both girls were determined to get to the end of the drive awake, and we rocked back into home at about 3am, where we were met by a high-speed whippet and poodle that were telling us that they had missed us all the most.

All three of us got changed, and took our night medications and got ready for bed.

I was visited just before getting into bed by Lilian, who was having a little moment. She had had so much fun that she did not want the holiday to be over, and she wanted to go back up again tonight. We talked it over about how it was a really fun holiday, and was voted as their best holiday yet, which made me so happy as I had been a little worried that at some stage I would stuff it up.

Both of the girls were well-behaved, even though they both had their moments of trying to drive me crazy with their attitude 🤣. This was precisely the holiday that we needed to have and that I wanted us to have. All three of us have many highlights that we will look back on in the future and think what a fantastic time we had when we went to the Gold Coast.

Below are all the videos captured from the day, the quality will be a little rough, as no post-processing has been done.