Photo TR: Movie World Carnivale!

[azza29]

Movie World has been running seasonal night-time events for a while - but up until recently just the standard fare of Halloween and Christmas. This year the park has introduced a new event with a loose Brazil/New Orleans/party theme. It's definitely inspired by Universal Orlando's event but, this being Australia, the term "mardi gras" tends to conjure up images of glitter, feathers and leather so the park have gone with the more generic "Carnivale" name instead. It had a fairly limited run, lasting for six nights over three weekends, and fortunately I was back from Scandinavia just in time to check out the final night.

 

I headed in with fellow TPR member Harrison (also from the Scandi trip) and was overall fairly impressed with the quality of the event, especially given that it was the first year. The park went all out to build a party atmosphere, with new lighting and decorations everywhere, lots of roaming entertainment and even some special food booths (including plenty of "safe" options for less adventurous diners). And for a park that normally closes at 5pm, there was the opportunity to ride the coasters at night - awesome!

 

Carnivale time! The park put a lot of effort into lighting/theming the event.

I'm assured the opening show was superb. My fault for not getting there early.

Plenty of roaming performers, including lots of ladies on stilts. Read into that what you will.

I believe the gentleman on the left is the King of Carnivale. Which is why he gets to ride in the back of a pickup truck adorned in rope light. With Bugs and Lola.

Aerialists! And fire!

Juggler doing his thing in an outfit inspired by Liberace.

The house band played such classics as "La Bamba" and "Hot Hot Hot". And it seems they had Dame Edna as lead singer.

The entire promenade was lit very colourfully, with quasi-latin dance music pumping through the speakers.

Some performers were clearly ride ops who thought they knew how to play steel drums. Others, like these guys, were pretty impressive.

Some of the food options were definitely there to appeal to picky eaters. "New York Style" in this instance refers to the giant single slice serving, not the price tag.

There were also some more adventurous options, like clam chowder and gumbo. Nothing groundbreaking but not bad for a park that typically considers waffle fries "gourmet".

Aforementioned clam chowder. It was hot and tasted good, although they went a bit crazy with the spring onion.

The lines were much longer at the "safe" food stands, where hot dogs and chicken wings were on offer. Perhaps next year the park might look at promoting the more unique food offerings better, to encourage people to try something new.

The rest of my group were boring and decided to grab a hot dog. Nobody added jalapenos. Wimps.

Movie World isn't completely licensed but does have a bar near the front if you really need some booze. They even had a couple of special drinks on offer. This is the "Big Easy", consisting of whiskey, cola and granita. It tasted like someone had tipped raspberry Fanta into a bottle of Coke. So not bad.

More stilt-walkers! The guy on the left is not on stilts, he is just tall.

Insert your own "fire lady is hot" joke here.

Coasters are tricky to photograph at night. This is my least overexposed/blurry shot of Superman.

Projection mapping! Just like Disney World!

Blues Brothers meets Batman meets Brazil. And yet somehow, it works.

The lighting was really well done, and the park was not passing up any opportunity to sell objects that glowed or flashed.

Almost every corner of the park had been decorated, including this beaded tree.

The hula lady, treading the fine line between street performance and burlesque.

More of the fire woman, because why not?

The evening's climax was a parade. Not quite Disney-level, but still pretty impressive given that the event only ran for a few nights.

Flowery skull. Because Carnivale!

Another stilt-walker twirling ribbons.

This giant head blinked slowly at onlookers. Other floats included an alligator, Poseidon, and court jester.

The parade ended with a dance party and streamers! Overall we had a great evening, and the effort the park put in definitely paid off. It was great to see Movie World try out an event that is a little left-of-field for the typical Aussie GP, and hopefully they'll build on this for an even better Carnivale in 2015!

Photography nerd alert. Green Lantern's LED logo is insanely bright, and while we were waiting to get out of the carpark I discovered that it even gives off a Green Lantern-shaped lens flare!

[cfc]

Looked like it was a very nice, colorful event. Wouldn't mind visiting Movie World again some day.

[ozziboy]

Nice report Aaron, the night photos came out pretty good!

 

Its nice to see some of our parks try something to drum up business in the middle of our winter, and an even bigger challenge to then use a theme that relates to a tropical party in this season. Going by what the public are wearing, I'm guessing that it was still pretty cool in Queensland?