Dream World - a local theme park

Day 3 (Tue, 21 Dec 2010)

Few people think of going to a theme park when visiting Bangkok. In fact, most people would be surprised to learn that there's even a theme park in Bangkok. But that's the perk of having friends living in the city, they have the insider information.

Lilian and her kids had previously visited Dream World and thought it a fun day out for families with kids, so she recommended it to us. It's about an hour's drive from Bangkok city and it's quite large with a wide variety of rides. We took the promotional package where for THB 1,000 per person (about S$43), you get unlimited rides in Dream World, entry to Snow Town, a buffet lunch and most importantly, transport to and from any Bangkok hotel.

The entrance looks suspiciously like Disneyland's Small World, doesn't it? The park is quite well maintained, considering it's a local theme park, definitely much better than the one at Genting, Malaysia. The decor, well, all I can say is, it looks familiar. Imagine a mashup of Disney, Warner Brothers and Cartoon Network, except without using the actual names of characters.



















The first ride the kids took was near the entrance, the Speedy Mouse coaster. It's like a blast from the past, didn't we used to have these old-style rides in the 1970s at the now defunct Wonderland?

Paddle boats.










Then we came across the big one - the Sky Coaster.


This coaster works on shoulder harnesses and your legs are left dangling.










Andre immediately wanted to take the ride. The rest of us were not quite as courageous so he decided to brave the adventure alone.

After the guinea pig had gone and emerged unscathed, he told his sister it was very fun, so she agreed to go on it with him.









Shoeless!

This next one was a ride the whole family enjoyed tremendously. It's called Bump Boats and it's the same concept as Bumper Cars except it's on water.










Grand Canyon, which is a rapids ride. You'll definitely get wet so wear your ponchos! We bought ours inexpensively at the park.

Another ride that Andre went alone - Super Splash. The rest of us were too chicken to take the plunge.










There's no subtlety to this ride, it's just a ride up up up, and then a very steep drop and a giant splash!

Everything within a 50m radius gets wet. I foolishly ventured too close with my camera in an attempt to get a better picture and got soaked. Not to mention, not much of a photo!

Snow Town is an attraction in Dream World that costs extra but our package had entry included. It's probably similar to Snow City in Singapore. You experience sub zero temperatures - always a novelty in tropical cities.

They give you boots and a jacket to shield you from the cold but unfortunately, as you can see from the picture on the right, we were wearing bermudas so our legs were freezing!

The highlight of Snow Town is the snow slope, where you sit on an inflatable snow tube and slide down. It's fun but pulling the snow tube up the stairs is quite a chore, especially when you have frozen hands and the handles of the snow tube are ringed with ice.










There are many other rides in Dream World, but some of them, like the go-kart and bumper cars, have a height requirement that Andre didn't meet so he was pretty disappointed about that. There's even a section with rides for toddlers and little kids so I guess there's something for everyone!

The lunch buffet that came with the package is apparently a standard for tour groups so though the food was ok, the typical kiasu rush and queues were rather off-putting. However, it did save us the trouble of finding our own lunch (didn't see many great options in the park) so I can't complain.

As we were walking towards the exit, we came by the Giant's House which was quite interestingly done and obviously based on the story of Jack and the Beanstalk.
















The only drawback of taking the package is that you have to leave by 3pm to catch the free transport. On the other hand, it probably beats leaving later and getting caught in the horrendous Bangkok traffic for a couple of hours.

We were back at Lilian's place by 4.30pm, leaving us plenty of time to rest and shower before dinner, which was at Je Ngor - a restaurant Lilian also previously blogged about. I didn't take many pictures of the food but what we had was pretty good. I think Lek Seafood was better but this was still a worthy contender. The sweet and sour pork, as well as the morning glory (again!) was excellent.










We finished the day on a sweet note - bagging a couple of slices of cake from a nearby cake shop, Secret Garden. This is their famous crepe cake. It's thin slices of crepe sandwiched between dollops of fresh cream and topped with strawberry syrup. Heaven on a plate!