Theme parks holiday is not really my cup of tea, but having primary school age children, I just have to make an effort to organise one. As it turned out, it really was quite fun and the kids just love it! They still talked about the rides weeks later.

Lots of rides at Movie World, be entertained by the Hollywood Stunt Drivers (where did they learn to drive like that?), have fun at the 4D cinema. My eight year old daughter, Fay went on as many rides as she could. This is her strategy: scream as loud as you could BEFORE the ride even started and just screamed for the whole time of the ride with both eyes closed! She came out of every ride with a BIG smile and claimed she felt really good!

Sea World is more relaxing as we spent most time watching live shows by the stars - dolphins and sealion. You get to touch lots of sea creatures including baby stingray which Fay was too scared to touch

Wet'n'Wild was rated the best of the three parks we visited. They were either waiting in the queue or in the water somewhere. Personally I think this park is the best value for money.

The only issue I have with theme parks is food and drink.  They don't allow you to bring in and they charge an arm and an leg for food and drink that are below average in my view.

Gold Coast is more than just theme parks, there are a few national parks which we didn't get to visit. We drove to Byron Bay in NSW for a day trip.

There are other theme parks which we didn't visit. (I can only take that many in a week!) One place I would highly recommend is Harbour Town Outlet Shopping Centre. I am not much of a shopper, rarely do I plan a shopping trip for my vacation. My plan was to spend half a day at the shopping town to unwind from all the excitement of theme parks of past days, I ended up spending a day and didn't even manage to visit half the shops! But I did pick up lots of bargains.