The Zorb & the Luge

The things that I enjoyed most on the trip were the fun things that we did. You see, there were a few… activities that we did. XD But I’m leaving the best two activities for the next post, because I wrote quite a lot for this two activities, because it’s not such a common or well-known activity.

The Zorb is a bit like a fun roller coaster, & it’s in Rotorua (one of the places we went in NZ), & there seems to be only one place which offers this in NZ, & it’s nowhere near anything else. There was another well-known place that was the closest to the Zorb (as in, within walking distance), but in my opinion, that place was pretty much isolated. Makes me wonder how people would know about it, or even be able to go there, since it seems quite inaccessible. But it was awarded the best tourism award or something like that, so it must be good, I suppose. & probably cos the attractions are all somewhere further away from the residence areas, so it's normal, I guess.

The Zorb was a new experience. But it’s really hard to explain. Basically, you sit in this huge, transparent ball, & you roll down in it (because the place is beside a hill, so you roll all the way down the hill). So, there are three kinds of Zorb, but I don’t know what’s the third one, because it was not available because of the wind conditions, but the second one, which we thought was available for us actually couldn’t be applied in the same way because there’s a height limit. >_>; The height limit is five feet five, & I’m only five feet, so irritating. But it was also in a good way, cos then I had no choice but to choose the first one, which actually, I did spend time thinking about whether first or second is better, & I chose the first anyway, but after realizing that I couldn’t sit in the second one, I was a bit irritated after fretting so much over which Zorb may be better to make my decision.

The first one

The second one

I'm not sure about the 2nd pic, but the 1st pic is the exact place where we went, so I was quite happy to find that pic. ;-D

The main difference between the first & second one, is that the first one is wet, & the second one is dry. Also, the first one is cheaper, by $9. The second one, seems to have a chair-like thing in the ball (as you can see in the picture), for you to sit in, & you’ve to hold on to the things places for you at the top, so that’s supposedly why there’s a height limit, because short people like me shouldn’t be able to reach it. T_T; But all you do is sit in the chair anyway, & turn upside down forwards, so it really seemed just like a roller coaster.

Whereas the first one, seems like a new experience. You see, supposedly, they put soap water (I couldn’t feel it though, it seemed like normal water to me) in the ball & you’re going to be sliding & slipping around in the ball while you roll down the hill. The thing that was really fun was that (I didn’t know it at the time I chose it though) the way you go down the hill would be in a zigzag, whereas the second one is just straight down. Also, another thing that I only noticed when going in the ball, is that you can’t really see outside the ball, so when it went in a zigzag, I had no idea which way I’d be rolling, so it was very fun.

The only thing was that we are in winter, you know, so the only drawback of choosing the wet one is that it’ll be freezing cold after that. Well, true, but I guess it didn’t matter so much, although I have had horrible memories & experiences of getting wet when it’s cold, so that was mainly why I hesitated to choose it.

Next, the Luge.

Ok, this is kinda a random pic, but I felt it was the best from the google search because that's what the Luge we were using exactly looked like, altho you may not be able to see it clearly lol ^^; also, my feet reached the end of the Luge whereas for this guy his knees are bent! shows how short I am ^^;

Hmm, I feel that it is a bit hard to explain the Luge as well, but basically, it is a ride, where you drive downhill the tracks, & the way the Luge is built (the object we’re driving in) is that it doesn’t need any petrol or anything, because it’s downhill all the way, & the only thing you can control on the Luge is the direction (left & right), & with the handle, you pull it forwards or backwards to control the speed. If you pull it backwards, you’re using the brakes.

Unfortunately, when we did the Luge, it started raining. In NZ, it rains a lot (I think 8 out of 10 days, which a lot of ppl seem to accidentally forget to mention to migraters & tourists), but we knew it already, because my uncle who migrated there was complaining about it. But for us, it only rained when we doing the Luge, & it may have rained on one or two other days when we were there, but we probably weren’t really doing anything outside at the time, so it didn’t bother us.

So, after you do the Luge, you are right at the bottom of the hill, so you’ve to take the chair-lift (which is what I always knew it as, but they call it the “gondola” which to me, reminds me more of that long boat in Venice). That was the horrible part, because a chair-lift is always slow, & it was raining, & it was cold, so we were shivering when we went up the thing. But when doing the Luge, it didn’t seem to affect us so much, but obviously it wouldn’t, because it was really fun. There were a number of people there also doing the Luge, mainly guys (there was a big group of them), but they all seemed to be prepared for the rainy weather because they wore water-proof jackets & all that, whereas I was just wearing a long-sleeved shirt lol. It was a bit funny though, cos we did the luge a few times, & when going up the chair-lift one of those times, it suddenly stopped, & I was kinda shouting, “NOOOOO~!!!” & then after that “WTH!!!!!” hahahahaha ^^ Then it started again, after a while of waiting. Imagine if we got stuck there though, that would’ve been horrible.

Supposedly, while doing the Luge, it was quite dangerous, & my dad felt that the one in Singapore would have more safely protection, hence more expensive that way, but I didn’t feel it was that dangerous, unless of course, your brakes don’t work, which could happen, because some of the brakes are a bit faulty. You see, the tracks have a number of corners, to make it more fun obviously. But most of the corners are right at the edge, so it makes you feel that if you’re too fast, you’d not be able to turn the corner & you’ll drive off the edge, & I’m not sure where you’d fall after that, but I assume it’ll be one of the tracks lower down, but it also may not be. They do give warnings though, as in, before you reach the corner, there’ll be big letters forming the word “STOP” on the road before the corner, or even a signboard on top of your head saying “STOP”.

But, you see, because we went 3 times, the first time, was when my bro went first & I went second, so cos he was so slow, I overtook him out of frustration. The second time we went, because my dad was trying to challenge & race my bro, in the end, we decided to race together (although I was a bit reluctant at first, cos I was scared to lose). & he let me go first, saying that he’ll be able to overtake me anyway. He never did bwahahahaha lol ^__^ Then, when we were both downhill (cos we wait for everyone to come down before going up together), I was laughing at him because he didn’t even seem close to me at all. & he said that I was driving too fast, & that it was dangerous. It was true that I was a bit faster & reckless than the first time, because I was trying to be faster, & was in danger of overturning the Luge a bit, but actually, it wasn’t that fast in my opinion either, just that it was a bit hard for me to grip the handle, after a while, my hands start to hurt, but of course, you have to still keep a strong grip on the handle.

Anyway, that's all for today. ;-)