A ride on the Anaconda…

A bit on the Anaconda – – – It is one of the only three roller coasters manufactured by Giovanola… It includes five inversions and reaches a maximum g-force of 3.5G (which after the ride I could totally still feel — I felt light-headed for at least an hour afterwards…)!!!

But it was super great fun!!! 😀

The build-up of anticipation – the calm before the amazingness!!!

The first inversion…

The third inversion…

I never mentioned that all my Gold Reef City photos was taken with my little snapper… Because who wants to carry a big camera around at a theme park all day?? 😉 **

Replica stations…

Two more replica buildings from Gold Reef City Theme Park… They are gorgeous!! Makes me wonder what it would have been like living in that era!!! 🙂 **

Johannesburg Stock Exchange

Gold Reef City Theme park is located on an old gold mine (for those of you that don’t know – Johannesburg is known as the ‘Place of Gold’ 😉 ). It is thus fitting that this theme park is themed around the gold rush on the Witwatersrand… A lot of the buildings are replicas, similar to the time…

With the discovery of gold in this region a need soon arose for a stock exchange. This is when the JSE (or Johannesburg Stock Exchange) was established. The JSE is the largest stock exchange in Africa & presently the 16th largest stock exchange worldwide!! 😀

Establishment of the JSE…

The building – plaque to the left of the door…

If I understand correctly this building became too small within three years of opening… Small beginnings… Who knew!! 😉

Thought a piece of history would be interesting with today’s post!! Hope you enjoyed it!! Have a wonderful weekend everyone!! 😀 **

Big Ferris Wheel…

Ok, BIG disappointment – The Big Wheel: also closed for maintenance!!! 😦 I was really looking forward to getting up a little off the ground to get a few shots to practise my tilt-shift processing with… Straight out of luck!! 😦

Nevertheless, I took a few shots of the wheel itself!! – – – from a grounded position – – – 😉

I’m not a huge fan of the floating soccer balls – I prefer the traditional balloons… This was probably done for the world cup back in 2010 (or was it always this way??) … 🙂 **

Tower of Terror…

Last weekend we enjoyed a laid-back Sunday at the Gold Reef City Theme Park!!! We bought our groupon vouchers & had a very enjoyable day at the theme park!! 🙂 I did understand why they had the special on though – seeing that it is winter, a lot of the rides were not open… I suppose maintenance is probably important at places like this… 😉

Well, over the next couple of days I’ll share a few of the photos I took… First off: Tower of Terror (closed due maintenance!!) 😦 Although I would NEVER go on such an extreme ride… – it features a 50m, 90­° drop and a positive g-force of 6.3G !!! A whole lot of craziness!!! 😀

Tower of Terror!!!

If you google it, you get quite a lot of videos & links to this rollercoaster!!! Extraodinary engineering in these rides… I was amazed all day!!! 🙂 **