The Blue Mountains is an area to the west of Sydney that is has some really amazing views.... and Scenic World caters to the tourist crowd that prefers to bus in, and then ride on some cable-cars to drink in the views in a sort of curated sort of experience. My mum had done this previously with some friends, and she was pretty keen to take us on this trip...
... personally, we have driven to lookouts and done walks in the old fashioned way, and I have to say, I sort of prefer that! But each to their own!
The first experience with Scenic World is... the line to get in. It is pretty busy, and you have to book tickets to get in at a certain time. Given that it was roughly a 3 hour travel to get to here via train and bus from Sydney, we left a bit of buffer time... which meant that we arrived about half an hour before our check-in time. And we were just told to wait... even though there was no line yet! Sigh... Australian beauracray...
... but we did get to spend the time with these massive cicadas! Which absolutely freaked out my daughters...
Once you are in, there are essentially four "attractions", of which 3 are trains/cable cars of some sort... and the last is a old school elevated board walk.
We went straight for the train... it is supposed to be the steepest rail line at around 52 degrees. And we had to wait...
But at least there was some pretty nice views to see whilst we were waiting... this was the glass bottomed cable car, which seemed to be the biggest attraction, and one that we ended up skipping because the lines were so long due to constantly arriving tour-groups.
Back to the train... four to a row, and everything was done in quite an orderly and efficient manner!
... and you start fairly normally, but then it drops off pretty sharply! Through the old mine shaft, and then opening out into a pretty nice view between two steep mountain walls.
Yep, I would definitely prefer to live here rather than in Sydney!
Some information about the Scenic Rail line...
... and this is the original rail design. It was mostly for shipping coal up the slope and off to Sydney, but some runs took passengers in this passenger car instead.
One of the coal mine entrances...
From here we took the Scenic Walk... an elevated board-walk through the forested area of the Blue Mountains. It is such a beautiful area... and largely populated by dinosaurs! I think they were trying to recreate the old prehistoric feel of the area... but it ended up being a bit comical. Especially with SOOOO many dinosaurs... in the old scaley versions instead of the modern feathered style!
... and we finally reached the cable car which would take us back up to the Scenic World Hub.
Again, some pretty nice views from the cable car... but again, I would prefer the old walking and then standing on a huge rock near the edge... away from all the crowds!
