As I’m sitting at the Boardwalk restaurant/bar sipping some Happy Hour champagne and toasting my arrival to Queenstown I spy a jet boat that is painted like a leopard shark. I had discovered this is the Hydro Attack tour. I’m posting pics on Facebook of the lake view and talking about this jet boat ride, thinking I want to do this. My friends are saying yes, yes do it! Like I needed that much convincing 😉
I check around for good pricing and I see a $20 off discount. This amounts to $89 USD for the early bird ride at 9:30am. I sign up for the next day. The tour kiosk is right on the main Queenstown lakefront. The water is rough that day and we get a boat ride over to some calmer waters in the lake. That boat ride in itself was thrilling as the boat Captain was jumping a few waves.
As we pull up to a calm spot we can see two jet boats pull up to us. One is a leopard and one is a black shark. I’m second to go so I get the black shark. I’m told they both have the same engines so no difference in performance.
The jet boat skims around, turns sideways, goes underwater, then leaps out of the water. Quite a unique and thrilling experience. There’s a GoPro camera taking pics of your facial expressions.
We stop for a few seconds and the jet boat driver opens the canopy to let in some fresh cool air. We chat for a minute then resume our thrill ride. After my ride (~20min in Jet boat) you’re brought back to the taxi boat and watch the others get into the shark boats and jet around. There were 7 of us total and two shark jets serving us. All-in-all we had a nice taxi boat ride as well as watching the others as part of the tour.
Of course I had to purchase the pics and video which they provided on USB stick. It cost $45NZ which is about $29 USD.
What a way to start the day!
