The Big Red Car Ride is a Wiggles-themed kiddie ride, common in shopping centres in Australia, UK and America (which is hard to find) that has been reissued and revamped many times since it's original 1997 release.
Made and manufactured by Amutec Ltd. of Mablethorpe, Lincolnshire, U.K., in 1997, under licence from Wiggles Touring Pty Ltd. and exclusively distributed by Ride On! Entertainment.
The first of a handful of rides based upon the popular Australian children's band, this ride was the first to not have your average "START button activation". It featured a number of different buttons - each acting as a START button and playing a different Wiggles song as the ride audio loop. Also, some of this version may have the altered board.
This second ride was physically identical, apart from the addition of edited song loops, a newer control board to store more EEPROMs (though still recycled the announcements) and adding four new songs and buttons to match what was popular at the time. This was the most featured-filled ride of the three (the first version featured only the four songs on the top row of the interior, and the third version featured a mere three songs on a Ride On! Entertainment base), as it features eight - count 'em, eight - songs to choose from, all of which taken from popular Wiggles albums from their time.
The third and the fifth model (this one) used an original Amutec-built toy on a base previously honed by the Honey Pot Kart, a commercially flopped attempt at an interactive ride designed by a corporation in New Zealand. It featured a similar radio mechanism as the original, just losing one song to fit what would be on a new control board.
An updated model of every the Big Red Car ride, featuring a new dashboard, new buttons, and supposedly, new songs, all to represent the new Wiggles (Emma, Simon, Lachy, and Anthony) rather than the former (Greg/Sam, Murray, and Jeff). However, this unit's timer was unchanged and this unit kept the original song without warning, even with the title above the button stating differently!
This particular model is the first. Releases were in 1997, 2002, 2007, and 2017. The original 1997 model retained a small shell, contained four songs (We Like To Say Hello, Ride In My Big Red Car [stated as "Big Red Car"], Hot Potato and Wake Up Jeff), two horn buttons, and control boards and bases owned at the time by Amutec. (Sourced by S.Croz88)
Transcript to Start the Ride with a Song Jukebox (Amutec)[]
Amutec: Please select your song, press the start button now!
Greg: Hi everybody!
The Wiggles: We're the Wiggles!
Transcript to End the Ride (Amutec)[]
Amutec: Please ride again!
Attract Mode (V3 and V5 only)[]
Barry: The Big Red Car, the Boat and the Plane, will be here when you return again! Waiting just to hear you say...
The Wiggles: We're the Wiggles!
Barry & Jo Wigley: Hop on, let's play!
Transcript of the Attract Mode (KRA)[]
Greg: Hi, everybody!
The Wiggles: We're the Wiggles!
Announcer: Hop on, let's play!
Transcript of the Start and End of the Ride (KRA)[]
Start:
Announcer: When you select your song, the Big Red Car will move along! Please press a song button!
Ending:
Announcer: The next time you ride the Big Red Car, choose another song, and sing along with The Wiggles!
Closure[]
In August 2020, Dreamworld had announced that two rides will not open with the park, which is Flowrider and the Big Red Car ride.
Trivia[]
- The Big Red Car Kiddie Ride V2 was seen in "Hula Hoops".