Vans are Big :P (Beware Taronga Zoo Parking)

[The_Hawk]

I took the family to Taronga Zoo today and tried to park in their carpark while driving Dexter ... next time I will be taking the Golf instead I think. It's just amazing how much bigger than just about everything else on the road a Multivan is.

While their carpark says it's good for 2.2M it felt bloody close in a 2M van. But I'm getting used to driving under those conditions, the real issue was the damn ramps up and down the levels. I had to reverse on nearly every downward ramp to get enough clearance to get down the ramps. Even going up was very hit and miss with some F#$%wit parked at the very top level in a non-parking spot blocking half the entry and forcing me to mount the kerb to get past (not that I didn't drive over a couple otherwise). With my eye in the mirror I swear I had mm's of clearance to the rear quarter panel a couple of times.

It was seriously a nightmare, I had visions of stopping in the middle of the carpark and just waiting till every car had left so I had room to swing into the stupidly narrow ramps. I don't even know if I would have been able to get into a space had I been able to find one. In the end we got street parking and all was well with the world, but yeah... be careful if your thinking of going there is a Van.

Edit: I forgot to add, I managed to get out with only a few scrapes on the rear rubber (maybe a small scratch on one of the rims, but it's only tiny). A minor miracle, I think both of us thought we had scraped something... although we both thought different sides