Ben Brennan: The first thing an Aussie kid will say when Mum and Dad announce a trip to Adelaide is ‘why?’

It’s tempting to laugh, but Disneyland Adelaide might actually be the brightest idea since we sacked Old Mate, writes Ben Brennan.

The most surprising thing about the harebrained idea to build a Disneyland in Adelaide was that anyone in SA tourism circles had the good sense to suggest it in the first place.

When I was about nine, my parents made the terrific mistake of taking me and my younger brother on a trip to one of SA’s finest drawcards, the Clare Valley.

Predictably, we kids hated it.

Wine tastings are not attractive to nine-year-olds. In fact, none of SA’s iconic attractions have much to offer nine-year-olds.

When we weren’t bouncing off the walls of wineries or Auburn motel rooms, we were nagging to go to detour to Magic Mountain in Adelaide.

Our beaten-down parents eventually relented and the holiday was saved.

21st century whining kids dragged behind wining parents will have no such luck though. SA now caters almost exclusively to an older crowd.

The kind of tourist attractions that excite kids – and make family holidays desirable – are more likely to get torn down than put up.

The $32m Steel Taipan roller coaster at Dreamworld in Queensland.

Currently the first thing an Aussie kid is likely to say when Mum and Dad announce a family trip to the City of Churches is “why” followed quickly by, “Can’t we go to Queensland instead?”

A rollercoaster at the top of a shopping centre was the sort of thing you could use to excite youngsters from Broome to Balmain. But Dazzeland had to go too.

Puzzle Park is now a housing development waiting to happen when the great Murray Bridge tree change finally blooms. Dundee’s Wildlife Park next door burned down and has been re-imagined as a pub.

We have the river, of course (which probably counts as my favourite place on this planet), but at the moment most of Australia’s east coast has seen enough from rivers to last them a lifetime.

Perhaps Disneyland is setting our sights too high, but until SA realises that it needs at least one big ticket tourist attraction that is actually attractive to children, then we need to just admit that those infamous old Old Mate ads really were pitching to our core market.

Parents with kids, for the most part, know better than to think a winery with a tyre swing counts as a family-friendly attraction.

Magic Mountain amusement park at Glenelg beach.

South Australia’s idea of a kid-friendly tourist trap in the 2020s is a gastropub with a slippery dip or a winery with a patch of grass out of earshot of the tasting bar. The best thing the Barossa has to offer anyone under 18 is the vague promise that they might get to watch grass grow.

Of course, there’s a giant rocking horse nearby. But it doesn’t rock, and is thus not likely to form the centrepiece of any campaigns to reach this massive missing segment of the tourist market

The surf is negligible, at least in the city where the airport is. We used to have an aquarium but now there’s just one in Sydney.

We’ve got very good zoos. But Dubbo and Werribee have some too, making the drawing power for New South Welsh and Victorian families dubious.

And none of this is intended to play down the magnificent investments our local councils have made in perma-pine play equipment. Adventure playgrounds are great. They’re also everywhere now – including Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Perth, Darwin, Hobart and Canberra.

Eyre Peninsula.

South Australia is spectacular if you haven’t had kids yet or they’re old enough to stay home.

The Eyre Peninsula’s beaches are otherworldly. Our food really is first class. The wine is world class. The Fringe is unmatched anywhere on Earth.

But were those the sorts of things you used to tell your classmates about when you got home from holidays as a kid?

If courting the House of Mouse really is a bridge too far, may I humbly suggest we start by building the world’s biggest water slide off the end of the Brighton jetty. Anything that might make a kid nag to come to Adelaide would be a good start.

But until then, you can shove your wine bar up your activated laneway as far as anyone under 50 with a family is concerned.

They’d rather go to Disneyland.