The history of Parkz dates back to 2002.
Up until early 2002, there was no communities dedicated to Australian theme parks. This changed with the launch of Total Thrills (www.totalthrills.com) in 2002. What started as some forums focusing on some of Australia's major theme parks slowly over the next two years grew into an unparalleled resource for theme park content. The actual website was little more than a collection of personal photos taken at parks across Australia, but over time it started to include construction coverage of the latest new attractions at parks while the community grew and became an immensely popular place for Australian theme park discussion.
In mid-2003 it became apparent that with nearly every single park in Australia covered in great detail by Total Thrills, its future didn't leave much room for more expansion. With this, development commenced on a website that was to combine the photography of Total Thrills with a more overall take on the theme park world. From there, Roller-Coaster.com.au was born and launched approximately six months later in early 2004. Photos here made up only a small portion of the site with dozens of videos, an unparalleled database of every park, roller coaster and attraction in Australia, and a commitment to being at the forefront of theme park news and the latest happenings. Over the next few years, Roller-Coaster.com.au amassed thousands of photos, and hundreds of news articles with countless worlds-firsts and scoops. As the site grew over the years, the journalistic style was perfected and eventually we opened the gates to allow any registered member to add or edit our database entries and submit their own articles, utilising a behind-the-scenes approval system to ensure that content met our exacting standards before publishing.
Once again, Roller-Coaster.com.au, like its predecessor, came to a crossroads. The site was undeniably at the forefront of the Australian theme park world and a desire grew to utilise this strong platform to allow the site to achieve bigger and better things; namely to build on the impressive coverage of Australian theme parks to take on International coverage. Development on what was to become Parkz commenced in late 2006 and took nearly a year to complete, calling for a very complex system to allow much larger scope. Unlike Roller-Coaster.com.au before it, Parkz was to be a 100% community driven website with any user able to add their own photos, write their own articles and add new database entries.
What you see before you is where this journey has taken us since 2002. Every photo a member adds, every article that is written is contributing to this very much collective and communal future.
