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But if the boats still bottom out through the flume section of the ride, I definitely don’t think things have been ironed out. It makes the experience so uncomfortable and turned this ride from a ‘must do’ into a ‘if the queue isn’t too long’.

@DaptoFunlandGuy here you go! Photos by @Theme Park Girl Considering there are lighting rigs set up in these photos and the night markets weren’t on this weekend, my guess is this was all set up for a private event. They’ve also got the DWF Gala at the start of next month which will be held in Rivertown/Tiger Island.

Perhaps you could share the photos? There's plenty of world class theme parks that use festoon lights for night lighting certain areas. I doubt they're all sourced from bunnings though, and not necessarily a cheap option for sure... In Rivertown's case, given Murray built an entire bush-mechanic's workshop, is it that unreasonable to think that maybe they figured out how to string up some lights? Honestly - without even seeing it, it's a far better option and fits the atmosphere of Rivertown. If they wanted to be cheap they could have just mounted a few LED floodlights on the existing buildings and ruined the feel of the area entirely. guarantee they'd have been cheaper too. I'll wait until I see it in person but given your recent post history i'm inclined to reserve judgment.

I believe they reprofiled the flume too, so the heavier boats don't exactly 'float' so much as they bump & roll down the trough. I don't know if this effects the reliability in any way, but i'm pretty sure it's another thing they did in the "upgrades".

Was horrific footage to see, but you cannot compare the shoddy workmanship (can you still say workmanship?) that is apparent there, and what we will have with King Claw. One’s a Chinese manufactured carnival style ride in a country with what I’d imagine to be fairly lax govt or industry body oversight, and one is a permanent Intamin manufacture, installed and to be tested under the rigours of Australian safety and operational practices. the apparent ride op running out the gate and away from the accident rather than attending to the injured also fills me with confidence about the quality of operations at the park…

With Scooby shut, WWF is probably the most complex ride the park has in terms of the number of unique parts (possibly superman might be more complex). It's also a lot easier to set off ride faults and safety faults. The optical sensors (rather than inductive sensors used on roller coasters) can be set off by leaves and birds, which can typically only be resolved by an evac and a safety block reset. Or stacking too many boats behind the station or at the base of the lifts causes a fault that needs maintenance to reset. Changes to the procedures in recent years (such as turning off the pumps to do an evac) also mean that downtime lasts longer. The new boats are heavier, and have come with a few issues, but those have been mostly ironed out.

With that type of ride model it’s seperate pieces joined together, but something like this wouldn’t happen on a ride like King Claw because it’s a completely different design and engineering. My take on that incident is either the ride wasn’t designed correctly, it’s not been maintained properly or (if it’s a travelling model) it wasn’t built properly.

The ride is manufactured by Sinorides, and appear to be a chinese company, with a very extensive portfolio. https://www.sinorides.com/360-large-pendulum-rides/ This seems like a complete accident and should be investigated extremely thoroughly because for the ride to snap like that, multiple welds and reinforcements have failed. (This is the smaller model of the ride, i'm assuming the one in the video is the same scaled up as there is a boxy panel covering how it attaches to the axel/swingy bit) The scope of these rides are very very different. One of them is a permanent fixed attraction and the other one looks like it could be moved to a different park each week. King Claw is manufactured by INTAMIN, whereas i've never heard of—and i'm sure no one here has heard of— Sinorides. Most of these gyro swings are manufactured by Zamperla and INTAMIN, both are very reputable companies in the Amusement Ride and Coaster Space. The new one opening at Six flags Qiddiya is Zamperla iirc. It won't stop me from going on gyro swings, I've been on a bunch and always felt safe. But everyone has their own reactions to events like these happening.

In Green Mountain Park in Saudi Arabia, a few days ago, a similar ride to this snapped in half mid-ride, leaving at least 23 injured (3 critically). X/Twitter Video - https://x.com/i/status/1950966029393261010 It literally looks like the beam snapped in half! 😶 I never knew this was even realistically possible as i thought the beam was in one piece? What maintenance failures would have lead to this happening? Do you think this will deter people from riding it at Dreamworld?

Nope because I don’t work at the park. But I do know it used to barely have any downtime time and since they got these new boats it has a lot more downtime and seems to be very temperamental

All I know is when they replaced the boats with new ones, they have had tons of Maintenance issues and often were running the boats at a reduced capacity like the front 2 seats were closed for a while.

Can anyone give a detailed explanation for why it is not reliable, and how it became that way?

Looks like they have added Bunnings festoon lights around jungle rush . A cheap fix to perhaps a lighting concern at night . World class theming there ? question as only seen photos and don’t know what it looks like in person yet

Is "technical delay" a new downtime excuse?

The seats are now fitted

Definitely not, it used to be one of the most reliable. The park has ruined this ride.

This is probably the most unreliable Ride at Movie World now with doomsday gone has it always been this bad?

I agree! Anyway…. to get these topic back on track WWF reopened a couple days ago and had closed for the weekend due to technical delays

They are running a hundred laps (or more) a day in testing before anyone even sets foot inside a car. It's pretty much the most intensive run time a ride ever experiences because you don't have the cycling down time experienced by guests getting off/on. You are punishing the ride with the shortest dispatches for hours on end, for days on end, it's like a giant torture test. THEN you switch to live testing with guests in it. The problems usually happen when the test period is cut short because you're either behind schedule trying to make up time or operations put pressure on you to get it open as soon as possible. It's not an issue of safety so it's ok to physically open, but nothing looks worse for maintenance teams when a ride breaks down, sometimes hours after it was reopened. Sadly, often people making decisions much higher up don't seem to place must stock in the public image your park projects to members of the public. So rather than drill it until you're sure the major kinks and bugs are worked out, it's often experiencing situations that make everyone look like amateurs and leave members of the public questioning if it's actually safe and do their maintenance teams know what they are doing.

And I simply stated the facts as to why it took so long and happened like it did. At no point did I say you can't split the train or it was impossible. I said there was no procedure in place to do it, they had nothing to attach the car segments to and even when it was considered it was decided it was more disruptive to do so. Pro tip. Nothing. And I mean NOTHING is attempted unless there is a procedure to follow. You know who dictated the whole process? Mack. Know who had no procedure in place for removing a train? Good guess. One big problem with your whole scenario. The train isn't secured suspended from lifting equipment. It has to be clamped and anchored. It's also incredibly difficult to remove a pin or axle from a loaded component. You've got the whole train suspended perfectly in the air, you are overestimating the level of control you have. A regular evac from GL (and every other coaster really) sees track clamps fitted around multiple axles to prevent the train from moving, then its also tied off with a puller/come along as a secondary measure. Bit different doing what you have to do to get people in danger off a train vs putting employees in harm's way trying to split the train. Quite simply, it was deemed risky. You can't sit the train on any of the running gear, place it back in the maintenance bay and return it to service. You have to completely remove the wheel carrier to remove it from the track, so that just leaves the spindles sticking out to bottom. Everything you remove, all the stuff you are suggesting to just sit it on now has to be rebuilt and reassembled. You can unbolt the wheel assemblies relatively easy and pull the axle pins out, but the spindles are not coming out in the field. They take a considerable amount of force to drive the king pin out. I'm not even sure if they would be ok reusing the main spindles if you were to sit the train on top of them as it's not something that is ever done, so best case expect weeks of rebuild time, maybe more if they don't have replacement bearings and fasteners in stock to reassemble wheel carriers, or months because they don't keep a whole trains worth of spindles just sitting there on the shelf. They are usually removed, sent for crack inspection and returned to service. You could maybe get it off the track quicker, but then what? Sit out of service for longer, incur greater costs in actually reassembling the train? Again, it stalling was not an issue with the train or any sort of mechanical failure, so it was in a state that could return it to service if you didn't pull it apart. Anyway. I'm not going to argue any further. I was trying to explain the realities of the situation faced, not how you would do it better now without any of the external factors they had to consider at the time.

It’d be pretty dumb to open the ride right as the peak period starts with all the kinks the ride will have initially from the new trains and braking systems. Hope it opens around October-November to give the ride time to be running as good as it can come Boxing Day.

Id expect it to be online start-middle December as schools end for the year, Boxing Day at the very latest. The testing and commissioning process will take a while given the extent of the alterations but they’ve had three years to plan for this. Running at full capacity from Boxing Day is a non negotiable

Is it possible they could get it ready for Fright Nights instead?

I think they mean Scooby Doo Where Are You. Which aired September 13 1969. Side note, it's 50th anniversary fell on a Friday.

1. The film and ride opened out in June 2002, MW did a post about it for the anniversary. 2. It’s already been announced for late 2025, so more likely December.