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This is probably the testimony I've been most interested in reading about, and all I can say is wow. Now we see the real cause of the issue, not $25 an hour ride ops not pressing a button, what he have here is a fundamental failure of a person overseeing the park's rides. The head of engineering doesn't know how the rides work but is in the position to make judgment calls about them? If he doesn't know how the rides work then why on Earth would anyone have told him that there's a problem? Not like he can do anything with that info. He'd been at the park for 4 years, the fact he didn't know how to run the rides is either a lie to cover up the fact he knew it was fucked, or he is terrible at his job. What amazes me the most is he's still there. He's still not a qualified engineer. He still hasn't taken any steps to mitigate the fact he's not a qualified engineer. He seems like he thinks not knowing how to operate the rides is OK. Elsewhere in his testimony he says he wasn't sure who had the job of making sure the rides are safe. I'll give you a clue, Head of Engineering; its you. It's your department, you set the agenda. Your agenda didn't see you making the effort to get to know the rides you were managing. Had you have taken the smallest bit of interest you would have known the ride's control system was a mess. I have zero confidence in the safety of any rides he's in charge of, and to be honest I wouldn't trust him to change a tire on my car. He doesn't need to go because of PR, he needs to go because he's a danger to the community in his current role. I know on this forum we can get hung up on trivial stuff like 'the wall is ugly now the tree has been cut down' or 'drinks should be in meal deals' so important points can get lost. But here's the thing, this person was allowed to continue to be in a position of authority while having no idea about his area of responsibility and feeling no need the change that. Other staff have had problems with the computer systems and encountered 'push back' from Ardent about safety issues, but they were all people who legitimately tried to make it better before something happened. Right here is someone who straight up was the problem, and continues to be the problem. A bubble of pure incompetence at the top of the engineering food chain. I don't care who you are, you cannot fail that badly at a job and be given a second go at it.

New legislation proposal. Skeets law – If it takes longer to read a post than to drink a beer, then the post is too long.

Please if the post contains 20 photos... don’t quote them

Stole the photo.

IRide is coming along nicely. The facade is huge and slightly invasive but time will tell when it’s completed.

This is coming... to my home park!! Parc Astérix will be building an Intamin LSM multi-launch in 2021! A layout animation was shown today (well, tomorrow for you Aussies ha) at IAAPA: Features: 51m (167ft) high 4 launches, including a forward/backward/forward half-pipe with no stop 23 moments of airtime! Looks incredible and has so many daring features, but wait! Walibi Belgium has shown their work too, it's a Megacoaster with a twisty drop like Expedition GeForce... Two crazy awesome designs, both within driving distance from home! Intamin made a huge statement today, and kudos to the Compagnie des Alpes (which own both parks) for allowing the manufacturer to make their ambitions come true

You really can't compare the two. Cedar point works out to be about $110AUD at current exchange rates, for starters. Cedar Point has 17 operating coasters, compared to Movie World's 6. They had 3.6 million visitors in their 6 month season in 2017, an average of 19,000 people per day (based on 183 days). I cbf trying to locate MW's attendance (not on the wiki) but an article about a record attendance post-rivals opening cites 11,500 as a record for september attendance. Even if we assume that's an average for the whole year, it's half the attendance of CP, with less than half the big attractions to spread people around. It comes down to an economy of scale. With so few rides, and such slow operations, selling too many fasttracks would absolutely destroy their capacity. CP can afford to have many more fast passes sold, because they have more rides to spread the load around on. MW's pricepoint isn't just about making money. It used to be cheaper - and so many annual passholes complained when they lifted the price - because they would regularly buy the fasttrack (since admission was "free"), which made it harder for everyone else. Regular visitors aren't the market for fast track - it is targeted at people making a once in a lifetime (or at least a rare) visit to the park, who have limited time to spend in park and want to get everything done. If your price makes it viable for regular guests to buy every time, it's too cheap, which is why it was increased in the first place. I'd suggest the reduction is a recognition that they perhaps went too high, and so they're coming back down to see what impact it has on conversion. If they start selling out again, maybe this is too low. If they still have many available every day, then perhaps they can reduce it further. TL:DR - it's not a joke. its a clear example of responding to various market pressures whilst trying to find the best balance for your customers. Afterthought - @Richard can we add "passhole" to the forum dictionary (like SBNO) to define a passhole as "a self entitled annual passholder that thinks the park owes them some sort of special treatment just because they're an annual pass holder."

Vekoma today launched their new website just in time for the IAAPA in Orlando! The revamp not only displays their new logo and branding, but most importantly displays their exciting new concepts: https://www.vekoma.com Among the revelations are a layout for the Suspended Thrill Coaster, the next generation of SLCs: Finally some info about the Next Gen Flying coaster has been shown too: Also announced are an upcoming Next Gen Motorbike coaster, and the Lech Coaster (Bermuda Blitz) and Formula designs are finally present online too. (Lech photo by Flex) Super excited about the developments at Vekoma as you may know. Lech is my personal favourite coaster in Europe (above the likes of Helix, Taron, Expedition GeForce and Nemesis...) and the improvements in smoothness and ride elements from the company are spectacular. I actually met their new lead engineer Benjamin Bloemendaal for a video interview last September, and he's definitely very talented but also skilled at communicating his passion and ideas for designing rides (shameless self-advertisement there, but hey it's an insightful vid I swear!) 😍

In this new ad for the One Pass, there’s a sneak peak of the SDSC disco room. If that’s what it will be like, that is awesome 🙌🏻

Image taken on November 5 And here's what it used to look like for comparison

Notice the sign referring to 'Planet Square'? Does this mean the area of the rollercoaster's outdoor portion is now called 'Planet Square'? I do agree the exit looks like a "waste of space" but like @AlexB said credit to them for at least theming the exit. They just need to justify the lack of earthquake damage but like @themagician suggested, that is an easy solution to make. Maybe to liven up the exit and reinforce the theme in the exit just a little bit more they could add TV screens showing a loop of TV coverage of Superman's rescue of the MRT train, timed so the critical part is shown when guests hop off the ride?: As the train leaves the station, the TV is covered with static. This lasts 60 seconds, at which point the train should launch. The static is then replaced with a 'breaking news' bulletin. It shows the hosts explaining the situation to the audience whilst showing 'live' footage of damage from the earthquake such as a burst water main near the entry of a subway and a collapsed road with 2 police cars in it (referring to events seen on the ride's indoor portion). This lasts 30 seconds. The news bulletin concludes with 'live' footage of Superman bringing an MRT train into another (presumably safe) MRT station. This last 20 seconds and imitates the rollercoaster's brake run and exit station arrival. Superman then does a quick interview for the TV channel before flying away. The TV channel also quickly interviews a passenger of the MRT train. This is all shown as guests leave the ride. The hosts then return the channel back to 'live' coverage of a baseball game held in another far-away city. The baseball game footage lasts however long it needs to. The TV loop then restarts when the ride leaves the main station causing a reference to the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake.

If anyone is interested, I also have way too many videos of the demo/earthworks going on too. Also, the pile of dirt in front of Buzzsaw is the dirt being ferried in from WWW, it was about triple that size by the end of the day @Skeeta Yes, the dirt is being piled on top of the old station turntable area (as I've had a few people asking) Note: My reply didn't include every photo that was posted because I forums etiquette goodly

So I was at DW today checking out how they are going with iRide and gold rush. There’s been bulk earthworks going on. so here’s some photos of gold rush and TRRR in its current state

Repaint is completed. Work is now happening on the magnets And the reason for the carpark partly being sectioned off is because it’s for bus access. The bus stop is currently outside WWWs entry, when buses leave, they travel between the barricades using the left lane and cars use the right lane.

Reads, we're broke, and we are hoping you don't notice we went with the cheap and nasty options. Village are like a monkey who won’t let go of the banana to get it’s hand out. Over an over and over I say, thousands and thousands of people on the coast at Christmas willing and wanting to spend money and MW shuts the gate at six.

They have a custom coaster section - so they will build you whatever you like. That said, they weren't really selling many (if any) boomerangs anyway. There are so many of them at various parks, and some that have been removed and put in storage, that it is cheaper to buy one second-hand from another park or for a chain like Six Flags to move them between parks. But here's some possible reasons for why they wouldn't be making them anymore: Vekoma is now owned by S&S Worldwide - who produce 4D Freespins, El-Locos, and other Small Footprint launch coasters that are more exciting, smoother, and more popular than boomerangs. Most of the images on the website seem to indicate that Vekoma is abandoning the Arrow-style track design (wheels running inside the track like on SLCs and boomerangs) in favour of their new track design that makes better track profiling possible for a smoother ride and more exciting elements. The exception appears to be Mine Train coasters, but they have a different track design anyway. Offering new rides using the new track design means culling old designs that might be cheaper. If you want to sell a more expensive (but better) product, you simply stop offering an cheaper alternative. This also streamlines fabrication by focusing on one style of track and train. Vekoma seem to be targeting a 'mid-thrill' market rather than trying to out-thrill their competitors. Fun, family-style rides with a couple of 'thrill' elements that Parents and Tweens/teens can enjoy together. This is something that a lot of parks in Asia will be wanting. These reasons might be completely correct or completely wrong. It's just speculative reasoning on my part. But personally, I'm excited to see some new designs and better technology from Vekoma. They've been installing the same painful coasters all over the world for decades and trying to 'fix' them with new train designs, while companies like Gerstlauer and Mack eclipsed them on almost every front. I think some of these new rides would be a great fit for parks like Dreamworld and Sea World. Dreamworld could create an 'aviation' themed area with a flying coaster, the iRide and Tailspin. Sea World is not a 'thrill' park, so Thunderbird model would be a great fit (especially if MW removes AA in the coming years).

It is indeed the travelling Rebel that will be going into the park. Not sure when but Gumbuya have bought it.

Another good interview at IAAPA to share! This time it's Maximilian Roeser from Mack Rides answering questions for Theme Park Crazy. Max is definitely passionate about the industry - approachable but also brilliant in knowing how to communicate the great work of his company. Mack is ceetainly having a great momentum building some high-scale rides, I'm certainly curious to try some of these in the near future. Maybe coming to Movie World to see you then

So many legal experts on Parkz sometimes I have to double check I'm not drunk and accidently clicked on my solicitor’s page, Weiner and Cox Attorneys at Law.

Another Dreamworld executive has taken to the stand and blamed the ride op. Such a disgraceful attitude. Anyone blaming the ops needs to get out if the industry pronto. You can't have a dangerous ride and that requires intervention to make it safe and then blame the staff member for not intervening, particularly a new staff member, particularly when intervention was not straight forward.

From Disneyandmore.com.. http://disneyandmore.blogspot.com/2018/11/iaapa-2018-bob-chapek-unveil-design-of.html?m=1 IAAPA 2018 : Bob Chapek Unveil Design of Epcot Guardians of Galaxy Coaster, Ride Vehicle Test Video, More...

Village Roadshow Theme Parks to launch biggest Summer Ever with new Attractions, Shows and Experiences Village Roadshow Theme Parks is set for its biggest summer ever with a host of exciting new attractions, experiences and shows opening across its premier Gold Coast locations. Click here to continue reading

Am I the only one noticing that Village seems to have forgotten they have another park at the Oxenford precinct? Constrictor - installed 2012, and WetNWild Junior - installed 2014 were their last major investments in WNW GC. Meanwhile they continue to silently erase rides from people's memories or keep them closed, without replacement.

Angus Hutchins Former Ardent Safety Manager No longer working at the park. Mr Hutchins states that when he started in the company, there was only 1 safety system in place to keep track of all safety related documents. Me Hutchins states that historical safety data wasn’t uploaded to safety systems, only new safety data would go into the database. Mr Hutchins only became aware of the 2001 incident on TRR when his solicitor showed him the incident report, in late 2017. Mr Hutchins states that annual holistic maintenance was thrown between the safety and maintenance departments as both departments thought the other was in charge of it. JAK an external auditing company was then approached to complete this maintenance. Mr Hutchins states that there was a lot confusion about which departments were responsible for what. Departments would often assume other departments would be in charge of something that they weren’t. Mr Hutchins mentioned that when Bob Tan (head of engineering) came into his role, he often wouldn’t be questioned when he made decisions as he was known as the “yoda” of that role. Also, in regards to Dreamworld and the documents issue. It was requested during the last hearing that those documents be provided well before this hearing started after the delays caused with the last hearing. DW ignored that and submitted all the documents at the very last minute again. Mr Hutchins was well aware of the issue where Dreamworld safety teams were working reactively no proactively and were heavily under resourced. Mr Hutchins had brought it to the attention of previous CEO’s including Craig Davidson. Mr Davidson agreed with Mr Hutchins but no extra resources were provided. After the incident, 4 new staff members were brought in to help with the workload in that role. After Mr Tan finished his role within the park, all of his duties were handed to the safety department. Mr Tan’s duties included registering, inspecting and paying for the registration of plant equipment. Prior to this, Mr Tan undertook all plant inspections and registrations. After Mr Tan finished at the park, Chris Deaves then started looking for a replacement for that role, it took months before the role was filled. Mr Hutchins states that it took so long to find a replacement as they were looking for a suitably qualified and insured engineer. Mr Hutchins was aware that the ride was not registered from January 2016 until the incident in August 2016 but allowed the ride to continue to operate. Mr Hutchins believed that the systems in place would take care of maintenance instead of sending out a maintenance staff member to check what maintenance was needed.

You only have to look at Shanghai Pirates to see what’s next... the use of various technical effect mediums to enhance a physical ride experience. Universal are pushing the limits of technology and honestly the results suck! There is nothing immersive about being parked in front of a projection with 3D glasses no matter how clever. An amazing automated, animatronic experience in a practical set will always be far superior to any techno gadgetry. The technological development is in the delivery of audiences through that environment and the realism and reliability of those ‘sets’ IMO