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Thank you everyone for the great feedback. I think it turned out well. It is always an interesting journey from idea to conceptual drawings and then onto delivery. Budgets are always a challenge and there are still a few tweaks to get it the way I would like it but it is 95% there and we are all extremely pleased with the result. Here's hoping for strong growth this season so we can carry on upgrading and improving. I should note that aside from talking credit for the original idea for the theme the congrats should be spread to include Atomiq who produced the conceptual designs, Theme builders over in the Philipines for all of the fiberglass theming, creative works who painted 80% of the theming and our Engineering and Maintenance team led by the dynamo that is Chris "Stimmo" Stimson. The project wouldn't have been possible without the continued financial support and vision of our Board. Watching the first rafts go down on Friday morning, seeing the excitement and trepidation, hearing the excited screams of guests as they entered the first drop from the launch, it was good to think that the slide will entertain so many hundreds of thousands (possibly millions) during its life span and will probably still be delivering those wows in decades to come.

In the US, responsibility for theme park and amusement park rides (both fixed and travelling) generally falls to either OSHA or the state department of agriculture. It's not as odd as you'd think - as the state dept of agriculture is usually the body responsible for the state (agricultural) fair - like Ekka as an example. The fair is (traditionally) an agricultural affair - which is why the RNA showgrounds (home of the Ekka) is short for 'Royal National Agricultural and Industrial Association Queensland'. Rides first appeared at these shows, and so (in the US) the responsibility for administration and compliance fell to these state agriculture bodies. When theme parks kept the trend going, the similarities led to them keeping responsibility for it.

The lack of serious injuries and media interest are two factors that will likely limit the amount of publicly accessible information regarding the incident. Someone with intimate knowledge of OHS might be able to answer this better, but I wouldn't hold my breath for the kind of reports that surface from US incidents. At the end of the day it has been closed long enough to suggest that it's more than a simple maintenance or procedural issue. That there's likely a design or fabrication issue that has had to be rectified. When it does reopen it will have satisfied the park, their investors, lawyers and insurers, plus S&S and their investors, lawyers and insurers. I'd personally take this implicit tick of approval over a government commissioned report. An in-depth report would be interesting to read, but I suspect it would say exactly what I've said above, along with 50 pages of metallurgy test results.

Yeah, Disney wasn't so bad, but people were going nuts for the whole Halloween thing at USJ. They must have 3 parades a day at these parks. The whole Harry Potter Wizarding World was great and there are always those little shows and street performances to watch. The wait times are always less than the advertised amount, but the Japanese are professional queuers. They're also incredibly polite.