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...Just four short years since 4 people were tragically killed on the Thunder River Rapids Ride at Dreamworld. ...it just writes itself!

I can confirm, whenever I take @AlexB to a theme park, I always change his nappy upon arrival.

We must also remember that Luna Park in Sydney has had a memorial for many years now, it’s tasteful, and there for those who want to see it, but for those who don’t, then they wouldn’t even know it’s there. There are a couple of ways this could proceed. Considering how hard this would be for all parties involved, it’s understandable that it might take a bit of time.

I investigated this heavily a few months ago when I got my new drone. The rules are pretty straightforward, but become incredibly muddled when airports, roads and private property come into play. As a general rule, you cannot fly any higher than 120 metres (about the height of the Giant Drop). There is also a rule about keeping 20 metres away from all vehicles, buildings and pedestrians. When it comes to the Seaworld helipads, you can fly within their radius (of 5.5km), however you must bring down the drone as soon as a helicopter takes off (regardless of where you are). My tip - fly to the eastern side of Seaworld Drive (at least 20 metres to the side of the road), to avoid any legal issues. I spoke to Bikash a few months back, and after a couple of incidents at the parks regarding drones, VRTP are quite strict on this issue. TLDR: Yes, it's safe to fly the drone, so long as you adhere to the Helipad rules and the 20m road/building rules.

Just heard from a reliable source (maintenance worker that very recently left) that Tower of Terror is most likely going to close because it can't be repaired anymore. - We know it's down for maintenance over the duration of the summer holidays which is extremely alarming. - The ride has recently been going down more than usual meaning it is running very inconsistantly. - They denied a refurbishement which the SFMM version received. - The TOT 2 store has been holding a 40 percent off sale for at least 4 months now indicating they are looking to sell all remaining TOT merchandise. My guess is that they are holding off on it's inevitable closing so that they can make the announcement of a new ride to soften the blow. Hopefully this doesn't happen as it's just going to make it harder for Dreamworld to be seen as making steps to win back guests. They need to replace it with something equally as ground breaking as TOT was at it's launch if anyone from the GP is going to be satisfied by this. *This is still a rumour at this point and anything could happen, but it does seem more likely than ever.

I thought Gaz wasn't allowed to just "find kids" anymore

That ambulant toilet is also a baby/ children’s change room. Considering we know Alexb has a child (he has posted about it before on parkz) it’s not out of the realm of possibility that he has taken his child in there to change a nappy is it? Nothing weird about that.

I feel too old for a place like that, but at the same time I really want to experience those old school water slides.

Thanks Naazon, The DJI Geo-map shows restricted flight areas - and of course Coolangatta and it's approaches are marked as you can see on the bottom-half of this picture - it does not extend up to the spit. As you say, helicopter landing zones are permitted flight areas, unless manned aircraft are in operation - Sea World helicopters don't usually operate outside of park hours, so early morning prior to 10, or post-closure after 5pm would be a safe bet, although you could fly at any time during the day provided you observed aircraft operations, and didn't fly over people. Again, I think even from 20 metres above the dunes would get some killer shots of the coaster construction.

Once the fine is paid, and the memorial installed, I hope this sad period in DW's history can be moved on from.

They were fined $3.6million https://www.news.com.au/national/queensland/courts-law/ardent-leisure-facing-multimillion-dollar-fine-for-2016-dreamworld-tragedy-that-killed-four/news-story/47f80b48864df0676a85578127c38b41 Edit: I didn't post the News.com.au story because it was rubbish. They just updated a previously earlier written story with the figure.

After pleading guilty, the sentencing/penalty will be handed down very shortly (court recommenced at 12:30pm). Prosecutors have asked for a fine of between $3-4 million which DW have stated they have the immediate capacity to pay (as you'd expect). https://www.goldcoastbulletin.com.au/truecrimeaustralia/police-courts/dreamworld-thunder-river-rapids-disaster-12yearolds-haunting-words/news-story/afaee97d0915cf9940679cc890a07d1c

Should be fine. From https://www.casa.gov.au/knowyourdrone/drone-rules I don't know if point 1 or 2 applies to SW, I'm assuming point 2, which then allows drones over 100grams, provided there are no helicopers taking off or landing.

When I was there sidecars were available but it appears they are limited to guests below 135cm. Single rider was presumably closed to allow for social distancing.

Only the horizontal loop version, which funnily enough you can already find at the Cockburn ARC

Though I'd probably leave that toilet available for people with mobility issues who might urgently need it.

The magicians name is Scott Williams. He took over from Arthur Coglan, the original magician. The park mascots were Ramondo the Rabbit and Spellzelda Witchypo. The tram shown in the later part of the video I think, went to a fruit farm attraction in NSW. The accelerator pedal was set so physically high that a brick was placed underneath it so you could rest your foot on it when driving. There was a Diesel engine in it that powered hydraulics that then moved the tram.

Here’s a few more taken from Dockside

That coaster is a S.D.C Galaxy Coaster, and the color scheme looks oddly familiar to the Thrillseeker that was at Sea World, but that opened in 1982 at Sea World. It may actually have been the Metropolis that went to Luna Park Melbourne as that opened in 1990 and an early photo of the ride at Luna Park Sydney shows the same track color scheme https://rcdb.com/1134.htm#p=1494

I’m gonna say it’s actually not that incredible at all and @themagician has taken better shots...

I've been to both numerous times. Perhaps it's just childhood nostalgia, but Magic Mountain was so much better. The Beach House never seems to be anywhere near as popular as Magic Mountain ever was. On paper the offerings are very similar but in reality Magic Mountain had a much better version of each ride imo. I remember there being more attractions than what The Beach House offers, and I also remember the slides being longer?, but my memory might be letting me down on any/all of these. I only visited Magic Mountain 2 or 3 times when I was fairly young. The Beach house is actually 5 levels. But only 2 really of them are part of the attractions. Lower Ground is an Underground Car park. First and Second levels are arcades, water slide ends & the various other attractions. Level 3 holds a private function room looking over Glenelg and Level 4 is the top of the slides. Dump of other random fun facts: They restored and kept the Carousel from The Mountain for The Beach House Magic Mountain had it's own Tokens you used to pay for the Arcades & Rides. When the Mountain opened in 1982 the Water Slides were the longest in the Southern Hemisphere. There was an old popular urban myth school kids used to spread to scare each other, that a group of misfits liked to sneak into the Mountain when it was closed and stick Razor Blades to the water slides with Blu-Tak. Made some of the younger kids particularly scared of the slides. Was obviously never true. The Ferris Wheel at Beach House barely runs nowadays. The local council normally set-up a much larger temporary Wheel at the start of the Jetty during busy periods which is much nicer. The Mountain was demolished for silly political/council zoning reasons and is generally considered a bad decision in hindsight. (Although it depends who you ask). Due to redevelopments in the area there wasn't enough "Free Park Space" and so the Council owned Mountain had to be demolished to free up some space. The mountain was meant to be covered in more greenery but this never happened. It was canned because of sub par performance I believe. Beach House seems to do well enough to stay afloat but it's never been quite as Busy as Magic Mountain used to be. Bonus pic (not mine) of Magic Mountain from the beach side looking from the Glenelg Jetty.

Movie world visit this afternoon. straight to WWF as it’s hot & very excited to see the improved/repaired effects. meh. yes the geysers is working now, which is great, as is the water towel leak BUT - water trough at rock fall no functional - no noise effects or smoke effects at train bridge scene whatsoever - no Indian chant or any noise effects or any campfire smoke at the Indian teepee scene. So it’s probably 2 steps forward, 2 steps back. the entirety of the lift hill Is pitch black, no lantern lights anymore, which I didn’t mind tbh... went for a second ride to see if maybe I got a busted timed run, but the same until.... turned the corner into the lift hill to see the boat before us was bottomed out/stopped pre-conveyer belt that takes you to the lift chain. We rammed into it and shunted it forward onto the conveyor. It wasn’t stacked as it was the first boat released post covid wipe down (we were second). we then stopped pre-conveyor, and the boat behind us rammed us forward onto the conveyor and up we went. Rounded the corner into the station only to shunt the boat in front again as the station was stacked. Boat behind us then shunted us. At this point there were some worried rice ops, some techs, heard something about turntable one. Our boat and the one behind were evacced off the side after waiting about 10mins as we couldn’t get up to the station. Got a “ride re-admission pass” for the trouble so straight to the front of Scooby was a good reward for the experience...haha Wristbands for DC Supervillians have also been removed, which I think is poor given more than half of the interactive scenes are inaccessible due to some work going on above the Capt Cold scene, which also blocks off the Joker/Harley, Luther & Grodd scenes. The Sinestro scene is also non-functional so having to pay for a wristband that only works on 2 scenes is just crap...

Take full advantage of it

I was meant to be in Orlando this month and today would have been my first Epcot day so figured I’d take a trip to DW and check out the new SV video. I like that during this time they ain’t wasting any time on preshows or safety vids, straight from the queue to the seats - although loading and operations definitely aren’t ‘fast’. But props to the girl running the queue line, had a quick chat and asked about how long she thought the line was, and she said since I’m a single rider she should be able to squeeze me in on the next cycle seeing as they have too leave two seats between parties there is usually a spare seat or two after they’ve batched everyone, so I waited like 5 minutes and was on. Also I thought it was really good that she was enforcing everyone to stand on the yellow dots, you’d think this is self explanatory but when I jumped in line everyone else was bunched up right next to each other, and after a minute or two she made everyone step back through the line so that parties were on their own dots. I was at MW right before DW for an hour and it doesn’t seem like the staff are enforcing the queue distancing and people just don’t understand to stay the heck away from me and stand on your dots - like there’s obviously a reason I’m not moving up to the next party, yet the people behind me feel the need to get as close as possible - YOURE STILL IN THE SAME SPOT IN LINE JUST STANDING FURTHER AWAY! Anyway to the ride. I enjoyed the new video, not sure which I prefer it been a while since it rode SV normally, I feel like I got more wet on USA but there was definitely less noticeable smell pods I think. Also with America being known for big cities, a lot of the flyovers are of big skyscrapers etc which isn’t that interesting especially if you’ve seen them before irl, but there are still a lot of great scenic shots. There is one shot toward the end that looks soo similar to the one from soarin, not complaining just interesting to point out (it’s the canyon rock formation with the balloons in soarin, exact same location in SV but has some people on the rocks ready to bungee off it looks like). Soundtrack/score is a bit lacklustre, I don’t quite remember how good the Aus score was but surely more epic than this was. Overall I enjoyed watching something new, there was a bloke sitting next to me that was so blown away by it which was heartwarming to see his reaction, it was his first time on a flying theatre and I think he was more blown away by that than the video itself, but still nice to see people in awe at something from our parks.

They should call it Wipeout, Reef Diver or maybe even Stingray. I see them just removing the Hot Wheels branding and its theming. The ride will just be called Sidewinder and nothing more too it

Not surprised about the log ride retirement, but hopefully this will lead to exciting things for this area of the park. With the coaster, if the first pieces of equipment aren't arriving until May, does this refer to track or machines to begin construction. If its the later, then will the coaster still be open by Summer? Seems like the Hot Wheels deal will be no more then. I wonder if it will return to a theme to match in with Ocean Parade? Maybe the Grid Burgers will also be updated to suit.

SW bothered and plonked a ride on the edge of the dolphin pools

Looking on nearmap, the area where HWSW is really wouldn’t suit anything but another coaster. It’s a back of house area that’s just concrete and back of buildings that were never meant to be seen

Unless he’s visited every day for the last 2.5 years

I do really like that idea of the story telling, but if that was the case it should be in the back of the park. I know you mention flooding, but the wheel can be elevated

If they were to remove the log ride and they were to install a wheel, I think the wheel would could replace it in that location. It’s by the creek, amongst the trees, doesn’t directly look onto the Main Street roofs, views of corroboree and the new coaster. But honestly, I don’t think a wheel would be right for DW. SW definitely, but not for any of the other parks. We’ve seen the view from the top of the GD and honestly it’s nothing exciting.

It has been there since major ground works began on the vortex site, so I’m thinking it could be the gondola

It doesn’t seem like it is. I remember the loading area was difficult to walk down because the original queue rail was so close to the load gates, so maybe this was the reason for the change

Forgive my skepticism, but judging by your (brief) presence on the boards, you don't come across as someone with an inside connection at DW... would you care to indulge us with an insight into how you know this? TL:DR: Source?