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I went on a bit of a road trip around regional NSW and rode a couple of toboggans, and broke a 1 year coaster drought, amongst other sightseeing. -On new years day I visited Corin Forest, which is a 40 min drive out of Canberra on a winding, but surprisingly fun road. https://www.parkz.com.au/attraction/corin-forest Due to Covid they were running the Toboggan in 1 hour slots, which was actually awesome because it was like an ERT session, and you didn’t have to get off. The ride is on the wild side, the sleds don’t have governors, the track is steep, and there are a couple of hard turns you absolutely must hit the brakes for. It’s not just back to back u turns either, it does mix it up with other random turns along the way to break up the straights. You have to lean into the turns, but look out for the long weeds that whack you in the face growing by the trackside. The track itself had a few dings in the stainless, and some of the sleds could do with calibration because they pull to one side….In fact on my first run I came partially off the track on a straight section because the thing was listing to one side. Subsequent runs were a bit quicker, and with limited numbers you could space yourself to avoid catching up to anyone. -Later on New Years day I drove over the hill to Nowra, and checked out the Huskisson Carnival, operated by Joylands amusements. The place was very busy with half of Sydney seemingly on holiday, but it was well presented with a wide variety of rides including the Claw, Hurricane, Jurassic Coaster, and the target of my visit “Wild Mouse”, not actually a wild mouse, but a Galaxi type coaster that used to operate at Funland at Weston Super Mare in the UK (Thanks @Noxegon ). Come to think of it, I don’t think I’ve been on a Galaxi for years. Thrillseeker is a distant memory, as is Metropolis, none of the major parks in the US seem to have them, and I haven’t been to Merimbula in a long time either, so I guess it felt novel. I dunno why they let bogans decorate rides though: It actually ran much smoother than I expected, no jolts or bumps aside from the final brakes. Reasonably popular with a 20 min wait. Good fun. "Step right up there's no waiting" I was thinking to myself, it would be great if someone like Gerstlauer took this layout, made the lift hill an uphill launch, and the first turn into a fan turn…would be a great standard model indoor coaster. -The drive back to Qld was long on the 3rd, but fairly easy these days since it’s largely non stop with the opening of Northconnex and the bypass of Grafton (I had to non stop through Sydney to meet the border pass restrictions at present). I made a bit of a decision on a whim to divert into Nelson bay to visit Toboggan hill park, my reasoning being the place has irregular trading hours, so I might as well do it whilst It was open and I was driving through the area at an appropriate hour (Often If I road trip to or from Syd, it’ll be very early or late passing through the area north of Newcastle) and rolled in around 3.30pm https://www.parkz.com.au/attraction/toboggan-hill-park The place was surprisingly busy, with a 30 min line for the toboggan, but the staff were on the ball in terms of moving people through. The setting for the run is very nice, bushland and almost subtropical. The run is a decent length, with the turns a bit easier than the one at Corin, though the sleds have governors, so even if you send it and do a no brakes run you’ll max out fairly quickly and still not risk crashing. Unfortunately I caught up to a nervous rider halfway down so the thrills were short lived. At the bottom the operator saw that a catch up had occurred and told me to go again so I could get a proper ride. That’s service. If I had to rank the operating toboggans in Australia: -Corin -Jamberoo Fast -Jamberoo Slow -Funfields -Toboggan Hill -Big Banana Thredbo and Kinkuna Country I did too long ago to really judge fairly. -Bonus I was in Narrandera a couple of days before new years. I went down to the Lake Talbot swimming complex hoping to ride the last remaining Toboggan slide (As seen in the old SW water park, WnW Double screamer etc). It’s no longer there aside from a tribute photo on the entrance sign, but they have modernised the pool, and it’s huge for a regional town, with a new long body slide and a couple of brutal turbo tunnel type slides with an excessively tight and roughly joined helix. The open body slide was much more fun.

I’m sure everyone has already seen this but in case you haven’t, here it is (I can confirm this also applies to dreamworld and whitewater world too) : stay safe, everyone.

Why the hell do those kids faces look like that on the art for the fast food stand at the carnival

After visiting the park and going for a quick ride, I must say that I enjoy the presentation of the Gold Coaster. From the pastel colours to the plant graphics, it feels like a postcard vision of the Gold Coast with a dash of Golden Girls. With all that said I do wish that they could've done something bit more substantial. The renovation, while aesthetically pleasing, doesn't do anything to change the existing problems with the ride and it's queue. My biggest gripe might just be the sign at the entryway. I'll commend them for going for a Googie inspired design but the execution is just a bit too flat. Would've been great to seem some more depth or maybe even some texture to break it up. At the end of the day, it's great to see them tie this attraction back into Ocean Parade. When my only sensible comment is about an entry sign, I think you've done well.

Covid has been the biggest kick in the guts ever to this industry. The GFC was not anywhere near as detrimental as Covid has been. Gold Coast theme parks have played a decent trump card tho. Tell the future plans now while everyone is down and it'll hype people up to visit the parks whenever normality returns. Victoria and New South Wales have some how managed to keep heads above water. Not without challenges tho. The west coast has survived simply because no one can travel.

As Gazza said, Perth is an exception to this. Given we've been relatively un-effected, and because it's not like we actually (AW and OS) relied on interstate or international tourism that heavily pre-covid anyways. People have also got more disposable income over here courtesy of the stimulus package, being able to continue working and the inability to blow all this in a bender up in Bali or On the Gold Coast (shit examples but you get my jist). We were also lucky enough that our lockdown occurred in the park off seasons, so loss of income due to closure was close to nil. For the most part though, both domestically and internationally, Covid has and is metaphorically speaking shat and shitting all over the industry and i don't think there's really much questioning that.

Perth might be a special case because you simultaneously have a Covid Free population with few limits on activities, combined with an inability to travel east or to Bali, meaning local options are getting more of a captive market. It's definitely been bad for the GC Parks, which needed assistance, and of course terrible for the Vic Parks. NSW im not too sure of, but they did close early for the year right?

Those would have been in the works prior to Covid, and probably would have been announced sooner if it weren't for Covid. It empathically hasn't helped.

Absolutely not. People have been made redundant, attraction pipelines have been delayed for three of the country's biggest parks and there's still been massive revenue issues given the lack of international & interstate tourism. To say anything else is just trying to make a causation from correlation, which is the equivalent of suggesting that vaccines cause autism.