Leaderboard

Hi everyone! Here to give a quick update on the construction. More excavation work has begun at Maloney's Corner. These seem to be where the metal poles to hold Sledgehammer (the Gyro Swing ride) will be. According to the artist impressions above the thread. The staff access to what used to be Tumble Bug has had it's paint's and panels partially removed. As it's not mentioned in the artist impressions. I'm expecting for it to go as well. The rides were also being turned on to make sure they're still working. Venues are still happening at LPS! As a wedding is being held tonight in Crystal Palace as well. But they are entering via the Boardwalk instead. And I'm expecting this won't be the last either. You can also see the skyline of LPS has looks more basic with Maloney's Corner empty. Watch this space! The next update will be next time I get around Milsons Point again!

Took the family to Carnival tonight for opening night with what I would call cautious optimism, I’d heard it was going to be bigger and better then last year, more immersive more entertaining more everything. My first thought was well yeah that’s hard, last year was so underwhelming half way through I thought about leaving and only stayed cause i felt like having a rest. The fact a ticket is included with our locals pass was the only reason we attended tonight after last year I wouldn’t have bothered paying for a seperate ticket. So fingers crossed we arrived at 5:30 to enter the park the usual “please mind your social distance” rang out everywhere and enforced random places. You enter and notice the size of the structure on the lake, impressive we have a little bit of hope. Gone is the stage area on the water from last year where dancers entered and hid for 15min to reappear and dance off. We make our way past the penguin area (Rio) and notice a food truck some dancers and couple games. Nice food already and we’re 50m into the park. The kids danced we played a game and moved on, We head to vortex for a quick ride, long line but high load capacity made it quick to get on, even at night the views are amazing, and I was getting way to excited seeing Leviathan lite up in the distance and thinking about the sound and look of the coaster flying around the track at night, We leave vortex, head past the lagoon and arrive at Mexico, more food dockside tavern doubles as fiesta feast, more games, mask decorating and now fire twirlers and stilt walkers. We watch the fire play check out the giant skull and move on into New Orleans, we arrive as street party “parade” is dancing its way along, We got dancers, juggling acts, bands it’s really a hive of activity, all the normal food retail is open plus cocktails and couple more food trucks we decided to eat the burrito’s and loaded fries which were amazing surprise surprise I know but way better then park food, actually just good in general no complaints from anyone, Coctail down “also good” we moved on to Africa it was nice to see cast away bay used as I remember last year there was nothing there or at least that I seen maybe I missed it but I didn’t this year. African dancers more food and ice cream plus battle boats open we skipped Infinity “been there done that” and made our way back to Aqua Light Show. C’mon guys surely we can come up with a name better then the amazing Aqua Lightshow??? But here we are sitting almost centre about 4 rows waiting, kids eating ice cream waiting for 8:30 to roll around, then bang the flames go off the music starts and we get a couple of fireworks, this is new there’s anticipation, it’s buildings then bang more flames more fireworks and the water starts, everything in time with the music it’s building nicely. We get our first performers 4 drummers with lighted drums and water vibrating up with every hit, break dancers centre stage, the wife approved. All the while the music, water, lights, lazers and fireworks all timed together with the dancer, so far so good. Jetskis have arrived circling at first then rigged with fireworks the join in circling the island, perfoming some simple manoeuvres all in time and couple of near miss passes and side by side runs all with in time fireworks being set off from a setup on the back of the ski’s looks awesome. Drummers return dancers follow the music turns up the water effects are everywhere and it’s fireworks galore then bang the final major sequence of colour, fire and music and the place goes dark and the crowd erupts. The kids 4,10,15 all loved it, I went in thinking so poorly I had no hope but wow what a show hats off to them from last year to this year %100 improvement I would pay to go again we enjoyed the entire experience that much. Sure things could be improved from a Covid stand point, packed park lots of family’s and 1 ride attendant to load unload and clean the a ride makes for slow moving lines and a great excuse not to do the rides, Some areas some quieter then others so don’t have the same atmosphere, Jet rescue was running but no music or anything carnival related around there, running the tmnt show is nice for the kids but would love to see something carnival or Mexican related seeing as it is in the Mexican area, Be interesting to hear what others thought, it’s not disney World of Color nor should we expect it to be but it was vast improvement from last year and I was pleasantly surprised!! I say job well done IMG_3774.MOV

Been to movieworld Friday and today (saturday), green lantern ran all day yesterday and still open today. Wild West falls water sprouts for old fateful are not working again, you can hear them trying but no water in the system. Scooby doo ride has no lasers working in disco room.

So for the coasters opening next year, which are you most looking forward to and which one do you think will be the best?

I'm most excited for Big Dipper, I've always wanted to see the day when LPS gets a new world-class coaster, and it'll be an hour away from where I live! I'm also very excited for Leviathan and Steel Taipan, but thanks to COVID and me being a paranoid bitch, I don't think I'll be leaving NSW anytime soon. Big Dipper is obviously going to be the tamest of the three. It'll be a 30 second ride which is quite slow, although it'll have some exciting elements and will look great from below. With Steel Taipan, I have to agree with @Slick. It looks great but the pacing looks meh. Leviathan is going to be the best ride IMO. It's going to be fast paced, it'll have a good layout and we've needed a modern woodie in Australia for years (though the two we currently have are still great rides and very unique).

100% Leviathan I haven't been on a wooden coaster since Bush Beast left us. miss the unique ride experience a woodie brings and the location itself elevates it. also excited for Steel Taipan however and DW having a classy full circuit coaster after all these years

Leviathan is going to be great. For this country to have another high-quality wooden coaster is about time. In looking forward to this mainly for the nostalgia. Sure, the views will be great etc but you really won't see much of the views while getting thrashed around the track. Big Dipper 3.0. This one has my attention. Not because it'll just be in my backyard, because it's a truly unique world first right here in my backyard. While in worried about capacity issues I gotta remember the oars daily attendance is nothing like the GC parks. I hope leviathan runs two trains on busy days tho. I say this thanks to operations at MW on some busy days. Capacity is a big and important thing such a new coaster of this kind needs to deliver. The theming I ain't holding my breath about either. With LPS I hope they use two trains also on busy days. I am not expecting great theming anything tho apart from the entrance to the queue line. Unfortunately for this coaster, it's going to be about the experience rather than its location.

Leviathan for sure. The view of Sea World from across the broad-water is genuinely exciting again, and I think it'll be both a real fun ride while also being incredibly unique. Big Dipper is also going to be exciting in it's own way. So many folks (myself included) have suggested for years that something like a Raptor-style coaster would absolutely kill it at LPS, so to have that dream turn into reality is pretty awesome too. Steel Taipan... there's so many pros and cons to this project that I feel like Homer with the Frogurt... Dreamworld finally getting it's first genuinely great full circuit coaster! Yay! But it replaces an entire themed land with (based off the tender files on Parkz) arguably meh theming and no real concious long-term view of how that will integrate into the rest of the park's flow management (let alone how it integrates with Buzzsaw). Yikes! But, people say these Blue Fire clones kick arse! Yay! But, with the triple launch feature, they're not shortening the now un-necessarily long launch section, which really mucks up the pacing of the ride as a whole. Yikes! But, we're finally getting something comparable to Rivals! Yay! But, will it be too similar in the public's eyes? And is it too little too late, and has there been to much closed and SBNO that the penny may drop come December that the coaster is simply not enough to turn Ardent's fortunes around and have they finally burnt out the last remaining goodwill they had with the public? Yikes!

I want to say that i am excited for all of them but i think big dipper will be the one for me this year just because i live in Sydney and i don't think i will be in Queensland when steel taipan and leviathan opens unless i can make a fair bit of money to fly up

But even then most of those parks are closed for the majority of that. If you're seasonal you announce before haunt to drive pass renewals for next year, like there's a purpose to it. These days the trend is to announce stuff long before the passes are even on sale, so you get no sales boost, and carry no momentum. By the time it's built it's already yesterday's news. In Australia, I think the sweet spot is about 6 months prior to opening for something big; you can tie pass sales to it, and get people who don't buy passes starting to plan a visit. For something like Vortex or any DW flatride from the past 2 decades, a month is plenty.

Something Queensland Rail and Movie World have in common.

Occasionally I'll search through tender websites for theme park projects and yesterday's search at work had delivered some treasure. Here is what is worth noting: This is what the queue line and station looks like. It would appear they are going with a snake skeleton shade structure. Exit Path. There will be 2 tunnels. This is the modern entrance sign is going next to Sky Voyager in Main Street. They will be cutting and filling a sizeable amount of the coaster's site. As a result there will be a large, imposing retaining wall on the Giant Drop side. A look at the station structure. It looks the same as Rivals or Green Lantern. Ramp up to station. An overview of the site. I do not know how this will integrate with Buzzsaw. There is a lot of mentions of the name "Steel Taipan" in the documents, which must be the name they are going to use. When you go to the Australian Trade Mark Search website (https://search.ipaustralia.gov.au/trademarks/search/quick/result?q=ardent+leisure) you can see they have trademarked that name already. If the trademarks are anything to go by, you would also assume that Sidewinder may be renamed GoldCoaster (or The Gold Coaster or something like that) once when it opens again. There is a lot of PDF files in the tender that were cool to check out including Mack PDF files. Happy to upload them somewhere or send them to Parkz to upload if you all are interested to look at the tender further. And before anyone rages about leaks these files are easily available on the tender site and those names are found on the public Aussie trademark website.

Sky Voyager was the biggest waste of money in history.