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Agree. If the ride you're bringing in is similar in design, or similar in operation, recycling an existing name is good, pays homage, etc etc. But for non-enthusiasts, imagine visiting a park you haven't been to since your childhood, seeing that 'the tumble bug' is still in the park, and heading to the spot it says on the map, and finding something completely different? It's like calling the 360 'the rotor'. No - names should be reborn only if the ride, experience, and design are close enough that you could call it a direct replacement, even if they aren't identical. ...Like the wipeout at Seaworld.

My understanding is that there was a proof of concept version made quite a few years back which had a Time Traveller style carriage attached to an existing Blue Fire train: And then Mack made the first production model and attached it again to their Blue Fire train for testing before sending it to Dreamworld:

Ahhhh, those were the days of the Aussie Coaster Forum Wars. When good vs. evil, Roller Coaster vs. Dreamneva mate vs. mate and state vs. state reigned! After that we were separated into 13 districts. President Wilson decreed no more war. And in return we offered up Roach as a tribute to be sacrificed into the enclave of community leaders so that others could live. I was invited to, and did the shoot, on behalf of DreamNova. I didn't have to run around for permission, just called the number and they gave me a date I could come down. Of course, as we know, the DN site never really launched, but this was meant to be one of the first big articles. As time went on I shared it on R-C, ensured you could still see the picture, while obscuring enough of it that there was no way it could be appropriated by others. The original is actually shot on old school film negative, and if i ever find it, i'll be sure to get it reproduced without it, along with all my other shots of that day.

The organisation I'm involved with didn't operate last year from March till late December . Neither did most of the other organisations on our group insurance plan. But we had to pay the full amount of insurance last year, despite 20% income and visitors. And this year, our premium has gone up dramatically , but at different rates to others on the same group plan. Sometimes it is just the insurance companies.

Gonna follow the construction closely from now on 🙂 I live about 30 km away from Blue Fire at E.P. - and while I`m happy that I`m able to ride that coaster for more than 10 years now - regularly - I`m still super-jealous about you getting it with the spinning option 🙃 Thinking about how intense and fun that ride is in places even without spinning I can`t even imagine how great, fun, intense and disorientating it will be with the spinning 😍 The multi-launch will be a nice bonus to the standard-version - but the spinning car will be the real highlight for sure...

It was in the video description when Mack first announced it on their channel. Note the spinning seats are an earthy brown and green rather than the silver/blue/red as per the rest of the Blue Fire train n

I think you mean 'recreation park' ? Jamberoo Action Park is their current iteration - as seen by the title on the plans shown above^ I was lucky enough to visit the park in the late 80s \ early 90s. First up - a slight correction - the go karts were 'up the hill' from the entrance (ie - to the left) and were in the area now occupied by the splashdown pools of perfect storm, funnel web and Banjo's: As you can see, the gokarts co-existed with the wavepool for quite some time. The wavepool was built on the site of the old motorboat 'lake' which wasn't much more than a circular cattle dam. The rear of the wavepool (the north eastern edge) was also home to the lattice maze - opposite and 'down the hill' from The Rock. Rapid River was at one point a large group of huts \ shelters, housing about 20 picnic tables each with BBQs at the ends, bookable by large groups (similar to what is on the northern side of Taipan today). Surf Hill and the top end of taipan were grass-skiing hills. The brick building somewhat resembling a ski lodge next to rapid river has always been there, and originally was the grass ski hiring area, and a restaurant we never, ever went into. As for plans, wayyyyy back when - more than 15 years ago, I visited the park as a photographer \ guest of the park, and shot some awesome pics mostly lost to time now. I did however meet with Dax in their boardroom, where they showed me the plans and concept art for their master plan at that point. Thank goodness for the parkz forums archive, you all can enjoy some 2006 goodness and marvel at how much has been changed! (also, tagging @Slickfor the lolz.) ETA - here is the original post on Parkz - https://www.parkz.com.au/forums/topic/2701-article-jamberoo-unveils-20-million-investment-plan/?do=findComment&comment=39136

Im not so sure, I dont think Boomerang lives up to Geronimo, nor does a kiddy ferris wheel live up to Tumble Bug etc

Unfortunately this is the way the world is going, everyone blames the insurance companies but the the problem is also these idiots who try something they shouldn’t or fall over and scrape their knee and expect a big pay out. No common sense anymore and no ownership over ones actions. I know this all to well as my wife and I run events and insurance is the killer more often then not and all because someone wants $100,000 for a paper cut

Apologies here’s the photo that you can actually see this time

See I'm not sure if I agree with all the names for these rides. I would've at least have named some in homage to the old rides such as the Sledgehammer being named "Flying Saucer", the boomerang "Wild Cat", and I would've given the kiddie wheel a much more clever name than just "Bug".

honestly that says more about how cheap the GC passes are, than how expensive sydney is (although sydney IS expensive). That said, the GC has the established market and passholders make up quantities that the Sydney park simply can't accommodate. WnWS was regularly hitting its capacity early on - and pissing off a lot of passholders who were denied entry. With capacity that low, you need to make more off of each ticket to remain profitable.

What's with this second gate talk??? Did I miss something?

WnWS\RWS is about the same driving time from Sydney Airport as Six Flags Magic Mountain is from LAX. Wonderland saw regular tourist coaches visiting for day trips, and Scenic World Katoomba - more than twice the driving time - regularly attracts bus tours, day trips and so on. Distance is not a factor - although it would have been wise to push on with a second (dry) gate to make the spot a destination. The fact it was sold to another company doesn't immediately illustrate it as a failure (the fact it was purchased indicates someone thought it had success potential, and village was over leveraged and under capitalised at the time - they needed to free up their bank balance - hence why they sold their oxenford land, WnWS, leased rivals, engaged with buyout offers, etc etc.). The Sydney market has great capacity to sustain theme parks. Wonderland operated for 19 years. Luna Park has had several incarnations and is in the midst of transforming into a new, modern era. Heck, Disney has explored Sydney as an option numerous times, and got really close to breaking ground once too (check out Disney Wharf on YouTube). Your claims WnWS wasn't financially viable don't make out - otherwise Palace wouldn't have purchased and continued to operate it. Villages problems weren't because of WnWS, but they did exacerbate it. Village went into the sydney market with the wrong attitude. They tried to introduce things we'd never seen at the gold coast parks - like RFID bands, paid parking etc - AND they cut costs on everything. Go and look at the concepts for WnW Aussie World, go and find the original WnWS plans, and then look at the concrete jungle we ended up with. The place just wasn't a nice place to visit. And the tower designs - fitting as many slides as they could on one tower - meant queueing was a disaster. Couple that with Village's launch plans - the failed New Years' Eve party in its first season fell devastatingly short of a professional operation, and this immediately soured many local's opinions. If Covid hadn't have come along, I feel strongly we'd have seen early whispers of Palace \ Parques exploring second gate options. Covid has now stuck a pin in that, so it's probably going to be a long time before we see additional development - but that still doesn't point to failure, as the park still continues to operate. Sydney's poor performance with theme parks stems from poor operators, rather than a poor geographical location. You could stick a halfway decent operator in Lithgow, and it'd still be popular. The problem is most definitely not the location or the population.

There's no hard or fast rule - Jet Rescue's launch system would be cheaper than Rival's massive lift hill in the same way that Tower of Terror's launch system would be more expensive than Storm's lift hill. Keep in mind that every ride installation is different too, even if they're visually very similar. A Vekoma SLC in Australia might look similar to most other SLC's globally, but there'd be hundreds of country-specific building and safety codes that ride would need to adhere to before opening to guests that say one in China wouldn't need to.