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I finished watching this I have to say that the area is looking pretty great. A couple of thoughts: The lead up to the coaster will be fantastic. It's well presented and considering the queue and load are 'within' the ride itself it'll be a pretty neat feeling to hype you up with the sights and sounds of the coaster itself. Shade and fans. Kudos to Dreamworld for considering the guest experience by making the queue as comfortable as possible. Sure it's not very exciting, but even Disney struggles to engage guests in their queues now because 90% of the time guests are on their phone in the queue. Also having a spot for loose articles within the load means that people can actually use their phones (I'm looking at you Superman!) Chill spot. The area they're working on where you can chill out underneath the coaster is a nice touch. There aren't many spots where you can chill out underneath a coaster or within the ride footprint in Australia so this will be a neat spot to drink a coffee or devour a pie. The coaster and its precinct are really well presented. It's a bit generic, sure, but it's not out of place. I also like the snake accents against the more generic architecture, but I do get Planet Zoo vibes from it. I know this may seem strange but it feels very Australian. The earthy colors, choice of plants and scenery make it look exactly like what I'd expect from a premier Australian roller coaster based around Australia. I honestly wouldn't be upset if other parts of the park requiring attention went down this route in the future. Sydney Zoo is a good example of this. T H E M E D B I N S My biggest takeaway is that it seems Dreamworld really considered the guest experience with this attraction. It's spacious, comfortable, pleasing to look at and has a good sense of flow. Could it be better? Sure. But considering that Dreamworld has managed to pull this off this well after not being able to afford it earlier this year is pretty crazy. I'd be interested to see whether my opinions change in person and with crowds, but I think they've done a great job with this attraction and I'm getting really excited to ride it.

Was nice getting close to ST for a change! C0076.mp4

I'm glad to hear it tapers away at the top to give views. That's nice. ST is a sprawling area, so having the queue mostly be a switch back to me is a shame. Yes shade is good, yes fans are good. So is being in an open non crampt space. I'm aware I sound like I'm being SUPER critical but honestly it's fine, I don't get the praise, but there's nothing wrong with it, it's a queue. As for the urban thing v themed thing, look I think presented V themed is right, I think that's bang on; pick an aesthetic and just do that throughout. Genuinely, I think it's decent enough. What I think they missed though, is the name 'Steel Taipan' is basically designed so you can do some cool Outback Steampunk aesthetic (Think Copperhead Strike, or Steel Vengence, with an Australian / Outback twist). They got the arid landscape thing bang on, but they missed the bit that takes it from serviceable to incredible, that I suspect a company that specialises in themed entertainment design wouldn't have missed.

Reading the comments about how comfortable the queue is and how there are great views of the coaster, I have to ask, is there a different queue to the one @themagician took a nice photo of that everyone is talking about? I nearly made a post the other day, (and I'm annoyed I didn't now) that the ride has come together quite well, and that it does have it's own style, and is presented nicely enough. That was basically the benchmark I set for it, and they have hit that. I think Gazza's post about it being designed by an urban design mob rather than themed design company sum up my thoughts reasonably well, I don't love the design choices, but there's enough of it that it works together. By default, I think it's presented better than Rivals say. Thing is, Rivals appears to have by far the better queue, but that's literally all it has. Again, don't love the choices they made for Rivals, but it works together and it's a thing. Anything not the queue, station and ride itself suck badly. With ST, it fits what I've been saying for years, don't try and tell some convoluted story, just present it well and give it a style. I think they've done that. Thought that would be a fairly uncontroversial opinion until reading posts on how a few switchbacks under an abstract shelter with fans that has a wall blocking views of ride on one side and the brake run on the other side is apparently the second coming. Yes you'll see the ride more from the queue given the layout, but if that's the metric, Green Lantern has the best queue on the Gold Coast.

I didn’t get photos on the day, but you can see in the below image how the canopy opens up more towards the top of the queue, which does give you views of the coaster

Letting people in early would be a great idea and definitely help with the issue. While the park might be gaining its reputation back in some ways, making errors like this (which is the very first impression for the event) does not help their reputation and will turn people off from visiting the park during the day.

I take back my ideas - I prefer Joz's! Overseas parks are doing amazing things with their queues and station buildings (and as Joz suggested, sometimes carrying over to the very start of the ride) to really build up the atmosphere. These days the best we seem to get at the major parks are basically jazzed up open-air tents

I hear there's a new family coaster opening up at Dreamworld soon!

One thing to note is for years we’ve said on here that DW is lacking in appearance, it was round down and doesn’t feel fresh or inviting. Recently they’ve been working on areas to refresh it and I think this new area definitely is fresh, inviting and steps far away as possible from what the theme of this area was, which I felt was needed.

Very quickly/basically themed station which to me equals barn with lots of pipes, cogs etc, and a more stylised angular train with that plate steel look. I think dark ride is over rated, but the barn carrying on over the turnaround to where the train stops for the launch would be plenty. If it's a budget thing do that instead of some of the rock work which IMHO doesn't add a huge amount. Lose the queue structure, makes the place look like a snake exhibit at Southbank rather than anything. Doesn't work at Atlantis (Maybe will be better when covered in plants?) don't think it works here. Shade is still needed, I think a nice open rustic queue would fit the bill. Rustic not Rusty though, try and not make it look like TRR or Log Ride. Actually would be nice if you could do the queue on the other side for better views of the ride and openness, but that would require a change to the storage track, and I'll give them a pass that the design of the ride was 'as is' and the aesthetic design came secondary to that, and I suspect it's tight for space on that unload side. At the very least, if the queue is stuck where it is make the launch viewing a feature of the queue. When I think of a ride called Steel Taipan, that's more what I think. Anyway, someone say it's shit now so I can say reasons I don't think it's shit. Feel like I'm stuck on one side of this.

Pretty much guarantee staff will be told to park in the staff carpark for the next event

I think Village will be fine. They've got a solid brand that they can rest on these holidays, but I would be wary of Dreamworld if I was them. The Christmas holidays is their opportunity to show off their progress after their well broadcasted shortcomings. If Steel Taipan goes off without a hitch, the park is well-presented and the atmosphere is energetic then I reckon a lot more people will consider Dreamworld holidays in the future especially now that WWW is basically a land of the park. It's their opportunity to win back some market share and from what I'm seeing they'll hopefully knock it out of the park.

In the video at about 3:10 you can see that the awnings on the right hand side start to give way to allow more of a view of the ride. You don't get a good view of the launch (it seems to be purposefully blocked) but you can see the coaster travelling through the loop and other elements. Plus you'll get to see people coming into the brake run where you get their reactions which is always fun. Its also easier to get a sense of scale because when looking at that image it makes the area seem incredibly tight. The reason I say it's comfortable is that the majority of the queue is undercover and has fans. It doesn't seem like much on paper but adds a lot for the guests compared to a lot of other open air queues. I feel our standards are pretty low. Honestly the best queue in Australia was Tower because of its uniqueness but now it is Storm: Coaster but even that is pretty generous. Almost all other major coaster queues on the GC I have significant criticisms towards. Steel Taipan isn't the best, far from it, it's just comfortable and shows it considered the guest especially compared to other recent additions. I don't know why giving something praise where its due is the second coming. I see this criticism a lot and I don't really get it. If you gave an urban design mod VS a themed design company the same brief and budget, what changes would you expect to be made? If it's not intending to be themed or tell a story then it seems like a waste of expertise. I'm sure that when it comes to the bigger picture things like crowd management, flow and direction then the conventions used to manage that would provide pretty similar end products.

I guess I'm just a little bit sad that the queue is literally right at the level of the launch start but we don't get to watch it due to the solid wall. Would be funny watching everyone's expressions change in a split second as it powers up. It does look like a very comfortable queue line for a hot summers day though.

So i'd like to expand on my previous point and talk about another coaster that is really fun. Its a very enjoyable layout and a great ride, but lots of people complain about it being uncomfortable to ride and they're stupid! Those people just don't realise they need to hold their head against the restraint in a specific way and brace against it for the entire ride to avoid headbanging on the large oversized original restraints. If they do that, it's fine! - Vekoma SLC. If there's a special way to do up a restraint, that is not intuitive, and requires a secret club, then its shit. Period. in my opinion.

Love what you said there @Dom What I love about the queue line and the coaster's layout is that from the queue, guests get a great view of the coaster cycling through the layout. It really helps to build that "wow" factor. It's pleasant to see how well the ride interacts with onlookers too, either from the queue, the precinct, or just walking through to the Giant Drop or Corroboree. That brake run tho, pretty insane seeing how close guests can get as the train rolls out of the heart-line roll and into the final brake run. The low-passes are insane.

Bonus points if they hiss at you.

I don't mean to alarm anybody but Steel Taipan has themed bins. THEMED BINS.

Its probably largely out of their (the park) hands. Their insurance company has probably initiated proceedings to recoup money from the engineers public liability coverage.