Leaderboard

Hi all, Just a few minutes ago, the Sky Safari closed down for the last time. I was lucky to be the last passenger on board the Sky Safari. So I’ll be talking about those last few minutes of the ride. The whole park was very empty as it was the first day for most students back at school. And it was not well known for people outside of Zoo Friends. The only press there was 9 News, so it was very low key. Shortly before the last trip, we were lucky to be allowed into the workshop for the Gondolas and got insider and in depth knowledge about how it all works. We were also lucky to get on the last ever service! All the staff were so kind and so friendly and went up and beyond for not just us, but everyone! After the last gondola came through, everything shut off and became eerily quiet. The last one was number 16, and then one by one by every staff member were packed up for the last time. Then there was a guard of honour and then a few speeches and photos before having a pizza party. Only 10 staff members will remain at the Zoo, the rest will remain for a few weeks for the decommissioning then become redundant. Apparently it’s been pretty difficult over the Pandemic due to both restrictions and the imminent closure that was delayed multiple times. All parts and gondolas will be sold over the next few weeks and anything that can’t will be destroyed. One of the gondolas MAY be kept to be displayed similarly to Scenic World. So now we got for the next 2 years the construction of a whole new system! I’ll keep this thread going for construction updates.

Why not both.

Yeah 2 just seems the simplest - doesn't obstruct construction works near 3. Behind west is a really odd position for it that wouldn't attract attention. Putting inside superman just shuts down the ride unnecessarily for construction, and we've already covered that its a tight fit. I would still prefer it at vikings. I saw the viking pad on the weekend and it is just THE. PERFECT. FIT. The surfboard theme also fits well with the park and no real retheme is needed (you can even continue to call it surfrider)

If you watch the movies, Donkey hooks up with the Dragon from the first film, and their kids are donkeys that can fly - Dragon + Donkey = Dronkey. Yeah to me its a way of keeping the ride operating until it goes down for its retheme - they can't continue using Dreamworks, but other than the IP imagery, everything else (including the gumdrop buttons on gingy!) is still there - so candy flyer matches the current theme without referencing IP. Once they close it for the rebrand, it'll come up with the new name.... simples! I came here to say that but you beat me to it.

Just a late one I finally got on leviathan!!! It’s a fully world class ride not even joking. I hate they call it the worlds most iconic wooden coaster but I will look over that because the ride is just sooo good. Today had no wait at all the rides were a walk on. Ok JR you actually had to wait for enough people to enter the line.. I have never been to a park that empty before.. nsw school hoildays are still on though. Maybe the helicopters have something to do with it?? Anyway I “lined up” for leviathan the start of the day had the longest waits being 7 minutes. The theming is soo sick I love the aircon too. I thought the tunnel to the station would be longer but it’s a nice touch. The station is rad with the leviathan swimming around you. The lighting effects add to it too! The turn out of the station feels so tight and forced but the drop is amazing. It’s the best feeling! The ride has some great airtime especially this one spot when you pass the green shade thing. I like the back row (not backwards) the most you really feel the drop there and the airtime. The restraints really digged into my hips though. I am fairly average size but I got bruises on my hips now but I can forgive that. Because of the restraint I did find it a bit rough but that just adds to the wildness. I really love the wooden coaster feel. It just keeps going it’s such a long ride I feel like DCR, ST, and Leviathan are tied for my favourite coaster. I rode it 11 times! No fast pass. I could have done it 40 times easy but the friend I was with wanted to see the rest of the park because they had vip ever been to seaworld. I never got sick of the ride it was fun every time. My friend said it was 10x better then SE. Leviathan opened with the park and went down for 20 minutes at the end of the day for “technical issues” but the wait times were so great the park was Erie it was so quiet. I had a great day and leviathan lived up to the hype. It’s so much fun i would go into the brake run every time with a smile on my face. All up we did about 40 rides (as in how many rerides on everything combined) seaworld OPs we’re all super nice and quick. Vortex was open but only had about 4-6 people on each cycle. One thing is seaworld NEED a skyrocket ll clone

It is even sadder that we only have 6 inverting coasters in the whole country and we will not be getting more anytime soon.

I'd love to see it get new Vekoma trains. It's turning 20 this year, Road Runner got new trains for its 20th as well. One can dream

If you continue down that rabbit hole, fundamentally all flat rides are just differently shaped spinny things.

I never made that connection until today - is it a weird subtle dig at Leviathan you reckon?

I’ll just quickly add it here as I can’t edit the post: The Sky Safari took 20 million people around, travelled the equivalent of going to Mars, and carried the Olympic Torch! It was also renovated in 2000 for the existing gondolas. The old ones from before 2000 can be found here: https://youtu.be/wQcqKaVxZ7Y

There is no approval in the works for SW so why is SW an option?

How do you know this? If I'm a tourist and don't know what is inside a place like a fair, I generally have a walk around first.

Place your bets now - numbers 1 to 4 is Movie World, 5 to 7 is Sea World. I'm hoping it'll end up at Vikings (7) or Wild West Falls (4).

I know its not a big ride, but interesting if they have to repaint is so it fits a new theme, so soon after they only just painted it a few years ago.

I think I already replied to something like this, but in case I didn't - my thinking is that doing it while Oz is under construction means they can access the Scooby stage from both sides while Oz is scorched earth. Doing it after Oz has opened will likely 'wall in' a lot of the scooby stage and make it harder to access - especially for cranes and whatnot needed to swap out the track pieces mentioned.

It's a shame - Viking's old station area would have been perfect for this, and is currently surrounded by ugly black covered fencing. I wonder where they're gonna jam this in, and what theme it'll have...

It would be cool if they made ocean parade 80s/90s surf themed like when wipeout was around. Have north shore style words and lots of cheesy stuff

Well, yeah, there is. There's a lot of industries with great safety cultures that also manage to pull in delays where it's safe to do so. In a large part a lot of it seems to center around a realistic look at procedures and how long they should take when done correctly, which is followed up by measurement against these benchmarks and investigation when there's a deviation. This is not a bad approach because variance in either direction is undesirable; if you have someone who is repeatedly coming out ahead of benchmarks then that warrants investigation as you may find they are not doing the job correctly, whereas if you have someone constantly under-performing then that's obviously also something you want to try and work on. The key to it is realistic benchmarks on what needs to be done, and how long it should take.

It can be confirmed now, Surf Rider is on the move. A new application has been lodge with GCCC for the relocation of the ride.

Considering DW believes removing anything relating to Dreamworks and replacing one sign constitutes a re-theme, like they have done on Candy Flyer, the area is going to end up a shadow of Dreamworks.🤦‍♀️