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Green Valley Farm - 4/2/2023 https://www.parkz.com.au/attraction/green-valley-farm Green Valley Farm is a place that I’ve wanted to visit for a while now. It’s located between Inverell, Glen Innes and Armidale on the New England tablelands. https://goo.gl/maps/fDb4G82QANByWfXy7 I’ve been up and down the New England highway multiple times, but It’s always been late afternoon etc, or in the cold months when the slide is closed (And who wants to miss out on an old school treasure like that) so the timing never really has lined up. The place fascinated me because it has a lot of play equipment identical to the things seen at the (in)famous Monash playground in SA (Google, or search forums and there are some threads about it) Originally I thought that when Monash closed down they had been relocated to Green Valley, but it turns out the plans were actually shared by the original designer, Grant Telfer, and the owners of Green Valley built replicas. It’s all great fun, but you can hurt yourself if you are being careless (i managed to bang/cut both shins within 15 mins of arrival) , which led to Monash closing in the 80s, with a more ‘sanitised’ playground opening in the 90s. But Green Valley lives on! More recently, when the ECC were on their Australian tour several people broke away from the main group and went on a rather wild day trip aiming to get a ride on the park's single rail, human powered shuttle coaster. (Hilariously, that coaster is on rcdb now https://rcdb.com/20449.htm ) Anyhow, fast forward to a few weeks ago and @Noxegon mentioned was coming to Australia and wanted to go. That was the kick in the backside i needed to finally make more of an effort to go there, and we figured out a plan where I could drive down to Glen Innes on a Friday night, pick him up from Armidale airport, head to the park and then press on to the GC for DW and SW the next day. Easy drive, a few signs by the road let you know when you are near. And finally you arrive at the car park. Actually a reasonable number of cars for a park in the middle of nowhere. Judging by online reviews, the place has a bit of a cult following and well regarded by generations. You enter through a museum in a mud brick building. I’ll spare you the photos of the siamese calf taxidermy though! Reminded me of the ‘historical society’ museums you see in many country towns, with lots of old farm equipment, old signs, guns, gemstones etc. Towards the end you sign a waiver (I guess its fair, if you want to do all this old school fun stuff without padding, there is an element of risk) and pay your admission. At $15 its a bargain. Yes the park is pretty old, but to be honest the water slide itself would cost you $15 elsewhere. And you find yourself in the park, a large grassy field with various elements scattered around. Instantly you are transported back to those old school adventure parks like Greenhills, Puzzle Park, Kinkuna Country, Arakoon, Wyangala etc. Didn’t do the mini golf. Most of the play equipment can only be used by those over 10 given the responsibility involved, and plenty of adults were having a go. I did my best to document all of them. A few of the good ones included: The 3 way seesaw. The 1 person spring loaded seesaw. The giant rocking giraffe, which I managed to draw blood on by going a bit too fast. What I called the “Catapult Swing”, where the entire structure tilts back and forth, as well as the swing itself. The “satellite” dish. The rotary cone. Tire pile that you can literally fall down the middle of, but great for a vantage point. Monash had way more slides, but one of the designs made it here. You ride on a hessian mat, but still almost stall out on the flat bits. But of course the main drawcard is the roller coaster. It’s entirely fenced, so you just jump the fence wherever and have a go when it's your turn. Pushing it up the slope is a bit like pushing the sled across the floor at gym on leg day. Eventually you reach a small platform where the track levels off and you can jump in, and then it's time to push off. The transitions between slope and level are at sharp angles, so there’s a bit of a jolt at each one. And it’s loud! Sounded like TOT. There’s one particularly hard bump as you come up the first slope from the low point. Oddly, they did make the spike at one end a nice curve. You then roll backwards, and partway up the first slope, and oscillate a couple of times. No brakes so it's up to you to stick an arm or leg out to bring yourself to a proper stop.The great thing is you can brave it backwards too for free, but those jarring transitions cannot be anticipated if you are going in reverse. Overall, not the fastest thing, but good fun just because of janky and out of control it feels. The park also has a rather nice garden centred around the house and the kiosk. Various animals and birds on display. They used to have monkeys but a sign mentioned that they got rid of them due to the “huge regulations” now governing their care. Macaws now live in their old run. The merry go round constitutes the sole mechanical ‘ride’. The kiosk, again you are transported back to a 90s milk bar, with the smell of dripping permeating the air and an array of lolly jars with the whole “3 for 10c” type deal going. Food is well priced and handmade. There’s a nice display with some photos of the park being built. The last thing I did was the water slide. Is it just me, or are long body slides like this not a thing anymore. It seemed every decent country town would have a mammoth like this. Nowadays new slides all feel like they are over in 10 seconds. You’re given a spiel by the lady at the slide kiosk with the rules and then essentially left to your own devices. The stairs are literally just treads made of steel pipe, similar to the giant slide. Mats are on offer if you want to get a bit of extra speed. First ride without one was a bit of a crawl. With the mat they suggest trying it wrapped around you like a burrito. Well, that turns the thing into hyperdrive, with so much speed that the water piles up in front of you, forming wave. Wowee! The bit for the toddlers seemed fairly new, and more to the standard as you’d see in a caravan park these days. Same goes for the kids playground and jumping pillow. Obviously the stuff for younger kids is a bit ‘safer’ I think we stuck around for 2 or 3 hours, did 3 goes on the coaster and had a go at most of the equipment. Overall, it's worth a stop if you are in the area and feel like stepping back in time, and hey, its only $15 (And the patch was $1)

JR gives you two options for storage. It has lockers and a shelf system at the station, similar to what wipeout had. People can choice to use the free lockers or the station storage.

You've done it here since May 13, 2021 so thought I'd have a go.

It’s not my photo but look how great this shot looks.. (Thunder bolt tribute anytime soon @Dreamworld?) The white track with the gold loops looked so good. It did fade though in its later years.

Potentially I think village would be taking notes on how dragster goes and see if it’s worth the investment. The hydraulic system at superman doesn’t seem to be having many troubles though it will get expensive to maintain in a few years time. Superman is far too popular for Village to rip out imo so a Scooby style renovation would make sense.

Another plausible option may well be that the refurb was already planned and ready, but a failure in something has happened sooner and even if they could manage to get it here in two weeks it's unlikely to pay for itself between now and when that item is made obsolete by the refurb. Let's say it's part of the elevator; would you spend three-quarters of a million dollars for the sake of, say, six months of operation knowing you'll be replacing the whole thing at refurb time - or would you just cop the short-term backlash, not tell people that was the reason, and try and make the conversation about the refurb?

Judging by the phone number, they've had those patches a while.... LOL

When the time comes to refurbish superman (which is likely to be the next big thing after oz and Scooby imo) I think it will be an easy quality of life change to change the lockers. Move the lockers later on in the queue, on the wall adjacent to where the current fast track line is, make them double sided so you can open them up in the old exit gift shop and retrieve your items as you leave. Redo the railings so you walk past these lockers as you line up, and reroute fast track to the other end of the building. Pretty easy and not terribly expensive quality of life change that improves the experience for many more people especially when you are lining up for well over an hour in summer. Not sure why they didn’t have this when the exit building had the gift shop in it. 30 minutes without a phone is fine, but when you’re pushing an hour and a half that’s where (younger) people will get put off and will go flood the line for rivals or green lantern

Are you saying the doors at the start are coming back?!?! If they don't I'm holding you personally responsible now.

A lot of the sky is falling here. Isnt it possible it was going to open December 26 2024 and now could be opening January 1 2025? The delay could be as small as a few days and still cause the year change.

Dean's argument is misplaced & looking at things the wrong way, but there's absolutely zero reason to make it as serious & personally insulting as you just did. Disregarding if you meant to imply what you've implied or not, the simple act of bringing up deaths on attractions to prove a point, even if it was a real statistic (it's obviously not), is taking it way too far. Bad move.

That's fair enough! It can be hard to find time to game, especially to dedicate the time to a story-based single player game. I haven't spent loads of time in it (maybe around 5-6 hours since it came out on Tuesday), and I must say, so far it's everything you would want in a wizarding world game. Incredibly immersive, huge map, lots of secrets. Brilliant game!

Yeah, and a lot of modern train designs flat out wouldn't accommodate any backpacks onboard anyway, either because they'd just slide right off the side of the train, or because there'd just be no room for them. In Superman's loose articles case, there's much worse examples of loose article policies with other coasters & parks (first one that comes to mind is Steel Vengeance). At least here there's trays for glasses & the like in the station, and the lockers are free to use for an hour.

And parks have switched entire trains backwards with no added cost or known general maintenance needed.

correct me if i’m wrong, but prior to it being updated to 2025 did the list of ride improvements include “vertical lift components replaced with modern designs?” I wonder if upon closer inspection they realised the vertical lift also needs replacing, and due to the late notice they’ve had to push the date back due to Mack having to try and fit that in their schedule. It’s a pretty big structure so i really wouldn’t be shocked especially with all the projects Mack has on their hands.

You’ve heard of ‘Bananas in Pajamas’ and ‘Rat in a Hat’, now get ready for ‘Horsettes in Corsets’

Just to clarify, it was the grouper selling the tickets. They sold them as they went to load the next group. Steel taipan has the advantage of a 3 deep queue line after grouping so that made life easier.

During the peak season Dreamworld actually had a eftpos terminal so you could buy Tail Whip at the ride line up (in the tail whip line). It actually seemed to work well, so it is possible.

Superman rescues me from the subway tunnels and i'm flying over metropolis that is packed with a mass of people? - Yes.

VIP privileges are nothing new or to be outraged by. Well unless you’re jealous to not be considered one. It’s fairly common for celebrities, industry people and good for publicity guests to be given this sort of perk. It has no measurable impact on the other park guests and is good for business.

General public sentiment was unequivocally "if they died on the mild ride, I'm 100% not going on the much scarier rides which look and feel far more dangerous."

It's nice that a positive video is still met with a wave of negativity here. Sometimes I read posts on here from people and think 'Fuck, did we used to date?'