Richard

Very interesting news. They purchased the props from a film set auction recently (could be from a film made down the road?), and they're using them for future attractions. It's not anything from old attractions. No official word on the actual attraction yet, but take into account what I've already said about it. One thing about film props is, despite being incredibly realistic, they're not always (in fact rarely) solid, sturdy things. I trust Dreamworld will give it some sort of reinforcing, because bored people will quickly make a mess of it (see Scooby-Doo's queue area, which isn't nearly as good as it was on the first days in terms of quality of theming). I'm leaning towards walkthrough at this stage, but for no other reason than that if I were Dreamworld, and down the road they've opened a walkthrough targeting teens, I know what I'd be doing. The only sort of show that fits this sort of theme would be a stunt show, and I don't see Dreamworld's entertainment department putting together a stunt show. Shows also need some sort of seating/stadium area, a walkthrough will need a concrete slab and a tin shed (air conditioning too, please!).

Yeah, the second one's probably not going to happen. It was to be the northern parks (Cedar Point, Holiday World inclusive), around June or July, but right now, a nice NZ ski trip instead is sounding very nice. Still, I guess there's always next next year for another trip (and I want to do Europe too after that...).

It's an interesting concept. Clearly, just a gimick, but a pretty fun looking one at that. The Taiwan ride's known Gravity Max, at Discovery World. Originally, some of you might remember (we're talking about 2001 or so) the park was having some financial difficulties and having trouble getting construction completed and the park opening, but it seems to have all come together and I'm guessing it's all operating now without too many problems. A lot of people say they wouldn't trust the ride because of the precarious nature of the tilt, but I did do a lot of research into it's locking mechanisms a while back and it's got plenty of redundant safety systems in place. Beyond the actual hooking/release mechanism, you've got camming devices (as in elevators) and essentially a steel "block", all of which are mechanically pulled out of position through contacts that can only be made in the vertical position. In all honesty, you should be more worried that you're going to get stuck vertical rather than rolling off the end of the track (and I'm sure they've got an emergency system where if it is stuck vertical, they can easily right it again). Another thing, the trains look really sweet. They must be among the most open and exposed trains on the market. Giovanola were/are also working on a version of this ride, which really utilises the potential of the tilt. They had plans to make it so that there were multiple courses, which can be accessed by rotating/sliding of the tilted track, and riders would vote for the course they want to go on. Obviously, it sounds very interesting on paper, but I think it'd be a lot more than a pain and waste of money to execute in real life.

Dreamworld seems to be getting ready to really kick off construction on their latest attraction/s. They've got some construction going on over in the side storage/maintenance area beside Thunderbolt (behind Vortex) - the same area that Reptar's track was stored prior to vertical construction. They've got all sorts props that let's just say look very "tomby". I've not taken any photos of it yet- I'm hoping to get out to Dreamworld with a camera some time this week or next week (I'm very busy, so I am a bit doubtful ). I guess I'm confirming my previous news that Lara Croft is coming for this year's christmas. Let's not get too excited, it's not going to be a ride. I'm sure a quality attraction nonetheless (especially as a licensed attraction), but you'll have to wait just a little longer for the next thrill ride. 8)

Wonderland's yearly attendance figures hover above the 1 million mark. Compare that to Dreamworld, which is now up at around 1.1 million, and the average for each of the Warner Village parks is 1.06 million (combined total of 3.2). The fact that the park can perform as it does, is simply because of it's location. The fact that there are 6 million people within an hour or so of the park, compared to on the Gold Coast, where there might be 2 million. Only 45% of the guests are actually from Sydney, 27% international is the next highest and at the bottom is 6% interstate, showing that it is definitely a regional park like Six Flags parks, not a destination park (as with the Gold Coast parks) like Disneys. So really, only 7.5% of Sydney residents visit Wonderland each year. It's not necessarily that they're happy to visit a park with nothing new, it's just that a visit every few years or whatever can keep up the levels of attendance. Each Sydney resident averages 1 visit every 13 years - each has been an average of 1.35 times in their life. (Statistics are fun! ) International or interstate guests (and to a lesser extent, regional guests) aren't the ones who are attracted by new shiny things. Let's face it, unlike a family holiday to the Gold Coast, where 50% or more of the time is spent at the parks, an interstate guest is just filling in a day with Wonderland, they're not basing their trip around it. International guests simply do the park because the coach takes them there (a little generalised, I know). There's room for a theme park in Sydney, definitely. Just don't go with the gimick approach that Sega World used, or near a bunch of yuppies as with Luna Park. Interestingly enough, Dreamworld was originally planned for Sydney, but no suitable land was found down there, so they went to the Gold Coast instead. A theme park in Sydney would really have to be something to do anything useful at all. Unless you're willing to put up something that'd give even the Gold Coast parks a good fight, an investor is wasting their time.

Without any significant investment or even new rides in the park in nearly 10 years, they've sustained among the highest attendance of any theme park in Australia. It's largely due to geographical location more than anything else, but the fact is, the park has been profitable for a number of years with nothing significant. I don't think there is any problem with having the park run by a Malaysian company. I furthermore don't see how an Asian company is any different from an Australian or American company in that the sole goal of business is to make money. They don't invest large amounts of money in the park, but they're still running what is among the most profitable parks in Australia. I'm going to leave the wage section out - if there's really an issue with wages, then I'd think the union would try their best to do something about it. I'll agree that nominal sounds to be what they're doing right now - repainting and whatnot. While we'd all love to see new rides, and agree that it would be the sort of investment that would do the park well in the short run, I'll refer you to the above two paragraphs, which I think sums up why they're said to not be coming any time soon.

I'll go a step further, and be 99% sure that the Zodiac is from Kings Island. I really did do a lot of research on this a few years back, and sadly I can't remember many of the exact details, but I'd be sure that just about all of the rides that Wonderland opened with are those that were discontinued at USA Paramount parks (pre-Paramount days of course). It just seems to be the most ideal and logical solution. Here's what I've got, just digging up some really old stuff now. Wizards Fury came from Kings Island, which was removed in 1983, known as Bayern Kurve. There was also a "Flying Dutchman" removed from KI in 1983, which could just further complicate finding where "Galleon's Graveyard" came from. That's all I've got for now.

My issue never was with the fact that they're trying to save money. That's all fine and well - it's how the world works. It's really the fact that they staff a single person on a ride like Cyclone or Giant Drop, who takes a minute to open the door and let people in, another two minutes to check the restraints, then proceeds to fill out their log book, before dispatching. I fully understand why the log book needs to used (how else would they know that Thunderbolt has taken nine million passengers? ), but why they can't do this during the ride's course on any rides is a mystery to me. It's also unfair to say that Dreamworld is the only park that has efficiency problems. I've run into truly rotten days at other parks because of what I'd call disgracefully unorganized and incompetent staff, but the fact is, at other parks, it's generally a rare occurance. With Dreamworld, unfortunately, it tends to be the norm. And it's really unfortunate that through years of such operations, it doesn't feel terrible strange to wait 20 minutes to get onto Cyclone when you're at the front of the queue. I remember the summer that Giant Drop opened, when they were advertising six hour queues for the ride so people knew what they were getting themselves into, and that was spot on. If the ride were running at even 400pph (half the manufacturers theoretical maximum), that queue would have been 2400 people and let me tell you, it would have been more like 300-400 tops in the queue (the normal queue house was used - no spillage). Opening day of Cyclone, it was running at 288pph (five minute dispatches), with I believe three or four staff. I've been told before by the park that new rides take some time for staff to "learn the ropes". I fully understand that there is some degree of truth to this, but the past has shown us that these opening periods tend to actually be the most efficiently run, and go 12 months down the track, you'll see that the ride's got a capacity not nearly as high as the year before. This was proven with Cyclone certainly, and Giant Drop's hasn't been performing at all in a number of years.

It is fundamentally cost-cutting, more than anything else. Why put four people on a ride when you could just as easily put on one, and just have queues 3x longer than they could be? Dreamworld's actually quite odd, in that most of the staff look to be quite a bit older than most parks. I'm sure the average age for a park employee at Dreamworld is something like 30. Go down the road to Movie World or Sea World. You're looking at an average age of probably 25. Warner Village do have an minimum age requirement as far as I know for ride operators, joz will be able to give the details, but it's something like 20 or 21. I'm guessing it's similar or the same at Dreamworld. Now, age doesn't mean anything necessarily. But Dreamworld's staff are notoriously slow and seem very uninterested in maximising efficiency. This hardly screams capable to me. Dreamworld does like "big numbers", but I guarantee you that most numbers listed on signage is what they got from the manufacturer, which is usually reasonable for ideal circumstances. Meanwhile, for Giant Drop to achieve a capacity of 800pph they'd have to dispatch both gondolas 50 times an hour, which is a 1:12 sec cycle, including load and unload (which is usually estimated as a 30 second period). Considering the ride's current cycle has a 1:00 wait at the top of the tower before dropping, I'd say this figure is pretty unrealistic. On their current cycle, assuming 2:30 including load and unload, they'd be able to quite easily achieve 384pph, which isn't all that bad. That's the sort of capacity that would result in about 1:30 queues on the busiest summer day, which those who've been there, know is about half what it'd normally be.

Again, contact the park about that one, frontdesk@----URL removed for non-compliance with Community Guidelines---- should do the trick. Try to use at least basic grammar and punctuation skills when you contact them though.

An Impluse would be in the area of 200ft tall - it's half the height of Dreamworld Tower. It is a launched ride, but it's also a very different experience, as those who have experienced both will testify. It has a capacity of 1100pph (from RCDB, based on the standard, 180ft version), but one thing I really don't like is the idea of a single train. One train is like a signal to Dreamworld staff that there's no hurry. Eureka Mountain (or Rocky Hollow, but it's not too relevant to my point) is the only ride at Dreamworld that ever runs "at capacity",which itself is very low because of the way the ride's length and blocking system - you're always seated and waiting for the block ahead to clear (or normally about 4 blocks when they're only running 2 or 3 cars). We need two train minimum, and operations proceedures to be able to keep up with it. Hate to break it to you Dreamworld, but you might have to roster more than one operator to operate a multi-train ride at a decent capacity. I'll kill (well, maybe wound :twisted: ) for anything from Switzerland, they're all high capacity, and they'll all put anything else in Australia to shame... not to mention it'll get people really gawking from their cars as they drive past.

Not a problem - interesting parallel nonetheless. From an actual design standpoint, the Giant Drop's structure is identical to Space Probe's, just larger. The track guage is larger, but that just means the gondola's contact points are also wider. As far as I know, there's no technical difference. What exactly do you mean by "rubber mounted contact points"? If you're talking about the wheels, yeah, all the wheels are all steel with a rubber (or plastic) compound tread. Interestingly, Thunderbolt at Dreamworld uses steel-only upstops (the rest are a very hard plastic wheel) - to prevent damage to the track, they'd use an alloy that's a softer metal than the track so that the wheels will wear instead of the track (Mohs scale, everyone). Regarding rubber compounds for wheels (again, I hope I haven't interpreted it wrong), I know that many modern coasters use a fairly recent product (maybe 6 or 7 years old) from DuPont known as Hylene PPDI. I don't know if Vekoma are using this on wheel replacements (Arrow shifted to it a few years ago), if not , it'd just be the standard poly-eurethane that most coasters used. This is fun. Keep 'em coming! 8)

True, I'm sure riding it I'm sure will change my opinion about it, to some degree. Though I must admit, I really don't think it is the sort of ride that'll rate up there as all time favourites. I'm of course by no means denying that it's probably a better ride than anything we've got in this country. I think the real issue is with the seemingly horrendous capacity and reliability of the ride. Dreamworld is the sort of park that could seriously benefit from some genuinely high capacity rides to really. Giant Drop is allegedly something like 800pph, and I don't think I've ever seen it run at more than about 200 on a good day. Cyclone's projection was 600pph, and the staff manage to get through about 300 or 400 if they're feeling energetic (15 minute dispatches are all too common during about 75% of the year). The list goes on. They need some rides that even the laziest of staff at Dreamworld (who I say have to be the worst of the worst) can get a decent capacity with. How Wipeout has the queues it does I don't know - it's a piece of cake to get people pumping through. I'll disagree with you there Slick. Thunderbolt wasn't just a little jerky - Cyclone these days is beyond a little jerky. Thunderbolt was, from day one, a torture device. It was one of very few rides that are actually rough even on straight sections of track. I've ridden it countless times, and I can honestly say that not a single one of those rides wasn't painful, and resulted in some sort of pain, except for occasions where tricks I've known. I'm happy for you to have your own opinions about the ride, and I'm glad you've got them, but hey people are different, and thankfully Dreamworld's upper management agreed ("It's always been a rough ride" - quote from a coversation with Dreamworld's CEO I had a few years ago). And just to correct you on one thing, Thunderbolt's listed official speed was 87.5km/h. Wonderland Sydney's Bush Beast is listed officially as 90km/h. Both rides will have had speeds both faster and slower than that, but officially, Bush Beast was and still is Australia's fastest "gravity" (ugh...) rollercoaster. Granted, it was a pretty fun ride (not exactly a thrill), and is a ride I'll miss for approximately the time it takes for something to take its place.

Any anomalies in the track would surely have an effect on the dynamics of the ride. It wouldn't really take more than a slightly less smooth section of track to really slow the train enough to cause problems. Vekoma wouldn't let such things pass though (as "bad" as they are... ), and certainly not in the short time it ran at Expo would it have caused any fatigue problems that might cause depressions or anything in the track (I doubt even today that any track has been replaced on Demon because of damage). The problem associated with adding spring-loaded wheels isn't so much with an incapability to add them to the trains, but rather with the way it'll effect the dynamics of the ride. Contact means friction, which means slower speeds, which essentially means even more valleying in the boomerang - which happens enough as is. They tried to get spring-loaded wheels happening on the Giant Inverted Boomerangs (Deja Vus), but that lead to repeated valleys in the boomerang, so clearly they've not yet worked out how to accurately simulate the friction that springs add to a ride. I know for certain that SFMM's Deja Vu removed the springs to increase uptime, and I'd guess that the other parks followed suit. From a technical standpoint, there is absolutely no difference between the train on Demon (an old model Arrow train) and that on Big Dipper/Cyclone (newer style Arrow train). Aside from the bubbly look and a few aesthetic and comfort changes, it is the same train as the old ones (Vekoma did add certain things to make the cable lift system and other things work correctly). Same track guage, same wheel guage, same cabin width, same seat and restraint height etc.

The age-old "Why Vekoma's are rough" discussions. This is one I've always been fond of (and I've participated in enough at ThrillNetwork, CoasterBuzz and Westcoaster ). New wheels do take a while to wear in, but they certainly won't be rougher than old wheels. See the graph I've attached out of sheer boredom to get an idea of the smoothness of a coaster with new wheels in relation to time (yes - I was very bored). You'll find it takes some time for an Arrow or Vekoma coaster with new wheels to wear in and peak its smoothness, and it'll slowly deteriorate over time. Cyclone's a great example for Gold Coast locals, and I'm sure Demon is the same. As for the idea of upstop and guide wheel spacing. It's a pretty popular argument, but there's a few things I'd like to say about it. The spacing of upstops doesn't contribute at all to roughness. Unless you felt the train drop and make contact with the upstops while upside down, this wouldn't make a difference. My best argument to put to rest the idea of spring-loaded side guide wheels solving the roughness issues is actually Runaway Reptar at Dreamworld. It's a Vekoma coaster that uses spring-loaded guide wheels, and I can tell you that it's far from smooth. If that ride were going any faster than it currently does (i.e. the speeds of a ride like Demon at 75km/h), you'd be beaten to a living pulp from the headbanging. They'll slightly dampen any heavy jolts, but they won't magically make them disappear. Flea, I know the jolts you're talking about in the loops etc. on Demon, and it's because of not-so-great engineering and transitioning, it's really not much to do with spacings with wheels. Though these might lessen the jolts, much of it comes from the sudden curve into the loop and the sudden shifting to the side of the track in the loop. Through the boomerang though, springs might prove more useful, but still, it's not going to do a whole lot. Softer restraints and more open cars would be the easiest way to fix this problem... or just keeping the wheels fresh enough. As for Space Probe, in a perfect world (conveniently remove friction), the speed will be directly equal to the acelleration (9.8m/s²) and the time it spends freefalling (before it hits the brakes). Of course, it's not a perfect world, and friction does take its toll on gondolas based on how much weight there is in it. The roughness sounds to me like it's coming from a lack of rail greasing. I know Giant Drop can often give a good rattle on the way up - thankfully it never does on the way down, as it's painful enough on the way up going slowly (it can sometimes give the neck a bump in an awkward way). If you look closely at the running rails of a Giant Drop from Intamin, you'll see they've got a good thick coating of grease, which allows the smooth and nearly frictionless descent (and is also why Giant Drop's so grubby and oily beyond the oil rig theme). Another day... another overly long essay on coasters.

G'day Chris, Can't help you with your request (not a huge carnival type myself), but I'd like to welcome you to Total Thrills. Feel free to contribute to existing topics, or start new ones if it's not been covered. Best of luck with the search though.

Deja Vu seems to be quite overpriced for what you're getting - and I'm not necessarily talking about the technical difficulties. It just really doesn't look to be the most exciting ride out there. Granted, it'd be a great experience, but not the sort of thing that would provide enough of a diverse experience to really make it a good perenially popular attraction, like Thunderbolt very much was (despite what you'd like to think about it). That, and the fact that it is a capacity nightmare. If Dreamworld is smart, they'll know that to get the most out of a new ride, it'll have to have the best possible capacity for the cost. Anything that doesn't have a realistic capacity of above 1000 pph to me would be useless. That's one of the only reasons that I think flat rides would be a good choice. You're paying maybe $6-8 mil tops for a ride that can suck up about 1000 pph with not necessarily as much staffing as a coaster would require. Of course, it's not what I would really want, but we're talking what Dreamworld needs. My mind is made up on the Intamin hyper or B&M floorless.

Warner Bros. only ever secured the rights for four films from what I remember. I think it's pretty smart given that the kid had already grown out of the role by the time the first movie was finished.

I'd appreciate it, as I'm sure would Intamin, if rather than directly embedding images (through the tags) from an external source - in this case Intamin's website - you either just use the tags, or attach them to your post using the "Add an Attachment" feature. This way you're not "leeching" the images, and not costing other sites in terms of bandwidth.

That's all, as I'm sure you're aware, the conditions of being a public company in Australia - all critical information must be available to the public. It's also why the Australian listed parks are not prone to even hinting at coming attractions - they're simply not allowed to (which is why coming here with "insider" information mightn't be the best idea). I'm not sure of the specifics of the KLSE (Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange), but I'm guessing that the information's accesible through their website, and might even be more specific and useful than the information available through ASX.

The Impulse route would be interesting, but that's the sort of ride you slot in anywhere it fits - I don't think making it the highlight attraction of a brand new area/land would be the best application of an Impulse, unless, as thunder suggested, it's stuck over way to the side somewhere. As for the 45º style of SFMW's - I've not ridden it, maybe someone who has could correct me (i.e. rabid), but from what I see, it doesn't look nearly as exciting as the standard version (aside from the novelty of perhaps slowing/stopping upside down), plus it takes up more space (but then that's covered by building it over Vortex). As an avid non-fan of flat rides in general (they have their moments, but so do coasters, 10 times over), I'd actually say that a collection of Huss Giants, such as the Land of Giants would be a pretty fun concept, and it'd be perhaps the easiest way to build some high capacity rides to really give the park the overall capacity it needs most of the year. The only thing is, these rides, from what I know, are seriously expensive - you're looking at a small coaster for each individual ride. They'd be relatively easily marketed in the park, particularly sticking a few "Southern Hemisphere's largest..." on a few ads. However, give me an Intamin hypercoaster or B&M floorless any day over a flat ride please.

I must admit, what they've done to Transylvania I really don't mind, but I've always been big on theme parks being bright and colourful. I know the theme has changed - it's less of an intimidating, delapadated "scary" as it a friendly, cartoony "scary", but I think it works well for Wonderland. As for the buildings - the first is undeniably a stock warehouse, presumably the Woolworths one we've heard about in the past. Crazy Clarks (or one of the equally cheap variations) built something similar out at the Port of Brisbane last year for storage before distribution and it, like this one, was truly huge. The Business Park is certainly not what I believe was originally invisaged back a few years ago, and I'd be lying if I said that it looks like a great development.

Cheers, that'll get changed some time soon!

Thanks for that link. I had looked on UsedRides.com a while back, but I guess I wasn't as successful as yourself in finding it. The strange thing is, they've hired a Dutch agent to sell the ride. That seems pretty odd to me, unless they've contacted Vekoma (who are Mesho's European partner) to help with the potential sale. You've just got to hpe that the poor park who eventually does buy it knows what they're getting themselves into.

Merimbula's Magic Mountain was done and up earlier this week. Also, I redid the Dreamworld gallery over the weekend. The old one, having looked back, was just plain rotten. The images are mostly old ones, but I did added 11 new photos: 6 of Cyclone, 1 of Runaway Reptar and 4 of the Tower. They're much nicer looking that the old ones. The colours aren't as messed, and they're now all standard sized (if you remember the old ones, the dimensions were all over the place). I'll look at doing the rest of the Scenic World gallery over the weekend.