Richard

The animal park happens to be one of their most important attractions. It is what brings in foreigners, who are big bucks.

I personally thought that the show that replaced it, Outback Celebration, was a very well put together show. Compared with other theme park musicals in Australia (Looney Tunes Revue, Superstars: Live in Concert), it's certainly one of the best I've seen. Granted, rather lame story, and the songs were adequately tacky, but it was very enthusiastically performed both times I saw it, and was very different from your average theme park show. And did have its moments, and some catchy tunes ("Three cheers for Daphne, she's our outback queen!"). It was only ever going to run for a year, celebrating "Year of the Outback".

The fact that you guys have posted photos of more coastets than there are in the entire of Australia is somewhat depressing. The fact that they're all on-ride makes it even more depressing.

Bermuda Triangle is proudly 100% in-house! I'd imagine most of the technical stuff was subcontracted to local companies - stuff that was out of their league. But hey, why pay another company to design and build a ride, when you can just steal all their ideas? As for Looney Tunes; I wouldn't get too bogged down on the storyline - let's just say it perhaps wasn't the best thought-out.

Well, the show is replacing a clone of our Police Academy Stunt Show, hence the identical set etc. (look at the second picture - even the stadium looks identical). But I think the world "random" does quite correctly describe the show from what limited amounts we can gather from it.

This link was on the latest update at Screamscape. It shows photos from the new show at Movie World Germany: http://freizeitparkweb.de/dcf/DCForumID39/743.html Now, maybe its because the show is depicted by about a dozen photographs, and accompanying German where I couldn't do much better than realising "nervös" is "nervous" (I've never studied German ), but sorry - that looks like the most pointlessly strung together set of stunts and other stupid things - all done in an unmodified Police Academy set (unless you call the"Tactical Response Unit" painted khaki a modification). Let's just all hope that this seemingly crappy show doesn't ever grace our park.

The lasers were turned off that day, which was a bummer. Sometimes the computer system or PLC that controls the laser movement dies, and the lasers shutdown mid-ride, which is interesting. However, on this particular day, they were off all day. Cost-cutting or what I don't know (this was back in about March). The lasers are picked up quite well by the camera, as you see with the single laser that was on, before the brakerun.

If you do watch Topp Twins, you'll see that I wasn't exactly serious about that comment. And while you're on ABC, be sure to tune in at 10:25 tonight, for The Glass House - in my opinion one of the funniest shows on TV at the moment (though the new Shaun Micallef show, though not quite holding up to his old show, comes close).

Actually, we were both wrong. The original figure was I believe $15m, this was well before even the name was known - just that it was to be Scooby Doo themed. The actual cost was $13m. I believe around $2m was spent on lasers.

Well, not so much a single photo, as it is 2445 photos joined together, as well as accompanying sound, but I thought this was adequately interesting. They tell you to hold onto loose items, which is what I did - my finger just so happened to press record during the ride. Quality has been way bumped down so everyone can enjoy it. I took another one on Lethal Weapon (never again), and one on Wild West Falls, but maybe if the public outcry is great, I'll put them up too. There's not much to see, but it's all part of the ride.

It could be Deja Vu... Now of course, you're all confused.

I've never heard any sort of comments regarding Aussies and kangaroos - that's a first for me. Am I the only one who's noticing a distinct Freudian element in conversations here recently? I personally think that New Zealanders are treated unfairly by Australians. You really need to know more about them before you can swing insults their way. Which is why I propose you all watch The Topp Twins on ABC tonight at 11:30pm, which will give you greater and understanding of true NZers.

Yeah, the ride rabid is speaking of is the Setpoint ride I was talking about. They're certainly not the most costly things out there, and look like great family fun. I'd certainly love something like this - it'd give you more than just slides and pools, which can get a bit boring (minus of course the Super 8 Aqua Racer, which will never get boring). On a related note, I'll try and officially launch the Wet'n'Wild gallery over the weekend.

Well, BHP have done the steel for several coasters in Australia, and I'd wager that they do equal, if not better steelwork, than most European or US plants. I'd say the real reason that Australia isn't doing too well in the ride department is because of a lack of creativity, or the respective owners trying to milk them for everything they're worth. These days, there is very little difference in cost between the big manufacturers. You'll pay almost as much for a Batman inverted clone from B&M as you'll pay for a Vekoma SLC. As a rule of thumb, based on the past 10 years or so, a new "big" ride from conception to opening in Australia, is around $16m. •Lethal Weapon - $16m •Wild Wild West (WWF) - $16m •Tower of Terror - $16m •Scooby-Doo Spooky Coaster - $13m •Giant Drop - $12m (on top of the $16m for TOT) •Big Dipper - $8m •Cyclone - $5.5m (3 for ride, 2.5 for relocation/construction/"theming") The three biggest of those rides, the top three, as you see are each $16mil - a fair benchmark price for the bigger rides.

Hey, nissa, welcome to the party! What I've done, is I've moved your question into a new thread in the "Other Parks" forum where it fits best. The link is here: http://www.totalthrills.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=187

Yeah, by all means, upload them here. It'd also mean if your current location changes etc., the links won't go dead. I tell you, I'm going to get down there this year, and I'm going to get so many hundreds of photos from Wonderland, we'll have pictures of every toilet and bin in the park. It'll happen - honest. :oops: Well, it looks like we're going to have a nice steady start to the season this year - not like 2000, when almost overnight the ski season began with about 50cm of snow out of nowhere. Last year, it was a bit late, and we had a week of nice soft powder, but the associated non-stop blizzards, and wind-chill factor that brought it down to about -10º all week.

"Show" Xcelerator at Knott's was up in little over a month. Once Scooby-Doo's shed was up at Movie World, it took around three months to be completed. "Scream!%¿" at SFMM took around 3 months. September to December gives them three months at least. I wouldn't count too much out just yet. And let's not count out flat rides too. Though personally they're not my favourites (meaning: they all suck outright, and I'd gladly take a knocking-ball to one given the oportunite), I'm sure some people would be jumping for joy at the announcement of a shiny new Huss Rainbow headed to Wonderland (I don't expect too many to get that joke ).

I've not got a list or anything fancy like that, but if you check out RCDB's Australian coasters, of them there are two that I haven't ridden - the Melbourne Show's Wild Mouse and Adventure World's Turbo Mountain (which aren't the easiest credits to get). Currently I've only got Aussie rides, but I'm waging that it's the highest count of Australian-only coasters for any single person. I'm doing a California-Florida trip at the end of this year, and with careful planning, I'm able to get upwards of about 50 or more coasters (including all year-round CA parks, Vegas, SFOT if we're lucky, all FL year-round parks, and a trip up to Georgia for Wild Adventures - the kiddy coaster Capital of the World).

Hehe, cheers. As you may guess, I used a Sea World template for this gallery. In changing files and moving them everywhere (from computer to staging server, back to my computer, then to totalthrills.com), some of the correct files got switched etc. I'll fix it before the gallery goes live, which should be once my life gets a little quieter (permission has come from the park ).

It's not the prettiest thing, I'll admit - but what slide is? The purple and blue doesn't exactly do it for me. I'm guessing it doesn't actually need the top half of the funnel (especially seeing as its only wet in the bottom half), and I personally think it'd look better without, but it does have a very intimidating presence over the park.

As long as it's not a body slide I'm happy. Sorry, but unless you're willing to go for Wiegand's stainless steel slides (which by nature are very European looking, which I don't think is the look Wet'n'Wild is after), they hurt too much. A lot of the bigger waterparks are investing in these continuous circuit water slides. They combine everything from drops, rapids, and uphill water-jet powered sections. Schlitterbahn, in Texas has one that lasts upwards of an hour I believe (and I'll be there in December!), where guests can ride for the entire ride, or chose to get off at several stations (i.e. you can ride the exciting sections, leaving out slower parts). I'd love to see one of them, but I'd imagine that it'd really be out of the league of Wet'n'Wild for the near future.

Yeah, obviously, that ride will never happen. Not because of space though, it'd be the noise (which my solution tries to combat). A ride could very easily be designed to be largely "on top" of the park, with supports squeezed in in free spots (Intamin's triangular and box truss tracks require significantly less support). The park's taking a different style when it reopens, with emphasis on entertainment and culture rather than thrill rides as with the previous encarnation. We'll still have the wooden Wild Mouse, thankfully, which is identical to the Aussie World ride (both are the standard Schwarzkopf design), and I'll vouch is certainly a quality ride.

Holiday World is a family owned park, which explains the outstanding way the park has chosen to go with this incredible news. Your average corporate park would be up and running like nothing happened within 5 minutes of an ambulance leaving. Holiday World closed the park in respect, and chose to be so open about the whole incident. It's tragic news, and really does make you think twice about leaving the lapbar loose for the sake of airtime, and has cleared up the thought on some of the larger sites that enthusiast=invulnerable.

Well, there's always the option of staving and overworking the animals in the wilflife park. Eventually we'll have our own authentic (and quite thrilling/life-threatening) Animal Farm attraction. Not only is it fun, but it also teaches you the fundamental flaws in communism.

Well, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. That's always been my opinion regarding the replacement of The Young Einstein house with Harry Potter. Now, maybe it has something to do with the fact that Young Einstein is my favorite Australian movie ever, and the fact that I can recite every line of the movie. The fact that over the past 10+ years I've broken two tapes of the movie from overwatching. Or the fact that I contacted Movie World when they shut down Young Einstein (this is like 1999 we're talking), to see if I could get any memorabilia from the attraction. But really, it was a heck of a lot better, in overall quality, and interestingness, than Harry Potter ever was. Granted, the film is now 15 years old, Yahoo Serious turns 50 this year, and hasn't been known as Greg Pead for 23 years, but I think that certainly should have set the standards for Harry Potter, which it definitely didn't. I don't necessarily want Matrix to have a slanted floor and water running uphill, but if the quality and just plain differentness of Young Einstein should be the benchmark for any future attractions that take its place. And if Matrix doesn't work, the walk-through sex attraction sounds like a goer.