Richard

Or to play devil's advocate, ticket sales dried up after Dreamworld's incident to the point where it was no longer viable so they moved to cancel it in the most appropriate way they could. They still proceeded with the sold out horror themed Friday and Saturday night events after all.

When they shortened Viking's Revenue they had to reduce the number of boats on the course. The bottleneck is and always will be the final drop. A hypothetical increase of its length (which is never going to happen) would not affect capacity so long as they have enough boats to use the final drop at full capacity.

If it is a situation where the ride's operations deviate significantly from the way it was designed, then the implication is that there are issues across the board and potentially a culture of ignoring best practice. I think this line of investigation/reporting from the media is more than fair in this situation.

Moving the unload platform to the bottom of the ride does nothing. Either they fix the problems with the conveyor belt and associated systems and it operates safely, or they don't and there's still a danger of flipping and destroying rafts. There's nothing inherently wrong with a conveyor belt lift hill on this style of ride; plenty use wooden slats too. It doesn't matter what they do: fix the immediate problems and reopen it, vastly re-engineer the ride with completely new systems and build superfluous unload platforms, leave it standing but not operating indefinitely or bulldoze it swiftly. All of these will carry considerably public scrutiny and press interest. If it reopens, the lift could be be a similar conveyor belt, an elevator or Balinese geriatrics... regardless, the ride will carry a stigma with it forever. Industry trends would normally suggest that the logical outcome is that they remove the three closed 30+ year old rides in this area and look to significantly redevelop it with modern attractions. But Dreamworld tend to eschew most industry conventions when it comes to their overall business strategy.

My comment was only insofar as the ridiculous comparison to a road accident. An otherwise normal road is safe to resume operations once the scene of an accident is cleared. It is increasingly apparent from the available evidence and eyewitness accounts that design, equipment, policies or procedures -- or a combination of these four -- caused this accident at Dreamworld. It's hard to imagine any way that the root cause of this incident will be a single catastrophic failure like Big Thunder Mountain, but rather a series of failings that led to this tragic outcome. I dare say Disney's political muscle and their ability to weather that storm is unique to Disney, like so many aspects of the company. Citing that case really just demonstrates just how strong Disney are. The park will resume operations in the near future and I wouldn't suggest otherwise at this point. But the overwhelming mood here seems to be to steadfastly defend the park and insist that every other aspect of Dreamworld is OK to go and just waiting the appropriate grieving period. To me this is an assertion that's just not possible with the information that is known publicly.

Not if the design, maintenance or operation of the road was a key factor in the accident.

Paywall bait and switch... I guess the AFR piece was free when I accessed it via Google News but is paid if you follow a direct link.

Proxy votes would not come to effect until the vote is called at the AGM. The AFR article I linked earlier suggests "the chairman does have the power to defer a vote on a particular resolution".

Annual general meetings must take place within five months of the end its financial year. They do however have the power to delay votes and Ardent's handling of everything thus far has been nothing short of disastrous. They should have postponed the vote on Deborah Thomas's ~$800,000 bonus. Even once Ms Thomas bowed to pressure and announced the donation, there have been deliberate and obvious omissions in regards to the longer term share portion of this bonus, which is why this disparity exists between the donated $167,500 amount and the reported ~$800,000 figures. They shouldn't have been caught out with their claims of being in contact with the families. They probably should have postponed the vote on the company name change. In this case they either didn't anticipate any backlash prior to going ahead, or they weighed their options and decided that the name change as a footnote in all the bad press is better than reawakening the beast in a few months time with the news. You can't fault them for being stuck in the unfortunate position of proceeding with the AGM, but they really haven't managed it well. An interesting read: http://www.afr.com/brand/chanticleer/ardent-leisures-lesson-in-crisis-mismanagement-20161027-gscciq

Typical meaning an incident caused by a fault or flaw in the ride system itself, or its operating procedures. A fire caused by external factors is totally different to the failure of a ride system. Luna Park's incident raised questions about fire safety in the broadest terms, not specific to amusement rides. To use another analogy: would you consider a driver killed in a bridge collapse to have died in a car accident?

The Coroner's inquest only dismisses a statement made regarding arson rather than ruling out the idea of arson as such. The findings are inconclusive but they do rule out any faults with the ride system. A completely different set of circumstances and a vastly different era for safety standards that I think separates the Ghost Train incident from most "typical" theme park incidents. I don't really think comparing or ranking these two against each other really offers any meaningful insight.

Though the cause of the 1979 fire at Luna Park was never determined, the general consensus is either arson or electrical faults. Neither of these really fall into what I would class as a typical theme park incident, in the same way that a tidal wave or meteorite wouldn't be classed as a theme park incident. Absolutely not. They would be completely liable in this scenario.

You don't think that maybe in the interests of the company and its shareholders to have contracted psychologists and counsellors that suggest the park reopen as soon as possible? No one has stated the very obvious (and somewhat cynical) truth. Reopening in a memorial capacity is a logical business decision by virtue of how it can improve the company's goodwill and PR standing. It softens the blow of reopening and shows that as a company they are doing everything they can to support the families. It actively encourages the public to come back with the knowledge that money they spend will be helping. Questions of overall safety notwithstanding, business as usual will be the way Dreamworld rebounds from this, and the memorial day is a masterstroke PR activity to facilitate this.

Please don't misinterpret this as a negative comment about laying flowers or paying respects at Dreamworld @Theme Park Girl, but by the very nature of those actions it constitutes a very public, not private, moment of mourning. Sadly it comes with the territory of paying your respects at the site of an incident of national and global interest. Nor have I @YLFATEEKS... but I get the feeling that a lot of the media-flaming is from people that gladly lap up mainstream news coverage 365 days a year. I do have my genuine concerns about the media in general; but the vibe I'm getting here is that *this time* they've gone too far. Not that they go too far in general.

I think this media witch-hunt is a bit dramatic. Their coverage of this story is exactly the same as their coverage for anything. You can't be disgusted at this and then still tune into the six o'clock news or visit their website day in day out to see them treat any issue of public interest in the same manner. Despite some of the sensationalised aspects of the coverage, the media have by and large been accurate on many of the facts we now know to be correct. Why isn't it perfectly reasonable to ask questions of the safety or maintenance regime of this and other attractions? Why isn't it reasonable to be asking questions of the long-term viability of Dreamworld, or the appropriateness of reopening on Friday? Let's say this was a potential design flaw in a car that led to a fatal accident. The media would be all over that manufacturer in the exact same manner and I guarantee no one here would be questioning this style of reporting like so many here are doing. Because it's a big anonymous conglomerate overseas that should be held accountable, not their beloved local theme park?

There's one gate at the unload platform where the disembarking raft stops. There's another one just before it which looks to exist to prevent subsequent rafts from bumping into the first one while guests are hopping off. This is further along than where either raft is stopped -- it appears as if both of these gates are within the fenced off platform area that can be seen in the various aerial photos.

This suggestion is incorrect. That small patch of white is not one of the steel bars but rather one of the cloth sheets placed at the site after the incident. The placement of the raft in that photo is not a location where there there are any steel bars or mechanical devices to hold the rafts in place. There's some images from other angles in The Sun's coverage, but be warned it's distressing and their information/speculation is also woefully incorrect.

There's almost certainly no way that this incident was in any way caused by the riders. The situation @AlexB has described seems like a reasonable scenario based on the photos and eye-witness reports that have surfaced thus far.

Look everyone... some have obviously been affected by this incident more than others. We're not going to ask members to refrain from speculation. Obviously at this point there are a lot of photos and eye-witness accounts out there to go by and this is a community of theme park lovers so there will be discussion. I might suggest that rather than condemning others for making observations or sharing thoughts, that you perhaps take a break from this topic for a day or two if you're feeling a bit overwhelmed by today's tragic events. We really don't want to see bickering, down-voting or other pettiness in an already difficult discussion.

Once again, please let's refrain from negative voting on completely reasonable posts. Because it would fall after the fast-moving gondola clipped it, so it would come from above the riders.

Giant Drop in early 2002... one of the cable couplers didn't correctly fold away after the gondola passed and was clipped on the way down. As Gazza noted this was the reason for the mesh awning.

That massive non-inverting loop is very cool. I have to say though that after that and the overbanked turn the ride has that sort of just killing time before the brake run vibe that seems to plague many Intamin coasters these days.

This quote has become so butchered and misappropriated in the year or so since it was said by Village Roadshow's Robert Kirby. "One of the world's best theme park drawcards" to me points to the installation of a world-class attraction that is reliably going to attract crowds. It's not a statement that says "we're going to build the world's best attraction" or "we're going to build the world's best [insert ride type]". The last thing this statement says to me is that they're going to gamble with something untested such as VR as the drawcard. If the budget for this ride is anything like what I'm hearing, then logic dictates they really can't afford to do anything but play it really safe by looking at what works historically.

Efficiency is a pretty important one though... optimistically if it adds just 60 seconds to a dispatch time of two minutes then capacity is down by a third. An hour queue in a peak period becomes an hour and a half.

A tip for bored kids at school: don't sign up with your official school email address if you want to troll. It makes it really easy for admins to see who and where you are.