Richard

Short answer yes. If something's just plain rubbish then I'll delete it.

I'd check over what's been said and make sure you're referring to the right people, Schwarz_freak. You're not exactly flattering people.

I guess that means that the page was updated around about when the incident first occured, meaning Scooby-Doo Spooky Coaster was about 18 months old at the time. Still hardly new.

Given that they're acronyms, they should be LOL, TOT, GD, SP, but yes they can be used. They are useful, because for instance saying WBMW or MW is much easier than saying Warner Bros. Movie World or Movie World all the time and everyone knows what you mean. My point is with words such as "u", "r", "cuz" and that sort of stuff. Very different from what's above, and quite hard to understand when they are used.

In an effort to make the discussions more meaningful and remove as much of the rubbish as possible, I've put together the Roller-Coaster.com.au Forums Community Guidelines. Please read it all. It's nothing any decent person doesn't already do, so don't worry. To repeat what it says, ignorance is not an excuse. If you break these rules then you pay the consequences, all of which are fair and reasonable given the individual circumstances.

http://www.roller-coaster.com.au/article.php?aid=6

I don't have any pictures from inside - it's dark in there, and the park does have a somewhat bizarre (though understandable) "no camera flashes in the park" policy. It's pretty hard to describe if you've never ridden, but just picture some The drop is nothing more than maybe a storey or two tall. It's a gentle drop with a 90º turn to the left. The lift is unique in that it's an elevator - how many water/boat rides do you know that feature an elevator lift?

I was looking over the Movie World website earlier, and saw something I hadn't noticed before. Apparently Scooby-Doo Spooky Coaster is a new ride at the park. Doesn't that just give you faith in the park's idea of how long a ride is new. I could fully understand it a year ago (back then I was still visiting the park semi-almost-regularly because the ride and the park was still attractive to me), but come on - the thing's going on two years! Yes, it's a great ride, yes Scooby-Doo 2 is out in cinemas, but sorry, it's not new. I know it's a bit petty, but I think this just shows the sort of unrealistic return that WVTP expect from their attractions. I love their parks, but it's just that Movie World is really quite neglected (neglect doesn't always mean badly maintained or not cared for you know), and most or all of its problems are simply looked over - after all who cares if a park is half the capacity it should be, given the crowds it gets? "Hey, I queue for 45 minutes to buy my ticket. This place must be good!"

Thanks Scott. Nothing like helping us keep on track over a month after the discussion took place.

I wouldn't say that the steepness is at all determined by the boats. Obviously there's a limit there. Freefall and drop elements are different because of they way they are designed - they aren't floating during these elements. Don't forget you've got to pump all that water to the top, which is where the limit comes in. A steep one has a much much higher flow rate thanks to gravity, and would pretty well definitely be higher for a substantially long ride. So you've got to pump the water higher, and thanks again to gravity that's no easy task and you need more of the stuff to start off with. Not impossible, but you'd need a hydro-electric pump to do the damn thing. A replica wouldn't be too easy because of constraints of landcape. Go knock on Intamin's door and they could give you a prefect layout for the plot of land. A bit more expensive, but at least it's done by a reputable manufacturer. I wouldn't want to see what a park pulls of with second hand raft parts, a whole heap of concrete and some plywood boards.

It's as hollow as they come. I could go into why filling it with concrete wouldn't do much for strength, but then that's going against my recent reluctance to talk about the physics or engineering of rides. I believe that there has been one Giant Drop, in England, which was relocated. I'm not totally sure of the specifics of it though. Needless to say, the thing is bolted together so it would be relatively easy to pull apart. Tony Braxton-Smith used the analogy of a big Mechano set recently regarding Thunderbolt, which explains it well enough. Honestly, most of the flat rides really aren't worth taking anywhere. If another Australian park chooses to pick some of them up, that'd be cool, but there's not too much in that department beyond Bounty's Revenge. I don't know, but I almost see it being not worth the bother of shipping Demon or Space Probe over to Malaysia. I'd think that they are. There might be some useful mechanical parts attached to the wood on Bush Beast or Beastie, and the trains would probably be worth $10,000 to some park who could do with the spares, but there's certainly nothing worth keeping on the wood. Then there's the discussion of the far more important stuff - deep fryers, heat chutes, cash registers and all that fun stuff. That'd be the first stuff I'd get rid of, because that's the sort of stuff you can very easily offload with an auction or two and a few Trading Post ads.

You can't really predict the success of the park based on the first day - that's just stupid. Get back to us after the Easter break has finished and then maybe you'll be able to make a valid judgement on the future of the park, but even then you've not given it a fair chance. There's a lot more to Luna Park now than the rides. I personally think that once the Big Top has established itself as a venue in Sydney the park will be able to survive on almost it alone. Throw in the other function halls and the lucrative amusement park and I see no reason for failure. The previous Luna Park failed because of noise complains and the one before that because of the fires. Never has Luna Park really faced dwindling attendance, and with this incarnation easily the most diverse of all of them, I see little reason for it to fail.

They're not really about the same things. Roller-Coaster.com.au will cover Australian parks in a more general way. Essentially, Roller-Coaster.com.au is not an opinion based site but rather a fact/information based site. Meanwhile, Total Thrills will become more of a "me" site, expanding on what it currently is - a site that I put together containing my photos, my opinions and all those subtle little jokes about how bad Australian parks are that I don't think many people get . It'll cover my travels, especially those outside of Australia or not to do with theme parks, my interests and all that sort of stuff. It'll all come together nicely. With the way Roller-Coaster.com.au was designed, it is a very low maintenance site (i.e. everything does itself/happens with one click). It'll still be frequently updated, but it takes only a fraction of the time Total Thrills did. The new Total Thrills will be similarly low maintenance, so it's really not a big workload.

I'd say you can expect the new Total Thrills in perhaps two or three months, depending on how it all goes. The new site won't be nearly as complex as Roller-Coaster.com.au is, but it will be a reasonably sized site again. What you can expect, as I'm sure I've said before is a more general site and a more graphically intensive site. I'm essentially tinkering with the design now, getting it right - nothing's been done in terms of coding or anything.

Please note that the forums are no longer located at http://www.totalthrills.com/forums. They are now found at Roller-Coaster.com.au. The URL is http://www.parkz.com.au/forums/. Please update any links, bookmarks etc. The Total Thrills version will remain up as a mirror for a few days, but you should change over nonetheless.

As seen on this article at Roller-Coaster.com.au: As Roller-Coaster.com.au continues to come together to become an all-inclusive source for Australian roller coaster and theme park enthusiasts, yet more avenues are being created. The current lineup of products includes a wide variety of different styles of shirts and tops, hats and even boxer shorts sporting the Roller-Coaster.com.au logo. For around the home there's mugs and cups, a lunchbox, apron, frisbee (a.k.a. flying disc) and a teddy bear. Be sure to check out the mousepad featuring a high-quality coaster photograph. The flagship of the store, something totally unique to Roller-Coaster.com.au - you won't find this on any other coaster sites - is the collection of posters. Coaster Profile Poster Series: Coaster Profile Posters are 16" x 20" full-colour posters showcasing roller coasters around Australian and the world, with photographs and some brief information about the rides. The current posters feature Dreamworld's Cyclone. Each poster will only be available for a limited time to make way for new ones, so be sure to get in and get them before they are replaced! Theme Parks of the World Poster Series: This is a unique series of 11" x 17" posters featuring some of the more stunning sights of theme parks around the world and can include rides, attractions or just picturesque landmarks. Focusing on beauty rather than thrills, each poster will feature a few photographs as well as a small body of text. They will be periodically replaced with new ones. Each poster will only be available for a limited time to make way for new ones, so be sure to get in and get them before they are replaced! More posters and other products will be introduced over time. Using CafePress to create the products gives us an incredibly diverse range of products at fairly reasonable prices, without sacrificing quality. Check it out now!

I wouldn't call Tomb Raider livening up Gum Tree Gully. Rather, it just butchered the area. How can you call what's there Gum Tree Gully? No single ride at Dreamworld is still marketable. They loose that after about a year. Try to find someone out there that goes specifically to Dreamworld because of Tower of Terror, Giant Drop or Wipeout. Yes, they probably go there because the collection of rides is better, but individual rides loose their novelty after about a year. You'll notice that the marketability of a new ride pretty well disappears after a year, and Dreamworld's campaigns reflect this. How many ads do you see for Cyclone these days? That's right, zero. I'm not talking about big, expensive TV spots either, I'm just talking things like the Dreamworld website, travel agents (save the particularly out-of-date ones). We're also seeing Nick Central's advertising go down, though with Nickelodeon tie-ins, it's largely a special case. Most Dreamworld advertising these days is concentrating on the "big five" or whatever they're dubbing it - the thrill rides collectively, as that is the only thing they've currently got that is appealing. Obviously when new rides come out, they'll become the new marketing attention.

Flat rides don't hurt. They're high capacity, even with Neanderthals operating the things. I would assume that Thunderbolt's spot won't be keeping the Ocean Parade theme, or that'll just become unproportionally big. Give it another theme, or better yet, no theme at all. Just make it look pretty with nice paths, gardens and trees, and a few shops here and ammenities. I just hope that they get a bit creative with the land there, even if it's a huge lot. Unfortunately, creativeness means a bigger price tag, which doesn't go down too well when you're presenting an idea to a Board of Directors to give you the money. Don't go and stick a big coaster that takes up most of the land or anything. Build the coaster of course, but minimise the amount of "Thunderbolt land" it uses.

Fair enough that Wonderland is certainly not world class (10 years ago perhaps, not today), though we're going to have to say the same about the Gold Coast parks. What've we got? Dreamworld - its signature rides include a dated launch ride and an old-fashioned and low capacity drop ride and there's not much else worth mentioning there. Wet'n'Wild has nothing that ever stock-standard water park around the world has. Movie World has a few pretty good rides, but for every good thing there, there's about five bad or tacky things about the place. Sea World's signature ride is essentially a 30-year old design that wasn't that great back then, they have pretty good animal exhibits and shows. The shows don't even compare to those overseas and the only exhibits really worth mention are Polar Bear Shores and perhaps Shark Bay (we'll have to see). Wonderland, to someone who didn't go every week or work there and know the horrible dark truth, was actually a pretty good park by Australian standards. No, it is not "world class", but then neither is anything else we have in Australia if we're going to go that way.

It's mostly fixed - the errors anyway. There's still an issue with the Thread Views counter and I'll see what I can do about that. The site has moved to a new server - the same one as Roller-Coaster.com.au is stored on, which will make some future changes a little easier to deal with. It's also running much faster, which you might have noticed.

Paramount's Kings Island opened Zodiac in 1975 and removed it in 1984. As for the link you're after - can't help you much with that.

I've just updated Roller-Coaster.com.au with an Orphan Rocker gallery. There are some nice, exclusive shots in there, including some of the ride in action, so check it out! They are working at getting the coaster up and running, though it's definitely not going to be operating this year, contrary to what some (including djrappa, joz and myself) have been told. With a full-time engineer working on the ride, it'll have a far more realistic chance of operating than it has in the past, sitting there as a side project in the back of everyone's mind.

I must appologise for the fairly constant errors you've probably found yourself getting while browsing the forums. The issue is with the database, and you'll find it's more of an inconvenience rather than anything serious. I've looked into it - if it doesn't sort itself out before too long, I should have it fixed by the weekend or so anyway. I'd just recommend in the time being, before you submit a new post or thread, you Ctrl+C what you've done so you're not loosing it all to database errors.

Does that mean when you jump on the floor it'll become all messed up and look like someone spilled ink on it? Richard, who destroyed many calculators (and just about any pen with a spring inside it) throughout his years at school.

You're right, it's not part of, nor an expansion of Australian Wildlife Experience, contrary to what has been stated elsewhere. The idea of AWE is to showcase a wide variety of Australia's wildlife in a replicated natural environment. Tell me how a petting zoo with a bunch of lambs and calves and chicks and whatnot at all fits in with this idea. The petting zoo is certainly nothing special or bold and new, but it is still quite an integral attraction for any theme park. You won't find too many that will go to Dreamworld specifically for it, but it's the sort of thing that has the capability to turn many families' day at the park from a good one to a great one. It's no secret that a larger emphasis will be put on family-oriented attractions, namely those with minimal cost yet the potential for great return. This has been been a recurring theme in a lot of Macquarie Leisure's reports. There's still a commitment to delivering top-notch thrill rides, but as has always been the case, such captial-intensive developments are unlikely to happen more than every three or four years.