Richard

Let me assure you that the new thrill ride's location has been well and truly chosen, surveys done and soil samples taken and foundation plans well and truly finished. This was all done some time last year. The location will be known when construction begins and the park officially announces the ride later this year.

Sorry, I perhaps didn't elaborate enough. When I say train, I'm referring to something that runs on two parallel rails, not a modified golf buggy parading patrons around the park in tiny cages. It's a bit late now for that sort of action - my point was that when they were faced with concerns about the size of the park, they had the choice of either making it possible to get around the park easily without walking or making the place smaller. They chose, and Hanna-Babera Land (Little Wonders Land) went. I read a bit about the changes while I was gone and saw the positive effect they were having. Disneyland was before they made the change, and it was nothing short of a joke. Walt Disney World was after and it was really quite an improvement. It's still far from perfect, but it's certainly better now. I'm with you in making one member of the party queue while the others wait, in some designated waiting area.

You know, Busch Gardens and SeaWorlds in America don't serve drink tops or straws because of the animals, but we learnt after San Diego and brought our own "equipment" in Florida. It's always good to plan ahead. Now, onto Hanna-Babera Land's closure. Wonderland Sydney is a big park, huge in fact, especially when the rides are as spread out as they are. I don't doubt for one second that 79% of the guests they surveyed commented that it was too big. But their solution, to simply shut off a large section of the park (one which had a very high proportion of the park's attractions) is just weak to say the least. The park has, from day one lacked a nice high-capacity people mover. Chairlifts/cable cars don't cut it because they're far from high capacity (no one wants to wait 15 minutes in line to get to the other end of the park). Any park that had any pride in what they were doing would have had a train system at the least - even something simple that just does a loop around the back of the park with stops in the three key locations would have done the park wonders, rather than shutting off the key area that brings in the families and citing the 79% as the reason. Don't mention wheelchairs. It went just plain crazy at Disney parks. Because anyone in one and their party gets front-of-line access, it's become like a premium FastPass that never runs out. You actually see families, where the kids are fighting over who gets the "next go".

Yeah, I was thinking of Galleon's Graveyard, which was the only Hanna-Babera Land ride in that area on my last visit. I remember the fountain, so I guess I'm now up to scratch on it all.

This was Wizard's Fury's spot if I'm not mistake (am I? It's been nearly two years since my last visit), a Schwarzkopf Bayern Kurve. I don't have any photos on me (without digging into old stuff), but it was best described as a powered coaster on a really tight circular track.

This is presumably the first time the ride has actually gone down for maintenance since it was built, which means it's been running solidly for some 400 days without significant work. Routine maintenance doesn't allow for more drastic maintenance such as disassembling of whole cars to clean and replace less accessible parts, which is vital to the safety and longevity of the ride. The ride also doesn't have a separate maintenance area like every other ride at Dreamworld, where work can be done without really worrying about mess or clutter. This would limit what they can and can't do before park hours, and mean there are more things to do when the ride goes down for annual maintenance.

Myself, essentially. I found out about the 2004 ride in early August I think it was through my own research, starting with stock market announcements and from there a few Google searches and asking the right questions to the right people. All the Gold Coast parks are public companies, and ASX guidelines are pretty strict with regards to leaking of information. "Those that know don't tell and those that don't know tell," is how it'd be put over at CoasterBuzz. The "Dippin' Dots Guy" (a euphemism for the general park employee who knows all, for those who never understood the term) hears things through the grapevine, and they may occasionally be true, and pestering public relations officers for information will get you nothing until a press release is issued.

A Gyro Swing has a footprint of about 50x50m, it'd take some squeezing to fit one into the roundabout area at Dreamworld. http://www.lotteworld.com/eng/magic/img/im...ma01_big04c.gif

Yeah, that's true (and Dreamworld's website says more or less the same thing). It's only one thrill ride though.

Actually, come to think of it, Norb always did have a habit of using particularly "interesting" words. For those unfamiliar with the show (though, I haven't seen it in like five or more years, which come to think of it is a bit of a shame), I'd describe it as Brady Bunch style superlatives (you know, groovy, super etc. etc.), only they were always made-up words to describe made-up things. Now, doing some research here and there, the ever-faithful UrbanDictionary.com has for one listing that the word spooty was used in Angry Beavers "as a adjective that implies distaste and repulsion." I guess there's our answer - I never really thought about it in the typically unusual Angry Beaver fashion which did really hold the answer, just that it was an odd name. Now here's a discussion you never think you'd have.

Similar in concept to Spooty Spin (I never understood that name... and I'm quite familiar with Angry Beavers, so does it actually mean anything?), but Spooty Spin's arms are on free hinges in the centre and rest on a flat steel rail that dictates the vertical motion. Tasmanian Devil is a fixed wheel which tilts from central hydraulics (unless it's powered by a motor, I really don't know). Tasmanian Devil, for this reason can really give a much more intense ride. Here's a picture of the same ride at Luna Park in Melbourne. It's a traveling version and it's really really cranked up - by far one of the most intense flat rides I've been on.

Do you think Dreamworld can handle the maintenance of a wooden coaster? If one were to spring up, I'd give it three, maybe four years tops before it starts to go from pleasantly rough to painfully rough. Give me almost anything over a wooden coaster, for the sake of everyone five years down the track. Don't get me wrong, I'd love a wooden coasters, and I enjoy them more than many steel coasters, but I have doubts that Dreamworld would treat a wooden coaster with the respect and care it does need.

I'm not denying that the Big Dipper added a lot of atmosphere for the park - a 150ft tall steel monster is bound to do that. That doesn't mean the ride is that great though. It's got some killer elements which I absolutely love, but aside from those two parts of the ride it's a "nothing" ride. It's made out to be a lot more than it actually is. From the plans they've got, I think Luna Park has the potential to have a great atmosphere. It wouldn't be the same atmosphere as the 1930's amusement park some might be expecting, but a modern, arty feel to the place. Whether they pull this off or just end up with a bland amusement park with a circus down one end somewhere, I don't know, but I'd like to think they're really trying to get it right.

The ships sound very similar, with the robot at the front driving and R2D2, but there's obviously a very different story. That's pretty common with Disney - usually, even "clone" rides at different Disney parks are completely redesigned from the ground up so as to suit the specific park. The story behind the American Star Tours is as you'd guess an intergalactic trip gone wrong, because it's the pilot robot's first time.

Well, Ron Toomer, who was with Arrow from 1965 through to the early 90's and the designer of most of their coasters during this period was with NASA before going to Arrow. So you're not too far off with the rocket scientists comment. When there's so much that can go wrong and high speeds, high forces and moving parts involved, you've got to have contingency plans for everything. In the words Lt. Proctor of Police Academy Stunt Show fame, "If it can go wrong, it will...", and rides are always engineered for everything. It's better to have too much than not enough, right?

Cyclone's single days are pretty odd, and Thunder River Rapids is doing the same a few times. At least they're all weekdays (Mondays and Fridays - the least busy day of the week?). Many parks would just close them without any notice for single days.

This is a fairly frequent breakdown (as far as breakdowns go) on TOT. You couldn't say what causes it each time, but for some reason it must shut down the LSMs. It could be a speed misread, overheating, system crash, power back-out or any number of things. Normally what they do (as they did in your case) is set the LSMs to reset, and they will slowly tow the car back into the station. If for some reason they can't do this (computer errors etc.), they tow it back manually using a winch that's built into the design for this very reason.

Yeah, perhaps the Paris version is different, because both USA versions are themed to the intergalactic airline. The pre-boarding room (where you line up in your rows and whatnot) even feels like an airport terminal with its plain blue carpet and grey futuristic walls, which I think is an amazing feat - they actually themed it very convincingly and faithfully drab.

What Flea said is exactly right. It's not in terms of sea level though (Superman would surely win, with Magic Mountain being way up in the hills). It's just the distance from the highest point of the car to the ground directly below. Because it launches off the top of a hill, and peaks off the hill, riders are effectively higher off the ground. The ride systems are identical, the ride performance should be identical (with neither park running them at full speed, who knows these days).

I've got no formal training - just enough years of experience. If you saw what I was doing a few years back, you'd cringe. When I start to design a new site these days I take note of things I like and don't like in sites I visit. It'll then usually take one site to get the ball rolling in terms of design, which I'll start by basing my design on. The design doesn't end up even remotely similar through a few solid weeks of making the design meet the predetermined needs I've got. I can't start working on a new site until I know what it'll look like in my head. With Total Thrills I have no idea where the original design came from (that's two "live" designs ago), but the next design along was just refining it and making it look neater (it was still pretty terribly I thought). There was a design I tinkered with for a few months, which didn't last, though I did rather like it (you'll be pleased to know that the Park Gallery images on the main page of Total Thrills are about the only survivor from that design). The current design for Total Thrills was sparked by Guide to the Point, with the large header banner, and it just grew from there, and as you can see, it's absolutely in no way the same to GTTP.

The ride's called Star Tours, it's in Tomorrow Land at Disneyland, and at the Disney-MGM park at Walt Disney World. Truly some of the best theming ever, and incredibly faithful to Star Wars. I thought it could do with a bit of a clean up (parts were just getting a bit dusty and whatnot), but it was a great ride. As far as simulators go though, Back to the Future is the most thrilling I've been on.

You're right. There's an issue with the forum software since I upgraded yesterday which has something to do with linking thumbnails to their attachments. Try this link for now: http://www.totalthrills.com/forums/attachm...attachmentid=26

Here's a screenshot of a gallery page. The images come up at full resolution as a nice Javascript popup, so they're not at all obstrusive, and it'll be difficult for anyone to get lost and close the wrong window or anything. Right now, the exterior of the site is pretty well finished. I'm working on a sumbission system. Initially, it'll just be "for staff only" to submit articles and galleries and whatnot, but I'm eventually going to get it going so that members can submit articles, which will be added to a queue for editing and publishing. For the time being, any submissions will be done by email. Lots of bug-checking, some finalising of the design and we're almost ready to go. I'll probably have a period of beta testing, much like I did with Total Thrills in the beginning which gives people an opportunity to play around and comment before it goes final and live. Early March, or sooner sound good?

I hope the refurbishment they've done is nice and thorough. These rides hardly suffer from roughness like regular wooden coasters do, but seeing this thing running better than normal would be great. Blackpool's is slightly different, but it's an identical ride to that at the Royal Melbourne Show, and Aussie World's. A very wild design - a lot more interesting than the steel ones. I wouldn't be that daring to say that it's actually a lot better than Big Dipper was.

Nothing beats Splash Mountain's very cool medley. For me, that was one of the best songs to get stuck in the head. Walt Disney World's Carousel of Progress (originally from Disneyland - it was in the rotating building that Innoventions calls home) also had a very catchy song... "It's a great big beautiful tomorrow...". Star Tours discussion here.