downunder

Gronalund and Liseberg are excellent, and the best part is they are right in the middle of the city so they are easily accessible. The area around Gronalund is also spectacular with the harbour and cool museums. Alton Towers is good, I used a fast pass for Air, Oblivion and Nemesis - and gotthere early and did all the one and done stuff before thelines built up. Sonic's Spinball is also cool, went here before the Smiler so I can't cmment on that. Thorpe is a solid park with some fairly good coasters - easily to get to in London. Parc Asterix is an OK park, but the lines get horrible quick, I'm talking 3 hours in high temps for Goudurix, which has been frequently voted the worst coaster on earth. Maybe going during the week in shoulder season would be better. Denmark's parks are nice and quirky with some great rides, some of them like Tivoli are in the centre of town ad others are quite out of the way.

Luna Park Melbourne is okay, never been there before. It's fairly easy to get to from the city on the tram. Light on for rides- Scenic Railway, kiddie coaster, Ghost Train, dodgems, and about 6-8 flats. The area is worth visiting overall. I recommend getting there early, the lines can build up quite quickly for the scenic railway and Ghost train as they are both very low capacity. Also the line for tickets was out of the park by the time I left. Though it seemed to be a large group of Africans having some sort of a day there. The all day wrist band is $48.95 which isn't worth it, I'd look for discounts and night deals on the web. The Scenic Ralway is ok, a bit bouncy and jolty on the drops, the brakeman almost stopped the train before it hit the drops. It's a unique ride and worth doing. I'm 6'2" with long legs and I didn't have a problem with comfort or fitting in, I rode the front row and the second row on my two rides - so I don't know if other cars have problems. The Ghost train is fun, but nothing special. The rest of the rides are fairly standard flats: pirate ship, spinny rides. Metropolis has closed, unfortunately I passed on the opportunity to ride that a couple of years ago just before it closed. The place is so small, I'm amazed they fit another full sized woodie in the place.

Thanks for the report, I went to Luna Park Sydney twice last year, though to entertain visiting fiends. They could sure use a few more permanent attractions. I have to admit I think it's awesome they preserved Coney Island, it's a hame a few cool things aren't working. Love the slides. Hair Raiser has got a kick to it. And I thought Luna Park Sydney was small until I went to Luna Park Melbourne on the weekend.

Nice work, they could put the ride in a sound proof dome and th Nimby's would still complain. Ah I remember the glory days of Luna Park when I was a little one, burned down when I was there for my birthday. It was like a mini Blackpool Pleasure Beach.

I was sceptical about wood over steel until I actually rode some of the really good wood coasters. A crazy airtime RMC at Dreamworld would be nice, and probably realistic budget wise - something like Outlaw Run.

Expedition GeForce at Holiday Park, got stuck at the top of the lift hill. Ride op came up and I have no idea what they were saying in German. Eventually they got the train over and we were stuck in the brake run because they couldldn't get the catch car back down to take the other train over. Got evac'd by ladder at the brake run.

I agree that it would be a better fit for Sea World. And credit whores won't have to visit an extra park to get everything. Nice to see Noxegon on the site, that dude is hardcore.

The pompous rich twats are at it again. NIMBY's limit so many amusement parks. The hoony ride reference is unintentional comedy gold. I want to buy a season pass and marathon hair raiser on the facing the cliff side and scream my lungs out. And then get drunk and fight on the streets.

^Ditto, I was so impressed on Saturday night. The cast on the 7.30pm special tour were hilarious and you've gotta love that special experience on the tour (no spoilers).

I went on Saturday night (18/10) on the Ultimate Tour, this is my first time at Fright Nights though I've been going to US events like Halloween Horror Nights and Knott's Scary Farm for years as a comparison point. I liked the mazes, Evil Within and Wolf Creek 2 were definitely comparable to Knott's and moving towards Universal territory. Ripper had great sets, but lacked scare actors, especially towards the end. Clowns was passable, some good scare actors. Scare Zones lacked a scare actors especially the alley to the soundstages. Main street was better though, especially when they had the rush of characters go through. The event really needs more attractions though to break up the crowds, even if what is there is good quality. It would be interesting to know how much of the crowd are people getting a free ticket from an Annual Pass (or do they have a cap on AP tickets). Overall, the event was tons of fun. The Ultimate Tour was excellent, the Lounge, special tour, bag of goodies, meet and greet with event cast at their briefing and Front of Line privileges were outstanding. They could make it clearer though that there are no backstage tours included in the Ultimate Tour. Luckily a friend knew the backstage tour wasn't included so I signed up for that while I was there during the day - the lights-on maze tour was excellent. One major turn-off is the dire public transport situation getting back from the event, I was lucky I got a lift with a friend or I might have been walking back to Surfer's.

Did anyone have any experience with the public transport bus after the event which I believe goes to Helensvale and then Surfer's? I'm coming up from Surfer's so I have nightmares of being stranded there.

^Ha, I might give it a miss unless I wind up having other people with me.

^The mazes are looking good at Hollywood Universal this year - that place gets seriously chockers, you could watch a good chunk of a whole series of walking dead on an iPad waiting in line for the maze. I'll there a less than a week after Movie World, should be fun. Is 4 mazes the most Move World has ever had at the event?

I asked someone reasonably who was reasonably high up in Universal the same question about Uni Studios in Hollywood and the answer I got was: "Do you know how much those soundstages make?" So it might be a similiar equation for Movie World, and of course MW has a number of other factors influencing theme park expansion like the neighbours. LOL, otherwise, start buiding that indoor megalite.

So can a solo adult male (albeit normal looking) ride this without everyone looking at them like they're Uncle Fester? It looks like fun, though the looney tunes ride was an outstanding attraction, but who knows what MW has in store?

^^Thanks for that, it seemed ridiculous to have to pay park entry. Going to be a busy day, I might see if I can squeeze in the Sea World shark feeding thing at midday before heading up. ^I have limited time, so I want to squeeze as much in one night as possible. For me, the Ultimate Tour was the tipping point in deciding whether to go or not.

I booked the Ultimate Tour for the 18th. I plan to spend the day at the park anyway, and go to Sea World on the Sunday, so it was worth getting VIP Gold. My read of that 15 people thing is that when they take you on the guided tour part of the package the maximum size of a single group is 15 people, I think they would have more than 15 Ultimate Tour packages available on any night. I'd love to be wrong though. I'm hoping the Ultimate Tour has lights on maze walk throughs like Behind The Screams, it wasn't clear about that. My Ultimate Ticket says meet at Stars Cafe at 4.30pm, I agree it's ordinary you need admission to the park as well to do the tour.

I'm looking into a VIP ultimate straight away, just what I want.

^I'm waiting on the options there, that may well decide if I go or not.

^^Behind the Scenes tours would be cool, I've done that at Halloween Horror Nights in Orlando and it was awesome. I'd pay plenty extra to do that.

Looks like RMC will have to use a lot more steel supports for the lift hill than planned. It appears to have been their fault, the speculation being that sparks from cutting out the old lift hill assembly set it alight. Based on that, I'd assume RMC will be liable for the extra work and materials. Should be a pretty good coaster as long as SFMM doesn't neuter it with too many trim brakes.

If the Ripper maze is anywhere near as good as Terror of London at Knott's it'll be excellent - London is one of my faves at Scary Farm. I'll be ineterested to see what the ticket options are this year, iof they have a decent fast pass type option that will be a tipping point for me.

I'd like to go, but it's difficult to find a window with sporting commitments. I'm also worried I might be a bit jaded because I do stuff like Halloween Horror Nights and Knott's Scary Farm every year (including late October this year). Doing the Gold Coast Rugby Sevens and a couple of Fright Nights would be an awesome double.

Twisted Colossus makes Magic Mountain a place that I'd actually go back to now, and Wicked Cyclone at New England, means I'll have to divide my time between between Bizarro/Ride Of Steel and Wicked on future visits. The S & S at Fiesta looks like an improvement on the Intamins like Insane and Green Lantern. Everything else is kind of meh, it will be interesting to see how legs the year-round haunt at La Wronge has, we know how much Six Flags like staffing things. Those Looping Flats are kind of lame, I'm surprised they don't make them go around a heap of times and try and claim the roller coaster inversion record.

Is it better with crowds to go to this earlier in the month, or is it just packed all the time? I've been putting off going to this for years, one of these years...