DaptoFunlandGuy

I went on Friday, and it was a first for us to do spooky nights. I haven't seen prior year's lake-shows, but what I saw was pretty good. The lighting design, the water screens, lights, pyro and dancers were a great 'together' package. I'd consider it a smaller show, yes, but given it ran multiple times a night, it's understandable - and at least having that many shows meant a greater opportunity to see it if the first or second shows were full. The monster towers were a cool touch for the kids (although, my wife pointed out how much of a 'high touch point' those buttons were if someone had covid). The food offerings looked good (we ate elsewhere after we left), and the various activities going on around the park looked great. We didn't experience many of these as we had other things to do but we got in early (around 4pm) got wristbands, got in a few rides, browsed the offerings, caught the show and left. Sea World Drive at about 6:45 was a shambles, but traffic control was managing it as well as they could. For both Dreamworld and Sea World (and Movie World for that matter) i'll never understand people who arrive ~20 minutes of start time and complain that there were delays.

The clean-up at the front entrance is mainly down to a redesign of the souvenir shop. Instead of exiting through the shop, you do a u-turn and exit through the same doors you entered the shop, and then quickly exit through a small gate beside the entrance booths. So the giant fuck-you billboards are gone because they no longer need to steer you back inside the entrance plaza to flog you a shitty greenscreen photo, because by exiting you beside the entrance booths, you walk straight by it. It's time they redesigned and refurbished the entrance plaza and begin using it the way they used to again.

Given the saga that has been Dreamworld's construction of Steel Taipan - do you honestly believe the 'ton of money' they 'saved' by reducing the launch components was just shovelled into a dumpster waiting for them to buy theming with it? Or if the 'saving money' part of reducing the launch more likely brought the pricetag down to a point where they could just afford it, leaving no money left to actually build it, requiring a loan from the government to do so... I doubt they had much in the way of 'extra capital' to do anything with, beyond what we've already seen.

I'm only going off the maintenance page here but I guess it depends on what you call decent. Dreamworld | Ride Information Tailspin is closed. The Claw is closed. Shockwave is closed. In their 'thrill rides' list, Gold Coaster, Giant Drop, Pandamonium and MDMC. I'll agree half of them are decent. You're right though - the shiny new hotness and cheaper pricetag with onsite waterpark is definitely going to win the coin toss for families visiting this summer.

^Yeah the guy worked across the road from the park, and had to time his workday just right to make the most from it. Its a good rort - but I can't imagine there'd be that many people with such a perfect storm of circumstance... and yes - it just promotes the plan for people who visit even semi regularly.

Me too

It's called sarcasm dude.

given the current state of everything, and the fact that many people are holding their breath waiting for changes to signs, bridges, theme elements, etc - temporary barriers are probably a simpler off the shelf solution for what is likely to be a temporary problem. Crowds are only ever a problem during major (NYE) events that having a huge stash of stanchions and sockets to put them in (which is likely the more expensive part to do) is probably not worth it.

Nope. Plain and simple once identified, it'd be tagged out until inspected. Some safety webbing can have a certain tolerance of failure - so minor abrading and fraying doesn't necessarily compromise the entire strap, but I'm not sure that applies to seatbelts and it would be a case of 'not picked up' one day and then 'tagged out' the next when it is identified. The fraying could be very minor, but if it goes beyond an acceptable tolerance, its no longer safe. One doesn't need to wait until the fraying reaches ' weeks and months ' to tag something out. I know an operator who tagged out a gondola on a flat ride because they noticed it was sitting higher off the ground than the others. Maintenance attended, and determined the cause was - the ground was lower at that section (the ride was level, the ground wasn't) and everything was fine - but it is far better to err on the side of caution. It is far better to take something out of service until maintenance signs off on it, than to think 'it's probably fine' and end up killing people.

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned it but it has to be mentioned that the Adventureland model was manufactured by Intamin. The Dreamworld Thunder River model was made in-house by the park, essentially copying 'by sight' - they had rafts built based on seeing overseas models and all the safety systems and controls were bodged together without much external influence. It's worth mentioning that many river boat and log flumes also do have many of these issues (sans inflation issues), but in most cases, raft restraints are no more than velcro straps (that after a while don't stick very well anyway).

I didn't even think for a moment that they still had the ST carpark fencing up, and thought it'd just be the bus bay area outside buzzsaw. If the first night still had a big chunk of the front part of the carpark cordoned off, no wonder it was a shitshow.

For the record, i've taken the below posts to imply that Dreamworld employees either were operating in these functions, or should be used to do so. I acknowledge however that nobody specifically said 'untrained' but nobody said 'professional traffic control' either.

I know a bunch of guys who work (or at least used to work) the BEC carparking. Among them are many qualified traffic controllers and retired police officers. Perhaps its just the attitude that comes with the training. Maybe it rubs off. I don't know. The thing about BEC is it doesn't really matter the type of event, they pretty much have the same plan. And they HAVE. A. PLAN. They also have a LOT of land to work with too. I don't know - Maybe concert goers who spent hundreds of dollars on 3 hours of entertainment are less likely to do stupid shit that would get them booted from the venue over $99 364-day a year Annual Pass bogans bringing their crotch goblins for a night of 'free entry with annual pass included in admission' entertainment. But - they (BEC) still have issues with people not doing as they're told. And I did say that - professionals (I would call the BEC crew professional regardless of their organisation) - will reduce problems but you won't eliminate them without 'behave yourself lights' nearby. What happens at Boondall doesn't change the fact that untrained Dreamworld staff holding a stop go bat vs. qualified traffic controllers is a huge difference in how effective your 'don't let them' plan will be. In Dreamworld's current situation, i'd be wanting to engage qualified professionals over untrained staff for anything where a professional qualification exists. As a bare minimum, after the last event, engaging a professional traffic controller seems like a no-brainer.

I did, but I didn't mention them favourably. I only mentioned them as an option because if you were remarking the entire carpark you'd have the freedom to choose. My personal opinion was angled was better - as shown by the part that was left out of the quote: This sounds wonderful in a utopian world. I have a lot of experience with traffic control and carparking in surfaced and grassed carparks for events from school carnivals to V8 Supercars and even Sirromet's Day On The Green. (in various roles as a volunteer and a member of the SES. Having done these events both with and without the presence of Red and Blue lights - I can tell you. Categorically. Without a doubt. Unless you get the police in - none of that is going to be successful. Professional, qualified Traffic Controllers might get you most of the way - but you'll still have outliers (this is why night roadworks have traffic control to do the work, and police cars to encourage compliance) Sure, a good number - probably more than half - of the vehicles you handle will do as they're told, park where they're told (with or without grumbling) and this will neither ruin their night nor cause you any issues. But you will also have a lot of people who won't want to go to the end of the line. "Don't let them do that" - the only way you can stop them is having barriers to prevent that that requires machinery to move them - water or concrete. I've seen people drive through empty 'water barriers' to get where they want to be. Or people drive down the other end, U-burn and come back up the next lane. People will do what they want to do - including endangering the lives of the people working the road. Take it from me - Dreamworld do not want to be putting people on those roadways unless they are qualified traffic control operators working to a designed and approved traffic management plan - if someone gets hit by a car - on purpose or accident - the absence of qualified persons and an approved TMP will tear them a new arsehole (and they've already got several from lax attitudes to safety). We saw this (to much greater disaster) with Thunder River - administrative controls - making people responsible for filling the problems with a faulty design - is never the best solution to a problem. Cost vs. benefit is probably the deciding factor - and in the rare scenario the park hits capacity, a people based solution is probably the most effective in both cost and outcome (putting aside future events that may continue to have these problems - we don't know yet) - but putting "staff" on these tasks, who are not trained or certified in traffic control is dangerous and asking for trouble. (And in turn - do professional traffic controllers who cost more money to engage close the gap between using them as an administrative control, and actually fixing the design, long term?)

I honestly didn't know that second exit existed and now i'm even more convinced that what I wrote above should be put into action. The only thing I don't like is that the old paint lines have to be covered up to remark the parking lot, and whichever way you do it looks like shit unless you repave the entire surface - which is an expensive exercise.

depends on if you read it as "has it been covered by every photographer" or "has it been covered by every photographer that was invited"

ETA: I think its pretty clear that MW's carpark design is much better for flow and pedestrians. Dreamworld's current arrangements are poor for handling peak ingress (and due to the one-way arrangements, if you pick a lane, and it's full, its a long way to come back and try the next one without going against one-way rules). The ideal would be for Dreamworld to completely re-design the carpark to improve traffic flow and reduce pedestrian interactions. The ideas expressed above have merit, but my thinking is to put the 'red arrows' (the inbound lanes) right next to the current outbound lane (you will need to expand the current exit lane which will lose 1-2 edge carparks on each row). Turn all traffic right at the first point of entry and only allow buses and other drop off services to proceed further. Re-mark the entire carpark either with the angled parking facing the opposite way, or make them 90 degree parking (the angle parking is the one good thing here as it permits really fast entry to the space), then have all traffic exit to the Parkway adjacent to White Waterworld. Either circle them back to the current exit path (which prevents cars from crossing paths) or install a new crossover onto the road - perhaps somewhere near the billboard, and put in traffic lights to control exit. If I have time later i'll do a diagram if this doesn't make sense...

Someone give this guy a medal!

Sounds like people wedging themselves is a common enough problem that they decided to re-engineer a million dollar train to solve it. Why didn't they just watch how the people in front of them did it? ...probably because those guys wedged themselves too.

Nice update. One thing that always irritated me is how haphazard the space between Mach5 and Black Hole was. https://www.parkz.com.au/cache/photo/individual_photo/construction/2021/10/2a59d23319a7a67ba83151bda66d88db.jpg I do hope that once finished, the new install isn't 'finished off' without regard to what sits outside the boundary - I hope that perhaps some slight re-working is done to better connect the two areas and make them naturally group together instead of the isolation each tower had previously

When you're done - how many does Dreamworld have? Here's a vertical view. Perhaps taking a known painted area and pasting it over the grassed area might give you an approximate?

No - just noting your logic is flawed in responding to GoGoBoy's supposed correlation. They could have offered a special pass that didn't include halloween for the discounted price if there were any capacity concerns...

If I recall, Dreamworld has opened the animal area, and vintage cars, two traditionally off limits areas in previous night events. Perhaps this increased the previous capacity of the event to levels the carpark couldn't accommodate? That still requires Dreamworld to participate in the scheme. They didn't have to accept subsidised purchases from the government if they didn't want to. They knew what cheaper passes would do here, lets be honest. On your marks - get set - go! Do a deal with westfield to utilise overflow parking areas and operate a dedicated shuttle bus (or several) and give the shuttlebus a dedicated entry gate to encourage people to use the bus to skip the main gate queues?

To be fair, the Motorway looks like this at the Movie World exit at 5pm on Fright Night event dates. I suppose Dreamworld's added difficulty is all the day guests leaving and all the night guests arriving are all trying to use the same roundabout (along with other usual traffic), whereas Movie World exits guests through two different lanes depending on departure direction. I think to a degree there is a certain element of responsibility to be taken by guests to get there early enough to allow for processing. I recently commented here about the security checks and Magic Mountain taking a while to get through and encouraged visitors to get there early to ensure plenty of time to get that done and I don't see this as any different... There's the added requirement of a covid checkin which I assume the park was verifying at the gate in some way too. By the sounds of things though, everyone choosing to get there right on opening didn't help, and sometimes, its the rush that you just can't recover from. Allowing early admission, even if that be through wristbands or some other method like a holding pen near Taipan might help. Using Carpark B's entrance? Surely they'd have contact details for booked tickets for this event - could it hurt to use a broadcast text message to ticketholders advising them to arrive early... perhaps even having.... gasp.... boarding groups? lol. ok too far but you get the drift. The park needs to communicate better about arriving early (and admitting them - one of the screenshots above says a ticketholder was asked to exit the park, when they were already letting others in - that's a shitty way to add to your already big queue), but the guests need to do their part and anticipate being there beforehand.

<sorry ignore that. i was looking at your picture not the picture above.> Those aren't lilly pillys from what i can tell (i've got about 15 at home) - the leaves are a bit too wide. I'm not sure what those plants are. As for Lilly Pillys - they don't necessarily grow that fast. I have a 6 metre tall one out my window and it has taken about 7-8 years to get to that height from about a 1m shrub, but most of the density and the height occurred in the past 3 years - the first 4 years they didn't grow much at all.