DaptoFunlandGuy

Just because the park made stupid short sighted decisions out of convenience (see also: LTRR show building storage), doesn't mean it can't go back to the way it used to be - which gave much better guest flow around the park.

Thanks for making my point.

Yeah, it said that in March and April too. Still didn't operate the entire time we were there.

Because big expensive change is not (apparently) ...and would have delivered upwards of 20 years further operation, whereas the small cheaper (band-aid?) maintenance is only going to give you another season or two max, based on the failure rate of the drives. Given it wasn't operating during the peak Spring Break season (and i'm not sure whether it's operating during this summer season) it may not have long left... if at all.

If a retrofit isn't difficult, why did SFMM come to Australia to pillage the TOT carcass, instead of just buying a new launch system? While not financially viable for Dreamworld, SFMM could easily have afforded to retrofit S-EFK if it were that easy.

Village parks don't have the capacity to spread that sort of load. a small group of people with an unlimited wristband can essentially marathon the park's signature attraction and grind everything to a halt.

It was a nice calm space to retreat to during a busy summer operating day. Air conditioned too. I'll be interested to see what they intend to do with it.

They're doing it just to annoy you.

There is a very big difference between an accelerator rollercoaster model that is largely a traditional style coaster that has 17 current installations including one that opened last year, and one under construction (according to RCDB) showing the ride type still in production, and a reverse freefall model which is completely un-traditional, had only two installs in the world, with the most recent construction dating back 26 years, with the manufacturer withdrawing both maintenance and parts support, and both models suffering terribly from a reliability standpoint as they aged with no realistic prospects for retrofitting, and only one other park to potentially share the costs with. Popularity variable plays a big part where something is possible. But it can't overcome the impossible. You were so close. But not really. There seriously wasn't a viable path for any park to keep a reverse freefall operating - the only reason SFMM's version continues to remain on life support (and thats a stretch given its current operations) is because TOT became an organ donor. Technically yes the park would have closed - because if they'd tried to keep TOT alive, it would have involved commissioning the construction of custom designed replacement parts from a new supplier, along with all the testing if they had to reverse engineer (assuming Intamin didn't hand over their intellectual property) so yes, they'd have gone broke trying to keep it alive, but for all the same reasons Qantas would go broke if they had to hire someone to design and build replacement jet engines from scratch for their planes once Rolls Royce \ P&W \ whoever else supplies their jets discontinued them. (And for all those reasons, it's why they didn't do it - which is why the ride closed).

While that may be the case, it wasn't always that way. Village has plenty of room to construct a maintenance facility elsewhere - a soundstage intended to be part of the park's footprint shouldn't be occupied by back of house purposes for convenience if it prevents the park from future growth.

Realistically the storage isn't a major obstacle. They existed for many years without that as an option, plus have other storage options including studios, back of house towards paradise country, or even offsite options if they can't accommodate it onsite. JDS isn't going anywhere anytime soon (though I do hope someone springs for a refresh of the theme to update the attractions featured in the ride - particularly Arkham \ WOO, so as far as the Sesame Street type ride, I doubt it would fit. However - the soundstage is big enough it could feature multiple levels. If the ride system is capable of traversing two floors, it could fit in the storage-half of the building without impacting on JDS, and then MW would be the home to two very elaborate kids attractions, nothing like anything else on the coast.

I think the discussion has been that most accelerators (like superman) are going to need some sort of new launch system in the near future, so there's a lot of people watching TTD to see what comes out of it and considering what, if anything, is transferrable... I don't think Dean was suggesting it was a suitable option for SE, though.

So this primarily benefits people who visit the parks very regularly. Given Leviathan's current ~50% uptime, the odds of getting 5 rides in in a day are low. It's good that they're having a bit of a 'how many rides can you do' contest, but considering there'd be only a handful of key holders, and even a smaller number of those in a position to ride regularly, i'm wondering if they'd get more folks interested if the prizes were based on a 'draw' system with every ride on the coaster counting as one 'entry' into the draw? This whole program just sounds weird to me.

If there's one thing we should have learned by now is that Village will announce a product that contains a certain level of benefits, then slowly strip those benefits away without compensating anyone, before eventually deliberately tanking the product by completely obliterating it's value to the user, forcing them to stop using the product entirely.

So just to be clear, they're not reversing the direction of travel, so the heartline roll is not in issue?

Given the experiences being shared here, this statement is patently false. if it were consistently available, others would be talking about their success in using it. The fact that most are not able to use it proves it is very much inconsistent.

Yes I do think Village's upcharge offerings change during the holidays - VQ wasn't available on our visit over the weekend in either MW or SW - so i think there's an element of surge pricing, and turning VQ off to reduce pressure in park. DW is a lot more manageable - they're quieter because people are still avoiding them. Once Rivertown has opened I think a lot of that will change.

Understatement of the year.

Twitterverse is reading too much into it. If that weren't going to be the finish line, would they have installed the track around it, or removed the finish post for easier install? i'm thinking the latter.

Their Autopia version, fully electric with smooth controls and safety systems was, in my opinion, far superior to California's boneshaking version, nevertheless, HK hasn't operated an Autopia attraction in over 7 years now. This assumes California is in full working order (which it isn't at present) so the effects are as much hit and miss as Scooby or Superman can be. HK has a smaller load station, but i'm not riding for the station. It's been about 8 years since I went on HK's version but having just come back from California, I think HK stands on it's own - not as big, or bold, but still a great park, with newly opened Toy Story Land and potentially Grizzly open in 2012 - certainly worthy of outranking Ocean Park, which was the original comparison made in this discussion. Like all attractions there's a difference between capital and non capital expenditures, and overlays don't generally come out of the same budget and full rethemes, so perhaps it needs to wait it's turn in the cycle. Nevertheless, the discussion was on a 2012 version of the park where that wasn't a factor. If we're going to make modern comparisons, then we also need to factor in the modern attractions (as well as the current closures) which IMO still tips the scales towards HKDL.

It is strange to me - They would have needed to staff the gates at WWW, and presumably another staff member to supervise the facilities to ensure guests didn't wander further into the park, so it can't be a staffing decision. Perhaps they already had staff onsite at WWW (maybe for contractors?) so it was simpler to do? As for SW - I think the latest numbers i've seen have Levi operating around 50%. I saw SE running while I was there but as mentioned, we didn't hang around long as one of the kiddos wasn't feeling well.

I took the family down the coast last week to meet up with friends visiting from interstate. We visited all 3 parks. I know it's school holidays, and you expect things to be a bit busier, but having recently come back from California during spring break, there really isn't much of an excuse for some of the things we experienced. Dreamworld I'm surprised to get home and find there's no thread about this - but Dreamworld had a burst water main on Friday afternoon. It happened around 1pm-ish, and staff were quickly running around with signs to attach to the bathrooms advising of the water outage. Shortly after, a looping announcement played over the park PA at regular intervals (maybe 5-10 mins or so?) advising of the water outage. Luckily for DW, WWW is fed from a separate water main, so the bathrooms worked at WWW - however instead of opening the internal gate near gold coaster, guests were directed to exit the park through guest services to receive a pass out stamp, then walk across the carpark to WWW to use the bathrooms. Soda fountains were also out of action but they were offering sipper refills from bottled soft drinks at some locations. I heard someone in park mention that the water main may have been hit by construction crews in-park, though that is just rumour. Without knowing that, it's hard to fault the park for it and I don't - the only issue I took with the park's handling of the situation was making guests pass-out instead of opening the internal entry to WWW as there are facilities just inside the internal gate. The park proceeded with Night Market, though we decided to leave rather than keep heading over to WWW all afternoon. Ride queues were reasonable given the holiday period. Cast were being as efficient as possible, wasn't as busy as I expected it to be. Sea World We visited Sunday, and Levi wasn't open. Staff advised it was unlikely to open that day. Trident was cycling intermittently - we noticed it cycled empty several times in a row. Vortex sounds horrible for such a recent installation - not as bad as wipeout in it's later years but still bad sounds - especially right near the dolphin pools. We stopped by all the animal exhibits up to Shark Bay and with all of Atlantis unavailable, we opted to leave for MW - Storm was 130 minutes and Jet Rescue was 55 minutes - whereas over at MW at the same time, Batwing, GL, JL, DCR were all 30 minutes or less (and we later found that the posted 30 min wait on Batwing turned out to be more like 15). Movie World Obviously, queues were a little shorter given there was more to do. One of the kids in the group wasn't feeling that well so we didn't end up staying for the HvV parade, and only did a couple rides. The park was well staffed, and Ops were moving as quick as i've seen at MW in a long time. That zipline tower on main street looks atrocious, and the park is looking tired - main street lights are falling down in places, one of the queue poles for Roxy wobbles a solid 12 inches side to side, so much so that when a kid swung on it, it pulled the queue pole into my son's head with quite a bit of force. Mentioned it to Roxy staff who acknowledged it was broken and had been reported several times. We did catch the 'cartoon heroes' mid afternoon parade, which was fun, albeit a bit short. With only three vehicles, it was over too quickly (though the song choice pumped a lot of energy into main street for the duration). I would have liked to have seen some of the other characters out in the parade - the park needs a 'generic' float that any character is suited to for this, IMO. Overall, this reinforced for me why we tend to avoid the parks during holiday periods. It was busy, but not stupidly so. Cast at all parks were doing a great job despite circumstances out of their control. Dreamworld has a ways to go but all signs point to them looking like they're on the right path. MW is chugging along, but Sea World is just disappointing in it's current state, and despite getting the most recent attraction installations, they haven't impacted the park positively at present, with all the downtime - and having the main drag past the dolphin pools closed off really fractures the flow of the park. Trident is an absolute lemon and Leviathan's unreliability is hurting them badly.

getting artwork, finding quotes, sending it to be printed, getting it installed. Took about 5 weeks or so... not great, but not terrible either, glad that they're listening.

I mean, we ranted when they had DC Rivals virtually built and still hadn't said anything about it.... so *standard rant about how enthusiasts can never be happy*

Nearmap's latest images for all GC parks is April 2023