DaptoFunlandGuy

this has been asked before. Someone (i think it was Huss) posted an image of the internal gears inside the tower, however, absent the image, its basically a network of gears that turn around the central shaft, to keep the seating upright. basically one motor turns the central pivot, and the gearing does most of the rest. I'll wait for Huss to post the image... because I know he will have it.

I think Gazza just said he would email the owners.... looking at what i can see, and the description, I think it is safe to say that that is BooBoo's Balloon Race. It may also be Dick Dastardly's Flying Circus. We shall see..

Well.... the door wasn't open when i started... but it was when I finished...

Honestly... tell me.... what happened to that door? it either: still stands in the same position was moved so other people could get more stuff out of there, and then put back has been bulldozed. Besides.... you told me to break in!.... just because the door broke before the lock did... not my fault eddie didnt have the right keys....

What I am saying here, is that the ride is shut down when winds reach a certain level to protect damage being done to certain vulnerable parts of the ride... So when Skyrider goes Delta, the cabins are all secured in-station, and the cable stops. If the ride is charlied, this means the vulnerable parts of the ride (the cabins) are then exposed to a wind at height. Im not saying Delta was a higher alert level, im simply saying what if delta levels of weather began while the ride was already charlied, leaving people stranded in a cabin, which is no longer hanging gently high above the park, but swinging violently in a heavy wind. Lets say Maintenance's response time from their current location to the ride is 10 minutes. (Our TL's and Sup's could go from Beastie to Beast in 6 minutes) they spend 10 minutes determining what the error is, and how to fix it, if possible. if they could not have it fixed 10 minutes after that (so no more than 30 minutes since it went down) ERS should have been called in.

yes well we all remember when the "water troughs" in goldrush collapsed from the wood rot and almost landed on top of a woman who was sitting on a bench breastfeeding, while watching snowy... oooooooooooooooo Zoe had fun that day... and the next day..... THEY WERE ALL GONE WITHOUT A TRACE! lol just because you hate the 2000, doesnt mean it is not a good multi-purpose mover. I never said a profile would make it look bad, i was talking about a number of things - if you use a mac, you need a controller, someone who knows DMX, and an expensive bulb. in a profile, the bulb is generally cheaper (depending), and can be positioned prior to the show by hand, and plugged into an analog dimmer, or hell - even a quad pack or single dimmer would do it.. and you have the same effect. The point i was making about lighting was simply that in that particular scenario, you have two things that will do the job... one will cost more to do than the other.... both delivering the same result.... which one are you gunna pick? so taking that analogy to the Maintenance aspect of WL, why replace the bearing, when it can be turned over? yes thats right - theres nothing wrong with it, but the comparison i am making with the lighting comes here to say - why use a mac (replace the bearing) when you can use a profile (turn the bearing over) ?

90 minutes by the paperwork maybe. i still disagree that it can be claimed to be "exactly 90 minutes". there are variables there that can not, and will never be accounted for. i was working right next to skyrider during that incident. i never pulled out a stopwatch but i can tell you it was wayyyyyyyy too damn long for the woman in the cabin closest to the station with an infant and a 4 year old. Skyrider goes delta in high winds. this is because of the safety of the passengers in the cabins during high wind. what could have happened if we got high winds while it was charlied? My only insistance here is that for the time the ride was down, no emergency services crew, police rescue, the S.E.S., fire brigade, or the local brickie with a cherry picker were called to aid the passengers stranded on that ride.... for 90 minutes or 120 minutes.... WHO CARES? it was too long either way.

yeah but clint - do you use a MAC 2000 P for the static placement of a gobo, when you could use a profile and get the EXACTsame result? EVERY company goes with a cheaper option... and if its cheaper to say... turn the bearing over to wear it on the other side, than buy a new bearing... then most companies would do that... One company I used to work for had many locations around the country, each with a single laser printer. there were 130 locations, and they had 260 printer cartridges. when you finished your old one, you sent it to head office, and they had someone there, who spent all day refilling the toner cartridges out of a drum, and sending it back to the location who sent it to them... we generally got our "new" cartridge within the week... which was plenty of time before the one that was in there died. its a fine line between money, and usefulnessefficiency

actually he is kind of right.... i think... Boolean is true and false I THINK (in other words yes and no) if i am not mistaken.. Binary is ON and OFF (which i suppose you could say was yes and no), but i dont see how yes and no is digital... so whoever is right... zordy is... once again... wrong... and thats really all that matters in this argument...

Buzz if i had the money i would have bought the park... whatever the cost... if i had the money i would have. the same with the souvenirs we got from the park post closure. if i could have bought them, i would have. i bought what i could afford... and even then i was a little short on the rent that week because of it!!!

I have nothing against the maintenance team at WL. i knew a lot of them and was good friends with some as well.... personally, i believe the blame for most of the incidents you could classify as "band aid" were due to management's niggling over money. can't fix a ride without the proper tools and parts.... there were however some incidents that cannot be faulted on anyone except maintenance personnel... like bussy's picture of the plc board at SP... with the little RIP notice taped onto it...

*changes "over 2 hours" to "a heck of a lot more time than it should have taken to either repair, or call emergency rescue"* Geez.... these maintenance and operations people get really defensive dont they? however long it took to fix skyrider... something more should have been done in that time. And how do you know it was EXACTLY 90 minutes? is there a stopwatch on a ride that starts automatically the instant it breaks down? i dont think so. so add on extra time for the operator to realise there is a problem, bell it to the other station, wait for the radio channel to be free, then call in to the control room,also bear in mind that once it starts up again, its a minute or two before the passengers make it back to the station, and many other little bits and pieces, your 90 minutes can balloon quite quickly... tell us.... how DO you know it was exactly 90 minutes?

how much did they pay?

I think you mean BINARY as opposed to DIGITAL. Remember that a lot of the flats originally installed at wonderland were USED rides when they were installed to begin with. Wizard's Fury itself was 30 years old when it was erected at Wonderland. So a 10 year halflife of a bearing or other consumable item would mean some of those rides chewed through more than a single bearing in their life at wonderland.

Rappa - don't forget the one about BooBoo's Balloon Race. it closed around June 2001, and cracks were discovered in the basket fibreglass, and it was deemed too expensive at the time to repair a ride that was going to be in an area that was soon to close. Later down the track (around march 2002) the parts were suddenly shipped offsite, and we all thought it was gone for good... until it arrived back a week later with a brand new paint job... ready to be put back together. it did a few months in HBL until HBL closed, and was then moved to skyhawk's old site. Zordy... as far as your little Rubber Band Analogy... we're not talking about a rubber band here... we're talking about very expensive components. generally, most of the mechanics inside these rides showed signs of wear and tear and abuse, before they became "unusable". if detected early enough, they were replaced before they failed. Finding cracks in major support structures cannot always be detected on daily inspections, and it takes a trip to the workshop for them to be able to pull the whole thing apart and find these problems. Yes Its interesting that these major flaws were found, and it was resolved not to be fixed at the time, and i think that can be put down to the whole "we're closing down soon" thing... but amazing how it was so inefficient to repair it for Wonderland, but some of those same rides then received new parts just in time to be shipped to a new location in another park...?

Wrong Wrong Wrong Wrong More information? Well the theme is right, what was the name?

OK - More trivia - at the main entrance to the park, around the gardens heading down the hill towards the ticket booth... on the tarmac were randomly placed squares of black paint. the questions are - What was under the black paint When were they put there Why were they put there? Where in the park was the "reason" for what was under that black paint? AND SOME MORE... What kind of cars were used on Ampol's Great Race? What was Billabong Grove called when it first opened? How many "entertainment" stages were in Wonderland between 1985 and 1990, and what were they ALL called?

Sydney has many sites that could possibly be made into a theme park and resort area. The problems exist when it comes to Zoning, logistics and infrastructure, and the surrounding area. Now I am not sure if you are talking about Homebush, or Homebush Bay (olympic site). If it were in Homebush, bear in mind that the markets are there already, and it is predominantly industrial and low-income residential. Chucking a theme park in here would be a logistical nightmare, adding thousands more cars on the road to an area that chokes itself to death trying to sustain what it already has. Homebush Bay on the other hand would be fine, and this area has been discussed as a potential theme park in the past. Transport to this area would be fine, so long as every road around the olympic site was turned into a clearway, and Cityrail cut services around the network to sustain the extra trains to run to Homebush Bay... Basically your Easter Show, 365 days a year... Eastern Creek (wallgrove road) was well situated, as it was at the crossroad of two main arterials from and to sydney, however these arterials were not being as severely overtaxed as parramatta road is during peak hour. Other dangers of building over old miningquarry areas carry other dangers... for instance, building high speed, highly sensitive rollercoasters over an old quarry or mining area would be dangerous due to the soil shifting, which could potentially buckle and bend and cause muchos muchos accidente... Local residents will complain, no matter where it is built - the good old NIMBY policy - Not In My BackYard. Everyone wants tourism, recreation, extra income from local businesses, and to attract other likeminded businesses... so long as they are not inconvenienced in the slightest while its there... So in summation - yes, i think Sydney desperately requires a tourism attraction of this type... but where to put it, in a place other than eastern creek area? I HAVE NO IDEA.

Sounds like Wonderland Maintenance, and operations management found themselves a new job in melbourne! I remember being up in HBL one time when Skyrider jammed up. The ride was charlied for more than 2 hours, and emergency rescue were NOT called in.... This was the same incident in which Zoe was up at the HBL station speaking over the Loudspeaker system to reassure the guests, and then, forgetting to turn off the microphone, maintenance told her it was going to be a while, and with the microphone still in hand, screaming F*$&ing S*$% F*$&ING RIDE!!!

i just want to go back to another post in here, having re-read it, about taz being a transportable ride... I am not so sure this is true. Tranportable versions of this ride - eg: the "thunderbolt" or "arctic express" operated on the same principals, but the "ride arms" ran along a track, which gave the tilt. I think Dreamworld's "Angry Beaver's Spooty Spin" uses this type of "tilt" system. Taz, however, was a hydraulic tilt system. Also, checking out how big Taz's "operations shed" was, I dont know if THIS version was ever transportable. Remember, a lot of flat manufacturers made two versions of their popular rides... a park version, and a truck version... Most of WL's rides were already second hand, from numerous parks including dutch, canadian and american parks (Wizard's was a 30 year old dutch ride when it came to Sydney). Of all the rides in Wonderland, with the exception of the HBL rides, Taz would be the only one that would have even POSSIBLY been transportable... I dont think it was...

this is just a guess bussy, im not too sure, but i think it may have been about the bush beast being the largest wooden coaster in the southern hemisphere. i think it contained the opening date, and also the name of some bigwig politician who officially opened the ride? but thats just a guess...

AHHHHHHH WE HAVE A WINNER.... lol. Thats cheating though wazza.... you would have spent countless bored hours at snowy.... so its natural you would know it - nothing else to look at when theres no queue!!! lol.

it doesnt necessarily mean that the park will be closed, or relocated.... if the new purchasers continue to operate it, it may even see something new and innovative, with the park being under new management.... only time will tell.

I can't see tiger sharks being put into the moat of tiger island. For one, without an underwater viewing area, its not really going to be that useful, to try and see them from above the water. I've also just done a search on OzCoaster, and can't seem to find anything about Tiger Sharks at Dreamworld.

lol... on the same topic - there was a plaque affixed to the "witches hat" roof on Snowy... what was THAT plaque commemorating?