dr_teeth

We are talking 2 pumps and 2 motors.... shes not lifting the harbour bridge man, we are lifting the weight of the cable, gondola and 8 people at most so it wouldnt need to be anything amazing. (not to mention its probably counter weighted anyway so you probably arent lifting much weight at all). all it would need to be would be higher capacity, which means its able to run faster while lifiting equal weight. in the last business where i delt with hydraulic motors and pumps we fitted a winch motor to a tilt tray truck. this was able to drag up a loaded shipping container onto the back when the tray was tilted....all parts came on one pallet and was able to be lifted by our dodgy forklift. not to mention it was a cab-over truck and we managed to fit all the pumps etc no problems under the cab. now i dare say the loaded gondola on the GD would weigh a heck of a lot less then a loaded shipping container so we arent talking about something thats all that massive when it comes to the motors and pumps etc. doubt very much if theyd even need to bring a crane in as they could probably get all that gear up there on the catch car anyway. (emember it does have a maintence platform on the top if the catch car which i dare say would be able to raise and lower ANY existing parts that might require maintence from the top)

hey slicko you got any more pics of when they were building the tower?

Dude there really isnt and need at all for custom parts other then the various brackets and things that would be needed to fit these parts. I can tell you ive seen hundreds of of hydraulic pumps and motors and i can tell you they are all very much the same in design and operation. AND i said a few grand each...that means each pump each winch motor and times it all by 2 for this design. Probably one thing i wasnt clear on i guess when i made that comment in the first place i was makeing a comparision between the millions you were talking about and what it would actually cost which would be closer to thousands then millions...Seriously we are talking about probably less then 50 grand to fix this ride up to have a quicker cycle time (which was all the modifications i feel that it needs) i dont think for a place like dreamworld 50G would be very much at all...i bet you one of Obstructure's million buck notes that the CEO is driving round in a company car worth more then 50g

Be great to see another ride go in so soon but i doubt it. Id think theyd have to make their money back on the claw first. And besides the claw will still have its "new" status and be a drawcard to make people want to come to dreamworld for a fair while yet. However itd be great to see something good go in there so fingers crossed hey!

Given that ive worked in the construction industry i can garentee that a few new hydraulic pumps and winch motors would be no where near "millions" a few grand maybe each but not millions. And yeah id rather see money invested in quality of rides rather then themeing..sure it makes the place look nice but you dont notice that when your on the ride.

Goboi: "Rough" compared to what? Bushbeast???

amen richard...finally someone has put some common sence back into this thread

troube with the stand up idea is that the gondola will pull around 4+G as it comes to a stop...that means for an instant that your body weight is effectively 4 times what it normally is....i dunno about you guys but i weigh about 85kg...i doubt wether my legs would hold me up if for a few seconds i weighed around 350kg

Fair-dinkum you guys are a pack of wingers! Id rather ride demon ANY day over something like cyclone or corkscrew. Sure it was a bit rough, and the maintence left something to be desired but it was still a good and solid thrill ride. From the last 2 visits i had at wonderland i can honestly report that demon had the longest ques ALL DAY! From people ive talked to since wonderlands closure demon has been the most talked about ride that was there. Ive lost count of the people that have said "they can move it to my place"! If it was a pos that you guys claim it to be then it wouldnt have been so popular. Besides if someone hadnt had the vision to move it to WLS in the first place then 90% of the people that got the chance to ride it wouldnt have had that chance at all! So be a bit thankfull for goodness sake!!!

yeah?? you say during NSW school holidays?? bugger we waited specially till after both nsw and qld holidays were finished, and went during the week cos we figured that it should have the least amount of people there... anyone that goes to DW regularly is it normally like this during the last week of nsw school holidays??

AAHHHH i should have read that hey...hehe

REALLY??? i see only an empty folder! :eek:

Dont worry rich i agree with you totally that it isnt operating at its full potential. I was just pointing out some factors that i had thought of as being possible. And my point with the brakes was that the delays on cycle time could have been a fail safe...usually for most things this means enough time to cool + a bit more + a bit more + a bit more + a bit more....anyway you get the picture. And ill say it one more time for good measure...if it can be speed up, it should be.

there are simply too many variables to say this is exactly where it went wrong, or for that matter this is how it should have been fixed. Come on man none of us here have been in the position of running a park like this so simply this is all guess work and we dont know anything for sure. However having said that you have some great ideas. A lot of which id be most happy to see in the real world. And rest assure that if i had a squillion bucks id buy up wonderland and reopen it and do it up...you could be my ideas man haha

of course it takes longer on the GD, any dummy can tell that the taller the tower the longer the length the catch car must travel to reach its destination. Howerver as a "naked eye" guess at things, space probes lift and drop of the catch car were by far faster. As for the brake fins i only suggested that earlier as a possibility that there was in the design a deliberate slow cycle of the ride to ensure it was a fail safe..but good point in that we dont know as we dont have the info from DW or the manifacturer Copper isnt magnetic, its just a good conductor of electricity. Also heat dispersion is mostly dependant on overall surface area of the object in question. These fins would have a large surface area as they are long thin. Also they are out in the air so they should cool rather quickly anyway. As for your other idea about using a rack and gear system to lift the goldola, Itd be probably too much of a maintence issue, as it would have to be greased every day and the amount of weight on the rack would cause wear quickly... not to mention itd probably drip grease on the passengers if it was moving at speed. I guess at the end of the day its a safe assumption that all activity of the catch car on the GD is controled by a PLC. ( that includes wait times at top and botom and speed that the winch operates) Because of this the speed at which this ride operates has been already pre-set. Is this for a reason, most likey, but the actual reasons we dont know. ?Could be safety issues, could be other things eg the capactiy of the hudraulic winch etc... All im sayig is that if there is a safe way to speed this ride up it should be done. (yes i know ive said that before)

alex man you have raised some great points. however there are so many OTHER factors that we would be unaware of in running the park. (eg public liability insurance which has gone up something like 400% since 2001). Basicly nothing ever gets cheaper. So i think its unrealistic to expect that entry prices would not do the same over time. Dont get me wrong. I loved the place and was sad when i heard it was closing. But the simple answer to why it closed was that the last decent thing to be added to the park was SP in 1995!! IF an attraction like wonderland wants to stay open and keep the crowds coming back simply they have to give you a reason to come back. Wonderland didnt do that in the last 9 or so years of its life, which is the reason it lost the crowds that you once mentioned. Wonderland was a an excellent park in its day. However it fell behind the times and fell away from what you would call a high standard themepark. Just take a look at DW its growing in what it has to offer the public. Is it any wonder that its growing in popularity at the same time.

I have to disagree with you there about it being a worlds first. Some aspects of it WERE worlds first...eg the height and the 8 seat gondolas. However it is still essentially a stock intaman "giant drop" (didnt DW do a great job of thinking up a name for it). All of the main components associated with this ride are much the same as any other I-GD in the world. For example the SP in sydney is pretty much all the same design. The running tracks, brakes and even gondolas are very simmilar in design (some componets would also be identical) Yeah sure when it FIRST opened there would have been some "unknown" aspects due to its height etc but you have to remember that it opened in december 1998 (thats 5 years ago this christmas) surely some improvements are possible and if so in my oppinion should be done. For me its all a bit like a game of chess. That is "a quick game is a good game". Id say the same for theme parks, "a short wait, is a good wait" In short i think i speak for most of us thrill junkies out there when i say "speed it up if its possible, and safe".

haha isnt that what i said in the first place haha

the brakes wouldnt get hot on the way up slick. only on the way down when the speed is high. low speed = low amount of opposing forces and low amount of heat (during the launch) high speed = high amount of oposing forces and hight amount of heat (way down)

This is just an assumption but the amount of time taken for GD to cycle could have to do with the braking system. The brakes on the gondola are magnetic, however the only visable part of the brakes are the copper fins that run down the lower 1/4 or so of the tower. the basic operation of this is that the magnets on the car travel past the copper strips and induce electricity. inducted electricity always opposes its creating force so therefore the carage is slowed bucause in actual fact its trying to push the car back up the tower. A by product of ANY electrical activity is HEAT. In this case after the car travels past a point on the copper stips (particularly the top cos the car is moving the fastest at that point) they would be reasonable hot. Therefore it is "possible" given that copper has a relatively low melting point that there is a safety issue here and that the cycle time needs to be spaced out to allow for the fins to cool fully and not warp due to the constant application of heat. but anyway like i said thats just an assumption and something i thought of during one of my many 40 odd minute waits in the que looking at the tower.

and if its not complaining about the rides, theming and tv shows - its complaing about what people write on these fourums haha j/k bus

when i first heard that it was closing i wasnt suprised. this was because ive always felt that it was built in the wrong spot (out in the middle of nowhere). It was never an easy place to get to unless you had a car. Otherwise it was a long train ride and then a bus from there. Even if you had a car from most places in sydney it took a fair while to get there. I guess if i owned it and felt that there was a future for the park my answer to this question would be simple. Spend a lot of money, do a lot of maintainence and build a few new attractions and try and get the people back.

RICHARD do you think it would be possible to get those details from intamin?

so why not post it on your own webspace and just put the link up here

who cares about that details of the que really. i mean yeah sure itd be great to have all this fancy stuff and underground passage and all that. however id prefer to see the multiple thousands of dollars that this would cost go into the actual ride instead to increase the capacity.