Santa07

Yeah the rocks, population, breaking balcony and water over the drop were all not working yesterday, but I'm sure it'll all be up and working in a few weeks. Also agree that the projections could've been touched up a bit. The miner in the last shaft is still hard to see clearly.

Haha, same with me on my second round, although it was a bit shorter for me.

Second part of the tour was definitely not as fantastic as the first, but while it didn't fully appeal to me if definitely did appeal to some of the others in the group.

My 2c on Arkham VR: What an experience. The star tour guides had organised for us to get free VR on the presentation of our badge, so I got to experience it twice. It blew me away completely, definitely the craziest and most intense experience I’ve ever had on a rollercoaster. If you’re at the park and haven’t experienced it - spend the $5 to get the headset. You will not regret it and you are really missing out not getting it. It’s a completely different experience to the non-VR version and might even make you scream, even if you aren’t a big screamer (as our Star Tour guide told us from his experiences). The storyline is great and the visuals are incredibly realistic - it’s a bit like dreaming - you know it’s not real but it feels so real and you just forget the outside world. A lot better than what I’ve seen of the Six Flags VR. You dodge many of Batman’s famous villains (meeting the Joker face to face is truly terrifying), and get a visit from Batman at the end who deals with the Joker. The intensity is unbelievable, even after riding it plenty of times before you do not feel like you're on a rollercoaster at all. The wind on your feet going up the lift hill is the only thing to remind you of the outside world, and even that feels as if it's part of the VR when you're going through Mr Freeze's cell. Cons - well I’m sure you know what I’m going to say, so I’ll start with the less-obvious con. That is - what Theme Park Girl said, the VR feels quite loose around the inline twist and the first time I was afraid it was going to come off (I don’t think it actually would, it’s quite secure). The second is that the roughness of the coaster does make the VR a bit shaky. Now on to the big one that everyone was expecting - efficiency. It’s been destroyed, even with a few people using VR on each train. It takes substantially longer to get all the VR set-up and calibrated, even with staff telling you what to do before boarding. It was pretty poor efficiency before, and now it’s even worse. If the queue is past the second switchback on the ramp, don’t bother riding as it’s probably going to be over an hour before you even get on. Let me put this more into context - at a time yesterday when Scooby had about a 10-minute queue and Superman was virtually a walk-on, Arkham still had a 45 minute or longer queue. I timed some of the dispatches and one of them (a particularly bad one) was about 10 minutes. Hopefully it’ll get better once the staff are more used to it. So yeah, go down to Movie World and give it a try, it’s an incredible experience. Everyone who came off all had this look on their face of 'wtf just happened, that was so amazing'. Side note - the new theming and TV screens that have popped up are fantastic, and the storyline is incredibly clear now. Did the hanging guard always twitch like he does now?

Yeah exactly. Steel Dragon is about 2.5kms and it cost 50m (with the extra steel though). I'm thinking this is more of a rumour spiralling around the staff that's completely made-up somewhere.

Not sure, never got to experience it before the fire, but I mean every part of the ride now makes sense together. It feels less of 'here's one scene, now here's another one' and more of one larger movie.

They’ve really hit the mark with the WWF refurbishment, and the ride has returned to its former glory. While initially it doesn’t appear to have changed too much (except for the pressure-hosing of the mountain of course) there are now lots of little details scattered around. Dynamite lies around every corner, tying the storyline back together. The last lift hill shaft was filled with signs and the final room now contains lighting that flashes to give the sense of an explosion. For me, the best part was definitely the change of the train bridge, it looks very realistic and works a lot better now. I do agree with others on the explosion possibly coming a bit earlier to make it work better. Overall a great refurbishment - the ride now is a lot more detailed and is just as fun as always. Unfortunately the operations were quite poor yesterday, with many empty boats going through because people were too slow, or stoppages of the conveyor belt. There was actually a problem with the ride at one point while I was riding, with one of the boats had stopped half-way up the lift-hill and other boats were stacked all the way out to the front of the mine. Not sure if it was a breakdown or just a ride stoppage, the ride started up a few minutes after sitting there.

Doomsday Destroyer/Supervillains Unleashed Area Review: Lived up to all my expectations, exceeding some. It’s a really great area. I’ll run through some of the pros and cons of the area. Pros: Doomsday Destroyer is a great ride. It’s not scary or intense (at least for me), it’s just a lot of fun really. The loose items procedure for DD, although sounding complicated initially for me, works really well It’s a great capacity ride and spread out crowds from the main DC section - queues were generally pretty short The sculptures have fantastic detail, especially the larger ones like Poison Ivy and Grodd Theming in the area overall is definitely up there with Universal and Disney-level theming Effects are all fantastic and working well Many easter eggs around the area if you’re into comics Cons: The loading procedure for DD is a bit weird - you’re asked to stand behind a colour and then you’re expected to remember it and find the same coloured seat while boarding. While it makes loading quicker and works well for most people, I can see problems with guests not paying attention and forgetting their colour or going to a random seat. Staff operations on DD were quite slow, I’m sure they’ll speed up once they’re more used to it and the great capacity makes up for it The area feels a bit out of place, separated from the main DC hub at the front of the park Overall a fantastic addition to MW, and definitely some of the best theming in Australia.

I believe this is correct from what we were told yesterday. I don't know if it's been confirmed already but Chinatown is definitely going to be a precinct for this year - nothing much happening in there yet though as we went through there yesterday.

While the tour guides for Star Tour yesterday knew nothing more than we did on the coaster, Lynn who works at the studios said she heard the coaster was going to be 4kms long. Taking her word with a grain of salt, but it would match up with Ninja's '8 minute ride time'.

Part 1 of what I was going to try to make a short review, but I guess its length just proves how jam-packed and amazing the day was. The first half of what's below you probably already know if you've already been on the tour or have read one of the fantastic reviews on these forums already, but the content in last few paragraphs you probably won't have seen.

Don't think so, we were told our fast photo was for all rides except for Batwing and Doomsday.

Tried that today, didn't work.

Wow, what a day. Absolutely worth the price, if not three times it. Review to come soon (maybe tomorrow I'm dead tired) but I need to thank Greg and the team at movie world, most importantly our guides (Matthew and I'm forgetting the other guy's name, jc help me out here ). Thanks as well to the rest of the group, although probably only two of you will see this (@jcgoldcoast). Every part of the tour was absolutely fantastic, there were a few things I don't think the past guys did which was awesome, Doomsday and the new area is amazing, and VR on Arkham blew me away, more to come on all that.

Don't forget, 3 negative Gs generally results in bleeding of the eyeballs

Wth am I doing up at 6am Just me and Richard online... no idea what he's doing up at this awful hour on a Saturday too.

I doubt that would be the case, and even if they were wanting to incorporate VR at some point I'm sure they'd focus on a thrilling experience before putting it on.

Alright, thanks for the help guys Literally leave my phone for 10 minutes and I miss the call Got the text and everything now

Nothing? Should I panic an wave my arms around now or just wait a bit? Should I shoot them an email/FB message or something, although I doubt anyone would be online now?

Not too long to go now... very excited Will I receive an email or a text tonight with some details?

Well, assuming the unlimited fast track does come with one free use, you'll find me using it tomorrow

It's nothing special yet since it's really only maps from the GC theme parks. I have an older Sea World map that I keep on meaning to put up too. Maybe I'll get a photo sometime

Well, my bedroom wall is covered in park maps... so it's not going to end up in a bin after being given to me

Technically yes, but a traditional hypercoaster has a lift hill not a launch. Then again, we may be seeing an inverting hypercoaster which also isn't traditional.

It looks like the artist forgot their colour pencils...