Levithian

short of a new boat, I can't see how you could replace the lap bar on wild west. You would end up having to pretty much destroy the boat to remove/change it as it's not like they just unbolt and come apart, so you would pretty much just start with replacing the boats wouldn't you? have they ever had new boats since the ride opened?

Arguably, Justice League was supposed to be the big family block buster that would replace something the size of the river ride. Aside from a few mentions about it being boring, few people seem to be outraged at the lack of use of it's building, given the size of the ride and the old library/hall of justice is pretty substancial. Why couldn't a better family ride have gone in there instead? much less hate directed here than at where the river ride used to be. Anyone who doesn't think driving school is an asset to the kids area has never been to the park with kids in the ~10 age bracket. Especially when 1) its busy; or 2) it's raining, or 3) during events like white christmas. Even with the number of cars on track, i've seen wait times of like 90 minutes before. That's just crazy busy. Id be very surprised if they didn't get through maybe 300 guests an hour when it's like that, thats a couple thousand people a day easily. What's more is kids still want to stand in line to drive them, which probably says something about how much of an attraction it is for kids. I think it's boring too, but there aren't too many kids rides at Movie world that I get asked can we ride again, so for that reason it's something that works for me. You can wish for the return of the river ride all you want, but it's gone. If you took out the cost of the demolition and fitout of the building before putting in the driving school, i can imagine a realistic budget might have been 2 or 3 million. No chance in hell they were ever going to replace or revamp the river ride with that sort of budget. It might even have been the biggest spend in the kids area in recent history, so they probably get a lot of use for it's small budget. There's a lot of space in the kids area in general. You could start looking at removing a couple of the rides that are the least popular, then condense the existing rides into the available space and still have room for another (maybe 2) family attractions. Problem is, what do you put there? they've got towers, they've got a coaster, they've got driving school and maybe keep the train? so what sort of ride does it leave you with kids in mind? maybe a mini swing of some type? retheme/redevelopment of road runner coaster area too and put something more immersive in like maybe a mine/train themed mini coaster? I can't see them doing much in the very near future, but a budget of maybe 10-15 million could completely change the kids area for sure.

It's how it is. People just assume women have kids, so they must be taking photos of their kids. Though I imagine anyone looking a little strange (ie, obviously by themselves, not just taking the usual family snaps) is likely to get questioned and maybe escorted from the area if they are taking photos of partially dressed kids in a water area. I can also imagine that it takes a bit of interaction on the part of park guests to maybe bring it to the attention of one of the ride attendants or something too.

They aren't going to get rid of something that is, 1) popular with kids as it actually gives them something to control, 2) is still only a recent development in the area. It's not about if you like it or not, or how you think it compares to the river ride that was there previously, it's about what works. Id be looking at a revamp of the area starting with the layout and some of the older rides before getting rid of driving school.

What you said is nonsense though. Even if you care to believe it. It literally doesn't make sense. If I wanted to be insulting, I would have used something other than nonsense. If you were to simply forget about dreamworld as a business, saying it's practically worthless, what it sits on isn't. So if you float the notion of a buy out, ardent isn't going to go bankrupt and have someone swoop in during a fire sale. Additionally, what is left of dreamworld that makes it a historic landmark? yeah, the park itself has been there a long time, but it has gone through so many changes that there is very little left of the original development. Rides have gone, park layout has changed, buildings have been removed/and or re purposed and developed. It's quite a bit different now than it was in the 90's, let alone the 80's. Aside from the park as a whole being a tourist destination, I don't think it really has historic value that would make it onto a heritage register. Back to reality though, just focus on the land mass. If the park shut tomorrow and was turned into a housing estate, given its location basically next to railway hubs and a MAJOR shopping center in development, combined with the fact that Coomera on the northern end of the coast is going through MASSIVE growth; the land is worth a fortune by itself. Even if you use the ultra generous 1/3rd rule to develop the land into housing, that provides for over $100,000,000 just in land development value alone. In reality there is probably more potential than that, given the actual cost of housing in the area, along with how many lots you can actually build given the area; then combined with the fact there are 4 major developers all fighting for space along the corridor between foxwell and yawalpah roads. As it stands, there is probably more value in potential development contributing to the value of dreamworld than there is as a theme park. The local council may only be able to tie it up during development application process, but given the area has thousands of lots going in and/or in development nearby, along with the infrastructure to support a major suburb; if they were to object any application the matter would surely end up in court where it might be tough to build a case against this small parcel of land when the rest of the area is booming having already been approved. Aside from that, along with development comes more revenue for the council. All the money tied up in development applications aside, the rates alone could be into the millions. So im not so sure if they would rush to stop any development going on if a worst case scenario happened. Given the park isn't the one actually doing the works, they would have contracts in hand with companies to perform the job that would usually see them lose money if they back out on the agreement; so you could lose a few million dollars just by putting them off until a later date as the companies would suffer a loss of income. Anyway, when would you rather the works are completed? If you talk about capital works, one side of the park in particular is closed off providing an excellent opportunity to make use of the quiet period between holidays. You could argue that rocky hollow is closed due to addressing existing issues of safety, so what is the issue? Aside from that anyway, it's not like their own workers would be taken off existing development works going on, halting any other progress in the park. I don't think any of the parks have a work force big enough to take on large scale developments without help from outside works. It's the same across any park you visit, they try to limit the disruptions for building and repair works to periods where attendance is lowest. See, this is the nonsense I am pointing to. That is exactly what liability insurance is for. It even covers loss of business. You can be found completely at fault, your staff members were negligent and caused the death of patrons; yet your business is covered. All those millions being wiped away would have been underwritten by an insurance company. The only question is how much coverage did they actually have and how accurate their estimates would have been when factoring into loss of business. If you think loss of life isn't one of the factors calculated when acquiring insurance coverage, then you don't really understand risk analysis. Besides which, the changes you speak of, you know they were the cause of the deaths? under what circumstances any modifications might have been performed? who performed them? when they performed them? were they inspected and audited following their modifications and years following to maintain their accreditation with the state government? That's a whole lot of assumptions unless you have inside knowledge of what the investigation found. Then you come back to the simple notion of insurance. You run a theme park based on the assumption that at some point you may seriously injure or kill a guest or guests. It's basically the same for any business dealing with members of the public. You couldn't operate such a large scale entertainment complex without having a policy that protects your business from financial ruin following lawsuits if something terrible happened. No matter how good your intentions are, how good your training is, or how much faith you put in your employees, there are far too many variables to run the risk. Insurance companies have entire departments that operate to calculate these risks. It's very much part and parcel with doing business. The problem lies in what happens after everything settles down and if your business is strong enough to recover following an incident. Im very much in the camp that dreamworld is, and that some people are seriously out of touch for expecting everything to be back to normal, or even improving 12 months on. 12 months is still short term. 5 years, 10 years, thats the sort of projections you'd have to start talking. Especially with village reporting that their numbers are way down too, revenue having dropped, so it's not like the industry is in a great place even with exciting new rides being used to stem the tide and turn it around instantly. It will be interesting to see what impact rivals has had on it's attendance figures each quarter. See if it's a short term bump or a long term increase; and if figures continue to rise steadily, how do they compare to the same time prior to the dreamworld accident. It was pretty quiet around Christmas time at movie world last year, nowhere near the sustained busy period it normally endures. If you hedged everything on one attraction turning your fortunes around instantly and returning everything back to normal, we might be in for a rough couple of years for both parks.

Its nothing like keeping your car roadworthy and your insurance company using a clause to get out of paying. With such a large work force, you insure your business against employee negligence too. Not just for injury. Thats the biggest part of public liability. You can be found at fault and you are covered. You just have to make sure you have coverage high enough to cover everything. Injury or death, but also loss of earnings/business as a result of the accident too.

God you talk a lot of nonsense. Have you heard of this thing called insurance? What are the council going to do? Cough up a couple hundred million and go into business themselves with a board that is basically voted in by popular vote every 4 years and not on their abilities? That would bankrupt the park, the shareholders and probably the council too. Life will go on. I wonder if they lost any staff after the accident that might be making things harder as far as annual maintenance goes. Given all that has happened, it would have made a mess of your schedules after all the inspections, losing staff would make that worse. Its not like you can just grab anyone and put them to work. Im not worried about things being closed now. Its when everything remains closed through the busiest time of the year that you start to wonder what is going on.

Theres really nothing modern about it. They are still a fairly involving system of gears that hasnt really changed much in design since the turn of last century. They all have a couple of big slewing gears that could be a nightmare if you had to replace one. Would require a lot of dismantling as a real common design used by lots of manufacturers incorporates it into the mast. Chance rides are one of the biggest companies i can think of. They do multi tier ones! Theyll have manuals and photos online to see more detail i reckon. It could actually end up being a pretty major job if that is true and gears may need to be reproduced. Forgetting when movieworld had theirs closed for months a couple of years ago?

Electric rope/string lighting doesn't survive commercial use very well. 12 hr days plus the combination of the quality of the LED's, and movement/impact from people touching or pulling on it, you're always having to fix it. It's the sort of stuff that works well when you can't see it.

How much seems to work properly in justice league seems to matter how long you stop for. Ive ridden it before and stopped under the space ship for maybe 15-20 seconds and the guns stopped working before we got to that starro screen. If you get a smooth ride, things seem to be better. What would make it even better is if the whole ride had air con, not just the queue. They could keep the ride and never update it if it meant 20-30 mins of sweet, sweet air con on a 35 degree day.

You really have to be found negligent to be held accountable as far as fines go. But that doesn't mean negligence occurring in this particular incident, it could be previous actions, procedures or operations too that fostered an environment where something like this could happen. It opens up the people in charge of the maintenance department to being charged too, along with whoever inspected the ride that day, and maybe even engineers who had performed previous inspections and passed the ride if it turns out that there was a design flaw/modification that was even partially responsible. It's not something you can even make an educated guess on if there is no report being made available, because people could be facing not only fines, but real jail time depending on the findings.

It's the school holiday period, so it was busy last week when we did movieworld and wet n wild. 15 mins wait maximum? I think you're expecting too much. It should be quieter next week as the school holidays finish, but if you are heading to the parks expecting 15 minute waits, don't get angry when reality sets in and you have to wait longer on some rides.

depends on how important the bolt is. Something that holds a panel or a cover on or something probably isn't going to shut a ride.

I think youll be safe. Nothing is broken, dont know where the 25 mims came from. Power issues hit the whole park after 3. Pretty much every major ride went into e-stop because of it apparently. Usual case of resets and evacs as needed id expect. If something really was wrong, you'd probably see them working all night to get it sorted for tomorrow.

Amazing how attaching the head gives it even greater scale. Really pops now. Brilliant.

It's not a driving range though. Yeah, you can hit golf balls, but it's designed more as a game than just driving golf balls. Throw in bars and restaurants, it's a place you can spend hours at, vs just hitting bucket balls.

I thought there was talk of a industry practice being established too, not just recommendations following workplace qld investigating the dreamworld incident? All these links/articles are only state focused though.

Its stripping the paint in areas of high fatigue/failure/stress. Not the whole ride.

Hah. Dannii Minogue.

no because it is not required. Firstly, it's not a joint and it isn't a weld. So what are you going to NDT exactly? It literally looks like the plate steel sheared completely through where the seat support arm is. If there weren't any visual indications (and if you could actually see the area properly) like cracking in the paint or other distortions in the surface, you wouldn't be able to tell that was going to happen during routine checks and there would be no reason to perform testing on the area. If it's not listed as an area of high stress, if it's not previously listed as an area of failure or fatigue, you can't just randomly go and NDT every entire surface of a ride. Aside from being impractical and just outright expensive, what about the time it takes? The ride wouldn't b able to operate with it closed so often. As sad as it is, looking back through history of engineering (and not just amusement rides), a great deal of previously undetected failures in design or underlying metallurgy issues were found and corrected only when a failure occurred. Sometimes all the best math just can't account for the unexpected. Things like water ingress for example wreak havoc with structural components and often there is no sign anything is wrong until physical signs of fatigue present. People who fly off the handle and blame manufacturers digging up "documents" that they either don't understand, or don't care to read are the same sort of people that fueled the fires when the terrible accident happened at dreamworld. Everyone on parkz hated that kind of coverage and blame game, especially when there was so much completely incorrect and misleading "fact" reporting, but now it's happening on the other side of the world it's ok? You guys are a bunch of hypocrites. Wait until more information is made available and another statement is released from the ride manufacturer and don't jump to completely incorrect conclusions. It only makes the whole tragedy much worse.

It doesn't say anything of the sort. I had a look at that facebook group too and lots of people are sighting the above service bulletin as the manufacturer admitting there was a flaw and this is the reason why it should have been shut down, and the reason for the possible cause of the accident. None of that could be further from the truth, it's clear as day what the bulletin refers to and the failure wasn't in any areas previously identified. FYI, The other service bulletin SB007 is out there for the restraints and also includes diagrams. http://www.caresofficials.org/sites/default/files/technical_info/kmg-international_fireball-kmg_frb24-sb007_1286.pdf where the hell you guys are getting information that links the above with this failure, I'd like to know (or you guys need to go back and read something properly). Edit: Just to further the point that the two are completely unrelated parts of the ride, here is a new bulletin from tivoli placing attention on the seat supports and tubes. Nothing at all to do with the swing arm fatigue found and addressed previously by kmg. http://www.caresofficials.org/sites/default/files/technical_info/tivoli-amtech-sosa019-1732.pdf

That's not where the cracks were found being addressed by that bulletin. http://www.caresofficials.org/sites/default/files/technical_info/kmg-international_fireball-kmg_frb-sb006_1237.pdf It starts talking about bearings and shows a flange clearly in the drawing for the repair. They are talking about the bolted section where the main swing arm joins the chassis that holds the gondolas. Not each arm to the gondola itself. It's the flange in the top right of the above. And in the middle of the above.

that red thing looks pretty cool. The arms on either side of what looks like track rail fold down. Not only that, they have either hydraulic or pneumatic cylinders in them with big dampener springs too, so it looks like it has some form of cushioning. Even more interesting is the bridges between the rails have cylinders on top of them too. They appear to be attached to the bar above the rails, the one with white angular pieces sticking up. Looks like the cylinders push/pull this bar in and out. Makes me think the whole thing can move in multiple directions. Maybe like the cars are pushed from the transfer on to the track, so instead of needing track rails to mount the train/cars on, they might provide more movement to move the cars about when not setup on the actual transfer track.

If you went to dreamworld during the late 80's and 90's, you'll remember gum tree gully.

And none of that happened did it? I was going to start the above post by saying unless trading as insolvent (by the way, do you know how hard that is to prove?), but I thought that would only confuse things and wasn't needed as it had nothing to do with what was being discussed. Seriously, alexb, sometimes you lack context. The discussion is about the directors being liable for the fines they were issued with, not what else they may be liable for. Sometimes you just make things more confusing by taking it off topic.