Levithian

How do you, as a quest, know what has happened is the issue though? it's not like you are told something broke, something failed, or it just needed to be reset, etc so you can't really be educated on the difference between a stoppage and a break down, especially in the case of being evacuated off the ride. You aren't going to walk away thinking it was just a normal stoppage, if you were asked by the media to comment, you'd be more likely to hear the ride broke down. That's the problem. It's kind of a lie without lying, telling everyone everything is fine, everything is normal hasn't worked very well so far, so continuing to call everything a stoppage is not the answer either.

The biggest problem for the member of the public is, how do you (they) differentiate between a "stoppage" and a "break down". Do you define a stoppage as something that doesn't require an evacuation? what about if you are stopped for over an hour before they restart the ride? If not an evacuation, do you then consider time to be the factor? if you are stopped for more than a few minutes, do you consider that a stoppage and not a break down? In reality its far more complex than that. The average member of the public probably doesn't know enough, or care enough about the operational side of things to be able to tell the difference. That and it's not exactly like our parks tell everybody the actual reasons for things happening. So it's not like it becomes common knowledge/practice anyway. So anytime they ride they probably expect they aren't going to be stuck/stranded/stopped at all, even if it is only a few minutes. So everything is going to simply seem like the ride has broken down. Education is a problem too, because you are only going to be able to educate those people who go looking for the information, it's never going to become a mainstream media interest that causes every person to view/read anything published. Again, the majority probably aren't all that interested about how they work outside of they go fast or turn upside down. Even with some really clever marketing, the number of people you actually reach within your target audience is probably so low that it's viewed as a waste of money. The main problem probably lies in that all parks tightly control what is said/released to the public/media. From the lack of simple explanations when incidents occur, right down to a simple warning about stopping during use. So it's difficult for every day stoppages and malfunctions to actually become every day knowledge for your guests. It would take a vastly different approach (and many years) for a simple ride fault and a planned, walk off evacuation, to become as normal as getting a flat tyre or having your battery fail and having to call RACQ. No doubt there is a level of fear involved there; acknowledging something has gone wrong and fearing being persecuted or indeed sued, plus you have the very real chance of incorrectly reporting an issue until it is fully known (which may take days/weeks, etc), so I can see why parks want to stay tight lipped when it comes to issues like this. If you opened up your park for filming maybe short 5-8 minutes segments, explaining each of your rides (i.e. 1 segment for each ride), including details on when it was built, how often (and how involved) they are closed for maintenance, how often they are checked and how it's safety functions work to protect you, maybe even simulating a ride fault that causes a stoppage? along with its key facts like height, speed, forces, etc (which most general people find kind of interesting); then made it available through various media channels, it could possibly be marketed as a behind the scenes access sort of deal anyone can access (without having to pay a large sum of money). Maybe have a host and the same engineer involved in each segment so people kind of relate to the same people each time? I wonder if all this change in attitude simply starts with additional warnings, perhaps something like, "While all checks and maintenance is thoroughly performed, amusement rides are complex pieces of machinery and may stop running without notice". Coupled with having a prepared, informed response for operational staff when even simple ride stoppages happen, maybe it would start to make it seem like nobody has anything to hide, and it's just a part of normal park operations that sometimes things will stop, but there are competent people behind the scenes that will be working to keep everything safe and get things going again.

When does it stop and start though? It seems to play for like to 10 mins and restart itself. Doesnt matter what is going on, it just seems to do its own thing. If you pay real close attention it seems like cyborg doesnt quite match the sound with his lip movements. But it seems that way all the time, like its a built in thing. Ive seen the small screens stop working before, just had some error on the screen. So i guess they can play up like any computer and mess up the video and audio. Im assuming it has some sort of computer playing the video in the station and not a little digital media box thing.

Because i dont think its part of the ride. Ive stood there for like 45 mins in the queue line and it just plays on a loop like other queue line video stuff. Doesnt matter whats going on, it just ends and restarts.

A roving person carrying something kind of like a ice cream vendor would be cool. Actually allow them to quickly tag on and demonstrate what happens on one of the elements. Make it more enticing (and make sense) than someone just standing at a stall.

A lot of the not working/out of sync issues seem to be related to stoppages during the ride i think. Ive been on before where we actually stopped in the ride near superman for about a minute and just had to wait for some reason. Couldn't shoot anything from there on, with the last staro projector actually being blank. Rode it again later in the day and it was fine with no hold ups and everything worked.

channel 7 seem to be worse than 9 and abc in hounding them?

You wont build one for that sort of money thats both the rumoured height and the length of this coaster. It would still cost closer to 30 million US.

25 million seems pretty short on the cost i reckon. If be guessing closer to (or above) 40,000,000 as a nice round number to put on it.

In the scheme of things, maybe 3 break downs is probably a little less than normal. You cant really call stoppages breakdowns because some rides require evacuations anytime an emergency stop occurs. They cant just start it up without moving people off the ride. Might be a quick 2 minute fix to actually get going, but moving everyone off turns it into a 30 minute + prospect. Prior to arkham asylum, when was the last time something stopped and remained closed for repairs? I remember batwing having issues before christmas, anything else?

I don't think it works that way. For starters, any agreement is based off the original concept, so if you go ahead and make changes, it probably wouldn't be covered and a new one would probably need to be agreed upon. The ride has been around for quite some time now, so the original holders might not exist given all the mergers, so I wouldn't be surprised if someone wants another great chunk of money to see it reimaged. Even if the same company did own the rights, everyone has to make money. If you don't think theme parks have to pay rights for image usage and merchandising, etc to production companies that may hold the rights to the product, even if they may come under the same group of companies, then I reckon you would be mistaken. Everyone would still have to get their share. We have already seen that media publishing rights and property rights for usage in theme parks aren't mutually exclusive. So you can't assume that just because companies are linked together for distributorship rights, that they will be able to use their brand elsewhere outside of the production/distribution deal. Merchandising especially is such a big deal, given the cost vs markup on the products. I wouldn't be surprised at all if you are talking millions of dollars per year for a deal when it comes to big name/big exposure property and nobody is going to hand that out for free.

It's gutted, maybe even more to come if they only opened it in the holidays to ease congestion on other rides. So anything that is changed and revamped will probably need a new agreement with whoever has the rights to the property. I wasn't suggesting it because scooby is dead, I was suggesting it as a way that you could use a lot of the existing theme work, update the ride to something new AND avoid having to pay licencing fees. Money saved could be used in the retheme to create an even better experience. Honestly, even if scooby brand isn't dead, a revamped attraction is going to be a bigger draw card and more incentive for the park to spend the money. The problem is, I can't really think of any other franchise that's as well known that could translate to the coaster. So I started thinking what if you drop the franchise and just stick with a well known theme, a haunted house/ghost train.

You could turn it into a pretty cool haunted house/ghost train ride without needing to change the cars or the castle entrance.

Doesn't that include the whole company though? across many divisions? So there could be a mass shortage of corn kernels driving up the cost of pop corn overnight, which might hurt their cinema division and the share price could drop.

The thing you ought to be worried about with automated cars is they have to be designed to kill people. Not only that, they have to be programmed to be selective too.

You can see the platform being used in the footage/photos. I think the fire service only evacuated a small number of people.

I dont think you can actively comment about the reason or cause unless it has actually been established. In the trial by media, it would be seen as essentially lying and you would be crucified if you get it wrong. Not only would you look stupid, but it would look like you are trying to cover something up or brush aside the incident like it was nothing. That would generate a whole bunch of fear and anger in people, especially the ones that were evacuated. He seemed to give out some info about a possible cause in his (and the parks) statement, but also made it clear that it takes time to investigate and no definitive cause is known at present. Thats pretty informative, it sounds like the truth given the train was still stuck up the lift hill yesterday afternoon. Not sure if you watched reports before you posted? Im not sure what more could be said in regards to operational issues/causes.

Ive tried a few of the new sandwiches in the deli and id have to rate it as excellent food. Its fresh, tasty and its fairly well priced considering the serving size.

Footage shows they werent upside down, they were going up the lift hill at the start.

Hah. Same reason for green lantern stopping? Isn't it pretty much just the standard reply for anything causing a ride stoppage now?

they do have an indoors one too though don't they? only depends on how big a set they need.

Yeah, because we kept seeing the ride actually run at various times, that made more sense to me than there being a major problem with a big/major component/part which a few other people were wondering. Seemed a lot more like a trial and error sort of deal, than having the whole ride grounded indefinately

I can't see them ripping up the gold coast highway to continue to tram to the airport when it was planned by state/federal government for the railway already. The last piece of the puzzle has been purchased to allow it to continue past reedy creek/varsity lakes now, plus they have already started the track works for dual tracks in the northern end of the coast to allow for proper express services, so I can see the train becoming a reality over the g-link.

He's asking because there is another VR install where you target and shoot things using buttons like that. They are just harness release buttons on arkham asylum.

I think you are supposed to hold the harness anyway, but, no, there is nothing linked with the harness release buttons when I rode it.