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@pushbutton@themagician Wh... What if they just hung a sign that said 'Entry' above the entry?

These aren't exactly the same angle, but they're close enough. Ardent are slowly turning Dreamworld into a soulless wasteland. These buildings wouldn't look out of place in an industrial park.

Those are experiences offered by the tour company ExperienceOz, who is the sponsor of the ride. So it is possible (even likely) that they are also the flyover locations. I wouldn't be surprised if ExperienceOz has a sales representative in the store so you can book those attractions after seeing them in the ride.

While I expect that Dreamworld/Brogent will have done a great job on the ride itself, in my opinion, DW have really missed the mark with the building facade and theme. Immersion is a key factor to getting people to suspend their disbelief, and it is also a key factor in getting people to open their wallet - not just for the cost of entry into the park to engage in the immersion, but also on food, drinks, souvenirs and up-charge experiences. This is one of the key rules of shop design to encourage more sales. It is why Ikea is one long path with room after room of products featured in-context, rather than endless racks of shelves. It is why Apple has tables at just the right height to angle their laptop screens in a way that invites people to touch the product. Immersion increases sales and can justify higher prices if it looks like a 'quality' product. Credit where credit is due - DW have done a great job with Dreamworks and Tiger Island and have proven that they are capable of creating immersive environments. However, they always manage to drop the ball, like the Green Prison at Tiger Island, or the Trolls attraction. Despite the iRide being one of the highest quality theatre attractions available, this building doesn't do the ride justice. I'm giving DW the benefit of the doubt that the ride itself will be great, but the building looks cheap. It breaks the immersion that did exist, and replaces it with something that can't even clearly be identified as an 'airport' terminal. Here is a comparison (photos from earlier in the thread): I've mentioned previously that I don't care if they tear down one facade and replace it, but it should be replaced with something that is consistent with a future vision for that area of the park. It should also be replaced with something better. Different is ok, but lower quality, less immersive and less aesthetically pleasing is not. I also don't think that Dreamworld have executed their design well. They tore down a classic style of architecture that could have been improved, but was at least consistent and immersive. They promised a modern, futuristic building with sweeping curves and sleek, bright entrances. But they delivered a lumpy, bulbous mess. This is just my opinion, but I don't think this building belongs in a theme park. I don't even think it is a good looking building outside of a theme park. I've mentioned before that this is a multi-million dollar tourist attraction and there is nothing about this building that is iconic or memorable, and no one is going to take a photo outside of it to share their memories or experiences on social media. For me, the most disappointing part is that Dreamworld had the opportunity to create a great historical Aviation story. Qantas was founded in Queensland, and Sir Charles Kingsford Smith was born in Brisbane and was a global pioneer in Aviation. From Wikipedia: In 1928, he made the first trans-Pacific flight from the United States to Australia. He also made the first non-stop crossing of the Australian mainland, the first flights between Australia and New Zealand, and the first eastward Pacific crossing from Australia to the United States; and, also, made a flight from Australia to London, setting a new record of 10.5 days. In my opinion, this history and unique Queensland connection would have been ideal for a story and immersive experience to wrap around a ride like this. What is more is that it would have given Dreamworld license to theme the building to something consistent with the existing Main Street - if not Victorian - then at least the simpler (and cheaper to maintain) Art Deco style of the early 1930s. I appreciate that many here won't feel the same, but I personally believe that Dreamworld has lost something good, replaced it with something bad, and completely missed an opportunity to create something great. While I am interested to experience the ride, I think Ardent need to hire a Creative Director to help build a future vision for Dreamworld. Hopefully, when they have a vision for the park and the theme of each area, they can re-theme it for a 2.0 version of the experience.

@Skeeta They're referring to it as a 'terminal' and telling you to check for 'departure updates'. But even this speaks to my point about Dreamworld not being able to pick a theme and stick to it. They can't even be consistent within a single ride. They have a Stark-Trek inspired logo, A rocket-man TV commercial featuring remote Australian landscapes, a building themed to an airport terminal, all dumped into a Victorian-styled Main Street. The whole concept is a complete mess because Dreamworld have been lazy and not given it anymore thought than 'let's theme our high-tech 'flying' ride to the concept of 'flying''. When no one is providing creative direction for the park or for the individual ride, everyone involved just starts slapping their take of the 'flying' concept onto the ride. I don't care if DW want to make changes to the park's aesthetics and style, but those changes should be an improvement and be consistent - working toward a larger vision for the park. At the moment every single ride, store, attraction and show seems like an isolated 'project' implemented by different people working in silos. It is just my opinion, but I believe that DW needs to hire a creative director whose sole job it is to start overseeing this stuff. This ride is supposed to be a major, multi-million dollar tourist attraction. Ask yourself if you think people are going to want to stand outside of this building and take a photo of themselves to share their experience and memories on social media. If the answer is no, it's probably the wrong design for a theme park.

This building looks terrible. It does not fit the style of Dreamworld, or have any unique theme beyond generic 'airport' or possibly 'shopping mall'. This design is going to date quickly and the glass windows housing the stairwells already look like a dated early 90s office block. Dreamworld increasingly seems to be treating their park like a shopping mall where each store has it's own unique brand and fit out and there is no continuity from one attraction to the next. While I get that there were no airplanes in the late Victorian era, to theme it to the surrounding buildings, there were ideas for flying contraptions dating back to the 1500s (DaVinci, etc). It's not difficult to come up with a concept that allows you to create a theme park attraction, instead of a generic 'flying' ride. We've all been to an airport, we know what they look like, and we don't go to Dreamworld to see a cheap copy of one. The theme of the building doesn't have to represent the concept of the ride, but the story attached to the ride and Dreamworld could have made that story anything. Even if you wanted to theme it to an airport, there are many Art Deco and historic airports from around the world that could have been used to create better theming, that would have sit closer to the rest of the main street look. Liverpool: Kallang Airport (Singapore): Newark: LaGuardia (New York City): Jacksonville Florida: Swan Island: The building could have been designed to fit the rest of the area and simply had an air traffic control tower element added, and all of the art deco designs would have suited a Sky Voyager theme much better than a modern airport. To be honest, I'm going to be disappointed with the current Dreamworld design if there are not metal detectors, x-ray machines and 40 minute security lines to get on the ride. If they're going to theme it to a modern airport, why not go all the way?

Actually, the apostrophe here is correct. It's possessive. The 's' is not plural. 'Your Classic's', is just a shorter way of saying 'Your classic flavour's original taste'. It's clunky but it's grammatically correct. @red dragin While it might be technically correct, it's an awkward way of phrasing it because they've truncated the sentence to make it fit. They've also used 'one of your' which makes the plurality of flavours both singular and possessive in a way that doesn't intuitively make sense. Multiple flavours would generally be plural, and 'your classics' would be the plural way of referring to the group of flavours. The addition of 'one of' and 'your' confuses whether they are referring to one 'classic' flavour or 'one of the classics'. Since there are multiple flavours the sentence, as written, would read correctly as plural rather than possessive singular - without any additional words being truncated. The truncation of those words makes the apostrophe confusing because they're referring to a singular, possessive noun, but your brain has to figure out what words are missing since the sentence would make perfect sense without any more words if it were plural. TL;DR it's just bad copy writing and they should have found a better way to make their point that isn't grammatically awkward. I hope this helps and doesn't just make you more confused.

They have a custom coaster section - so they will build you whatever you like. That said, they weren't really selling many (if any) boomerangs anyway. There are so many of them at various parks, and some that have been removed and put in storage, that it is cheaper to buy one second-hand from another park or for a chain like Six Flags to move them between parks. But here's some possible reasons for why they wouldn't be making them anymore: Vekoma is now owned by S&S Worldwide - who produce 4D Freespins, El-Locos, and other Small Footprint launch coasters that are more exciting, smoother, and more popular than boomerangs. Most of the images on the website seem to indicate that Vekoma is abandoning the Arrow-style track design (wheels running inside the track like on SLCs and boomerangs) in favour of their new track design that makes better track profiling possible for a smoother ride and more exciting elements. The exception appears to be Mine Train coasters, but they have a different track design anyway. Offering new rides using the new track design means culling old designs that might be cheaper. If you want to sell a more expensive (but better) product, you simply stop offering an cheaper alternative. This also streamlines fabrication by focusing on one style of track and train. Vekoma seem to be targeting a 'mid-thrill' market rather than trying to out-thrill their competitors. Fun, family-style rides with a couple of 'thrill' elements that Parents and Tweens/teens can enjoy together. This is something that a lot of parks in Asia will be wanting. These reasons might be completely correct or completely wrong. It's just speculative reasoning on my part. But personally, I'm excited to see some new designs and better technology from Vekoma. They've been installing the same painful coasters all over the world for decades and trying to 'fix' them with new train designs, while companies like Gerstlauer and Mack eclipsed them on almost every front. I think some of these new rides would be a great fit for parks like Dreamworld and Sea World. Dreamworld could create an 'aviation' themed area with a flying coaster, the iRide and Tailspin. Sea World is not a 'thrill' park, so Thunderbird model would be a great fit (especially if MW removes AA in the coming years).

People aren't booking the experience after the park closes on the day they plan to do the experience. They're booking it online - in advance - probably for the same day they plan to attend the park. Plus, most locals have VIP passes and get park entry included anyway. Moving the time to after closing allows them to up-sell the experience to people already at the park, in which case people who want photos and a backwards ride, will pay $99 for those things AND a coaster climb to secure their place on the climb earlier in the day. I doubt many people are enthusiastic enough about a roller coaster to want to climb the lift hill, but not enthusiastic enough to want to spend a day at the park riding that same roller coaster.

MW could simply add some extra value into the $99. Here's how to make it already have more value: Include a Backward pass that can be used when the park is open. (I'm surprised this isn't already included). Include a video of your backward experience and free digital ride photos for the day at the park. Neither of these things actually cost MW anything. The ride regularly cycles without backward riders, and they are already capturing photos and videos. If they really wanted to give a bit more value, they could also include one or more of the following: Cross-promotion between parks with a free game at Top Golf (which is one of the few things you actually get a view of from the top of the coaster) A DC Rivals Soft Drink sipper-cup. To be honest, a backward pass with video, and free photos for the day would sell me in. A drink cup would in addition would make me think it is excellent value. Giving me a free game at TopGolf would get me over there (I currently have zero interest in it), and I'd probably buy drinks and food there too - possibly even more games if I enjoyed it. This is the kind of thing I would also be likely to buy someone as a gift, especially with a TopGolf game thrown in, and so they would get at least two sales - one for me and one as a gift - so we could share the experience together.

Just for anyone that is interested, this is a short Halloween Horror film from the Director of the MW Fright Night commercials. Happy Halloween!

You don't need a CEO with theme park experience if you don't plan on having a theme park for much longer.

@Brad2912 At the conclusion of the inquest the coroner must deliver findings in which he/she establishes how they died. Coronial inquests also have two other functions. The first is the coroner’s power to make recommendations. Part of the coroner’s duty is to consider from the evidence whether any recommendations or opinions should be publicly expressed with a view to avoiding similar deaths occurring in the future. This would be around regulating ride safety through inspections/staffing/operating hours/retiring or completely refurbishing rides after a certain age, etc. The second function of the coronial inquest is for the coroner to determine whether there is a reasonable suspicion that someone has committed an offence of some sort. A coroner may suspect that someone is responsible for the person’s death, for example due to manslaughter or negligence. If the coroner reasonably suspects such involvement, the coroner has a duty to refer information gathered during an investigation (and inquest) to the relevant agency/agencies, usually the Director of Public Prosecutions. The coroner does not personally express a view about possible guilt, but simply refers the information to the proper government agency for a decision to be made by that other body. Hope this helps.

I booked with Young Pioneer Tours and did a special 10 day tour specifically for National Day. There is no tour where the amusement parks are part of the itinerary, but our Korean tour guide was a little bit awesome and we basically nagged her to take us one night before dinner. We really only had about an hour or so there since it's not an 'official' thing and all activities have to be cleared with the government. So it was something special I thought I would share.

I recently went on a trip to North Korea and visited the Kaeson Youth Park. It is centrally located in Pyongyang - a short drive from Kim Il Sung square, next to the Arch of Triumph (photos taken from the top of the Arch). Here is a google maps link for anyone interested: https://goo.gl/maps/sRmidMu3WRk The park is fairly small and only open in the evenings. It is next to Kim Il Sung University. The park is mostly moderate thrill rides aimed at the university students. You can see from the entrance that Pyongyang is a very safe city - there was no high fencing, just a simple rolling gate with no locks. That bathroom tile aesthetic in the buildings is extremely common in North Korea. They will tile the external walls of 30 Storey buildings on every floor. The park had a really fun suspended flying coaster with an egg-beater lift hill. I'm not sure of the model, but it was a really smooth, really fun ride. It has two inversions. You load onto the ride in a standing position and the operator closes a cage over you. You're tilted into the flying position by a large steel bar just before the lift hill. The two inversions are fairly intense considering you're not actually strapped into the cage, but they whip you around so fast you never really feel like you're gonna fall. They also had 3 Zamperla rides, a Disko, a Power Surge (i didn't photograph it but you can see all three rides in a row in this pic), and a Frisbee (with the most terrifyingly loose restraint I've ever experienced). In addition, there was some dodgem cars (the Korean's are really violent drivers), A small pirate ship, and an S&S Shot 'n' drop. There was a burger place inside the park (which was closed) but there were a bunch of street stalls outside selling snacks and soft-drinks. Unfortunately, while foreigners can visit the park, we aren't allowed to buy stuff from the local stores since they only accept the local Korean currency (North Korean Won) - which foreigners are not allowed to use. Foreigners can pay in Euro or Chinese Yuan. We had to pay 10 Euro Entry to the park, and the individual rides ranged between 3 and 5 Euro each. The park was quite empty - probably about as busy as you would expect Luna Park Melbourne to be on a random Friday night. It was National Day on the Sunday, and a Long Weekend, so people had a bunch of other stuff to do. I didn't have a lot of time there and I wanted to go on most of the rides, so I only managed to get a few photos (and some videos). I only took my iPhone, so I apologise for the quality. I've got a couple of videos, if people are really interested I can upload them but they're really just of the coaster and the general park. If I can get more photos and videos from the people I was traveling with, I'll upload them too if people are interested.

Yes. Did anyone consider having 4 shorter trains and splitting the current Blocks into 2 sections each?

The launch is already utilised as a block. You need at least 4 blocks to run 3 trains, since you need the train ahead to have cleared the next block before the train will release from the current block. If you run 3 trains on 3 blocks, no train can move because the block ahead will always be occupied.

I, for one, think the Westfield iRide looks great. 🙄

S&S purchased Vekoma back in March. Steel Curtain looks like a hybrid of both companies designs and technologies. I don't think that combination promises a 'nice' ride, though it might explain the quality of layout design and element shaping.

I am not an engineer but my best guess is either for rainwater drainage from the land around (and north) of it, or they have an exciting new Mosquito Breeding exhibit planned for 2019.

How long are they going to blame their failures on TRR, instead of the fact that they are a poorly planned and poorly run park with boring and unreliable rides? There are better parks with better rides, better water slides, better animals, and better experiences. Dreamworld's unwavering commitment to relics TOT, Wipeout, RHLR and HWSW seem more like a desperate attempt to cling to the nostalgia of when the park was in its prime and wasn't a confused mess of cheap, mediocre 'thrill' rides dumped into any available piece of land. People don't hold that nostalgia. Dreamworld is not Disney and anyone under the age of 30 is too young to remember any of those rides being new and exciting at an age when they would have been able to ride them. Young people - the people that you want coming to your park - don't care about how 'classic' RHLR is, they only know that WWF is better. They don't care about how 'iconic' Wipeout is, they care if it is open and can actually make it through a complete cycle instead of just rocking them side to side for a few minutes. They don't care that TOT2 launches you backward, if you can get a faster and better launch on SE. And the sure as hell don't care about a rickety and painful old steel coaster made by a company that went bankrupt in 2001 - when they can ride a brand new Hypercoaster, and a rickety old Inverted coaster at a different park for the same price. The TRR incident is not the reason people aren't returning to Dreamworld. In my opinion, when they closed for several months, people (like me) realised that we didn't really miss it when it was closed, and when it reopened there really wasn't anything interesting or exciting worth going back for. There still isn't. And that's the problem.

This probably has more to do with Dreamworld building a completely new back-end for their website - which includes ticketing, marketing, and payment processing. Memberships are more difficult and expensive to process than a single pass with part-payments outsourced to afterpay.

Hopkins sold all of their IP to WhiteWater West in 2012 - who now sells the rides under their own brand. Hopkins Rides is still a separate company though that designs the rides. They recently built a new Superflume with similar elements (but a different layout) to WWF at Everland in Seoul (in 2016 I think). It's called Thunder Falls.

Every Vekoma SLC in the world is a rough ride. The old stock trains built by Vekoma actually had padding around the head specifically because of the rough ride - and most SLCs around the wold still operate with this train design (see pic). Honestly, if a rough ride hasn't been enough of an issue to close the ride over the last 22 years, it's unlikely that it will be the thing that makes VRTP tear it down. They might replace it at the 30 year mark in 2025 (which would be within 10 years from now), but it is unlikely to be replaced before then unless there is some significant problem with the track (or maybe the train) that puts it out of action for an extended period. Also, HWSW is the same age as AA (1995). It's also a second-hand roller coaster that DW purchased from Luna Park Sydney in 2001. Arrow Dynamics went bankrupt in 2002, but Vekoma is still around building painful coasters all over the world. (They even built the current awful trains for HWSW). I would expect both rides to be around for a while longer yet, but there is a good chance that one or both will go before they turn 30.

I didn't mention any website, it was a private conversation between me and one staff member I know that works for VRTP. It was not asked to the company through any of their channels. That image is the entire interaction about the topic. I casually asked the question and they volunteered that response. The good employees that I personally know have the exact same complaints as people in this thread, so there is exactly zero chance of reputation damage from asking them why they think it is occurring. But I do home VTRP management drop into the forums and see some of these comments, because there is some good feedback they could use to make improvements - including what their own staff think about their workplace culture. I think most people could overlook lots of the little maintenance details people are complaining about if the general level of customer service was high enough though. It might sound a bit stupid, but small maintenance issues like the jackhammer or broken tiles would just come across as guests abusing the park (rather than management that don't care enough to maintain them) if the staff created the impression that their primary focus was the enjoyment of guests. I've been to a few parks where the rides were a bit worn/dated or just not that thrilling, and it was the attitude of the staff that made it a magical and fun experience for me (even as an adult).