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Baconjack

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Everything posted by Baconjack

  1. Counterpoint: few amusement parks anywhere had IP’s in 1981. Wasn’t even a thing here, Wonderland was still only a few years away
  2. Having visited MW and SW this week a few interesting take aways from it. The practices regarding minimum and maximum height checking seems to have gotten more strict since Covid. Now I'm a tall fellow who ordinarily is barely under the Intamin max height restriction (BD, Superman, and JR), and I wear volleys and a weighted back brace to parks to artifically shorten my height as a fail safe (have this down to a science lol). The practice now is basically "feet together, stand up straight" yada yada, much more formalised and standard from when I last visited in 2019. Can't get away with shit like slanting your back slightly like you could before covid. Probably for the best though. Also, ops now tell guests not to do their own seatbelts on Rivals (as well as trident and vortex), instead they have to do it themselves. When did this change because I certainly remember this not being the case in its opening year or at my last visit (2019). I thought otherwise Rivals and Leviathan ran really well. Under 2 minute dispatches usually which isn't bad for Village standards where I'm expecting at least 3-4. But the seatbelt thing adds probably another 30 seconds to the process which helps when you're only running one train.
  3. Name 1 family IP that will drive gate that’s not off limits for DW to license. I’m seriously struggling to think of one, they are pretty much all either owned by their competitors like Disney/Universal or Village at this point. I think they’ve done very well keeping ABC Kids and the Wiggles on board as is.
  4. 100% this. Have universal ever offered to license one of their IP's to a competitor? That's probably something to keep in mind with renewal. It was always going to go once the ten years was up, no question about it. Wipeout and Big Red Car both needed to go. Wipeout should have been planned to be closed years before it actually did. By watching videos of Big Red Car in its last years it looked like nightmare fuel, would have cost a lot of money to upgrade and is better off being flattened for something new. Why keep a rotting ride going to buff up the ride count. Tower of Terror is an appropriate trade off for Taipan. I'll give you the points on buzzsaw, the trains, tiger island, and the log ride. Buzzsaw was costly to maintain but needed to be kept around for a bit longer than what they did to fill gaps in the lineup. Log ride was an expensive redo but needed to be done or replaced with another water ride ASAP (that's not going to happen for a while). Trains and tigers are self explanatory. FWIW Yong and his people have been spending the last two and a bit years cleaning up 10+ years of neglect by past management teams. It has affected literally everything at the park. Some of that neglect has hastened certain rides' operating lives. That sort of clean up doesn't happen overnight. It's going to take time. I do think Jungle Rush when its finished is that ride to capture the punters' attention which Taipan has so far failed to do provided it either equals or beats Village in presentation.
  5. Lol who hurt you? Unfortunately not everyone has the luxury of having the parks close by to them.
  6. Back row has better airtime so guess that’s where it’s best haha
  7. Yep. One in each section. Wish I could have got more. It ran faster on the later rides for sure. Funnily enough it closed again at quarter past 3. So it was really only open for an hour or so.
  8. Ok so sea world clutched up and opened leviathan at quarter past 2, which surprised me considering staff said it would be closed all day and it didn’t test for about 3 hours beforehand. Managed to get a few rides in and will grab a few more before close. The AV presentation is pretty cool and looks great. It looks a lot better in person than in photos or videos. It’s certainly not the best implementation (the timing was pretty wonky), but it’s a really good step nonetheless for what is essentially village’s 2nd go and makes me look forward to the next couple of years. The station and pre show stairs is where the theming really stands out. The detail is very impressive. I do think the station lighting needs to be a bit brighter to make the screens fit in a bit more, but I’m being a little bit nitpicky. Queue rockwork and vegetation looks cool but will get very hot in peak summer, maybe some mist machines or fans would be nice. I was initially pretty disappointed with my first ride as it ran quite slow but definitely warmed up to it with a few more laps in different parts of the train. It’s one of those rides that will run slow in the morning and speed up later on in the day. Lots of little airtime pops and the first half had some solid pace to it, feeling very out of control. The roughness caught me off guard at first but given I’ve never been on a wooden coaster before is something I can’t really judge. Leviathan is definitely not going to knock off rivals or taipan as the best coaster in the country, but a really really solid big thrill ride for sea world that’s been needed for nearly a decade. No doubt it will be popular once the teething problems are fixed up and it’s back to peak season.
  9. And a lot of money to build too. I know our parks like splashing cash as of late, but it’s still out of their budget imo. A free spin would be a more reliable and cheap alternative and very marketable.
  10. A loop screw like what sea world eventually got would have sucked at DW imo. Too small and it wouldn’t have been big enough to look noteworthy on the midway.
  11. Lol where are they going to put it? Dreamworld need to get that thunderbolt throwback raptor going in the lazy river plot so gold coaster’s plot can be used to expand WWW down the track
  12. Down, but sporadically testing. Staff seem to have be told leviathan is not running today
  13. Fucks sake lol. Guess I’m having a crack in winter
  14. Big Dipper and Abyss are both great rides that run rough in summer just by nature of the heat. Abyss was a bit rattly when new, can’t imagine what it’s like now. Abyss should have had lap bars from the start too. Layout wise Big Dipper has abyss beat. No ride in this country flies through its layout like Big Dipper does especially when it’s done a few cycles during the day. And it runs a lot smoother in winter except for the valley between the non inverting loop and the immelman Arkham was like being in a violent car accident in its last couple of years. Gold Coaster was pretty nasty before it got the new trains, now it’s just a bit jerky in 1 or 2 parts.
  15. Do we even have evidence that new trains are being installed? The soft OTSR's like what you see on maverick would be a really nice alteration to the existing ones imo but i doubt they'll be put on SR. Those intamin harnesses aren't very kind to taller people
  16. Potentially I think village would be taking notes on how dragster goes and see if it’s worth the investment. The hydraulic system at superman doesn’t seem to be having many troubles though it will get expensive to maintain in a few years time. Superman is far too popular for Village to rip out imo so a Scooby style renovation would make sense.
  17. When the time comes to refurbish superman (which is likely to be the next big thing after oz and Scooby imo) I think it will be an easy quality of life change to change the lockers. Move the lockers later on in the queue, on the wall adjacent to where the current fast track line is, make them double sided so you can open them up in the old exit gift shop and retrieve your items as you leave. Redo the railings so you walk past these lockers as you line up, and reroute fast track to the other end of the building. Pretty easy and not terribly expensive quality of life change that improves the experience for many more people especially when you are lining up for well over an hour in summer. Not sure why they didn’t have this when the exit building had the gift shop in it. 30 minutes without a phone is fine, but when you’re pushing an hour and a half that’s where (younger) people will get put off and will go flood the line for rivals or green lantern
  18. Getting a little nervous tbh, I’m driving up from Sydney on Friday and planning to visit SW for leviathan on Monday.
  19. From memory its the face, crystal palace, coney island, the wild mouse and the rotor that are specifically protected. None of these are going anywhere, nor should be suggested as such. Otherwise the rest of the park is fair game. That said, the land is still zoned for use as an amusement park.
  20. Wild Mouse is heritage listed. Its for sure not going anywhere. I know the park has invested quite a bit of money into retracking over the past year. Given the uniqueness of the ride all of this new track has to be custom made. I believe a few of the timber supports are getting reinforced too, and I think the trains have gotten updated restraints in recent years.
  21. I haven't even ridden tnt and i could say its better. KFF is a boring layout that's brutally rough, it was unpleasant in 2018 and couldn't imagine what its like now. Fingers crossed new trains/restraints have been bought with the refresh to make it a better experience
  22. Not to get into the semantics of it but i think it's safe to say a track switch and a turntable are generally interchangeable terms, whether its a simple track switch (a la most modern coasters) or an actual turntable (think Gerstlauer). I think it's also a bit interesting to note that not one coaster listed on RCDB with a turntable listed as an element is a vekoma product. I think it'll be that track switch we see above being tested right now, possibly even sent straight to dreamworld from the factory like what they did with the tilt coaster drop.
  23. Lex Luthor would be my first choice because it literally sits metres away from superman, but Aquaman could easily work as a theme and is probably the most appropriate choice given the nature of the ride. I've always felt that corner has been more general DC than superman. After all, Arkham Asylum was sitting right next door for about 10 years so pretty much anything goes.
  24. How much is it to make new bodies for the dodgems lol? I can see some similarities with deep sea creatures but it’s honestly a little lazy. It’s like they are retheming Ocean Parade to fit the KFP rides rather than the other way around
  25. This is certainly a well overdue upgrade. Next Generation was a poorer experience to the original ride, not fixing anything related to the coaster experience and instead a lacklustre effort at meeting fire safety requirements. Getting some of the theming fixed would be nice, especially at places like at the mirror scene or on the elevator. Retracking will make the ride more comfortable considering it runs in the dark and has so many pot holes.
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