Baconjack

I took the “food for thought” as implying “hey let’s get these trains on superman” but i suppose that’s not the case here. LSM’s will be difficult to fit onto the existing track with the space available. That said as the technology of magnetic launches continues to improve it can be done and I think it’s plausible if I were village I would be looking at the Canadian install that’s near opening very closely. Superman is far too popular to straight up kill (as opposed to let’s say doomsday or green lantern) and would it make sense to invest the money into renovating for that reason given the popularity of the ride, but that popularity variable hasn’t stopped dreamworld from getting rid of tower as an example. Nevertheless village have recognised the value of renovating old but popular attractions in the past with Scooby so maybe that example is followed with superman in the future. Of course it can change in a few years.

Or an indoor boat ride/flume like a modern version of ltrr. Something thats reasonably high capacity and eats through crowds. I would have said something like studio tour would fit but it makes no sense putting that next to road runner and I don’t see jds going anywhere it seems to be popular, plus half of the building is used for storage so need to consider where everything in there goes too

Fitting those on superman would be physically impossible when concerning clearance envelopes etc.

The effects are also cheaper imo. No strobe tunnel in Hong Kong, 2nd lift effects are just strobe lights compared to the tunnel on the California version, brake run tunnel looks worse. Load station is smaller and looks a bit odd too. With the Star Wars overlay it looks incomplete and a mish mash of Star Wars & old space mountain, you'd think if it was intended to be permanent they'd go all in on the retheme. You're right on the layout and soundtracks but look into the little details and you see it's the cheap version (their autopia version could fall under this criticism too) which explains why Hong Kong was considered bad in its opening day form. A couple of standouts and it's a good park for someone who hasn't visited a Disney park before (Like myself when I visited) however if you visited Disneyland or WDW beforehand you'd notice these things pretty quickly. As you say Mystic is a fantastic dark ride, easily the best thing there, and a great take on the haunted mansion, it doesn't depend on screens as heavily as modern trackless dark rides (compared to Ratatouille or M&M RR). Grizzly is a great ride that has a great feeling of speed but haven't ridden any of the big thunders yet so can't make a judgement on whether it's better than that. Iron Man is a good alternative to Star Tours but I wasn't particularly impressed by it and it stuck out like a sore thumb in Tomorrowland, haven't gotten to ride the Ant-man space ranger spin redo yet but based on POV's it seems to be a downgrade. Arendelle looks great and although I dislike Iger/Chapek era IP-based projects as much as the next person it has its place and is a necessary addition to drive visitors up as something different from what you can experience in the mainland. Hoping the Avengers e-ticket is eventually built to finish off the marvel corner of tomorrowland which will also give visitors a reason to come as there's nothing marvel at shanghai.

“This is the first time a ride has been placed within a ride in the Southern Hemisphere”

Rivals cost $30m. There’s no way in hell a flash statue, a barebones queue area, and some 2d signs is adding up to $20m. Maybe a quarter of that at most. If you are being generous a new train with new restraints as pointed out in the concept art is about a mil but I’d say it is largely wishful thinking until parts rock up in BOH.

Given someone’s pointed out the fact the restraints are getting changed the process of commissioning may take slightly longer than expected as opposed to a simple relocation? If this is taking this long to open (considering it was supposed to come here as a capacity boost for peak season yet it’s opening in April) I’m going to say the sea world thing is just a yarn. Also the theming is a massive step backwards but did we seriously expect more? I don’t think we were getting something on the level of Atlantis/Oz here. ”Ride within a ride” I guess Luna Park Melbourne doesn’t exist then? This makes absolutely no sense

Pull it down

Except when it’s perfectly legitimate criticism of incredibly cheap lettering, especially considering how out of place it looks when compared to the rest of the refurbished ride. You can also see it anywhere, be it in the boarding area or when non riders are watching the ride from the ground. There’s plenty of recent examples of dreamworld doing things correctly (Pandamonium -> serpent slayer) and unfortunately giant drop is not that which is disappointing considering the time & money investment: Anyone who has used Microsoft word more than once in their life knows exactly what that text is and can come to a similar conclusion as me. If they changed it to match the ride sign, then it’s great and fits in correctly. by itself, it is not that bad, but you can’t be making yourself look cheap with all of these half hearted details around the park (see: giant construction company banners on dreamworld flyer construction walls etc) for a park that charges $100 for a day ticket.

It looks ridiculously unprofessional, especially when you can identify the font (more people could do this than you think). When you can do that it just looks extremely lazy and screams of some staff member typing "GIANT DROP" in the default font on a powerpoint presentation before saving it as a png and printing out decals.

Wait did they didn’t remove the Microsoft word text from the gondola? That’s a little embarrassing

If I were to take an educated guess either the 2nd gondola is being refurbished and wasn’t ready for re opening (doubtful they’ve had 12 months to do this) or has been broken down for parts for the other gondola (most likely imo). How much would a new one cost from Intamin?

To be fair it wasn’t very good in 2012, no mystic manor, no iron man and probably no big grizzly mountain. Basically in its opening day state with the expansions they put in. Without those big majors to set it apart from the rest of the Disney parks it’s literally just a Disneyland clone with half the budget and effort (compare Hong Kong space mountain to California)

My old man used to live in Hong Kong for a decade so went to this park every time I went over there to visit before he moved back home so I've followed this park pretty closely over the years. The animal exhibits are as you say great and more than adequate. The presentation is excellent, but I think it's degraded quite a bit since it was all new. The park was basically rebuilt a decade ago to compete with Disney and I remember when it was all new and fresh. The fact that Ocean Park is very cash-strapped is very telling through the photos. I don't think its particularly well looked after at all especially compared to how it looked when it won an award usually reserved for Disney, Universal or big European parks. Hair Raiser started out very smooth when it was new but it definitely developed a nasty rattle over time. I think it's a great ride and has a decent layout with a combination of different forces but unfortunately it operates in the wrong climate - I think it's pretty similar to Abyss in that respect. It can get very hot in Hong Kong during peak summer and it's easily worse than the coast thanks to the humidity. The mine train was awesome, truly a fantastic experience and one of my favourite coasters despite being a Zamperla with crappy transitions, no other coaster in the world has the setting quite like what that did. Dragon had an awesome setting too but it was a terrible Arrow looper which says a lot considering I have a bit of a soft spot for them. Some of those transitions were just wrong, you can see them in POV's. Particularly in the helix after the sidewinder. It's a shame they're all still sitting there unused, but it doesn't at all surprise me - I don't think this park has the cash to remove them - there's heaps of rides and buildings down there sitting closed left to rot away including a few flats and a massive log flume. The park is huge so even on a relatively busy day it looked dead on each visit. It's unfortunate because Ocean Park had a huge master plan a few years ago that looked awesome (with a lot of new rides themed to the standard of what's at the top of the peak including a dive coaster and a family launch coaster) which was supposed to replace all those closed rides but they have since been shelved as a result of Covid, the protests that occurred before driving down attendance from the mainland (last time I visited was right before Covid started and the park was nearly empty). From what I hear also the government chose not to give the park money to invest in the expansion. To my understanding they are changing the park's operations to contract out zones to different operators - I think they're quite desperate and the future of at least the amusement side of the park is not looking particularly bright.

Did village finally do away with the go away green grass fence?

Getting the cars inside Coney Island is a ridiculous effort considering you have to go through BOH then through the side door. At that point why don’t you just leave it there where it belongs and chuck a tarp over them so they don’t get faded? Plenty of room there they’ve kept wild mouse track there too in the past

Correct me if i'm wrong but isn't the top of the coaster supports being painted green to resemble a tree? I recall seeing it on some concept art somewhere

Isn't that mostly empty because it was cleared for the lazy river that was never built? Plenty of room for the globe in BOH I would have thought

The concept artwork kind of gave that away as it looked similar to lethal weapon/arkham in layout. Most of the buildings in that lethal weapon courtyard area will be kept (such as the petrol station entrance & theatre pre show building which will get the emerald city facade). If they weren't being reused they would have been ripped down along with the coaster, a number of the buildings will get new facades. I think the pre-show won't be like lethal weapon where there is a film, I suspect it would be more of a photo op as the queues for the coasters look to be outside that building.

12 months of refurbishing and they still haven't removed the calibri lettering. Hopefully this job gets done before re-opening when they apply the new decals

LSMs are almost impossible to integrate into the layout too whether or not you raise the top hat. They simply aren't powerful enough yet to get a train to 100 km/h in the space required. Superman already crawls over the top hat so you'd need double the power if you were to raise the top hat which cannot be done without a swing launch (which is straight up impossible to fit inside the show building) There is almost no reason for them to replace the system yet. Perhaps within the next 10 years it's a possibility but for the time being it runs well and Village take good care of it. I think it's more likely that Superman gets updated trains like Roadrunner or Scooby than a launch system upgrade.

I would have expected Village to wait and see the performance of Dragster before going down the Superman Escape Next Generation route. (now I don't think TPSN is gospel by any means but broken clocks can be right twice a day, they've gotten a few things right in recent months re: surfrider but this a can of worms worth opening)

My understanding is that it's a retrack in most places. Last year I saw newly fabricated track pieces sitting under Big Dipper on one visit.

Yong probably reads these forums. Everyone on here wanted the dreamworld tower to be converted to a sky jump back when Tower closed. Would have been pretty awesome but he’s right - the average punter is already put off by how high giant drop is (which is why it never gets a line), let alone adding a feature which makes guests face the ground at that height. Also Tower wasn’t being launched anywhere close to that speed in its final years. The LSM’s and control system could only handle about 100-110km/h and the care that dreamworld put in (or lack thereof) pre 2016 made that problem worse. It also sat closed for months at a time unscheduled every year. I think six flags are lucky to get that much height out of theirs.

Perfectly good except it barely made it halfway up the tower and was consistently shut for extended periods of time in its last years