Flea

Thanks Troy! Smaller resolution of Troy's shot of Buzzsaw's layout for anyone having issues with the size:

Leviathan looks cool but I seriously question the park's decision to go with a coaster they already have, only taller. You've suddenly taken the park's premier coaster (Behemoth) and turned it into the "kiddie" version of Leviathan... so strange. Even though I'd say Behemoth has the better elements of the two, a whole lot more interesting than overbank, camelback, overbank, camelback etc.

Sure there is, but like I said above this is the time that locals will be assessing which park has the better offering this year which, in the general public's eye at least, is Dreamworld. We all know that VRTP offers better quality attractions, but the longer that MW's new ride is kept somewhat of a secret, the more passes Dreamworld will sell. Remember that not everyone can afford both passes.

Of course they do. Having 300,000 people you can advertise to without paying a cent is a great asset. Dreamworld have a huge marketing advantage over the VRTP parks at the moment, particularly when the parks have chosen to move to the cheap annual passes model. This is the time that a lot of the local families will be purchasing passes -- if I were a parent and I had to choose between a park that has announced a "multi million dollar attraction" versus a park that has already opened a new ride and another to come in just a couple of months time, I know which one I'd buy.

100% agree. Any coaster with a train other than standard sitdown seating will blow the Aussie GP's minds.

The ops on Tatsu would do something similar, can't recall what exactly but it was something like "Tat-suuuooo!". On that note I thought operations at SFMM were fantastic, the ops at almost every ride would really get into their spiel.

Completely agree with your comment on Scream with the whole floorless element being more of a gimmick than anything. With the park being so empty during my visit I walked straight onto the front row as I thought it would "enhance" the floorless experience but yeah, no. Did you find it rough at all? I thought it was one of the roughest coasters I've been on... maybe I was unlucky. Shame you missed out on X2, it's my favourite coaster by far.

Great photos, KBF looks gorgeous on a sunny day.

I'd say once the "drop" becomes an inversion then it's no longer technically a drop.

I rode the Motocoaster for the first time last month and actually enjoyed it. The pacing was fine. Only downside were the dreadful trains and what they do to your knees... not good.

So now that I've got some kind of free time I figured I'd write up a little Photo TR of my visits to KBF & SFMM in February this year. This was my 3rd visit to the states but seeing as all of the trips have been for work I've had little time to no time to visit the parks. This year however I was given the opportunity to do a mini theme park trip after the conference in Vegas. I stayed at Four Points LAX -- I figured it would be a good choice seeing as: 1. The location is central to KBF & SFMM. 2. Relatively cheap rates as compared to hotels in Hollywood/downtown LAX. It ended up being a terrible choice because: 1. The area surrounding LAX is bad borderline scary. 2. There is nowhere to eat apart from Burger King/disgusting hotel room service. 3. The bus I took to the parks (Starline Tours) would pickup from LAX hotels first (EARLY in the morning) and dropoff at LAX hotels last (LATE at night) 4. The "deluxe" renovated room I paid for, albeit new, sucked and looked as if it were designed in the early 90's. Anyway onto KBF. The bus arrived at my hotel at around 7am. After doing all of the pickups the bus heads to Hollywood for processing/ticket collection, where you then jump on another bus that goes directly to the park. I arrived at the park a little after 10am. It was cold and wet so the park was empty. How empty? I wanted to start off slow and build up to the bigger coasters so off to Pony Express I went. Thankfully only one train was operating and the paint on the brakes had dried so my chance of dying on this thing was slim Painfully slow launch and a relatively boring layout, was an absolute hit with the 9 kids that were at the park that day though. Xcelerator and it's surrounding area were still closed at this point so I walked over to Ghostrider. Yes it's rough as s**t and yes you completely stop on the MCBR, but it doesn't detract from the fact that it's an insane coaster. The only wooden coasters I've been on were those at Wonderland so maybe I'm giving it a little more praise than it actually deserves, but it just seemed to keep going on and on. Love it. I saw a train crest the tophat of Xcelerator so naturally I picked up my walking pace and headed over. Literally a walk on with the air gates already open. The launch is incredible. SO much more forceful than Superman, it really honestly takes your breath away every time. The tophat is fantastic but IMO the overbanks were a little lacking. I still prefer Superman but that launch, WOW. Silver Bullet was closed as the lake was drained for the repositioning/addition of a support so I gave Montezooma's Revenge a go. The loop has to be the most intense thing I've ever experienced, good fun. Sierra Sidewinder was also a nice surprise, ended up being a lot more fun than I had expected it to be. Supreme Scream was only running one tower so this was the only ride I had to wait a couple of cycles for. I love the initial drop, it really yanks you down as opposed to the gravity driven drop rides. As my tolerance for spinny rides has weakened over the past few years, the rest of the day was spent re-riding the coasters as much as possible. I ended up getting about 11 runs on Xcelerator, including the last train of the day when the crew decided to launch us again after a quick recheck of restraints. They could've easily shut down the ride and kicked us off but they were more than happy to send us around again, awesome operations. On the way back we were stuck in traffic for a good hour. The bus was full as it had picked up everyone from Disney as well, so it took around 3 hours for me to get back to my hotel. The driver was fantastic though -- after dropping the others off we had a nice chat and even stopped for me at In n' Out to pick up a meal and eat on the way back. Genuinely a nice guy so I tipped a little more than what I usually would. Up stupidly early the next day for what I was really waiting for - SFMM! Hunger pains set in when I woke up at 5:30 so I ordered the hotel's "mega" breakfast. Tasted nothing short of ass so I left a note informing them so (which thankfully the hotel acknowledged and didn't charge me for). This is what you pass as you drive up to the park's entrance. This is also where I realised I'm a huge nerd after I began to shake in excitement. We arrived at the park well before opening so I grabbed a nice spot in line ready for the dash to X2. By the time the gates opened there were only 100 or so people waiting (another really cold day - it even started snowing for 5 minutes!) so I ended up casually walking to X2. It's easily my favourite ride -- the first drop is ridiculous. I really think the American's whinge too much re: coaster roughness. Yeah it shakes you around a little but definitely not enough to yell and curse Arrow/S&S/whoever. Every time I rode it my mind was too busy trying to process WTF was happening. After X2 was Viper, another walk on. Surprisingly smooth but not something I'd ride over and over. Tatsu was near but I wanted to leave that til later on as I didn't want to knock out the park's two star attractions in less than half an hour and be disappointed with the rest of the park's coasters... So I headed in the opposite direction over to Scream. It sucked. Sat in the front row, the whole floorless thing is a huge gimmick IMO and adds nothing to the ride, it'd do just as well if not better with a standard sitdown train. For a relatively new B&M I was expecting a smooth ride, but it's comparable to Lethal Weapon. Huge disappointment so needless to say I didn't reride. Batman was next, such a great blur of intense fun. Sat in the back row as the front was closed when I rode (guessing because of the rain). Riddler's was right next door so I raced over. Great ride, definitely in my top 5. It just feels so unnatural to not be sitting down a coaster. Deja Vu was closed (apparently it doesn't operate during winter). Bit of a shame really as I've heard it's fantastic. Not to worry though as Apocalypse was running. To be entirely honest I didn't know what to think of it... yes it's twisty and forceful but no real OMG moments. I loved the out of control feeling of Ghostrider -- this just felt like a mediocre steel coaster. Although I actually liked the preshow rooms (again something that's constantly bashed by the locals), theming adds so much to a ride and it's great that a decent effort was made. The weekend I visited SFMM had planned a "soft opening" of Superman: Escape from Krypton for their Facebook friends. Unfortunately the snow/occasional light drizzle kept the track wet and hence closed. Would've been nice as they actually run this at full speed! While I was up on the mountain I gave Ninja a go. Another nice surprise, I really like the free swinging of the cars -- definitely an underrated ride in the park so I stayed on for a couple of more cycles. Finally Tatsu was up, not much to say other than it's such a brilliant/graceful/forceful/fun coaster. The pretzel loop is ridiculous. I headed back toward the front of the park for Goliath & Revolution. Goliath is fun although all I really remember is squinting the entire time... ice cold air + speed hurts. Revolution is another coaster that I found hardly rough, the first couple of drops were great. By this point it was only 1:30 so I did another lap of the park before heading back to the hotel. All in all a great park, really thankful that the park was dead empty. So empty infact that their management decided to shut at 6pm instead of the scheduled 8pm.

Even if the pass was $200+ it'd still be good value IMO. Where else can you get unlimited entry to 3 parks for the cost of a day's admission? In saying that though, unless the parks introduce something incredible, the public just won't accept a price raise. The pass is a great idea and certainly got them out of the GFC, but if they wanted some flexibility with increasing prices later on, it should've been priced a little higher than it is now.

Have a look at the comments in ... looks like "yellaturd" was in the know a whole lot longer than any of us were

That's the issue though. Locals have gotten too used to being able to purchase a ridiculously cheap annual pass to all 3 parks that reverting back to individual park pricing would mean drastically lower attendance. Unless VRTP can give locals a reason to pay $70ish a park per visit (such as regularly building solid attractions, not every few years as they are doing now) then there's no turning back.

I personally don't think building a $15million+ coaster, regardless of how amazing/unusual it is, would affect international visitors all that much. The main draw card the parks have for international visitors are the animal exhibits -- something they absolutely cannot experience in their country (kangaroos, koalas etc.). Sure there would be the rare few that would visit the park solely for the stand-up 4D dive machine coaster, but why spend the extra money when you can blow the local's minds with a cheap one trick pony?

I think it'd be safe to say that the VIP passes will continue for at least a couple more years. It'd be suicide for VRTP to revert back to individual park pricing.

Look at it from a marketing perspective though. Will the general public care about an airtime hill and a couple of turns? Or will they rave on about the vertical lift/upside down transition? Sure, as enthusiasts we will always want the best of the best, but I'd say Dreamworld found it hard to justify an extra $2million or so for a couple of elements that are largely overshadowed by the main element which is already included in the basic model.

It's true that not many people would look at the ceiling, but IMO leaving lights visible is a theming element on it's own -- it's particularly fitting in movie studio themed parks.

^ I noticed that too, it's probably just the camera/lens they're using.

Well that just made me atleast 6 times more excited, heading to KBF and SFMM in a couple of weeks!

Looks great! I do wonder what the poor souls at Jamberoo are thinking though.

But surely the ROI would far outweigh the cost of the TV ads? I thought interstate visitors make up for a considerable percentage of visitors... ToT is an iconic ride that is known across Australia, why not capitalise on this major refurb?

^ 5 motorsport themed restaurants, not go-kart themed. I like this idea. What I'm envisioning it to be at the moment is something similar to Downtown Disney. If only it were possible to add in a hotel somewhere in the vicinity - connect Wet n Wild, Movie World, AoS and this new area with a monorail/tram and it's starting to become a Disney-esque holiday destination. Wishful thinking I know but it's good to dream.

I really didn't want to believe how bad Bermuda had become but it was all confirmed during my visit last week... Joz, the lights don't even turn off anymore - the ship just sits there. Not to mention things like the onboard audio only half working, the projector showing a blue NO INPUT (or a similar error message) screen and the oh so fantastic red neon wire replacing FIRE?! I mean wow... just wow. It's a real shame considering SW was once my favourite park. The place has lost it's unique atmosphere it once had... Just walking through the park it all felt very cold, what happened to the cheery staff? A couple guys manning the churros/sausage carts were swearing and joking between eachother. Not the greatest of impressions to make while serving a family with really young kids. Also what's with the large majority of F&B closing at 3PM? I can understand that cost cutting measures need to be taken but surely there are other options that don't make your parks look like complete crap.

Wow, wow and wow. Who honestly needs to use the internet at a theme park? They're not really pushing the whole "escape from reality" thing are they? Such a shame to see...