djsupersleuth

Yeah I suppose you could, but the average 10 year old who threw the ball into the bucket had the ball come back at him/her - any wonder when you seen the underside of the bucket. From memory that game had more regulations than than a home loan contract (no rimshots, no crossshots, no reaching etc etc) couple that with the extra bounce from the bucket and it lends itself as an unfair advantage.

Except for good ol Bucket Ball, I remember when the buckets were replaced from the cane type to the well themed blue plastic ones, I walked through the Carpenters shop and saw the "secret" there were about 10 of those super bounce balls and 1 tennis ball glued on the board directly under the bucket giving the thrown softball 10 times the energy when it hit the bottom of the bucket. This was the reason the ball would come out of the bucket with lethal force!

Its also on at 3:30 am Friday morning, dvd recorder is set to get it. I could then burn copies from my laptop I suppose.

Could be one of the three small rides i was told about, cant remember all of them but one was definately a carousel.

Good point Damo, and you are correct Doohan was more a successful racer than Gardner.

Poor Wayne Gardner, wonder if there was consideration between the two.

I wouldn't place to much cred into the parks quoted costs for rides. It is not uncommon for parks to boast and "inflate" the prices on what their attractions cost, Wonderland were not backwards in coming forwards by promoting that Space Probe cost 10 million when official documentation stated a lesser figure. Early 90's and 16 and 18 million for Movieworld attractions, come off it Movieworld no way they could have cost that much.

Thanks Churros, I reacted to the question asked not knowing the type of train on this coaster and thought it was a multi carriage train and would require a curved station to get to each carriage but since have seen that it is essentially a flat double bogied vehicle which eliminates the curved station theory. Thanks for your uncomplicated clarification.

Is that a serious question? The station will have a curve to match the track and steps up to each car.

Well sorry to disappoint AlexB but two guesses for where Michael Croaker ended up after Wonderland. He pursued his acting career and when that 5 minutes was up he went back to WVTP as Entertainment Manager. Although he probably wont choreograph shows now he certainly would have an input into it.

Substantial = $30,000, I don't think so. Petty cash.

Can you clarify what you have said? Surely you cannot mean Dreamworld have changed their minds halfway through construction and a couple of weeks ago phoned Intamin and said "hold it, can you guys still build this ride but make it less thrilling" Or did you mean: It has become apparent in recent weeks that Dreamworld has opted for a less extreme coaster from the outset.

Could he be confused with the last batch of slides to come to WnW. One of the Engineering staff went over to South America to collect all of those rides.

Good spot T-bone, but no not Probe as this one is a 5 gondola model and Probe is 3. Made me look twice though. Very coincidental that they have versions of 2 of Wonderland's signature rides laying next to each other.

My previous post was relating to drop rides only i.e: Probe, GD. Some of you would have picked that up, some wouldn't have.

What you do not understand is that the brakes cannot fail as they are non switchable therefore making them failsafe, foolproof whatever you want to call it. What makes it reliable is the fact that there are no moving components in the braking system, the permanent magnets (rotor) bolted to the back of the cabin are gapped for clearance to the fins (stator) bolted to the tower and there is no contact between the two. The permanent magnets can eventually weaken but this shows up in weekly weight tests performed by maintenance using weighted bags (usually sandbags).

Horizontal somewhere in Malaysia. Still owned by Sunway.

Yes but there is a point where the exponential limit flattens out and braking does not improve. Evidence of this was 4 very large maori fellas who took a ride on the Probe when the weight sensors were faulty, all 4 ended up with bruised tailbones.

Correct, however in that situation it would hit the bottom buffers very hard as it would have the added weight of the catchcar (approx 250kgs) which added to a full gondola is far over the allowed weight. It would still slow dramatically in the brake fins but hit the ground with a definate thud. Now for this to occur BOTH cables would need to break at the same time and the chances of that are highly unlikely unless both cables had worn past use by and the second cable couldnt handle the load of the cabin by itself.

Same as GD magnetic brakes. Probably different in size, mounting, number of etc but same technology. Rare Earth permanent magnets.

Content below from: http://www.wsoctv.com/news/13548463/detail.html#"] May shed some light on how it occured however I wouldnt rely on it totally until an official report was released. "We seen the cable break loose soon as it got to the top on the right-hand side," said Chris Williams, who witnessed the event. Treva Smith said it snapped again as the ride descended. "The people on the ride just came and hit the ground," Smith said. Williams said she saw the teen maimed. "As the ride came down, the wire swung left, struck the young lady on the back side of my children," Williams said. Williams' daughter Amber said she gave up her seat to the 13-year-old and was sitting on the other side of the ride. Williams rushed toward the ride to find his daughter. As Smith raced to find members of her group, she said she made a gruesome discovery. "When I got up there, the lady, she was just sitting there and she didn't have no legs," Smith said. "She didn't have no legs at all. She was just calm, probably in shock from everything." Smith said she saw no blood and the girl wasn't crying, but the same couldn't be said for many who witnessed the incident on the ride formerly known as the Hellevator. Warning: Speculation below, read with care. This ride was a prototype from Intamin and was being built shortly before the Probe at Wonderland. One of the lessons they learnt by building this one first was the alignment of the guide rails which the cabins run on, after many attempts and many holes drilled in the tower (Swiss cheese apparently) they finally realised that aligning the rails and drilling was impossible to get right during the heat of the day and the phenomena of the tower "following the sun". Installing the rails took place at night when the sun had no influence. This unit is pretty much identical to the Probe other than it runs 5 gondolas opposed to Probe's 3. The winch system is housed in the top machine room and the twin ropes wrap 10 times around the twin drum system - one drum is driven by the gearbox and the other is purely a deflection drum to enable the rope to stand off the inside of the tower the required distance. The counterweight weighs as much as the cabin fully loaded (from memory about 1300kgs) The winch actually does more work lowering the catchcar after the cabin has released from the top as it is lifting the fixed weight of the counterweight without the balance on the other side (loaded cabin) Now pure assumption on my part but if one of the two cables broke whilst the cabin was near the top then the broken section - say 10 metres would fallover the front of the cabin and onto the guests which wouldnt really injure anyone too much (a bit like a punch in the head) but then if the cable twisted and wrapped into a loop around the feet of someone sitting there and the cabin releases from the catchcar to which the cable is attached to the top of well then you would have a situation where this may happen. One system which I would hope is in place there as was on Probe was a proximity switch sitting close to the cable which would trigger a E stop if it lost the cable ie: cable breaks and moves away from it. Anyway just a thought, feel free to pick it to peices!

The media would burn them either way they went on this issue as is what is happening now. The way it reads and the way Dreamworld would have approached the decision would/should/could hopefully be two different things.

I suppose it could work in two ways: Keep it running showing confidence to the public and media then get criticised for doing so. Or close it down in line with the US parks to be sure and then have the media work in reverse saying "If it is safe to operate then why close it?" throwing a bad perception to the general public about its safety. Proverbially: "Between a rock and a hard place" "Catch 22" "Dammed if you do, dammed if you dont" Perception is what it is all about and I think Dreamworld has chosen the lesser of two evils and kept it running to display confidence. Also without knowing the details of exactly how the legs were severed other than "cable snapped" I believe they have made the right decision. I have also seen in the media Dreamworld state that their cables undergo daily inspection which would be a visual check which I can tell you from experience means nothing. I doubt their regular daily would be a "rag test" which would be too time consuming however they may have decided to do this until the cause of the US accident has been established. A bit of overtime for two maintenance employees outweighs keeping it closed

No, Although I thought $800 was quite reasonable for 4 tickets and I did well in the casino I did not purchase them, the owner of ski resorts in Victoria purchased them.