Slick

Can vouch for this - the Abu Dhabi airport facade was something Weiss wanted.

That’s it. And then if you rebuild the Captain Sturt, it’s not travelling between three country themed lands anymore, you’ll have a 19th century paddle boat docking between a kid’s area, a fake boat, a green concrete jungle of a coaster entryway and the remnants of an opening day building that’s been all but abandoned. If I were rescuing Dreamworld, building a boat is not the solution.

This aligns well with what @joz mentioned in the tributes thread for John Longhurst's passing - they're so keen to be like Disney or tap back into the past of Dreamworld without understanding the question of "why?" In this particular case, why build another Captain Sturt when towards the end of its life the Captain Sturt was robbed of any purpose? Initially the boat was an elegant and beautiful solution to meet up with the steam train and put hundreds of people in-front of where the bushranger show was being performed. But for close to a decade after the show stopped, all it did was ferry Japanese tourists to the koalas and, occasionally, have the Wiz put on a hand-magic show in the back. It was originally a large audience mover, but it was eventually a boat to nowhere, and like so much of John's legacy, was misunderstood, left to rot and eventually bulldozed. Rebuilding the Captain Sturt at a time when the park can barely get enough people in the door to watch the light version of the bush-ranger show out the front of the train station would be wasteful spending at best, and at worst, nostalgia for nostalgic sake. It's akin to nearly building a lazy river for WhiteWater World at a time when driving gate was critical and park throughput and capacity was anything but critical (which is precisely why Fully6 was built and not the lazy river.) If it were up to me, i'd be building attractions on the island FIRST, and then building some cool, smaller, steampunk style boats (like Tokyo DisneySea's) to navigate the waters and build on the park's kinetic energy.

After John sold Dreamworld, he went back less than a few times - a few weeks after the sale and a few years ago. On his last visit, he remarked to me personally that he hadn't slept for days after witnessing the state of the park, noting that while Main Street (pre Sky Voyager) looked nice enough, everything beyond there was largely unkempt and not to the calibre or standard he would wish for. That's not to say John was always right about Dreamworld's future or how parks as a whole had evolved in the decades since the sale of Dreamworld - his hatred for any large "un-Disney-like" thrill ride was, at times, almost amusing - he was well known to hold his hand up to cover his face and the view of Dreamworld as he drove past, and we debated on more then one occasion about the merits of Rivals, large rides as a whole and how the industry in Australia had evolved and changed over the years. Having said all that, my point is this - despite some of his industry perspectives not evolving with the times, I can guarantee you John would hate having his face forever plastered out the front of that park that doesn't understand his fundamental legacy in the same way he would hate having a roped-off, un-operational steam train engine plonked out the front of a closed train line, seemingly taunting guests about a memory that once was and is no longer.

As reported in the GCB, John Longhurst has passed away, aged 90. Most folks will remember John as the founder (and builder) of Dreamworld, responsible for literally carving out the rivers and buildings that exist today. John was a visionary and will be missed. If you'd like to learn more about his legacy, I interviewed him a few years back and turned our chats into a three-part series which is, as far as I can find, still the best source online about how he built Dreamworld.

Cheers for the shoutout @Rivals - here’s the photos in higher quality.

Cheers for posting that mate. Enjoyed reading the perspective of someone who hasn’t been in a long while. Out of curiosity, was there a period of era of Dreamworld you identify with the most? (E.g. Early 2000’s) And based off that, how do you rate Dreamworld today? Was it better or worse?

I think that's why it's perfect for Sea World. If you're the tween/teen/adult family member being dragged to a day at Sea World, there's at least one ride that caters to satiate the thrill tickbox for guests. It's low capacity and thus matches exactly the kind of demand it would attract, and placing next to Jet Rescue means it leverages nearby guest flow and existing amenities to ensure it's used. Let's remember that Sea World was an anaemic park in the way of attractions for many years because they skewed too family and that the whole reason why Atlantis is being built is to try and undo that skew.

With respect @AheadMatthewawsome I don't think you need to report everything you hear to guest services - they've probably got enough on their plate as is being short-staffed during a pandemic. The general public love a good crazy story about rides going wrong - the amount of times i've heard people say they got stuck upside down on (insert ride here) would be enough to think every ride in the country is doomed to fail. These rides are built and marketed on the illusion that they're scary and dangerous, when in reality they're anything but. Some great life advice for both this situation and anti-vaxxers is to let people be people and don't get too worked up about stuff that's clearly nonsense. 🍻

I'd move it to Sea World. Seems like a slam dunk next to Jet Rescue. I would rather they'd moved Surfrider instead of buy Vortex, tbh.

Between myself and another mate we've been a half dozen times between when Steel Taipan opened to now and I've yet to see the park bustling the same way Movie World is. At its busiest i've yet to wait more than 15 minutes for Steel Taipan and i've also yet to see it hit the switchback or the entrance sign.

The big question - is it a family suspended coaster or a half decent proper suspended coaster?

Simplicity of design also means a greater reliance for the fundamental parts to operate correctly 100% the time, and when they're not looked after, the opportunity for them to go really bad happens really quickly. Dreamworld's Giant Drop has had its own issues, namely with the cable holders, which landed them in the news in the early 2000's when a cable holder was yanked, resulting in Dreamworld installing those steel meshes above the gondolas.

Contrary to popular belief, he never worked with Disney Imagineers. You can read about it when I interviewed him about it where he said point blank (and is referenced in my audio transcripts) that it never happened. Tim Fisher was the CEO for all of those rides that were both themed and lightly themed so i'm not sure what your point actually is. If it's that parks have used IPs for rides (and that's bad) i've got news for you - everyone does it because it works to drive gate. I have no doubt Fisher picked this up at Paramount Parks and instigated that same use of IP at Wonderland Sydney. Dreamworld does it, Disney does it, Universal does it, big parks little parks - everyone does it. Bermuda Triangle didn't close because the all knowing Disney wasn't brought in. They also didn't play a hand in anything structural or anything engineering adjacent. It was already a retrofit of an existing dark ride system (Lassiter's Lost Mine) and it was closed because much like the Looney Tunes River Ride the current management considered money was better spent on new than the huge cost outlays to maintain existing. Having said that, the cost to maintain those attractions were also so high not because Disney wasn't brought in, but like everything built in that era, virtually no one from the industry at large was brought in. Eureka Mountain Mine Ride, Thunder River Rapids, Viking's Revenge, Looney Tunes River Ride, Bermuda Triangle, Rocky Hollow Log Ride, Dreamworld's Main Street and it's trains/boats etc. etc. etc. were all either built largely in-house or were all out knock-offs of international variants. That "she'll be right/can-do" attitude of doing things a little bit cheaply to try and get something as good as the Americans for a tenth of the cost all but evaporated when Dreamworld's incident happened in 2016, culminating in rides like Scooby Doo literally having walls of theming ripped of, Sky Voyager being re-wired with thicker cabling or Wild West Falls having entire sections rebuilt. There's that old saying of "buy cheap buy twice" and that's definitely been a hard lesson all our parks had to learn. I think of it as a course correction. There's been pages of discussion here about how parks need to be a solid day's mix of stuff for everyone and it's another hard lesson our parks (specifically Village's parks) had to learn. Skewing each park to a specific demographic doesn't work because at the end of the day, roller-coasters and big new things drive gate (and you don't get that when your park is aimed at three year olds) but having two parks so close to each other with identical rides also isn't a recipe for success either. I think there's some nuance in the middle somewhere that I hope Atlantis (and whatever Movie World builds next) will eventually capitalise upon.

Euuuuuuuugh.