Slick

Did the Terror Tour last week. Long story short, i'm a convert. I knew nothing about the Terror Tour and thought it was just a buffet and some fast track passes, boy was I wrong. It's world class stuff. The whole experience is borderline faultless. I was really pleasantly wowed and hand't felt that way since Parque Espana in Japan. I'll write up something a little more detailed later, but in the interim here's some photos. Don't forget you can checkout my review of Fright Nights here - http://ourworlds.co/fright-nights-2015/

This x10000000.

Corporate spaces are big business.

Looks like it'll make a great undercover corporate/function area.

Better late then never, here's the Fright Nights review I threw up today: You can checkout all of my thoughts over at OurWorlds but suffice to say I think if you're reading this forum and you're into parks you absolutely do need to go check it out. It's very polished. Kudos to the team that pulled it together this year.

The website's pretty bad but they look to have atleast one or two installs of this train overseas thus far. Still have no idea how they get away with just a steel frame with no padding.

I'm going to offer my two cents here for what it's worth and if we're being brutally honest, nothing has been as internationally defining or as iconic (thrill ride wise) as the Dreamworld Tower. Buzzsaw is certainly a local landmark through sheer presence alone, but it holds no weight against other great coasters of the world beyond being a one trick pony that's been repeated in several other parks around the world. In my eyes, it's essentially a modern Boomerang. It's not a bad ride by any stretch, it's a great bit of fun what with the whole "being upside down so high up with just a lap bar" element of things, but it's also no Superman Escape either. And therein lies where Dreamworld should move next. I don't need a magic ball to guess that Movie World will likely create something big in the next year or two and Dreamworld will need to really plug the coaster hole it has to be able to go up against Village as a whole. If I were Craig Davidson, i'd pick from two coaster types: 1) RMC Wooden Hybrid. Why? Nostalgia. Everyone's been on the Bush Beast at least once in their life. Adding a modern twist (inversions, steel track and even a launch) would not only peak local and interstate interest, but it'd put the whole park back on the world map as a place with an interesting, worthwhile coaster. Throw it in Blue Lagoon, and you've got amenities, facilities, and a stage for the ride to be built into ready to go. 2) Launched inverter coaster. Take your manufacturer's pick. Gerstlauer, Intamin or Mack. It just needs to look like Superman, talk like Superman, but pick up where Superman leaves off and roll a few inversions into the mix. It's a gimmicky tactic, but it's a marketable strategy where the general public can get behind it and go "Dreamworld's new one is like Movie World's one but it goes UPSIDE DOWN!" Think some kind of crazy Intamin Mega Lite, lap bars, the whole shebang. Ultimately they don't need another one trick pony, the park is full to the brim now of them. They need a Thunderbolt successor. Iconic, impressive, long and unlike Thunderbolt, actually enjoyable to re-ride.

I checked out their site - not sure i'm too keen on having a steel-only lap bar slammed into my family jewels repeatedly over a 60 second plus period of time.

Couple more until the full review drops.

2017 at this stage. Seriously though - I've got plenty of work on today but my aim is you'll see it tonight as the first public Fright Nights hits.

If you're uhmming or arrr-ing as to whether or not you should go... go.

Wow. I can't even begin to think how that could've happened. Either decent photoshop or legitimately quite scary.

In the pursuit of the ultimate thrill ride, yes, it's worth every dollar.

Hahaha, well played.

I got your back bro.

I'd say for 9 million Dreamworld could retrofit Giant Drop with some tilting gondolas and give it a new queue line. Hell, they could even have a stand-up side and a sit-down tilt side. I'd drive interstate to do that for sure.

I still think there's a lot left to be discovered in terms of fourth dimension coasters. I'd imagine sometime in the next decade we'll see them make a comeback - who-ever can revisit the concept and make it cheaper for parks to own and operate will be onto something. I'm not sure what the obstacle was for going with an electronic system for spinning the seats, one naturally presumes redundancy and safety, in which case, if someone like Intamin can innovate the tech and overcome the need for a rack and pinion / second track system, they'll be on a winner. I can imagine mega-lites with customisable inversions for guests or "pick your intensity" scenarios. Super marketable for operators, and opens a pandora box of what could be potentially a new golden age for rides.

My bet was always somewhere around Fright Nights. They're naturally not going to rush it, and at the same time Fright Nights is a big thing for Movie World these days and i'd imagine they'd cop a lot of flack with the crowd influx with a SBNO attraction left for so long.

That's a pretty big leap in logic there. Last time I checked, the closure of a few retail shops won't be stopping my nieces and nephews watching ABC Kids on the telly. This will probably work to the advantage of Dreamworld if anything. The closure of the ABC shops will make whatever box sets or videos that are available inside Dreamworld more tantalising through sheer convenience and availability.

Top level. Before the final queue point where you get into rows.

More photos. To answer your question directly - the first room you see when you walk in with all the blinking lights and stuff was originally nothing. Just blank walls.

When it first opened, the premise of the ride was all about escaping a contaminated city. My memory is hazey now, but I remember hearing the voice-over repeat endlessly something like "warning, this area contains toxic wasted and is contaminated. You must proceed the escape pod immediately etc. etc." For starters, the ride had a three attendant minimum just to operate. You essentially had a deck hand on the lower level, a basic operator on the upper level and a senior op despatching. And yes, those two lifts you see as you walk up the final stairs up to the top level - those really worked at one point. When you reach the top of the first step of stairs and turn left, that's where the skull used to be. There's a kajillion photos of this around, unfortunately for you i'm too lazy to find (read: upload) them. You'd actually queue in a set of switchbacks outside where Escape from Madagascar's queue is now, then the first deckhand would count you into your groups and then let you up the stairs and into the skull. From the skull to where the TV is now with the random "spark" going off has been relatively unchanged, save for a few things - more pipe and lighting has been added and the strobes and fog underneath the queue died, long, long ago. Before you'd go past what is now the spark TV, you'd hit a gate where you'd wait to be taken into the lift room that would take you from the first floor to the top floor. There was a TV showing explosions and meltdowns and stuff to your right while you waited to be let into the lift room. From there you'd walk over a mini city that was well lit up (hence why the floor is acrylic) instead of looking at the spark TV and then instead of going up yet another flight of stairs, you'd jump into one of two load lifts. I'm sure these are well and truly decommissioned now as they're boarded up with checker plate steel on the top level. There was sounds of buzzers and sirens were playing along with some voice-over that escapes my memory. From there basically the rest is the same as it always was, sans the switchbacks that now exist and the LED's - back in 2008 or so they put the checkerplate walls in to combat bored guests. I've uploaded some crap from 2004-05. It should give you an idea of how things were back in the day. Sidenote: still thing the original pod running at full speed without the full tunnel is lightyears better than what we have now. #lapbarsforlyfe

I thought it was going to be a discussion about some of the merch parks sell.

I actually spent some time a few years back hassling Sunway Lagoon in figuring out where Probe ended up. Turns out it was going to cost too much to get setup at Sunway lagoon and got scrapped.

At this point I think they'd find more success in charging $10 a pop to use an Oculus Rift headset running Forza with an Xbox Controller then running V8 Redline.