Slick

Ah! It all makes sense now. Sounds to me like you're taking sound advice from these jolly fellows. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBiSI6OdqvA

I'm sure we'd all love to read it. You should totally upload it.

Oh, no sarcasm. I just figured they'd see it for the great idea that it is and would practically be paying for you to install this service in for them. By the way, how much is the app worth on the App Store? A buck, five bucks? I'm sure we'd all love to know how much we will need to pay or how you plan to make a return on installing numerous on-site solar panels and the obvious pain-staking, complex coding that makes such a great system work.

If I could have a time machine.... Dreamworld after Cyclone opened but before Nick Central opened. (Thunderbolt, Kennyland, Tower of Terror skull on the right side etc.)

Couldn't you just ask the parks if you could just wire into their mains? Surely they wouldn't mind, you're practically doing them a favour.

Your app? It's clearly marked "Parkz" in Comic Sans AND in hot pink. But dude, seriously, chill-out, it's just a joke, if you took Parkz and life too seriously you'd end up like that guy who freaked out at the Fright Nights Preview... OH SHI

OMG GUYS. I have an idea that could make Parkz MILLIONZ of dollarz! Teh Parkz App that tellz you about queuez and ridez while your in the parkz! (Too far, maybe?)

Guys, guys, seriously, can't we just settle this over a beer at the Dirty Harr.... Oh shi

Could you imagine their electricity bill? They'd need to buy a crapload of solar panels from Julia if those Disney 2012 rumours are true.

Can we get a PR rep from Theme Parks a Go Go to comment on this highly welcomed new addition to the theme park coverage landscape?

I don't get all of the negativity regarding Tiger Island? It's without a doubt a world-class facility and what's more is that they're always adding to it to be able to accommodate more animals for more breeding programs both nationally and internationally. And the back of house are exceptional, too - the kind of veterinary and dietary care those tigers/cougars receive is above and beyond what the RSPCA (you know those people who are against animal cruelty? Yeah, those ones) considers as acceptable conditions. The only perceived con about the facility is that it's not a "sanctuary" or "wildlife" sized space but rather the animals are kept in cages. (Because shit, the Coomera State School 200m down the road is a perfect place to let the tigers loose on a human/animal Discovery channel experiment, right? Tiger jailbait everywhere, man). And I totally get that. But get that tigers aren't pack animals. They are solitary, territorial, animals, so having 11 large cages instead of one big sanctuary makes sense. Half a dozen solitary animals in the same area in a "sanctuary" environment doesn't make any sense, and it means either constant human interference to keep the animals from fighting or have less animals altogether, which greatly reduces the breeding program possibilities. But since they're hand-raised and don't know any different and the "caged" environments are very spacious and the tigers are walked and exercised "literally" 24/7, I hardly see what's so bad it all really. We get to continue to see these beautiful animals in the wild through said breeding programs and donations from daily demonstrations, they're well looked after, and most importantly they're trained and not tamed with their handlers so that mutual respect is obtained and the handlers can literally play and cuddle with the tigers instead of being three feet away, gun-cocked, in hand, just incase it goes down. What's the diff and why have human interaction, you ask? With the amount of health checks the tigers go through at the facility, it's much easier on the tiger to train them to sit and stand in certain positions and be amenable to a vet's check on command instead of having to sedate animals on a regular basis to achieve the same thing. And what's more, the training not only allows them to be more capable in different environments for breeding but means you can see them in a show do various tigerly things that raises more awareness which = more donations which = more wild tigers which = no extinction anytime soon. And if they're trained, get that they're still wild predatory animals that all have different personalities and most importantly, work 90% from body language, which is a total opposite from humans, so for them to nip or bite, especially if a handler has their back turned or isn't showing the correct body language for a tiger, is totally bound to happen. From what I understand, and it's at best a theory, but tigers don't think ahead about the possible police charges and court hearings they might need to attend when they feel agitated in a certain environment and have to use their body language to show their emotion. I'd actually go so far to say that the fact that it's a nip is a testament to the tiger/handler relationship, and the fact that the tiger didn't freak out and decide to "maul a bitch" but instead decided to nip and back off to show its feelings (as a wild animal at the top of the food chain which naturally doesn't care if it seriously hurts or kills another animal) is actually pretty damned amazing. Also, hate to be crass Aussienetman, but if you have a problem with your children seeing pretty basic predator/human interaction like a punch in the head, then either educate them about the difference or don't take them there. I'm so anti nanny-nation, and i'm hopeful we don't have to have a warning sticker outside areas like this so that parents from the likes of Beenleigh or Logan (i.e. bogans) don't sue because their uneducated kids decided to sucker punch their cat and then didn't expect their family pet to go apeshit. How else are you going to obtain mutual respect from such a large wild animal and be able to comfortably exist in the same space? Asking it nicely to not bite you or carry a weapon around in fear of an attack? They're the only two choices outside of what the handlers currently do, and from what I can see it's an amazing thing they do. And now everybody reading this thread knows better. Good job internets.

Yep, going by that, I hope we get a Euro-fighter too. ..S&S have a 14 day return policy, right?

Reminds me of Apple rumours before a new product is even launched... "Oh man, that new iPhone 5 is not launched yet, but if it doesn't have a big screen, then that's it, i'm getting Android..." It's looking great at night though. I'm really looking forward to stepping through the queue line for the first time and seeing if it was like Shockwave, where the bark is spray painted green, or if they've actually made the effort to create a long-term environment for the attraction to exist in.

Shouldn't you know, www worker?

Winner.jpg

Great find! Thanks for sharing.

And here's a POV of the train valleying... http://www.themeparkreview.com/coastertube/play.php?vid=californiascreaminstuck_39qm

^Absolutely. And even if they don't straight away, in a few years they can always turn the train backwards and re-theme it to "Buzzjet."

^ Is it a possible correlation that the reason there's no culture is because there's so many people saying that we can't have a culture? I just think it's funny that a small group of Americans (talking about TPR of course with their recent trip, and their group that came here was smaller than the people who frequent here at this website) with a positive outlook can make ERT's and stuff happen and a group of people whinging, like above, for some odd reason, don't get the same response from the parks. Maybe what i'm trying to say, is if we as a community stopped going out of our way to make sure the parks weren't giving us anything and then being right about them not giving us anything and instead went "hang on a tick, let's create some action here, create a report and do something as a group" then we'd actually have some culture like overseas. I don't think it's hard personally.

Looks like 2011 will be the year for jamming really tall roller-coasters that have a long, shallow footprint as close to the highway as possible.

^ Agreed. They could've actually built this ride into the park's existing themed space, like say, oh, I dunno, where the chairlift station used to be, and really expand the area nicely and add to the Eureka area as a whole. Instead, they've figured out the one possible way to make their park's entrance feel more cheaper and crowded by adding a ride in right on the border of the Eureka "themed" space. It's like they've become Disneyland trapped inside Cedar Fair's body. My assumption is that there's only a few really passionate and committed people in Dreamworld's hierarchy, while the rest are more entranced on shareholders and returns, hence why when you walk through the Tower of Terror it feels like literally every single guest must've had a blade knife in their pocket - names are etched everywhere, things not working, all less then a year out from opening. If anything I get this feeling like Dreamworld's listening, and for the most part if it's even a remotely risky investment to the shareholders it's not worth acting upon. We've been bitching about the bush ranger show and the Mine Ride for how long now? Or the look of the Wipeout? Cyclone queue*? At least with Disneyland's peoplemover it's not a ridiculous eyesore like half of the park has indeed become (particularly the Mine Ride). *I totally get the park has great excuses for all of these problems, and they're great at making excuses too - it'd just be nice instead of copping out they'd do things properly, fix or burn the Mine ride, make a new bush ranger show, add some water effects to the Wipeout, and actually use the Cyclone queue.

That ad was so bad it reminded me of this:

This'll give you a good idea of the difference - keep in mind that Vmax is actually 20m wide, so larger then a Hoyts retrofitted digital IMAX theatre, but comparing it to a purpose-built IMAX cinema (also granted I'm comparing it to the largest IMAX screen out there, Sydney Harbour's) you get this:

See, the resurgance of 3D cinema and in particular IMAX has been due to digital cinema. IMAX all the way through the 90's and early 21st century was a prevalant but still niche format due to purely cost. The larger IMAX cameras were more expensive to lease and harder to get access to, getting shots was (and still is) a pain because of the limited run-time in film reels, not to mention reloading the camera over, and over, and over... then you're looking at your telecine costs (digitising the film), post-production costs go up because of the insane amount of data the sideways 70mm film captures.. and then after all of that you've got to print ginormous IMAX format film reels AND seperate audio reels and then get your lease-only projector from IMAX corp to match up everything and actually play the sucker. And all of this essentially relegated it to documentaries only as a result - given you can make an extra quid from taking your IMAX film and giving it to Nat Geo (or whoever) for a TV Broadcast, 39-42 minutes became the sweetspot for IMAX films - cost-effective spectacle format that at 40-odd minutes, would also keep the costs down for distribution of the physical reels. Need I say more? Now though, most of the IMAX cinemas you'll see these days are all digital, which has meant it's significantly levelled the playing field against standard 2K cinemas. Getting the films out there infront of patrons is same-same, and cinema owners are looking for ways to specialise right now (Event Cinemas with Vmax is a great example.) And to top it off, now that digital video camera technology is so big in the industry, most equipment centres that have cameras from the likes of Arri and Panavision (companies that much like IMAX have always specialised in film up until recently) will give agencies film for free or at little cost just to to get their film cameras out there, just pay for the telecine and you're set. Dark Knight was a great example of what's now possible with IMAX. The critical shots were done in IMAX, and given how fast technology is now, it's now cheap to get the rest of the shots re-analysed for an IMAX format screen. Also while i'm ranting this is all in part why Dreamworld had to destroy their IMAX projector. All of IMAX's projectors are lease-only, and given IMAX's film projectors are worth virtually nothing now, it was cheaper for IMAX to get Dreamworld to destroy the camera then haul it back to Canada where it would probably sit indefinitely.

Reminds me of this: