Gazza

I think the real issue now is really the competition with themsleves. With WnW and MW surging ahead the GP could see SW as stagnating. It is by no means a bad park, its just that it needs to be doing something to avoid getting a reputation of being a boring park where nothing happens. Thought with SW, i think for them a better stratergy is to build more less often. While MW and WnW can move away from that stratergy (as they have been doing latley to build up capacity) i dont think it would work for SW. Animal exhibits are expensive, and its far better to do one every few years and end up with something like Shark Bay or Polar Bear Shores, than it would to build one every year or so and end up with with something horrible.

Welcome to R-C Good idea about using the existing railings for both rides, but as you said some good signage could eliminate any confusion. Its a nice spot to queue too with all the trees. But, i still do think SE should be themed more on the outside, its sort of conflicting to have the inside of the ride themed and convincing, but the outside just some white sheds, especially since the rest of the park is so niceley done.

Hence why you keep your legs crossed over with the feet sort of hooked together so that doesn't happen.

I got my computer at the start of the year and RCT3 runs fine on it.

Not necessarily, i think by that they mean that it would follow the contours of the terrain. It would probably be built maybe only a meter or two off the ground, maybe less. It would be very expensive to excavate the volume of dirt needed to fit the wide mammoth slide sections underground.

Thats doesnt mean Intamin wouldn't do one that Relates to the tsunami theme (Im thinking it should look like a surfboard or a chunk of driftwood) if the park wanted one. So far all of the Half Pipes built so far are named "Half-Pipe" so thats why they all have snowboard cars.

Hey, I was defending them, i said they were mostly OK and there were only a couple that seemed iffy, but this is what I said.... I was just going against what was said in the past (That they are all feral), but at the same time there are a few "characters". Im sure they are all nice people. Oh, and did you mean "write" and not "right"?

Why not build a "carpark" slide, a bit like with SFMM and Scream. It wouldnt matter as much as if the slide is enclosed you cant see anything anyway. I can just see a mammoth slide going out over the carpark with a "creative" support structure, like what was done on the left side of mammoth falls in terms of building it over the existing maintenance area. They could also stick some more slides in with cyclone (there is a nice rectangular spot enclosed by the lift hill and first drop). They could go further and relocate some of the mainenance areas behind ocean parade if they got desperate. Hell, they can even build more waterpark on the other side of DW if need be. Schlitterbahn in the US is actually 2 smaller parks seperated by several city blocks, and to see the whole park you have to take a shuttle bus to the other side of the park. Though IMO i dont think WWW used space as well as it could have, there seems to be too much in terms of paved areas (and they reportedly trimmed down from what was orignally planned because the budget was going to be blown). Bottom line is that the place could have been a bit more "dense" and they should have tried to get as many rides as they could have in the space they had.

With the congestion issue mentioned, the LW area seems dead anyway, it needs something else to get people to trek down that alley.

I hauled myself away from the books for a couple of hours tonight and checked out the Shepparton Show. It seems to have finally matured and I was pleasantly suprised by the line up, there seemed to be very little duplication of rides, and most of those un-thrill rides (like that thing that has a similar ride motion to the ali baba, but is sort of mounted on a wall). But anyway, here are some shots of the goings on. The main entrance, since the redevelopment you can now walk under this arch freely. it used to be a gate. Oh yea, and it cost $5 to get in to the actual show. The main path through, its not so much sideshow alley, but rather gastro alley. It was here I was reminded how much the soundtracks that advertise the skill games sound like Rodney Rude The refurbished grandstand. There is a small hall under it, and it is in there where you get your magnetic bracelets and spray on tatoos Inflatable farm animals were all the rage. No, not quite Superman: Escape..... ill bet WVTP would be happy about this one. Oh yes, this is a coaster site eh, im supposed to talk about rides. Anyway, here is that Extreme Speed Machine. I ended up riding this later on and it was awesome. You could see all of town lit up; the views were great and it was such a great feeling going so fast. The wind just rushes past and you cannot hear the motors at all. $15 was a bit steep, but i really wanted to try it. It seemed pretty popular too. Probably the most popular ride, Space roller was quite a lot of fun, it twirls you around a bit and you seem to spend all your time sideways. Very fun when it gets going fast. Unfortunatley i was seated toward the middle so i didnt get as fast a ride as i could have. Same ride, but after it had caught on fire A first for country Victoria, but crazy coaster was here, it was surprisingly good value at $7.50 a go with $5 for subsequent rides. The first ride was fun, but with only 3 passengers the spins werent all that wild. Another look at it. Considering how elaborate this is, the number of staff and the general nice presentation I felt it was better value than the $8 space roller. Even the sign looked professional. My second ride on this was better. It was night and the show was busier, which added to the atmosphere. I was also seated in a full car. The girls in there asked what the spin was like, and going by the previous ride i said "its no worse than an office chair". I was a bit shocked when we hit the spin toggle and went around that bend and the car span very quickly. The response from the girl that asked me: "OFFICE CHAIR MY ASS" A look down the main sideshow alley at sunset with some of the other rides in view. I went on cliffhanger, basically what you get when you cross a flying coaster with an entiprise. You got a bit of air at the highest point in the revolution, and a bit of g's at the bottom. It had that "wind in your hair" factor too, an OKish ride. $6. Looking down the alley after sunset. The place was getting busy so at least it has been sucessful. It is now the time i will make my carnie comment. They weren't too bad, they just seemed like your average tradie. However the guy running Kamakaze had an impressive mullet, one of the games blokes was missing a few teeth and quite a few seemed ill shaven. I also was asked directly by the bloke running the ball in the bucket game to "come over here mate", but i sort of skirted off. I dont really like being approached like that. But the female carnies seemed OK (no, not in THAT sense), they didnt even seem bogan at all. So this is what fireworks mode does. Well, that rounds off my trip report, its nice to see rural shows are improving, and I think they still have a bit of life in them yet.

Im inclined to say its not a thrill ride in the traditional sense, its basically a wild mouse with extras, and while it is thrilling, it lacks the same intensity as a traditional "thrill ride". I think of it as a family coaster. I think if you compare things like LW and S:E and BW:SS to rides like TOT, GD and Cyclone you can see a clear link. But if you compare scooby with say cyclone or the claw then that link becomes less aparent. Also, the fact it is themed around scooby doo hurts it in terms of being comparable to the much more imposing names that the rides at DW have. Things like the claw and tower of terror have that definite feel, but "scooby doo spooky coaster" sounds a little bit kiddy and well, not scary, but spooky. If anything its comparable to Eureka at DW, and i dont consider that a true thrill ride. Basically for me, a thrill ride is a woodie, a looper, a hyper, or an intense flat ride. Most of these have full restraints too (except for hypers and woodies) which sort of makes them feel more like a thrill ride. Now i know there are exceptions to my argument, but thats how i feel. Oh wait, this thread was about a new ride at LW. Im hoping its a kung fu theme ride like what has been discussed before. That would be cool.

I sort of guessed that was going to happen, im guessing that there will be some sort of uphill slide (but they might do a pair installation because of the crowds and to push that "Biggest 'n' Best" Message) Im also predicting a bowl attraction of some sort, but maybe not a Beheomoth bowl. And maybe a park here will finally put in some of those "Turbo Tunnel" Type things.....

Well, at least it relates to the theme of SW and they havent tried to do something like an extreme sports tie in to attract that teen market. How long though until people claim the name is insensitive to victims of the Boxing Day Tsunamis? There was a park in the US that re-named their woodie from Tsunami out of respect. And SW isnt immune to doing this, they renamed their fairy penguins to "little penguins" to avoid offending people. Then again, maybe it has been long enough now that people dont mind, i mean we have rides like cyclone, and they have killed many.... Still, this sounds cool, im looking foward to seeing how it looks.

Yeah, there is something known as a "Zone Blocking System" Basically there are more sets of brakes on the track then there are trains. Each section between the brakes is known as a block. The rides monitoring system only allows one train in each block at a time (Basically to avoid one train rear ending another) If for some reason a train hasnt cleared the block ahead then the brakes will close, stopping the train behind. They wont open until the zone is clear. So for example, if one train was at the begining of the launch, it would not be able to go until the train ahead had at least cleared the unload station. This is why sometimes on Scooby Doo your car comes to an abrupt halt on sometimes, it means a car is still in the zone ahead.

Most workplaces seem to keep uniforms folded up or hanging in a cupboard, and often it is near the staff room. They would never be kept in the locations you described as it would be a downright pain to have to go right out the back or into coomera to get uniforms everytime they have an induction for new staff. They also need to be close at hand in case somebody arrives at work, but has forgotten a piece of their uniform. The amount of storage really just depends on staff turnover. It wouldnt be bigger than say a walk in robe. If you think about it a secondary school uniform shop supplies a similar amount of people, and i know the storage area for mine is little more than a wall divided up into boxes.

I guess they changed it then. Good find though.

I thought it was illegal to place fake job ads, i know in our local rag they always have a little warning saying not to place fake ads yadayadayada.

Ok, first get a cup and sit it on the edge of a table so half the bottom is off the side, but no so much that the cup falls off. Now, get a jug and tip water quickly in and see what happens, they basically work by that principle. (maybe do this experiment outside, for example on the front steps) No offence mate, but i thought it was pretty obvious how tipping buckets work, they are on a pivot and overbalance when they are too full. As for the little cone ones, its the same principle again, they just re-calculate where the pivot needs to go so the bucket will tip. To fill the pools up the filtration system has a direct mains connection, so all they do is open up a valve and water flows into the system. I know in our pool it is kept topped up by a little chamber that is beside the pool and in the ground, it is connected to the pool by a thin pipe that is at water level. When the pool gets too low there is a float in the chamber that drops a little bit, opening a valve so water can flow in, until it is high enought, so the float goes up and the valve is shut off (its exactly the same as the thing that makes the cistern fill after you flush the toilet) Oh, and i would imagine WWW would add new rides, what sort of theme park doesnt? Was that a rhetorical question?

Im hoping that these new ticket options relax some of the requirements too, one of my biggest gripes is the way you have to visit all parks before being able to park hop. But holidays are random, and you might not feel like doing things their way. For example, when i was up early this year i had to go to SW, then MW, then WnW. But IMO it would have been more logical to do 2 days in a row at MW (With WnW each night) then SW, but the conditions didnt allow this. And what about if you had gone to SW and MW already, but the weather was bad so you wanted to go back to MW instead of WnW. Of course, you can get around this by just turning up at a park and leaving right away until you had done all 3....except that the parks need a car between them and its just a waste of time. If they just opened it up a bit and let you do things your way the pass would be better.

I was on the bus home tonight, and i noticed something very cool, they are currently setting up for the shepparton show, and to my suprise the crazy coaster is there, odd considering that Shepparton only has about 40,000 people, and in the past in terms of rides the biggest we get is Kamakaze, what is even more odd is the fact its only a 2 day show. Cliff hanger is also being set up, and i think space roller was there too (im not that well versed in what all our show rides are. I was intending to get some photos about an hour ago because there was some stuff I had to do in town, but unfortunatley i had left the camera card at home (i had used my camera at school for some stuff, uploaded it when i got home, but left it in the reader) I wasnt actually intending to go to the show but i might actuall go for a couple of hours since there seems to be some decent stuff there this year. Also, the showgrounds here have had upgrades of their own (Grandstand was moved 50m south, all new center oval, renovations, new entry, landscaping, its actually only 2/3 of what it used to be since 1/3 was sold to SPC so they could build a big new distribution centre. Im not normally interested by the show scene, but this is all sort of cool. For those of you in the industry, why is Shepp getting all of this stuff all of a sudden? Anyway, ill take plenty of photos on Friday for you all to see.

You dont think that the southern NSW one could be that Pictura place could you?

Just a little thing I'd like to add, I often find that when parks state a queue time, the actual queue is much less, maybe its because they guess incorrectly, or maybe they just didnt bother changing the signs, anyway, i dont think that it would have actually been 45 minutes, they probably overestimate to keep people happy. As for what DW rulz said, well i agree with rich that 2 trains should run if the queue was more than 30 minutes, but as others have said it was most likely an unforseen problem that caused them to only run 1 (Though i thought there were 3 trains avaliable, i guess there arent) Yelling at the queue person wont help, just write an email saying what day you went etc, and they will probably give an explaination. But just out of interest, have you ever yelled at the people at DW because Giant Drop only runs one side, now THAT causes real problems.

The only alternative ican think of is to build a big building on part of the carpark so the sound is enclosed, and then somehow have links into the park. I was sort of thinking an aqua trax could start near corkscrew with the launch section be slotted in beside the ski lake on the eastern side of the park (it could even be done in a similar way to calif screamin, with the launch water cooled using water from the lake) then have it go into a twisted section inside the building with theming etc, with some sort of lift to bring it to the top of the building. Then a big drop would come out of the building, followed by an airtime hill, before splashing down. It would share similarities to that aqua trax at lotte world. I doubt they would do anything like this though as it would cost $$$.

Gee, all this complaining about a grey tower and not a mention of the TOT This was what i was expecting, but im still wondering what sort of grey it is, im hoping its a fairly dark grey similar to LW, it will give it that industrial cast iron look perfectly. As for that giant piston thing that goes up the middle, maybe a red-orange colour (similar to what is on the signage for the ride), either that or grey again. I have no issues with the colours, it will make it look dark and imposing, the exact sort of look you want, and as Adam said, fitting with gotham city. You have to trust MWs judgement, they dont make ugly rides, unlike some other parks...... Im not expecting too much for the car sorry djrappa. MWs other thrill rides arent that heavy with vehicle theming, id expect something on the level of SEs trains. On another note, one thing they might do to the tower is put panels on it (like maliboomer at DCA), which could help with the theme. Edit: Just saw Rabids pics, that shade of grey looks cool too, reminds me of some of those European coasters.

Maybe the colours are meant to make it like you are inside a huge wave curling over you