Gazza

If they do, then I hope they make the stairs up to the terror canyons a decent width instead of the ridiculous set up now of trying to have the queues for each slide side by side in a space 1.5m wide.

^Im glad somebody feels the same way, it was even cool seeing those transfer tracks that can pull a train out of the way to help with efficiency. It was crazy, It was easily the best station I have ever seen. You are right about SE also, the ride hits its crisis point straight away, that big long straight after the turn from the station been a normal subway trip, but then about halfway along you could trigger a bunch of effects at once signalling the start of the earthquake. It wouldn't have cost any more actually since you are putting all the effects for that section in one spot rather than spaced out. And the superman on the back of the train is something debatable, it looks good to bystanders while the ride is doing its thing, but it looks ridiculous in the station. And the funny thing about the doors that hide superman is that they weren't there when the ride opened, sometimes I wonder if it was because of Richos comments in his official review of the ride:

Just on that, I have always thought it was a crying shame that no Australian park has tried to adopt ABC characters for a childrens area. Wiggles world was a good start in terms of using Australian content, but give me Bananas in Pyjamas over Jimmy Neutron any day. Most kids wouldn't have pay TV anyway....(Only 20% of households)

I guess MW shouldn't have done this then http://www.roller-coaster.com.au/gallery.p...125&image=4 The best indication is from an article that appeared in Melbourne's Herald Sun. They apparently hope to have it open by the September holidays so you could be in luck. See http://www.parkz.com.au/forums/in...ost&p=44383

By all means, theme the ride to their hearts content, there is no reason theming would reduce capacity. Well for me, merely theming the station in the same style as the rest of the rides features such as preshows/queues etc is sufficient. But you can see the trains leaving Personally, I would have made the gates in the station look like the ticket barriers you see at train station entrances, but that's a whole other topic.... But we need to get back to how this whole branch of discussion started, Cyclone was brought up as an example of how people would like to see the station done. Cyclone is a poor set-up since people have no knowledge of the loading process, and the ride has no proper theming where doing this has an advantage. SEs setup works well since they have the video. LW also works since you can see into the loading area. But it shouldn't be that you cant see anything.

^Which one is the real San Fransisco? I'm guessing the second one since the boat has a radar. First of all, for me theming is very important, theme parks are meant to be escapist places so they should make the effort to theme their rides. IMO it is possible for any ride to be themed well, it just depends on the creativity of the designer. Also, if I were a park I would have a smaller ride with better theming than a large ride with poor theming, so for instance I would prefer a small highly themed ride like Black Mamba over something large but sparsely themed like Sliver Bullet. Needless to say, Universal and Disney are my favourite parks. I think that theming the queue area and station is most important for starters as this is where riders will spend most of their time and would have the time to appreciate it. For the ride itself, perhaps theme the low to the ground areas, but landscaping should be done in the remaining areas as it is a waste of time otherwise. I think also, if the park didnt have the budget to theme and entire queue then they should perhaps theme the latter section, but leave the first part plain so there is a clear transition into the themed section, and have some sort of portal that signifies this transition. Space mountain sort of does this, it's just a regular outdoor waiting area at the start, but once you enter the building the rest of the park fades away. But with theming, it should be go hard or go home. First of all, the theming should make sense, it shouldnt be about just 'flavouring' a ride with a few disjointed objects that somehow relate to the theme. GD is an example of this, the outside walls of the building seem to just have random foam signs and fixtures everywhere that dont really mean anything. It would be better for instance if they had fixtures, then had the signs relevant to them right beside. Batwing does this too as the theming around the ride is a few batman related objects, but nothing cohesive. Realism is the key and if a park is going to theme a ride, they should do plenty of research to ensure it looks the part. Wild west falls is a bit guilty of the random objects method in the queue too, but at least they have used real looking items. However once on the ride the progression through each zone works well since a central idea is retained in each area. Flat rides are a challenge to theme, so for them the focus should be more on making the ride look appeal to bystanders as well as those in the queue. The two main DW flats do this nicely, but of course you could always go further. Sometimes, with the minimal theming approach, such as in WWW it can be OK if the thematic elements look good in their own right. Take the BRO, while the big shade structure doesn't make it feel like you are in an octopus, to bystanders it is a cheeky visual gag which makes it OK. IMO WWW isn't themed at all as you always feel as if you are in a waterpark, but the few beachy things they have around provide some nice photo ops and "oh look at that" type moments. I think SDSC comes close, but the laser room, while impressive, is incohesive with the rest of the ride. Actually, the ride with the best balance is the humble little Roadrunner Roller-coaster, it retains the look of the cartoon and all the elements complement each other well and seem well thought out. Im not a fan the painted backdrop. In fact I dont think they should be used at all. I think one place where it ruins the feel is on Indiana Jones Adventure, there were a few walls where they had painted vines or skeletons and lit it with UV lights, which looked totally unconvincing when compared with the rest of the ride.

By all means, feel free to blab as much as you want, detailed discussions are always more interesting.

^Yeah, that is a known fact which works well for Se. But LOL the whole thing started when people were talking about Cyclone, and that has nothing that makes loading more efficient such as videos, pre item storage etc.

I was just wondering what peoples views on theming rides are. Do you think its worth it? How much does it add to the ride? What makes the theming of a certain ride effective or ineffective? What looks good and what ruins it? How much should there be? How much of the budget? What are the textbook examples of good our bad theming? Its a pretty opened ended topic, write what you want on it, I just put those questions at the top as a few starting points, you dont even have to address them at all.

^Didnt they have a Carribean metal drum band too? Anyway, yeah, I preferred the rustic feel, Its a point of difference for DW that made a uniquely Australian take on the theme park. Now it is pretty much like any other theme park out there. I wouldn't mind having a good old discussion on theming, Ill go start a new topic later, but Ill put something related to what you said. I think with Luna Park the situation is more to do with the type of park it is and the owners willingness to spend. It aims to be a Coney Island / fairground type park where theming isn't the go. And as you said the nature of the parks operations means closing the ride to touchup theming directly affects the bottom line (whereas pay one price parks can close stuff willy nilly) I don't so much think the fact people don't care about theming, its just that the Australian public isn't really exposed to it much so parks can get away without it. Im sure if a park opened up on the GC (forget all other market forces) with a similar lineup to the other parks, but a huge amount of theming it could be more popular. People these days are preoccupied with how things look anyway...maybe thats what we need, a designer theme park.

Scream is defintley smooth compared to non B&Ms. The point I was making was that all the other B&Ms i had ridden on my trip felt the same, but scream just rumbled a fair bit and jerked in a few places. Its smoothness was an issue raised when the ride opened: all the other floorless coasters out there are super smooth, but this one was a definite step down, so I was merely asking Richo if he had any idea as to why this would be the case. The issue was actually mentioned in this thread, ive dug it up for you: http://www.parkz.com.au/forums/in...3&hl=scream

Just thought I'd clarify for those who mightn't know, John Wardley is a fairly famous ride designer with a long history in the Amusment industry, and was behind many rides such as Nemesis, Oblivion, Air, Stampida, Colossus, Dragon Khan. He is a bit of an authority on ride design. Well, Disney does a lot of rides like this in terms of story progression. But thats the problem, if people are off in lal a land all engrossed and have no idea what do do in terms of where to put items, how to correctly fasten restraints etc, they wont be paying attention and this will slow down loading. Its not the loading process you would want to hide, but rather the ride itself. Exactly! Space mountain at Disneyland is an excellent example of this. The station is a huge chamber and you enter in on the second level. You walk down a ramp that wraps around the outside of the chamber and the whole time you can see this controlled chaos of trains pulling in and zipping out of the station, you get a birds eye view of the loading station and what is going on. Then you get down to ground level and you know your going to be getting on soon. The whole time you have this anticipation you speak of. I don't see what's so special about hiding the loading process anyway, its a pretty dull part of the ride, especially since half the time you are just sitting and waiting for an op to check you. IMO the gains in excitement a few kiddies get is not worth it against the overall lower efficiency. IMO it's the opposite effect, when you can clearly see other people jumping in and buckling up, it makes you more eager to do it yourself, so when the gates open people will hastily take their seats to get on with the ride. Now, to relate this to what DW is doing, I imagine that this ride will have restraints unlike any other ride in Australia and probably more complex, therefore it is a good idea to ensure people have a good idea of how it works before boarding. Thats why hiding the station is such a terrible idea. But were you excited about the ride, or excited about the loading process?

The whole topic of what causes roughness raises some interesting questions. -If all B&Ms of the same type use the same systems, then why are rides like Scream less smooth than comparable B&Ms? -Why do steel coasters "get rough" as time goes on, surely the consumable components such as wheels would be regularly replaced, and the mechanical components of the ride would all stay in the same relative position. Therefore no opportunities should arise that would allow the ride not to follow its path properly or vibrate too much. -Why do Vekoma keep making the same mistakes in each of their train redesigns, and instead just use articulated axles?

Thats another decent idea, but you need space for that. How it could work would be you would pre group riders, let a trainload of riders through to a baggage area where they can put their stuff in, then they would move through to the gates and then the next group would be let through to the baggage room . you would need extra staff to make this work and good communication to ensure people were getting through each area at the correct time. The storage units would need to work a bit differently as you would need more than 2 units as on the claw and WO. There would need to enough secure units for the number of groups that would be needing to use them (the ones loading, the ones on the ride, the ones at the gates and the ones in the room actually putting in their items) Perhaps instead of using sliding doors there could be vertical roller doors that run up and over each unit enabling one side to be open and the other closed. Another variation of this method is to just have a manned cloakroom just before the station, like on Stealth at Thorpe Park. And just on the keyed approach Richo Suggested, I think someone should develop a locker system that shares a similar mechanism to the trolleys at Aldi. Im sure people are familar with the process of putting a coin in the holder and sliding across. Attached to the sliding part however would be lock bar that prevents the door being opened. When the door is locked a unique key is released. To get your stuff back you put the key in, and the lock slides back, giving you your $2 back. I can see your point, but if people are being held up in a locker line, then that would make the main ride queue shorter anyway because people would not be able to enter. You would end up waiting the same amount of time.

Makes sense, the original plans only have one mammoth on it, however as Jamberoo Fan has posted they are doing 2 of these slides now. See for yourself on the right hand side: I fully acknowledge that AlexB took this photo.

Personally, I dont think there is a problem with electronic systems as long as they are fast to use and have plenty of terminals. They can create a bottleneck, but when it comes down to it, any delays in the locker room just end up delaying the inevitable brick wall you hit when you join the main queue so it's not that much of a problem. On Revenge of the mummy at USH you dont have to muck around putting in your DOB and picking a colour like you do on those Compusafe lockers Aussie parks use, instead you just put your finger on the pad, it gets scanned, then you put your finger on a second pad, it gets scanned again and then you are done with it, so there are some good systems out there.

I dont necessarily think that is a good way of doing things, ill quote something from a roller coaster design lecture by John Wardley:

Well IMO for the station, I just want something efficient, I would have it so the queue would split, with one leading to the front row, and another to the rest of the rows. A grouper would fill the other rows as IMO that leads to better capacity than just letting people enter when the gates open as you end up getting people unwilling to fill seats due to wanting to stay in groups. I think SE at MW and Disney rides do so well with capacity because of this approach, whereas at say SFMM the parallel queue method tends to lead to a lot of empty seats. I wouldn't expect a pre show though, this being DW and all. LOL, no you dont, Cyclone has a terrible queue and station set up. The gates are too far from the queue, and people cant see what happens in the station when they arrive at the gates because they aren't see through, so when they get in there they aren't familiar with the flow of the station. I mean there are all these little one percenters that slow things down, like people forgetting to do the buckle before pulling down the restraint, people putting items in the wrong spot etc that can be prevented if people just knew what to do. SE of course gets around this by having that instructional video. A ride shop is basically a given, why would DW pass up an opportunity to further drive in park spending.

I thought staff members at parks didn't know anything

These are the best pics I could find to show what I mean, but have a look how the "train" sits on the wheels: http://www.rcdb.com/m/ig2648.htm?picture=3 Because the wheels are so far apart, at each end of the train, the train just sits flat even though the track below it is curved. Not exactly rocket science. http://www.rcdb.com/m/ig3499.htm?picture=2 The station platform is flat, not stepped like djsuperslueth said. And arrrgh, the slides at white water mountain were demolished, not destroyed.

I imagine they would have posted something if there had been some construction, people here are pretty good at keeping an eye on the latest developments.

Just so you know, I think you spelled the topic wrong (tower of tower). And where did you get that picture, I know it was once from Dreamworld's website, but how did you find it? Originally I tried using the wayback machine on http://www.archive.org, unfortunately the image didn't show up so I did the most obvious thing...I Google image searched "dreamworld tower of terror construction" and I found another copy of the image in the first page of results.

Here is one I found, it used to be on the DW website at one point and it is the only one I know of:

Hmm, odd. When I first saw the post the only word in it was "hi", it didn't have the second sentence, so I thought it was a random spamming. One thing I noticed in the pics is that there are jumping fountains, but MW doesnt have them in main st, or anywhere for that matter

If you want any further proof about a Sesame St related rides and attractions coming into cartoon beach: Well, its not any construction work yet, but it proves they have a licence for the Characters.