Dreamworld - Kenny & Belinda's Dreamland Updates

[Ashley Jeffery]

[themagician]

The Humpty-Go-Round is now open

The Kenny statue and entry signage for Kenny’s Forest Flyer has been installed

Ground works for the Big Red Boat coaster are underway 

[New display name]

Surprised they named a ride after a one night stand.  Humpty, Dumpty.

[Brad2912]

Seems Humpty had a rough night 

Young kids were trapped for more than half an hour on a family-friendly Dreamworld ride as stressed staffers worked to release them, according to concerned parents.

Exclusive photographs show stress on employee faces as children, as young as eight, were left hanging in the air as the Humpty-Go-Round ride seized up.

Parents say mechanics pulled away a panel on the ride which made “a cracking noise and shunted” causing the merry-go-round style attraction to “drop violently”.

A concerned parent said: “At first it was a bit novel seeing the ride had malfunctioned and frozen, the kids were laughing and carrying on, but pretty soon a whole lot of staff appeared and the situation got a little dicey.”

“It looked like there was a fair bit of panic in the eyes of the staff - they seemed to be really struggling to figure out how to get the kids down safely.

“The kids who were stuck were pretty calm, but you could see they were unimpressed and some of them were clearly frightened.

“I was shocked to see no staff actually attended personally to the kids for the best part of half an hour.

“No counselling, no reassurances at all that we could see, just left them hanging up there.”

A Dreamworld spokesperson said: “The Humpty-Go-Round experienced an unscheduled stoppage as a result of its safety system functioning as expected. 

“The process to lower the ride was conducted and our team was in communication with all guests for the duration.

“We understand the inconvenience for our guests, however safety is our first priority and at no time was safety compromised.”

Thousands of parents and families were in the park, privately booked for Australian Futsal Association 2023 national championships celebrations.

The ride stalled - with some kids hanging five metres up - at 8.30pm last Thursday and it took until after 9pm for the last child to be released, the Bulletin has been told.

Security staffers were stopping people trying to take photos, parents said.

“This was our first time back to Dreamworld in nearly 15 years and the first time for our youngest son who already struggles a bit to feel safe and confident on thrill rides at these kinds of parks,” a parent said.

“Thankfully he didn’t see much of it and was off with his friends elsewhere at the time.

“It made me think of those poor families and witnesses from the River Rapids ride, and just how quickly what’s supposed to be the most fun and exciting moments can turn bad — just heart wrenching.

“The rest of the night was great and the rides all ran smoothly, but you could see they were in for a long night working on the Humpty ride. The service staff and management were all there working even when we left at closing around 10pm.”

https://www.goldcoastbulletin.com.au/news/gold-coast/exclusive-pics-horror-night-as-kids-left-hanging-on-dreamworld-ride/news-story/f48ae06e15b5f40807fedf51616d1532

[PoolGuy]

 

@Gold Coast Bulletin  

[DaptoFunlandGuy]

Written like someone in 8th grade english who has just been taught how to use adjectives. I doubt it would have made headlines if it happened during normal day operation. 

[Gobbledok]

The article is stupid 

But did i get this right that the stoppage was due to a panel falling off the newly opened ride

Thats kinda bad

[DaptoFunlandGuy]

8 minutes ago, Gobbledok said:

The article is stupid 

But did i get this right that the stoppage was due to a panel falling off the newly opened ride

Thats kinda bad

That's not how I read that.

On 02/10/2023 at 7:22 PM, Brad2912 said:

Parents say mechanics pulled away a panel on the ride which made “a cracking noise and shunted” causing the merry-go-round style attraction to “drop violently”.

The way I understood that was that they slide part of the ride shroud, which keeps the gondola area separated from the machinery of the ride. The noise was probably just scraping over the concrete floor. Not sure about the drop, but that could just be the result of maintenance hitting some sort of manual control to lower the ride (which is probably inside the shroud)

I've no inside knowledge, i've only read the same article you have - but that was what I imagined to be occurring when i filtered through all the sensationalistic journalism.

[themagician]

23 minutes ago, Gobbledok said:

The article is stupid 

Agreed, classic GCB

23 minutes ago, Gobbledok said:

But did i get this right that the stoppage was due to a panel falling off the newly opened ride

I don't think a panel fell off, but they had to remove a panel to be able to manually lower the ride. The ride came to a stop and didn't return to its staring position.

The ride was closed on Friday, but reopened as normal on Saturday

[Gobbledok]

That makes sense admittedly i read it as the panel caused the ride stop

Good to hear if thats not the case 

[Ashley Jeffery]

Reminds them of the TRR accident? Lol anyway to mention it I suppose. 

[wikiverse]

9 hours ago, themagician said:

The ride came to a stop and didn't return to its staring position.

So, a safety mechanism performed exactly as designed and stopped all motion upon detecting a fault.

Sounds like front-page news to me.

[Rivals]

the fact they compared a ride stopping in a normal position to ensure the safety of the riders to an accident that killed 4 people is wild to me.

[Ashley Jeffery]

[Tricoart]

9News story featuring Big Red Boat Coaster’s trains:

Perhaps more importantly, though, what’re they on about? Someone in the newsroom was either joking or heavily misled. Next up, Jungle Rush was modelled off Orphan Rocker.

Edited November 14, 2023 by Tricoart

[themagician]

They probably saw this and used it for their report

 

I believe the only actual connection is the fact they’re both powered coasters 

[Baconjack]

1 hour ago, themagician said:

I believe the only actual connection is the fact they’re both powered coasters 

And made by the same manufacturer (zamperla). I believe rcdb classify the tops coaster and big red boat as belonging to the same model as well but yeah it's really a weird connection to make

Edited November 14, 2023 by Baconjack

[aaronm]

If this was a Village park they'd be raving about having "Australia's only powered coaster that isn't portable"

Edited November 15, 2023 by aaronm

[Ashley Jeffery]

Gotta give Dreamworld props thier having a good crack at it.

 

Photo thanks to Jaggs Journey

[Ashley Jeffery]

[themagician]

2 hours ago, Ashley Jeffery said:

Credit to Jaggs Journey 

[New display name]

The little extras DW are adding, are great.

[DaptoFunlandGuy]

Is it good to see them continue to 'plus' things, and presumably the builder of the additional elements had a longer lead time than DW was happy with and so they decided to open the attractions without these elements to minimise downtime. 

While I applaud them for keeping the attractions open as much as possible, I can't help but feel that some of the 'wow' factor was lost. These additions, while "great" are with minimal fanfare and will probably largely go unnoticed.

[themagician]

59 minutes ago, DaptoFunlandGuy said:

presumably the builder of the additional elements had a longer lead time than DW was happy with and so they decided to open the attractions without these elements to minimise downtime. 

Which is what we've seen happy with Kenny's Forest Flyer. They wanted/needed to get the ride back open, even though a lot of the theming wasn't ready, we saw it and the ride signage added later. However the attraction is currently down again for a couple weeks, which (I'm speculating here) might be related to adding more theming to the ride as we saw in concept artworks.

[New display name]

Adding a forest would be a good start.