Hair Raiser removed from LPS website

[jhunt2]

Hair Raiser, which has been closed since March and supposedly in need of a significant maintenance upgrade, has been removed from Luna Park Sydney's website.

I usually wouldn't find this particularly notable, as the marketing teams who run webpages aren't likely to be the first informed of ride alterations or removals, but this is sudden and unexpected. Historically LPS' website usually just marks rides as "down for maintenance", even during long closures like Wild Mouse's, so this is setting off some alarm bells for me. I think especially the fact that Wild Mouse's page was used to provide ongoing updates of the lengthy renovation, and that was so recent... if the needed upgrades were going ahead, I would have expected a similar approach.

Thoughts? Anyone been to the park lately and heard/seen anything about what's going on with it?

[downunder]

That's interesting. It was fun and did have a kick to it. Though it really was a carnival ride, maybe it's gotten irreparable or too expensive to maintain like you observed.

[TBoy]

43 minutes ago, jhunt2 said:

Hair Raiser, which has been closed since March and supposedly in need of a significant maintenance upgrade, has been removed from Luna Park Sydney's website.

I usually wouldn't find this particularly notable, as the marketing teams who run webpages aren't likely to be the first informed of ride alterations or removals, but this is sudden and unexpected. Historically LPS' website usually just marks rides as "down for maintenance", even during long closures like Wild Mouse's, so this is setting off some alarm bells for me. I think especially the fact that Wild Mouse's page was used to provide ongoing updates of the lengthy renovation, and that was so recent... if the needed upgrades were going ahead, I would have expected a similar approach.

Thoughts? Anyone been to the park lately and heard/seen anything about what's going on with it?

It'd be a big shame if it got removed. It's very intense: rather than slowly going up and waiting you just go up and it drops you immediately upon reaching the top. Hopefully they replace it with something intense like it.

Edited November 13 by TBoy

[Baconjack]

What a shame if it goes. Best drop tower in Australia imv, it is very intense.

If its time is up I hope they can replace it with another drop tower however I know the park have pretty strict height limits to work with. Would love to see an Intamin sky jump on our shores

Edited November 13 by Baconjack

[Wil_i_am_not]

Take this with a grain of salt obviously, but I had a source inform me that it was potentially getting moved to a different location in the park. 

Not sure if this is still going ahead as I was told this several months ago. 

[Yyosh]

That's insanely weird and alarming. AFAIK very little maintenance has been done on the ride since it closed. The plan I heard was the park intended on deconstructing and reconstructing the ride, reopening in July (obviously didn't happen). I'm really hoping nothing is happening to it, but honestly, the park is presently in an awful state and based on how current upper management seems to have been treating the place lately I sadly won't be surprised if this is the end...

I'm going to hope that its removal from the website was unintentional...

[themagician]

Coincidentally I’m in Sydney at the moment, so I went and checked out the ride in person and this is its current status.

[DaptoFunlandGuy]

The park changed ownership a little while ago, right?

[Baconjack]

25 minutes ago, DaptoFunlandGuy said:

The park changed ownership a little while ago, right?

Yep start of this year to Oscar’s group

I went in the park fairly recently and it was in horrible shape. Place was dirty and some of the rides were running very poorly.

For those playing at home - publicans do not seem to be very good at running theme parks and in fact make current village roadshow look like experts

[downunder]

Unchanged since I was there at Halloscream (this event actually improved on the last couple of years). "Fun will be back here real soon" very cryptic, maybe a different kind of fun to the fun that is there at present lol.

At least both Big Dipper trains looked operational, even if they were only using one train.

[jjuttup]

4 hours ago, Baconjack said:

I went in the park fairly recently and it was in horrible shape

I've been going through regularly since i got my Osmo 2 years ago waiting for the place to be painted and all vivid so i can properly get an idea of what my camera can do, and i'm still waiting. It's so bad you can clearly see how faded Boomerang is from the Watt Park end of Quibaree.

[Jobe]

Appears to have been a glitch or an error

Hair Raiser is back on the website as under maintenance, but still with no

timeline for it’s reopening. 
 

Hopefully this means the ride is just having some loner than expected fixable issues.

i have had reports that this ride can be temperamental . There were reports of some corrosion early on in its life. Also there could be some anomaly with the winch that could be causing the problem. Either way it’s a fairly simple ride overall to operate and maintain. So unless it’s a parts issue there shouldn’t be too much wrong with it from an operational point of view. Hopefully it’s nothing structural. 

 

[Yyosh]

According to a fairly high-up source, the park has no plans to retire Hair Raiser, though it probably won't be reopening anytime soon. However, bafflingly, the removal from the website was seemingly an intentional decision by the marketing team. I understand why the park doesn't want to promote a ride that's not going to be open for a long time, however sweeping it under the rug sends the wrong message and only draws more attention. Hair Raiser's reinstated presence on the website is tucked away at the very bottom of the rides page now, and it doesn't show up if you sort by thrill rides.

Hopefully the park will choose to properly communicate about Hair Raiser's maintenance. Don't quote me on this, but I think the original maintenance plans involving the ride's deconstruction and reconstruction are still going to go ahead. I'm sure many people would find it interesting to learn about that process.