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Ask and you shall receive. My friend apologises for the aliens tardiness, like most theme park guests he'd lose his brain if it wasn't screwed on, and it's not hence the detached state,

I can't see any reason that they won't be able to bounce back over time, but the damage has already been done this financial year. I think they will struggle with the holidaymaker crowd this summer, with or without those inevitable news stories of crowds swarming and interviews with Barry from Arundel who reckons that nah it's all good, love bringin' the family here aye. The sooner it's business as usual, the better. The return to normalcy will absolutely help sway tourists back towards the park, but it's hard to see any way that the overwhelming trend for the summer won't be one of Dreamworld avoidance from cashed up tourists. No shortage of other things to do on the Gold Coast, including visit three other theme parks without a tattered reputation.

Look I shouldn't as a mod but I friken love this post!

There is a growing trend towards mega-threads relating to parks which we want to address to try and curb. Threads should wherever possible be devoted to a single project/topic/debate/discussion. All-encompassing threads like "<Theme Park Name> Updates" really become unmanageable after a while. Ideally we'll like to see the current crop of these threads slowly become replaced. Though it's a fairly easy way to share thoughts, content or information, they're really not a useful way to function long-term and makes it really hard for anyone who doesn't follow the forums on a regular basis, which is the vast majority of the Parkz audience. Threads will always veer off-course from time to time. This is fine. If it veers too much off the original topic we'll split it off into its own thread. As a really simple set of guidelines: Don't be afraid to start a new topic. Don't chastise others for starting a new topic... if it's a duplicate just let us know. If it hasn't been talked about before and isn't related to what's already being discussed it should be in its own topic, even if it's a fairly minor thing. Tag the new topic with the park's name and anything else relevant, which gives great sorting/filtering abilities. If it's really minor, or just a funny observation or side comment then sure, post it in an existing topic relating to that park/ride/etc. Else the Chit Chat forum is the place for unrelated ‘nonsense’. Don't start an open-ended or vague topic like "<Theme Park Name> Updates". When construction ends on a project, and you wish to share a review, thoughts etc., start a new topic for this purpose. At the end of the day, even if it's a somewhat boring topic ("Sea World replacing a foot bridge!"), it makes more sense to have it off in a thread of its own that only gets a few posts, rather than mixed in with half a dozen other concurrent topics in one mega-thread.

Sounds more like it is to do with maintenance safety harnesses, not ride seatbelts.

This one is a particularly interesting read - not for their objection, but for all the attached documents - who knew they were so informative to local residents, and they even give free tickets to local residents for fright nights! 58811087[011].pdf

An exclusive lego-dreamworld set would be pretty nifty and something I'd definitely want to buy, even if it was just a small part of the park such as main-street.

Improvement notices are: • Green Room Waterslide – the “Emergency Stop” button’s colour is faded and the label contains the manufacturer’s ride name not WhiteWater World’s name. WhiteWater World is installing new buttons and labelling. • WhiteWater World is required to submit a Chemical Register to notify WHSQ of storage of hazardous chemicals. WhiteWater World is filing this notification. • The Flowrider ride requires an updated chemical log book. Dreamworld is updating. • Staff working on the Flowrider are required to use upgraded Personal Protective Equipment (respiratory masks) when adding pool chemicals and should be trained in how to use the new masks. Dreamworld has purchased new masks and staff training on mask handling, storage and use has commenced. • A Flowrider plastic mat connection contained a sharp edge and was a potential scratch hazard. Dreamworld has repaired this. • Dreamworld requires durable tags for all electrical equipment/tools (‘tag and test’ tags). Dreamworld is ‘tagging and testing’ all outstanding equipment. • A maintenance staff member working on the Escape from Madagascar ride did not comply with ‘Work at Heights’ requirements. Dreamworld will undertake ‘Work at Heights’ training. Prohibition notices are: • WHSQ raised a concern with maintenance safety harness anchor points on the BuzzSaw. Dreamworld is undertaking independent certification to ensure the ride manufacturer’s anchor systems comply with Australian standards. • WHSQ identified a staff maintenance procedure error relating to a maintenance safety chain on the BuzzSaw. Dreamworld has revised the maintenance procedure and re-training has commenced. A secondary system will also be installed. • The BuzzSaw requires an additional inter-lock gate for the operator’s control booth to restrict operator access to the ride platform during ride operation. The new operator booth gate has been installed and will be subject to WHSQ approval.

There's actually more out there than you'd think. I know a couple people with them.

but if a person were so stupid as to endanger their own life by entering the ride envelope whilst the ride is in motion, what good would an emergency release button do? same outcome, but with financial cost.

Those resident letters attached to the link you posted @AlexB were super informative! i now know I can see a free fireworks display tonight at 7pm if I go to the MW car park, and more impressively, if I call the booking line and quote "FN residents offer" I get a free double pass to fright nights! BooYah!

They didn't build LEGO versions of everything at Luna Park Sydney - only the Face, Ferris Wheel, Wild Mouse & Crystal Palace. That's like, for Dreamworld, building LEGO versions of City Hall, Tower Of Terror II/Giant Drop, Hot Wheels SideWinder & Temple Of Huey (to represent Whitewater World). Just enough icons to look like a full park replica.

I think a Lego version of the DW globe would be cool, and not take up anywhere near as much room... and could be hung potentially within the shop

I think they'd be mad to announce it now TBH. If they announce the ride now, you'll have to wait another 6 months before you can buy a ticket to ride it, by which time the impact of the announcement is gone. While the inner working of the VRTP accounting are a bit beyond me, for my taste, it'd make sense to open up VIP pass renewals around mid March, as well as open up new sales for a slight premium to account for having an extra 3 months (so $99 for renewals, $110 for new sales), defer the bulk of the income to next financial year, pocket the premium for new sales this year, then make your announcement mid March and then market the hell out of it.

Lets finish this! Last but not least is Six Flags Fiesta Texas. http://www.parkz.com.au/search/photos/location/park-102-Six_Flags_Fiesta_Texas It’s a newish park about the same age as Movie World, with various Texas themed areas...An wild west type zone, a German settlement, a Mexican themed bit, a gulf coast boardwalk, and a roaring 50s themed town. Most stuff seemed to fit the zones, except for the two DC superhero coasters. The park is easily the most pleasant and best looking six flags park. Well maintained, and a nice setting built in an old quarry with cliff walls forming the barrier around the park. There is also a largish water park with a texas shaped wave pool, but I had no time for that. The first ride I did was Superman Krypton Coaster, which is a huge B&M floorless, and probably the best one out there. Recently they have added VR to the ride, which seems sacrelige to do to your flagship high capacity coaster, but the VR was quite good, and seemed better managed than at other parks. I got on the first train back row with VR and did an immediate re-ride front row, with no VR. The VR was basically that you were on some sort of high tech metropolis city suspended monorail (Like the Wuppteral Schwebebahn). Lex Luthor fires an anti gravity gun at you, and the track breaks up and everything starts floating upwards, along with cars, uprooted trees etc. A cool touch was at one point you get grabbed by a lex bot, and in the refection of its lens you would see a person wearing a VR heatset, and if you moved your head the guy in the reflection moved their head too. Quality. The rest of the ride you can imagine was a battle between Lex and Superman, looping around buildings, laser beams and heat vision fired at each other etc. Silly thing though was my headset had no sound, but others did, which probably made the experience more muted than it should have (Excuse the pun!) Goggles off, the ride is excellent. The first drop runs up to the top of a cliff, then drops off, into a huge loop, then back up onto the cliff, around a helix, then off again. From there it’s a zero g roll, cobra roll, the mid course brakes, and a couple of interlocking corkscrews, all at a fast pace. Moving along was Batman the ride. Still no idea why SF still uses the old 1990s batman design and logo. You head into a small indoor batman lab themed area, but once you’re outside it’s classic six flags “theming” with a ride plonked in grass with pool fencing and a few themed signs. Why does the ride booth look like a caravan park cabin. Shouldn’t it have metal trusses and old brick like a Gotham city building? But, the ride! It’s pretty good, an S&S free spin. I know that the Intamin ZacSpin is pretty polarising. Some people love the intensity, other people find it very uncomfortable. This ride certainly improves on that. The axis of rotation of the seats is closer to your heartline, the drops are less sudden, and overall the experience is more accessible to more people. The ride was popular all day, and people stepping off seemed happy. As for the ride, just heaps of quick flips, the drops seemed a bit more controlled with magnetic brakes. I’m not sure how much they cost, but they seem to be spreading quite quickly. Nearby was Kiddee Koaster, which takes out the golden ticket award for the worst ride name. After that I hit up Poltergeist, which is a premier launched coaster into a ridiculous tangle of track with 4 inversions. It's a shame more of these don't exist, because they are up there with a hyper coaster in terms of visual impact. This one ran very well, and had no mid course brakes either, so I thought it was fantastic. Just a shame I had no time for another ride. I jumped on the Ferris wheel to grab some photos before moving on. By this point things were getting busy, so I picked up a flash pass, booked a ride, and then rode roadrunner express in the meantime. This one is basically a big mine train on a hill, but actually a pretty decent ride...smooth, well paced, good helices and exciting. I guess I had to ride all the bad mine trains first before finally getting to do this one. Next up was Iron Rattler, a pretty kickasss RMC coaster. The ride features an enormous steep first drop with a bit of an s bend kink on the way down, after that yo come up into a cliff with a "sideways airtime" turn. Before you drop down again and come up into a zero g roll (sort of, you finish much higher than where you enter so its sorta like a zero g meets barrel roll) at the top of the cliff again you muck around a bit doing a few turns / opposite banked turns. You can see how this was perhaps the nexus for similar elements at a much larger scale on later RMC rides. Theres one last big drop off the cliff, and a unique turning tunnel that is mined through the cliff wall, before you hit the brakes. This one sits towards the front end of the RMC pack, so I made sure I rode again later on. I booked another coaster and headed over to Pandemonium. Its another standard Gerstlauer spinner, which I have reviewed previously. There's also a Scooby Doo shooting dark ride in the same area. The paramount parks used to have these till they were rebranded as "boo blasters on boo hill". The sets were almost exactly the same, except for a few Scooby cut outs, and you were shooting money bags rather than bottles of potion. The difficulty in shooting targets spoils the fun, but it was a nice escape from the heat for a few minutes. My time slot rolled around for the Boomerang, and I snagged a front row ride which was nice. Finally, I got around to Goliath, Another batman B&M inverted coaster in as many days.....so that's every B&M invert in the US ridden! Its positioned quite well along the front fence of the park. With all the coasters ridden I booked a ride on Bugs white water rapids, and did a re ride on Iron Rattler and a lap on the train, which is great for getting pics of Superman. Bugs whitewater rapids is a Hopkins flume like WWF, but with more lift hills and i guess a somewhat interesting layout that runs over and under itself in the middle of the park. It has a 'roller coaster' drop: And a few looney tunes sculpts, but not much of a storyline. But it was enjoyable. I finished the day with one last shot on Batman. I was with family, who were borrowing the car for the day, so only intended a few hours in the park anyway. Overall, SFFT is quite a decent park. Several good coasters with Iron Rattler, Superman, Batman and Poltergeist (And of course Goliath!) The family coasters, Roadrunner and Pandemonium round it out well. There's a good range of flat rides and water rides. too. (I regret not riding the "billiards jail" ride) And the place does look nice. In terms of other rides, hopefully they get a Justice League clone at some point. A hyper using the cliff edge would be amazing...maybe when SF start building big coasters again So that's all the parks in this trip done. **************** ********* Not quite done, after SF Fiesta Texas I hit the road to visit one last park. About 50km of San Antonio in Seguin is ZDT’s Amusement park. It’s not a big place, but I wanted to go ride the new Switchback, which is a shuttle wooden coaster by the Gravity Group, running their timberliner trains. http://www.parkz.com.au/parks/US/Seguin/ZDTs_Amusement_Park/ ZDT’s itself seems to be a realisation of many enthusiasts childhood dreams where you’ve driven past an old factory or vacant lot and imagined a theme park on there. This place seemed to be an old grain silo and distribution centre, so there are go kart tracks and other things winding through the buildings. And grain silos that are rock climbs. But it’s also nicely presented and kept, combining old with new. The main indoor bit is the heart of the place with games, an indoor playground, simulators. Standard family entertainment center stuff. But outside are actually a few decent rides. A couple of zamplerla family flat rides. Somewhat untouched by certain safety regulations.... And a small water park area with a master blaster as the drawcard. All they need is one of those water play structures...It’d be perfect. So, not a huge number of rides, but actual good choices. But the best thing is of course the Switchback coaster, which is better than many full sized GCIs. An impressive investment for a park of this size, and would work well at a smaller park here in Aus IMO. The way it works is that out of the station is a loop of track that has the lift hill, a very tight turn at the top, and the first drop. At the bottom of the drop is a transfer track that serves at the start/end point of the main shuttle layout. This transfer bit is also used to move the train to connect with the station again, or if it moves the other way connects with the maintenance track. (Here the track is running straight through off the first drop into the main layout) But from the first drop (impressively steep), you blaze through a whole bunch of quick turns and small hills, including even cutting under an awning of an existing building with a good head chopper. The small train is quite nimble and maintains its speed, so it feels like it’s all done at a million miles an hour. The 90 degree banked turn is cool too. Eventually you reach a vertical section of track, a bit like a mini tower of terror, get almost to the top, then fall back and reverse through the layout, at still considerable speed. Eventually you get back to the transfer track, which has the brakes. You then get shifted over and fed back into the station. One of my favourite woodies, and the shuttle design is quite flexible. There’s no need to connect the layout, so the track can just snake and thread through where it wants till it reaches a natural dead end. The places is good and well worth stopping in. Check the website, but I got cheaper admission by arriving after a certain time (6pm?)

Seriously Tornado.. Your a total Tossa and you need to fuck off.. That is all.

I can also confirm that this person is happily married, and that both robots are currently enjoying retirement. I have heard though that the owner is wanting to one day get them operational again.

SeaWorld San Antonio was my next park..That’s every SeaWorld visited now J http://www.parkz.com.au/search/photos/location/park-146-SeaWorld_San_Antonio This seemingly used to be the main entrance. But the addition of 2nd and 3rd gates means the main Sea World park entrance is a little further in. I would have liked to have checked out the Aquatica water park, but that wasn’t open. It’s quite a spread out park, centred around a water ski lake, which wasn’t operating. The park was actually rather pleasant, with acacia trees shading the walkways, well maintained gardens and buildings and so on. The park has four coasters. Journey to Atlantis is my first Super Splash. Basically it’s like a glorified shoot the chutes, except it has coaster track for the top part, and turntables. You sit in a big 16 person boat, so double the size of the storm coaster boats, but as a consequence this model of water coaster can’t do turns. You head up a lift hill, a turntable a bit like the one in WWF turns you backwards, and you go down a backwards dip (again, like scooby/WWF). Then a second turntable rotates you straight again and you go down a big drop to the splashdown, and float in a channel back to the station. There was a bit of theming in terms of some Atlantis style buildings for the queue house and the open air station, but for the most part it’s a bare structure. It’s good as a way to get dabbled with water, but otherwise it’s hard to see why you’d build this instead of a proper water coaster. Steel Eel is Morgan mini hypercoaster. A pretty standard out and back design, about 3 big hills one way, then a whole bunch of smaller hills the other way. The trains are quite spacious, and run quite smoothly. The airtime is kinda funny, decent amount at the top, but at the bottom of each hill the positive gs are really strong, so you get but-slammed a bit. A cool ride, that I did a couple of laps on. Great White is a standard “Batman” layout B&M inverted coaster. No need to review this one other than to say that the park was dead, so I got to do a few front row re-rides that are otherwhise too time consuming if you’re at a busy SF park dealing with queues. The final coaster is the diminutive Shamu Express, a small kiddy coaster with an oval layout and cute Killer Whale themed cars. The new Rescue coaster they are building should be good, but no signs of work on site yet. The only other ride was Rio Loco, which is an Intamin river rapids ride. It’s mostly not too bad (Compared to Shipwreck Falls in San Diego for example), except right at the end is a huge waterfall that juts halfway over the course, so a couple of people on each boat will end up utterly saturated. I quite liked the decorate limestone walls and acacia trees which gave it a nice south western feel. In terms of shows, we saw the Sea Lion show (Two actually) and the Killer Whale show. The first Sea Lion show just showed off things like Walruses, Sealions and Otters, and spoke about how they are trained. Apparently if an animal doesn’t want to co-operate on a given day they just ignore it for a few seconds, then move onto another activity rather than pressing the issue. The 2nd show was Sealion high, same animals, but they had a couple of Sealions that apparently had to finish their subjects to graduate. This was a bit more cheesy, eg for Dance/Drama class they had the seals dancing and flapping fins, for debating they were barking over each other etc. I probably preferred the first show, it was easier to watch and more informative. Outside the arena is a sea lion area called Pacific Point Preserve that is a bit smaller than Seal Harbour, but with nice looking Californian style timber buildings. We didn’t see the main Shamu Rocks show, but we did see the educational one. It’s still all the same tricks/ behaviours, and the crowd still gets wet from tail slapping, but the format is a presenter answering various pre-recorded questions about killer whales (how much do they eat? How do you train them? Why is their fin floppy? Etc) It wasn’t bad, and probably a better format anyway than the theatrical shows they have run previously, I would have liked to see the Beluga whale show, but it was on too late in the day and we didn’t feel like sticking around for a couple of hours for show time to come around. I found this unintentionally funny: I felt the park was a bit light on with the animals overall compared to the other SeaWorlds, and our Sea World. Maybe it was just the spread out nature of the park making me feel that. The exhibits were well done however. The penguin encounter exhibit had a few types and really big colony. You moved past on a travelator, so it was easy to get a good view. There was also a smaller secondary area with some cute puffins. Alligators had their big swampy type area. About as interesting as you’d expect. There was a fish food dispenser! My favourite. There was also an indoor Animal Connections exhibit with a few quirky animals like snakes, cockroaches and armadillos. This exhibit felt a bit older, like a traditional natural sciences museum. No pelicans, but lots of flamingos. And that’s the extent of the animals in the main SeaWorld park. At the other end is Discovery Point, which in Orlando is known as “Discovery Cove” which is a smaller exclusive park where you can swim with animals. The format here is that it’s included in your SeaWorld admission, but there are seemingly no gate controls stopping people who want to see some Dolphins and a free aquarium. The dolphin area has some shallow pools where they swim up close. I presume you can’t feed them anymore The underwater area follows that “whimsical sea” theme they first used at Manta in Orlando, but it seemed a bit depopulated down there sadly. Explorers Reef was a very extensive aquarium actually, and probably my favourite animal exhibit in the park. Had several tanks of various sizes, so you got a good cross section of different under water environments, from sharks to sea horses. So that’s the park. It was quite a pleasant and relaxed place. In terms of what I’d do with the place, an indoor attraction of some sort would be welcome....The new rescue coaster will certainly do them in the coaster department. But more animals would definitely balance out the place better.

Six Flags St Louis was the next park on my trip. The road from Springfield to St Louis essentially runs along the old route 66 (When i checked into my hotel the night before they asked if I was a tourist doing that road) http://www.parkz.com.au/search/photos/location/park-137-Six_Flags_St_Louis Anyway, the park is on the western outskirts of the city. First impressions is that it is a bit of a 2nd tier Six Flags park. Everyone says Six Flags America is the worst but I reckon this one is. At least SFA had better coasters, and notional efforts to maintain distinct themed areas. The whole place just felt a bit run down and weedy, and wasn’t aesthetically pleasing. That all said, there are a few worthwhile attractions at the park, which I’ll get to. I headed straight for Ninja, which has had VR added. Signage said the VR is offered from 2pm, and they had two different queues depending on if you wanted to ride with or without. No objections from me for it being offered from 2pm, the experience on offer was the alien fighter jet one I’d already done at SFMM / (and could have done at SFOG) and it meant I could get my ride in without encumbrance. It’s an arrow looper with a loop and sidewinder, and a couple of corkscrews. Felt a bit RCT with the fixed size of the elements and the first couple of loops being high in the air. Transitions were a bit too sudden for comfort. But overall, like most arrow loopers it wasn’t that bad. The most interesting moment is coming out of the sidewinder when there is a very close headchopper under the lift chain return. Nearby was Batman the ride, which was filling up fast, probably due to being one of the best ride there. No intention of buying a flashpass, so I waited 30 mins or so. It’s much the same as other installations (so quick, forceful, exciting) except more weeds growing underneath. I crossed over the park to a surprisingly short queue on Mr Freeze Reverse Blast. This ride follows that short trend we had where rides had their trains reversed, so like TOT2 you end up looking down towards the ground at the apex of the ride. Basically you launch out of a tunnel, around an inverted top hat, then an overbanked turn and up into a vertical bit of track. LIMs at the top actually grab the train as it starts to lose energy and pull it the rest of the way to the top, but then release and you go back the way you came. A good ride, I wonder why more parks haven’t expanded on this sort of shuttle, with airtime hills etc…it would be amazing. Justice League is a 4D dark ride like our justice league, but with a different storyline, and “spiderman” style vehicles that can tilt and spin. It was a really good attraction. The queue was very similar to ours, except they didn’t have that impressive hall ours does with the marble statues. There’s a few street scenes where you are shooting little lex bots and a near head on with a truck, and eventually you make it into lexcorp where the justice league is being held captive, more shooting and you are released, and from there it turns into an all out street chase with big curved screen. This bit I felt was too fast paced so it didn’t feel realistic. There was also a random black room between two scenes that didn’t make sense…Basically green lantern makes a car jump and you smash into the 2nd floor of an office building, drive through the office then land back on the street…they could have done office interior theming to bridge the gap between screens. I did a lap on the ferris wheel and the train. The train in particular didn’t show off the parks best side :/ Nearby was American Thunder, a GCI. Ran pretty well compared to most, good pacing and a decent length. Boomerang was shut, but I had already ridden it a few years ago at SFOT. River King Mine train is a typical arrow mine train with small drops and awkward transitions. Screamin Eagle is a big out and back wooden coaster. Much like the racing woodies out there, its mostly straight, so it wasn’t too bad, and had good air. The Boss was the final Woodie and coaster for me to ride. The thing is enormous, reminded me a bit of Ghostrider, so a bit rough, but a lot of fun. The first drop was a double down and I didn’t know that beforehand, so a bit of a surprise. Basically the drop dives through a structure, flattens out then goes downhill again. The last part of the ride is an out and back section through some trees along the side of the hill, with a helix for good measure. Fireball is a super loop ride. I’ve never actually been on one of these. It feels a bit cramped, but in terms of ride experience, we’ve all ridden doomsday/ranger/kamikaze right? With everything done I did another go on Mr Freeze, Justice League an American Thunder before heading to my hotel. ******************************************* In St Louis, there’s also the City Museum which is big architectural museum/art gallery/playground in an old shoe factory. The place is immense, and makes you realise how unfit you get as an adult trying to go on play equipment. The place is obviously popular with families, but they have night sessions where they are open till midnight with DJs etc, so a different crowd then. Well worth a look, but don’t wear jeans or else you get stuck on the slides. Heaps of crawl spaces, including really narrow spaces between floor slabs. Other random places are throughout too, such as caves, an aquarium, a giant hamster wheel and so on.

add TRR at the top of the list

they should be focusing on building a new coaster not a lame lego store selling over-priced plastic brickz for kidz

And lego isn't necessarily just for kids... I know a few adults who still use them I think it will become a major drawcard for Dreamworld.

Lego is in no way just for kids, it's a very popular hobby among adults (or any age for that matter). Plus, DW will be having the first official Lego store in Australia, and having been to one in the UK very recently, they are quite special.

you should know by now that this site is full of insecure assholes who down vote anything they don't agree with !