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This is a nice touch that I've never seen before (Photo: TPSN)

Preparations for this years Chinese New Year Celebrations for the year of the rooster have begun. I still think they could take these Celebrations further, and make a new night even from it, especially now if Carnivale stays at SW. They could have fire effects, street entertainment, and a parade, but maybe they don't need to do floats, but could have tonnes of the dragons and all the street performers create this final show. It could run throughout February, and really think it be a great event, especially if they also have Chinese food stalls throughout the park.

Thanks @Jamberoo Fan, I think the sign had already cleared things up.

Good to see they've dusted off the Lethal Weapon theming.

This is what happens when you get distracted doing other things and forget you had the game open. But I got this almost done so that's something.

Because coasters are love, coasters are life.

So today i paid a visit to Holoverse in Southport (behind Aus Fair) after seeing it in one of those tourist brochures in my hotel. Easiest thing to say would be i was blown away (i'm normally very sceptical of anything boasting VR or 3D.). So first off, you get the choice of 2 experiences: "experiences" and "False Eden: Part 1". With a limited budget, i chose to do just FE. When you get loaded into your gear, all it is is a belt with a white Mo-Cap ball on the front and your glasses and "wand" in a holster. The glasses surprised me as they not only chose active shutter 3D, but through that, it was also running in an anaglyph setting, combining the two. These also had the Mo-Cap balls on either side. Then there was the wand; this was almost literally a Wiimote with the bullshit cut off the bottom and a cross-guard on the top with the balls on either side of the guard. Once assigned to your booth, you "Tap-On" with the NFC chip on the wand, then stand on the feet on the ground and hold the wand out in front for calibration. Before going in, i was skeptical on how movement was done. Basically its about 85-90% On Rails, and as you jump from side to side, the screen will shift with you. The 3D use actually surprised me in the sense that with the sword attachment, you were able to really bring it up to your nose and get not a single spec of Ghosting. As for the Crossbow (best weapon), you were able to use the scope as you would normally, despite the entire thing being on the screen. The Staff is a useless weapon. I'll be the first to admit that the story is kinda weak, but for all you fat kids with Lightsabres, if you get over 200 points, you get a free slushie. Getting over 200 is harder than it sounds too (i got 214). The only things i would change would be: - Increase the FOV by about 5 degrees. The system gives you a certain FOV and blurs and de-renders (occasionally completely cutting off) your peripheral vision. Where its currently sits gets a little annoying in the earlier levels. - Rendering. I don't know if its the processor trying to keep up or what, but in my jumping around, the environment was rendered about 10 degrees into my FOV. - Height. The game will get chopped off at times because of the screen. the screens probably only 2m high, and everything on the screen is rendered in true height. So around mission 6, the hair of one of the holograms is chopped off as are most of the beasts heads (and in the case of flying frogs, the entire unit goes off screen). This gets questionable as you have a boss fight with a dragon. -Sound. This ones just more of a nitpick than anything. But They only give you stereo Bluetooth headphones. So for you non sound people, if a tigers running at me, i don't hear it like that. You hear it as coming from the sides of both ears (also the voice mixing is bad). -Also, just slow down the 3D shift. If i'm moving my weight from one leg to another, there's no need to completely shift the 3d render like Transformers. If you're into whats basically VR, its worth the $35. It's $55 or so for 2 sessions, so you can do both.

So here is some news for you all. The construction walls have been completely taken down, with just some low metal fencing in position now. The store I think looks really pretty at night, and does have multi coloured LED strips along the roof. You can see in the bottom left corner of the below image that there are some glass sliding doors which will provide an entrance/exit to and from Main Street, where there currently is that part fenced off.

Maybe get Foghorn Leghorn out for photo ops?

@reanimated35 you just fell over.

Given their recent history (Green Lanter, Storm, Polar Bear Shores, Constrictor, PC Opal Mine, Seal Harbour) I'd be leaning more towards these guys http://www.astuteprojects.com/our-work/

Most certainly did, Will fix it but acknowledging the error haha. and I intended to surf right around that Big Can of Worms, largely due to the the way Lego characters are put together. Moving on

@Slick That sign has been there since the Cub Kindy opened, and yes it is over in Ocean Parade.

Slightly off topic, but may be of interest to some people. A lot of the stuff underneath the ride has been removed, including the penguin holding the upside down sign before the lift hill. Queue is still well-themed, but there's almost no theming at all on the ride itself.

Or a parent of a kid who loves roller coasters I have a 4.5 year old, who for the last year or so has absolutely loved RRRC. We did it 10 times in a row one day before finally convincing him to move onto something else. As cool as being suspended on EFM is, the height restriction of 110 (as opposed to RRRC being 100) means that he is still too short to ride it. So for that reason, I vote RRRC. Kids can get an extra year of fun out of it

They've also updated the pricing on the website, and you now have the option to pay per lap. You can do either 2,3 or 4. With prices being $39, $49 and $59 (doesn't matter whether it's licensed or not) https://buggc.bookingboss.com/experiences.cfm

At first I thought that was absolutely absurd and stupid. Then I realised we were talking about Donald Trump and Tom Cruise. For this to be completely accurate, wouldn't Mr T have been in the bathroom having a 'shower' though?

It looks like they are removing that fencing, as from the original plans they are going to use quite a bit of area for stage 2, which also goes towards the back of the island.

Amazing stuff, that's better than things i have done.

I always thought it's was because it goes through some caves, or hollow rocks they're also known in 'upwards seating pit' community.

Out of interest for myself I scaled the 'Flash Coaster' at Lena Adventure China to MW to see if it is realistic to expect a similar coaster experience for us. Anyway I thought to share it with everyone. For scaling I used a 100m line as reference. I checked out a YouTube POV of Flash and it looks amazing. I'm excited because having made this comparison it is very possible we could get a coaster that is a minimum of 1,200m long with similar speeds, inversions, height etc. Obviously the layout will be different but I'm pumped!!!

@Slick we are still waiting on your input.

Rode it Sunday and would say it seemed about the same as before.

I'll vote for Escape from Madagascar. I find Road Runner boring, although it is outside my age group...

in a statistical analysis and taking into account the subjective nature of opinion from one person - those two figures are close enough to call them a draw. it's not sportsball after all. If I were to use the same scoring system: Road runner rollercoaster Escape from Madagascar Theming 7/10 6/10 Speed 5/10 5/10 Height 4/10 5/10 Layout 5/10 6/10 (extra point for suspended) Train 6/10 8/10 Capacity 8/10 8/10 Re-ride 7/10 9/10 As far as theming - i agree RRRC is better, but i don't consider it to be as wonderfully drastically different as others have said. Both have middle-of-the-road speeds, and score accordingly - they aren't meant to be mindblowingly fast, and they do the job they are supposed to do wonderfully. Height - likewise to skeet's score EFM just tips the scale Although both have the same layout, EFM takes the extra point for being suspended. Consider the boomerang vs. the inverted boomerang (and yes, i realise there is a layout difference with the inverted having a crossover) - although both are technically the same layout (reverse lift, drop, station, boomerang, loop, lift, reverse order repeat) the inverted boomerang looks, rides, feels different, simply from riding on the other side of the track. I scored the train as such because i find the EFM seat and harness perfectly comfortable. I frequently bash the shit out of my knees on RRRC, and find it to be a bit of a squeeze to ride two adults side by side. I have minimal views on capacity - both rides take a similar amount of time to ride, load and unload. I've seen DW allow the next group to enter the ride area before the previous group has exited the gates, which IMO is a much more efficient load method. RRRC suffers the interminable operations procedures that MW has across the board. My memory is fuzzy on this point, but i feel like EFM also has gates per row, rather than single gate for the entire train, which I feel is also a plus (but acknowlege i could be wrong her e- couldn't find a picture of it). Re-ride - I have had the opportunity (at the dreamworks launch nite for passholders) to ride, and re-ride EFM for almost a solid hour, and it was thoroughly enjoyable (the operator was also a contributing factor to the enjoyment, as was riding at night). I've rarely if ever chosen to ride RRRC, except when hosting family with smaller kids who want to go on it. this is of course completely one sided, but it is opinion, and it's my opinion, so i consider EFM rates higher here. That leaves me with RRRC-42 and EFM-47. considering the point differences between them though, they're all fairly closely and evenly matched, and it will always come down to personal preference on these few issues where the factor is based on opinion.