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This is the first person I've seen who if they haven't been sacked, should be. Lets go through a one person timeline here (as best as can be determined by the information publicly available, if there are corrections or important things I've missed please let me know and I'll fix) * Is aware of state of console, but knocks back proposal to simplify console. * Despite knowing what a cluster the console is in, decides a proper e-stop is not needed. Panel has 3 buttons which could be confused for e-stops, including one which is labeled Emergency Stop; which isn't a proper e-stop * Keeps ride open when faulty, figuring ops staff can deal with any issues that come up with poor console. * Despite knowing it's faulty, takes no active interest in the ride. *Disaster* * Blames ride ops. * Blames people who reset pump which he knew was faulty for not telling him it was slightly more faulty. Unrepentant more than a year after. I get that people need to sleep at night but this attitude of 'My crappy work was fine and it's everyone else's fault for not dealing with it' has already been proved dangerous once at Dreamworld, he needs to get out before its proved dangerous again. Looking forward to seeing what sort of oversight and corporate culture allowed this sort of man to thrive.

Had a quick walk around, here's what I noted: work is barrelling ahead on i-Ride - there's plenty of folks on-site cracking into construction Looks like they're gearing up to start work on the Lazy River in WhiteWater World - plenty of flags on-site. How does this relate to i-Ride you might ask? There's additional temporary buildings on-site near the cinema and a lot of buzz around the reservoir - all signs point to them using the dirt they pull up for the Lazy River to help fill in the reservoir (when I say all signs I mean I easily over-heard a few hard-hats chatting about it from the Giant Drop walkway.)

Yesterday I would say was the most damning day yet. 1) rides should never rely on the operator for safety and 100% it is engineering’s job to ensure there are contingencies in place to ensure operator error doesn’t compromise safety! 2) just so everyone is aware, $10k is a TINY TINY amount for a controls upgrade. I’m dumbfounded how they couldn’t approve that on the spot. Basically this is saying that a life to Dreamworld wasn’t even worth $2500 a piece because that’s all it would have taken to prevent this. 3) the second that this ride was identified to have inadequate safety systems it should have been shut down until they were brought up to scratch. No excuses whatsoever. 4) Scott is a dispicable human being IMO.

He couldn't look them in the eyes when he knows how much of this he is personally responsible for. Such a coward.

A man would've looked them in the eyes.

I wasn't aware of that. Is it mentioned in the forum rules somewhere? I must have missed it. I'll have a read of it one day.

I don't understand this post @MickeyD what is Parkz??

Ardent are quite possibly the biggest bag of dicks to ever operate a Theme park in Human History. It is absolutely no surprise they are keeping major attractions closed at the busiest times of year right now - And Why? - Because they're closing the books and getting ready to bow out of Australia for good, People. And they know it..

Yeah the ARM units have OTSR's @Jobe, that's one of the main reasons that I find them uncomfortable. They're still a great money maker for showmen, but I'm just not a huge fan. The HUSS unit however I've gotten to ride once, and from what I remember, I loved every second of it! I was pretty young though, which is a shame. Fingers crossed for Youngs unit, which I believe is currently being refurbished?

It's not unnatural for a drowning man to pull people under with him but this dude needs to pick up the mirror and stop playing the blame game.

We're not trying to bore you with constant updates, or anyone on this forum. The constant updates I have been making lately mainly reflect the fact that rides, which are not being advertised on the Dreamworld website as closed, are closed. We're also trying to spark discussion on what could be going on with these rides. We're currently experiencing the unexpected closure of 2 major attractions (Wipeout, MDMC), which Dreamworld continues to fail to advertise, most likely because it might "look bad" on their website. The fact of the matter is, we have had 5 out of 9 big thrill rides closed for the past 4 and a half days. This is not acceptable coming from any theme park, and it's interesting that it hasn't been talked about more. At the end of the day, we're dealing with mass closures across the board for this theme park, and not all of these closures are being advertised. I do find it annoying when date changes, which are for rides not scheduled to open in months anyway, are posted on this forum. However, when attractions which are expected to open the next day get pushed back by an extra month, that's the stuff we should be posting. Like Wet'N'Wild's Surfrider, scheduled to open the next day, then boom, pushed all the way to 31st December. That sort of shit isn't cool, just like the falsely advertised Dreamworld closures. That's the stuff I want to know about before my planned visit to a theme park.

Part of the reason for contacting Intamin in 2016 was due to rafts taking on water and the ride having to shut down for 30 minutes each day to drain the water from the rafts. In June 2016, Dreamworld got in contact with another company “dynamic attractions” about replacing the rafts. They quoted $12k per raft for 10 new rafts. It appears as though the contract with Dynamic Attractions was in its final stages before the incident happened. The Intamin communications were just emails back and forward. A company named “PFi” was contracted to undertake the PLC upgrades in 2015-16. There was also discussions in August 2016 about having a compressor replaced on the ride too. This was brought up recently and discussed heavily. I believe @AlexB(?) figured out that old arrow trains had this ability but the new Kumbak trains couldn’t, which was part of the reason for the upgrade. I think it was mentioned in a news piece on ABC or Channel 7, when they obtained documents from Dreamworld and that was the first time it had come out that sidewinder had that issue. Mr Watkins has just finished giving evidence and we have adjourned for lunch. I unfortunately have to depart again but rest assured I’ll be back tomorrow morning.

In October 2004, a guest was being unloaded from their raft in the station when another raft collided with it causing the guest to fall in the water and go under a raft. In 2014, within a week of the the raft collision on TRR, there was an incident on the Hotwheels Sidewinder where a train was dispatched from the station with a guests restraint not being locked down. Both ride operators were terminated. JAK, a ride audit company, recommended in 2014 that the TRR controls be simplified as it relies on far too much manual operation from the ride op. Today was the first time that Mr Watkins had seen the 2014 cctv footage from TRR. Mr Watkins agreed that it would have been helpful if he had seen that footage previously or if that footage reviewed during the 2015-16 time where the ride was upgraded. In 2014, an email was circulated around Dreamworld Staff about theme park incident overseas on a roller coaster at Six Flags Fiesta Texas where a woman died as a result of a failed safety harness. In that email, the 2001 TRR incident was also brought up and included photos of the rafts that had stacked in the unload station. It literally looks like someone has dumped 5 rafts from the sky into the unload station and conveyor area. There are rafts literally sitting on top of each other. One of the recommendations in 2015 was a $10000 upgrade to the controls Included in this recommendation: “The existing operator controls have been adapted and added to over many years and are in a poor state. This scope (of work being completed) should be expanded to include the upgrade of the operator co from panel. This would include: the addition of a 7inch touch screen, it would monitor all alarms, water levels and pump loads. This will also control all of the arrival and exit gates.” “This would future proof the ride for years to come” Dreamworld opted to not implement these upgrades, just the anti-rollback gates and conveyor chainbreak upgrade.

Undulating waves are created with air pressure or water paddles. High pressure air, or a moving paddle displaces water at the deep end forming a wave. In simple terms, the air model is a giant fan that creates a depression in the water, and the water displaced from that depression has to go elsewhere - creating a ripple. So in simple terms the mechanics, and cost to operate is fairly simple. In terms of construction, these displacement style pools really only require the pool itself, and connected filtration, with the fans or paddles placed at one end. A water dump pool uses a lot more energy to operate. I'll use Thunder Bay as an example - since it was what I could find some stats for online - it uses a 100, 200 & 300 horsepower pump to move water through 3 metres vertical, along a length of 9 metres of pipe, into the dump reservoirs. On the numbers - it dumps 341,000 litres into the 7.6 million litre pool to cause the waves. To generate waves of a reasonable frequency, these pumps have to move that water constantly - achieving approximately 150,000 litres per minute at normal speed. You're then running a hydraulic system to open and close the reservoirs (there are eight chambers at Thunder Bay, so 8 separate hydraulic doors), although the hydraulic pump is a small part of the system energy wise, it's another moving part requiring maintenance etc (and in the Tbay example, they use vegetable oil rather than regular hydraulic fluids due to the risk of the oil entering the pool water. Finally, rather than a standard 'pool' construction, to ensure the water dumped flows to the 'shore', the system can't pump water from the deep end, or else those pumps would be countering the effect - so the pool needs a water return, so that excess water at the shoreline can return back to the pumphouse. I found this little graphic online that represents it well, and as you can see - large volumes of water return in a specially constructed channel, rather than just pipes like a pneumatic wavepool filtration system, to move large volumes. These channels, with their steel and concrete, naturally cost more to construct as well. TL:DR - yeah, what @djrappa said.

*Note: full day product must be experienced over several months, as not all rides, shows and experiences are open year round due to never ending maintenance extensions

A video of the i-Ride structure inside the building found on instagram, looking like most of the main framework for where the gondolas sit is complete. This also pretty much confirms the ride will have a 60 seat capacity over 6 seperate gondolas, over 2 levels, facing the same orientation as the original dreamworld cinema. The caption of the post also states that the gondola installation will be happening very shortly.

It doesn’t have to reach 161km/hr to beat Rivals it only needs to go 115.1km/hr The GD is 119 high so it only need to go 2 metres past halfway of the tower to beat Rivals. If the ToT still beats these stats and I don’t know if it does, then it would be great if DW grew a set and disputed MW claims. DW should run an ad campaign. “Still the fastest” “Still The tallest” "First to go Backwards"

This is true. The 6 seats on the north side facing the wave all have lock out straps on them.

In other random maintenance news, TailSpin has had limiters put on the wings so you can barely even move them now making it next to impossible to actually get the ride flipping. Wipeout will only allow a maximum of 20 riders at a time (which funnily enough is how many they need to even run the ride)