Leaderboard

This is coming... to my home park!! Parc Astérix will be building an Intamin LSM multi-launch in 2021! A layout animation was shown today (well, tomorrow for you Aussies ha) at IAAPA: Features: 51m (167ft) high 4 launches, including a forward/backward/forward half-pipe with no stop 23 moments of airtime! Looks incredible and has so many daring features, but wait! Walibi Belgium has shown their work too, it's a Megacoaster with a twisty drop like Expedition GeForce... Two crazy awesome designs, both within driving distance from home! Intamin made a huge statement today, and kudos to the Compagnie des Alpes (which own both parks) for allowing the manufacturer to make their ambitions come true

From Disneyandmore.com.. http://disneyandmore.blogspot.com/2018/11/iaapa-2018-bob-chapek-unveil-design-of.html?m=1 IAAPA 2018 : Bob Chapek Unveil Design of Epcot Guardians of Galaxy Coaster, Ride Vehicle Test Video, More...

Another Dreamworld executive has taken to the stand and blamed the ride op. Such a disgraceful attitude. Anyone blaming the ops needs to get out if the industry pronto. You can't have a dangerous ride and that requires intervention to make it safe and then blame the staff member for not intervening, particularly a new staff member, particularly when intervention was not straight forward.

A while ago I reached out on here for any helpful info about theme parks to assist me in writing an animated comedy pilot about a run-down Aussie amusement park. I’m excited to share that the first episode has been written and we are looking for people who want to be involved through Kickstarter: http://kck.st/2SzSI6K The link shows a short preview of the comedy (There’s a roller coaster called the Red-bellied Black Snake!) and also has some pledge rewards that may interest anybody who wants to become a cartoon character in a show! Additionally, I’ve also written about my Theme Park experiences as a kid growing up in Sydney during the 80s and 90s. (Wonderland, Old Sydney Town, El Caballo Blanco, SegaWorld, Green Valley Farm, Tomteland, Fox Studios Backlot Tour and others all get a mention): http://www.pacificrock.com.au/blog/nurry-brothers-adventure-world/come-and-revisit-your-favourite-childhood-amusement-park/

HaHaHaHa somebody is being a stick in the mud. It needs a cartoon character who’s catch line is “that is not a monorail” every time they get of a ride.😊

Did you not read what they said @Brad2912 ? Having a tourist attraction inside a tourist precinct isn't the best location for a tourist attraction. 👍

Have to say I dunno how anyone can visit this forum without a Parkz Crew membership/subscription haha. Mine expired a couple of days ago and figured I’d wait until payday next week to renew it, and survived all of 48 hours of the bloody ads before I whipped out the credit card.

Personally, I think the test should be whether you knew - or should have known - that the decision you made materially increased the risk of serious injury or death occurring. Ergo; If you were denied the funding to complete an upgrade to safety/control components then the decision was not yours, therefore you are not culpable. Allowing a ride to return to operation several times following an intermittent fault may not make you culpable if you could demonstrate that you were unaware that doing so materially increased the risk of serious injury or death occurring (which would be a fairly high bar, but how many of us before now would have linked a pump failure with an accident like this? After all, as far as we were aware it's never happened in all the years of operation) If you knew the state of the safety infrastructure on a ride was deficient and knew this deficiency increased the risk of serious injury or death but either neglected to report it or down-played the risk when reporting it you are culpable.

You dont need to know how each ride physically works to oversee a department. You have to UNDERSTAND how engineering principles work and UNDERSTAND control systems, so when your very experienced (with this ride, function or system) staff come to you, explaining the situation or discussing a matter with you, you know what they are talking about even if it means you can't walk over to a ride and push buttons on a console. You can talk over to a ride with this very knowledgeable tech staff who know exactly how to operate the ride, who then can perform those very basic functions while you talk about the actual control systems and mechanics that are happening once that button is pushed. See the difference? You know what systems are actually functioning when you press that button that starts a conveyor, and how that conveyor works. The operator pushing the button only understands the function, not the process. The department head is going to know about the engineering that goes into running a complex machine like an amusement ride, they don't have to sit down in front of a ride and run it. Might things change following this inquest? maybe. But it really doesn't make a lot of difference. Unless you are a chartered engineer registered with one of the few societies in the country, you aren't making judgement calls on systems anyway. So even having an engineer in the top job of the maintenance department who could replace a sick operator at a moments notice isn't going to achieve much. What you are supposed to be is someone up on current industry standards around things like safety and operation and very adept at recognising potential issues before they happen. This is what half of your job is, the running of the department is left to supervisors. You oversee the works and are tasked with bringing in auditors and technical inspectors or 3rd party engineers for advice or to respond to outside requests, changes or incidents. You basically want a chartered engineer prepared to put a recommendation to paper, essentially putting their registration and insurances on the line. I would be surprised if there are any of these people in any theme park in the country. They are the ones that command big dollars and are ultimately singing off on projects and developments for pretty much everything you see around us. If a person has had a hand in building or maintaining it, there's a chartered engineer who has signed off on it. So, going ahead and making changes to a control system full of buttons and complex controls isn't something someone running the department probably does either. It would be like my boss coming into the office on monday and saying he wants the bottom chords moved higher in all the trusses of this conversion we are doing so they aren't immediately visible from the big glass doors at the end of the building. No problems, i'll just change the bottom timbers out on all the engineered components that hold the roof up and tie the walls together. It's not like it would need a complete redesign to be safe, no big deal. What seems to have happened at dreamworld though is they have had good, 3rd party, professional advice on many issues of safety, control and operation of their rides, and little to none of it has been implemented. This may not be just an issue with the department head though as they would have budgets to work within, but further up the management chain where the money decisions are really made. Especially when it seems clear they had been told to put a hold on any spending that wasn't already a capital works project. Really, jail time needs to be an outcome of this. Who gets jailed should ultimately come down to who made the yes or no decisions that placed ALL of us in jeopardy. Not just the people who lost their lives, BUT EVERY PERSON WHO VISITED THE PARK IN RECENT HISTORY. If there is a long suffering maintenance department burried under the lack of funding decided upon by people like the financial officers, park general manager or even the chief operations officer, then no matter how inept some people in the department were, it's not ultimately their responsibility alone. In this specific case; Yes - allowing the ride to return to operation that many times following faults should see you jailed. You ignored even your very poor control methods/standards and people died because of it. The ride should never have been running, and if you advised park management of this and they put pressure on you to keep it open, you should have grown a spine and told them it's an issue of safety and you weren't prepared to open the ride until the electrician arrives to inspect the problems with the pumps. and Yes - Not approving a MAJOR safety upgrade to your ride that would have made its operation easier and implemented a control system that no longer required the input or judgement of operators, which would have meant these people would not have been killed, you go to jail. You, or they (together) sat there in front of a bunch of numbers and discussed the works and ultimately decided an amount worth less than your monthly salary was too great to ensure that your guests will be afforded with at least a basic level of safety that should have been (and was previously recommended) performed long ago. You put a price on each of those people's heads that amounted to a few thousand dollars each. You all should go to jail. And if they bring in a new law that requires every amusement operator in the country to register for a licence to operate amusement rides, you should be struck off the register to make sure you are NEVER in the position to weigh up the cost of human life again. You were supposed to weigh up the cost of upgrading the ride vs shutting it down, you weren't supposed to weigh up the cost of safety vs the cost of human life. I hope it comes out in the inquest if these same methods were applied to any other rides too, because it's these people that need to be turned out for all the media and the general public to see. There needs to be a clear message sent out that it's not OK to judge who lives and who dies. If you cannot afford to maintain, upgrade and operate a complex, dangerous machine within the grounds of what the safety industry, and hell, members of the public consider an acceptable risk; then you don't get to open the chain links or gates to that ride until you come up with the funding to do so. When it starts becoming a business of making profit for shareholders, you start killing people and that should never be acceptable. The board members who stepped down should have necked the lot of them and turfed them all out as they were out the door themselves.

You do realise there is an actual theme park called Adventure World in Perth who will probably have a big issue with their name being used in a cartoon depicting a run down theme park....

Was just watching this video from In The Loop & again the biggest thing to stand out for me in their video was Dynamic Attractions. There is a video at 11:50 that shows off all of their work. I also saw in this video that it shows the theme parks they have worked with.. & it shows Movie World?! I then checked their website & it shows no sign of them ever working with Movie World. Assuming this video was only just recently made, does this mean Dynamic Attractions is currently working with MovieWorld? Does anybody know if they have worked with them before? Or am I just jumping the gun... 😂 (most likely)

Meanwhile our parks are winning prizes for designing a hat 😅

In all honesty, you do a better job that all these apparent “court reporters” that I’m surprised the GC Bulletin don’t stalk this thread for their tweets...

By contrast I'm pretty sure that Movie World's previous General Manager Greg was signed off to operate every ride at the park... if A GM isn't more of an Administrative role than Head of Engineering then I don't know what is... I guarantee Movie World's Head of Engineering knows a hell of a lot about how their rides operate.

Mr Timothy Tracker https://youtu.be/CPZqjmACQ4k

Okay guys, so there has been an NPO (Non Publish order) for the things discussed during the first moments of today. One of the journos has already gotten into trouble for posting it. I’ll figure out what’s going on and then post the details from early today if I can. Essentially, Angus Hutchins, the Safety Manager for Ardent, has applied to give evidence sooner rather than later as his mental condition is deteriorating after witnessing the event and court will be a very stressful time for him.

And my reply is basically saying if they are, the direct fallout, other than word of mouth/reputation is pretty much nill anyway.

The company, as they testified at the inquest, has a policy in place that the ride pumps were not to be restarted multiple times. They also testified how important water levels are from a safety standpoint. Not only that, but they also testified that they knew there was a problem with the pumps and had an expert tasked with coming to inspect them. On top of that, they knew the age of the units too, and had a history of faults occurring during the month leading up to the deaths. So even after experts have testified they had very, very poor documentation or procedures in place, what poor practices they thought they should adhere to, were ignored by managers anyway. Given the history and the fact that you thought it frequent enough to have an external company come to inspect/repair them, if you continually had faults after the fact the proper decision was to close the ride until the problem could be rectified. Opening it, knowing all this is negligence. Even if for a moment you could prove the operators didnt shut the ride down properly. The park is still negligent for returning it to service multiple times creating the situation in the first place. if they are based overseas, even if they are, a judgement handed down against them in australia would basically prohibit them from trading in the country again under threat of staff being arrested at the airport, BUT if you actually wanted anything out of them you would have to file a motion in the court based in their home territory and probably have it go to trial. So you'd have to fight another legal battle in another country under their system/rules, which means all the testimony, all the witnesses, etc would probably have to be presented again. So thats probably not going to happen, but it would be nice if they were effectively blocked from providing services within the country.

This is probably the testimony I've been most interested in reading about, and all I can say is wow. Now we see the real cause of the issue, not $25 an hour ride ops not pressing a button, what he have here is a fundamental failure of a person overseeing the park's rides. The head of engineering doesn't know how the rides work but is in the position to make judgment calls about them? If he doesn't know how the rides work then why on Earth would anyone have told him that there's a problem? Not like he can do anything with that info. He'd been at the park for 4 years, the fact he didn't know how to run the rides is either a lie to cover up the fact he knew it was fucked, or he is terrible at his job. What amazes me the most is he's still there. He's still not a qualified engineer. He still hasn't taken any steps to mitigate the fact he's not a qualified engineer. He seems like he thinks not knowing how to operate the rides is OK. Elsewhere in his testimony he says he wasn't sure who had the job of making sure the rides are safe. I'll give you a clue, Head of Engineering; its you. It's your department, you set the agenda. Your agenda didn't see you making the effort to get to know the rides you were managing. Had you have taken the smallest bit of interest you would have known the ride's control system was a mess. I have zero confidence in the safety of any rides he's in charge of, and to be honest I wouldn't trust him to change a tire on my car. He doesn't need to go because of PR, he needs to go because he's a danger to the community in his current role. I know on this forum we can get hung up on trivial stuff like 'the wall is ugly now the tree has been cut down' or 'drinks should be in meal deals' so important points can get lost. But here's the thing, this person was allowed to continue to be in a position of authority while having no idea about his area of responsibility and feeling no need the change that. Other staff have had problems with the computer systems and encountered 'push back' from Ardent about safety issues, but they were all people who legitimately tried to make it better before something happened. Right here is someone who straight up was the problem, and continues to be the problem. A bubble of pure incompetence at the top of the engineering food chain. I don't care who you are, you cannot fail that badly at a job and be given a second go at it.