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Another good interview at IAAPA to share! This time it's Maximilian Roeser from Mack Rides answering questions for Theme Park Crazy. Max is definitely passionate about the industry - approachable but also brilliant in knowing how to communicate the great work of his company. Mack is ceetainly having a great momentum building some high-scale rides, I'm certainly curious to try some of these in the near future. Maybe coming to Movie World to see you then

An updated artist impression:

Some of the same people have been promoted too. And the ones that left are now your local mechanics.

Get back there, the coverage has been awful It's actually kind of interesting in itself; so much awful stuff has come out that DW seem to have maxed out the amount of bad press they can get. It's kind of like winning a fight by beating yourself to a pulp and making the enemy take pity on what a pathetic bloody mess you are.

@AlexBthank you for showing us what paint on people looks like.

I prefer the 3rd option of jacking up the entry prices and having no fast pass. Never been a fan of a fast past and never will. People are stupid so you're always going to piss somebody off no matter what you do. Put the prices up to high and people say the park only caters for the rich.

I just really think the glaring thing is THE SAME PEOPLE ARE STILL IN CHARGE OF THE PARK! Attitudes don't just change, so you know they will be doing the bare minimum they have to in regards to any improvements. I don't care if they built a 300 foot giga coaster tomorrow, there is still no way I would set foot on any moving piece of machinery in that place.

It's also priced high as a way of stifling demand so the average guest who has paid admission doesn't get the shits with it. If you put a cap on it and price it low you're upsetting all the peeps who have piss all money who want to skip. Price it high and the whole issue takes care of itself.

Image taken on November 5 And here's what it used to look like for comparison

Actually, they also have 'Snakes in the wild'. But you won't find it on the map - as they literally just show up practically anywhere in the park. No showtimes either. Just a matter of luck... if you get really lucky, you can get a free lifetime* snake tattoo from the resident red bellied tattooist. There are a few conditions: no choice of design. two small dots are all you get. no charge for the tattoo work, but out of state residents are liable for any ambulance costs. Dreamworld First Aid will also provide one free compression bandage. Lifetime guarantee on tattoo only applies where medical assistance is not sought. Where ambulance \ hospital \ antivenin is administered, lifetime guarantee is voided.

Or you could cover yourself in paint and go on the slides a few times...

Water slides are quit grippy when there is no water on them Most slides get walked through each day before operation

How does one prevent oneself from sliding down while one is on a slide painting the inside of it?

Cause they look like Shit

Because they will only be at the park 1 day in the next 3 years, so a season pass makes no sense but they want to experience everything in there one day? i doubt more than 10-20% of fast pass sales are locals/pass holders. I’d never buy one at $100, I’ll just come back again tomorrow when it’s quieter. If it was $50, hey why not, my burger meal at lunch costs half of that... Don’t think FP is designed for regular attendees, but the once a year, once every few years visitors

The bus stop has been there for months now, it’s sectioned off for trucks moving the dirt from the lazy river to gold rush.

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.

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)

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.