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I'm surprised nobody has pointed out the biggest tragedy of this entire change - the loss of the batmobile!

Continuing with my Trip reports from Melbourne/Victoria here is our day at Adventure Park Geelong. The day we visited was quite a mild day with a top temp of around 26 degrees but there was a decent wind which made it seem cooler. Adventure Park is a bit of a trek to get to from Melbourne- from our apartment in St Kilda it was a 1 hour 16 minute journey. Easy to get to by car but much more difficult if you have to rely on public transport. The tickets are based on height not age so my family attracted the top price with the total tickets coming to $178. Ouch. Interestingly, the carpark is all grassed area with easy to navigate designated areas to park quite visible. We bought our tickets and headed in. What struck us was the amount of covered areas for your bags etc- there were literally dozens of tables and chairs under large marquees where you could base yourself. There was also a huge building that had at least 40 tables and chairs in a large open area which was adjacent to toilets/ change rooms and also lockers and the main food outlet area. After settling on a space, we then booked a locker for our valuables. This cost $12 for all day but the system was quite practical. Where you paid, it assigned you a locker ( with handy card payment option) and then it asked how many wrist bands you required. We decided on 2 and then all you did was place the wrist band on your arm, select your locker and then the wrist band is assigned to that particular locker. No worry about remembering pin numbers or locker numbers. Very easy. Forgive me if other forum members are familiar with this type of system, but I had never seen it before. Extremely user friendly. The first thing that strikes you about the park is the Ferris Wheel which dominates the skyline near the front. We rode this straight away as there was little to no queue ( and remained so throughout the day). It provided great views of the entire park and the surrounding area. As you can see the main slide area is bounded by the lazy river which circumnavigates the entire area and passes underneath the racer slides. We decided to do all the dry rides first up so the next stop was the Wave Swinger. This was a nicely presented smaller unit ( I am unsure of the manufactuer of this one- @HussRainbow87 perhaps you can help out here?) with only 2 rows of riders. It featured murals of iconic world destinations as well as familiar Melbourne locations. What I was surprised about this unit was that it had a weight limit of 104kg. To me, this was not overly heavy and I have never seen this specific a weight limit applied to a Wave Swinger before- can anyone answer if this is normal? I am assuming its the manufacturer's specifications and its size would be a factor but none of the other park Wave Swingers I have checked have a weight limit ( Aussie World's certainly does not). Curious. Anyway the kids loved this ride and got in 3 rides in quick succession. We then moved on to where the remainder of the dry rides were located and rode the Crazy Coaster, another unit from SBF Visa. This unit differed from the LPM unit insofar that was a smaller figure 8 circuit whereas this included another helix. This remained popular all day , given its family nature, and once again , I was surprised at how good these rides are. This is a perfect installation for a small park such as Adventure Park. The kids then tried the Little Buggy Speedway, which was well themed for what it was. I found it a little confusing that a park of this size has this for the kids yet there is no option for a full sized Dodgem set. Surely this would not be a huge capital cost but I guess there is the factor of riding this if you are wet or damp. This may play some part in their decision ( and Funfields) to not include Dodgems in their ride lineup. I guess they could look at including a Go Kart set up ( like Funfields) as a future attraction. The park also has some old school retro attractions such as paddle boats on the lake. The kids loved these! Speaking of old school attractions, anyone for archery? The big new inclusion for this season was the standard run of the mill Tornado. These are becoming fairly anachronistic in Australia as most water parks seem to have an example. This one has been installed with expansion on the left for another slide in mind for sure, but obviously the budget this time around did not include the conveyer for the cloverleaf rafts, I have to tell you, lugging one of these up by hand, is no mean feat and it was this fact alone that certainly kept ridership to a minimum throughout the day. I am sure this will be rectified in the future when Adventure Park installs an expansion slide into the ready made area. The Aqua Racers are your standard mat racing slides- I always seem to get a mountain of airtime on this variety! Bonito's Bay is your standard kids play area - it was well presented with cabana's available for hire on the periphery. It was a nice setup. The Lazy river also hid access to premium cabanas on the other side, These were in an elevated position overlooking part of the Lazy river and included full fridges and TV's in each one. Very nice indeed! The park also included on a separate island in the lake 2 x 18 hole mini golf courses. These were excellent and were also quite popular and were a great way to soak up a couple of hours as a family. The last 2 major slides ,Wild West Canyon and Gold Rush Rapids , are enclosed raft slides. These ones are obviously original slides hearkening back to the earliest days of the park. Certainly do not see Wooden Towers much anymore!!! They both provided a good ride experience, operations were excellent and as a result, there was minimal lines. Adventure Park is a park that is quite beautiful - it has well landscaped grounds and a picturesque lake in the middle. It has huge areas and huge potential for expansion- they are certainly not lacking in land options. The food options were excellent and quite varied throughout the park- this was a bit surprising to see. The option to bring in esky's and your own picnic lunch is a welcome choice , especially for larger groups or families. Its a park that is very old school in some of its attractions (paddle boats, Archery and Mini Golf) but this does nothing to undermine the charm that it has acquired. This park is on the cusp of becoming a larger player in the amusement market in Australia and they are really only another major slide and dry attraction from really putting themselves on the map. They dont quite match up to FunFields offering ( more on this later) at this particular time, however, I can see them really challenging this status quo in the years to come. The somewhat strange ( to me ) combination of water park and traditional amusements is of course driven by Victoria's weather and its high seasonality for water rides. It does work but it means that they are going to have to continue adding dry and water attractions back to back to maintain some sense of equilibrium. The park was also open to 6pm during holidays in the summer to take advantage of the later day light that Victoria enjoys. This was excellent and something that Wet 'n' Wild Sydney and Jamberoo should take note of. All in all, we had an excellent time at Adventure Park and for families , it really is a great day trip. I would definitely recommend a visit!

Bit hypocritical?

But you can’t do extensive maintenance on a ride in one day, or across multiple days, with the ride operating in between Im sure the parks would loose a lot more money by closing 1 day a week, than if they just operated

Park was busy today with what I would say around 4,000 people there. While at the park today a few things I have noticed, Along with the perviously discussed misting system that was installed in the Kraken queue they have installed a hose system that sprays water onto the path for the Tidal Wave & Sea Serpents queue along with new flooring and railings. As mention earlier in another thread the Aussie Wildlife experience has reopened. However this area personaly could still use more work to really make it lively. Rampage is still closed and a staff member said it was awaiting a new part, Goliath was closed all day but opened at 6:15pm giving 45 minutes of cycle time before the park closed at 7pm. Seemed like the issue was with the floor not dropping properly. (But thats a guess) Good to see maintenance working all day to get it up and running ASAP to avoid having it out of service during peek season. A Shipping container has been placed next to the Moat and the Container was opened and then closed later on and some movement was happening around the area. Not sure if its MI-4 related or for something else.

Cage time

Why are they doubling down on a clearly flawed design aesthetic that literally no one else in the industry uses? This map, like the other new VRTP maps, fail at the one thing it should do well - being a map. As an example - give both maps to a mate and see how long it takes them to get from say the exit of Constrictor to the entrance of Black Hole and you'll see the difference. Like deadset, why did no one at VRTP take onboard the dozens upon dozens of complaints about why 1:1 scale maps are a terribly flawed idea? Don't even get me started on why back of house areas shown on public-facing maps - it's just so ill-conceived for so many reasons.

Even if the name was changed to something along the lines of 'Adventure world - Mi4 and general discussion' the clarification would be there. It's unrealistic that this will become a mega thread as mi3 and general park talk is nothing like combining a Gold Coast park update thread with a construction thread.

WnW have updated their park map to fit the new style VRTP have gone with. This style has had issues before, but I think WnW's is definitely the worst yet. All the dark colours make it difficult to make out what the attractions are and how to get to them. You wouldn't even know Surfrider existed based off this. They have however now removed Mach 5 and WnW Buggy from the map. Interestingly though, when you click Download Map, it comes up with the old style of map, which too has been updated to removed Mach 5 and WnW Buggy. And of the two styles, the old one is still the one I prefer much more.

Thing is there is a lot of those little details hidden in those maps. SW's had a pirate and little alien walking around. Nice little things to discover if you studied it. Plus it worked as a map. The new one has the AOS stables on it so thats handy right?

By the way when I was in the park the other day boats from WWF were being shipped out.

Funfields also use Height to determine entry.

I see your point. If this was a movie world thread or something yes, maybe then split it up into individual trip reports. Just a bit unnecessary on a thread about a small park like AW from which we have had 54 topic posts over the whole summer. Anyway, Tim made a new one, LOL

Luna Park Sydney uses height based wristband prices. They use three tiers.

Great report! Thank @Jobe! The entry price based on height is a curious one... I mean I understand the logic behind it, but I haven’t seen it utilised before. I’m not overly familiar with the smaller/regional parks however - is this pricing model used elsewhere? $178 for a family does seem a little steep to me... largely due to the distance outside of the CBD, but it appears to offer enough to be a comfortable full day experience

Adventure Park used to have Go Karts but removed them a number of years ago.

I have a distinct memory of riding Tornado in September 2004 - but apparently my memory is wrong, as the Wiki says it opened in September 2006. This is only about 3 months before the Green Room opened in White Water World (WWW opened in December 2006) - and that just doesn't seem right - but according to the forums it is... I just felt like the Tornado was so much older than all the others, and kinda felt this explained why it didn't have a conveyor when all the others did. I realise Mammoth had a conveyor several years before the Tornado arrived, but being the mammoth are such a large raft, it wasn't really possible to carry them. Who knows? Maybe WWW already had their order in, and ProSlide couldn't deliver another conveyor, so WnW's race to market before WWW opened meant they had to forgo the conveyor? Realistically though, the design of the WnW Tornado probably couldn't accommodate a conveyor - the enclosed section is laid out differently to Green Room, and I don't think you'd get one in. Who made that decision or why, no idea - but there it is. I've seen two kids carry the cloverleaf up the stairs. it IS a pain in the arse, but its not overly heavy - just bulky.

I was pointing out the distance from "perth" to the park. It's 51.9km between the centre of Perth and Outback Splash. It's 54.9km between the centre of brisbane and Dreamworld (both measured by road on google). I was noting how laughable it would be that anyone would consider Dreamworld to be "in brisbane", yet Outback Splash is considered to be 'in perth' ...and the fact that the thread started before the construction of the water fortress, and since construction is now over, the construction thread should be closed. Someone should probably create a new thread and call it 'outback splash - 2019 general updates and maintenance and construction and anything else i can't be bothered putting into another thread because its Perth and we're special in Perth and if you disagree you're a bully.

its still unrelated and misleading. 'general updates' - and when its time to find something that someone said about that thing we talked about three years ago, we've got mountains of photos and posts and shit to wade through (including this discussion) to try and find it, instead of just searching for "tim's trip report January 2019" We now have an 'updates' or 'maintenance' thread for "2019" for 4-5 different parks. Fuuuuuuu.....

I am pretty certain most of the lanterns (and the stone lions) came from the lethal chinatown originally - its probably fair to say that if it never existed, we'd never have seen them do anything for the period. It was always just a case of 'hey, we've got this shit lying around, we could put it out there and look like we're embracing culture!

Mark did say keep your eye on that area 😉

You mean like this one that @Richard already wrote? It compares other delays and breaks down the context behind why the delay is so critical for Dreamworld pretty well, imo.

Superman and Lightning Rod both had prototype elements, compared to the off-the-shelf Flying Theatre being installed at Dreamworld. It's not all that far-fetched to suggest that the Dreamworld/Ardent factor is again at play here. Look at Trolls Village (a shop and some painted flats) - opened six months after they'd announced and it was still mediocre!

I think you'll find the reason people are talking about it so much is because Dreamworld is regarded as a park on its knees that needs a lot of things to go right for it if it's going to turn things around. In most parks a new ride is continuity in the park and therefore the date slipping isn't a big deal. In this case you've got a park that is low on working rides and in need of an attendance boost, and that's why this is a big deal.

Thanks for the history on it @Baconjack. I wasn't aware that was the heritage of it. I reckon the screen inside it is not original to the attraction, and if that's the case then I wouldn't think replacing it would be too taxing for the park. Looking at the software that drives it I wouldn't think it would be too hard to tweak the motion timeline if it was needed - but I'd have thought the fix might be a little more mechanical than that. Even so, a basic vision and audio upgrade is unlikely to be costly or difficult and would make a world of difference.

Okay, can we get a specific thread for Adventure World updates? This topic hasn't been about MI4 in a long time. It's just turned into a photo dump for every time someone goes there.

How about an A-Frame

I've logged in after 7 years just to fountain vote his post.

Mods - can we have a ‘Tosser’ emoticon added please ✊✊✊💥🥴

It has rusty pipes... DEMOLISH IT AND THE WHOLE LAZY RIVER! AND THE CHURRO CART WITH THE WONKY WHEEL!!

Outside of school holidays, I don't know why the parks don't close one day a week for maintenance and budget reasons. Village could stagger the closures to funnel crowds to their other parks (i.e. Sea World on Tuesday, Movie World on Wednesday, Wet n Wild on Thursday). There will always be a need for extended maintenance from time to time, but I'd rather a park that was open six days a week to one with potentially two major rides out of action during a visit.

The Mods are free to divide this thread up into what they want. @Richard do your thing!

If you're moderating, you could do it for us. 😉

Busy day by the pool, today, with the temperature around the mid 30s. Goliath was out of action (although testing), Rampage is still down and tunnel of terror looked quiet. There were 10-15 minute queues on most things, which is manageable. They were also hosing the path down outside Kraken. Those misters on the queue line were great too. Luckily, I was there for rope drop and headed up soon afterwards.

Final night of AW Nights for the season was tonight. The car park was only half full and it wasn’t as crowded as last week. I didn’t manage to get there until after sunset. Rampage was down, but everything else was operating. The Grand Prix and Abyss had fairly lengthy queues of around 20 minutes. Our wait for Inferno was around 5 minutes. The food trucks and Kahuna Falls were doing really well. We did catch up with Ross a couple of times and shared some fries with him. Ross said that were surprised at how successful they were during the last couple of weeks with AW Nights. There were a few staff members conducting surveys too.

Visited the Maze/Outback Splash’s Australia Day party, today. The waterpark part was packed. They had a DJ and a costume kangaroo character. There was a big flag above the water playground. The huge scaffolding at the back of the park represents the height of the new slide tower being constructed, this winter. The rest of the park was not as packed and was pleasant to walk around.

Are we talking Boomerang or Family Boomerang? The family Boomerangs look quite good. We need more family rides which are re-rideable, like SV. A lot of people look at GD or a large inverting coaster and just go ‘no way.’

Okay, without offending any SW fans allow me to explain some points. Ross, the GM, had mentioned that they had to use their back up power once during this season when the local grid had issues. We’ve been watching these substations, or whatever they are, expand throughout the park these last ten years. The five rides was a reference to a particular area of the park that has nowhere near 5 rides now (needless to say we weren’t fishing for info on AW’s power supply). Where once they couldn’t expand until they fixed their power problems, now they are ready for future expansion. Here's the link to when Adventure World did their last lot of distribution boards.. https://www.parkz.com.au/forums/topic/7275-goliath-adventure-world’s-new-intamin-gyro-swing/?page=13

It takes a certain kind of special to decode special.

Yeah, I don’t deny that those animal exhibits would need a lot of power and that the two parks are very different. It was just weird as we had just had that conversation with Ross, the GM, and had presumed that the GC parks would be similar.

You can talk to the GM and CEO? They future proofed the park? It’s funny that this ‘water park’ has more dry thrill rides than that marine wildlife park.