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Good Morning everyone. And welcome to another exciting update of the construction. On Tuesday, I was looking from the Harbour Bridge on the train home, and I went. Oh goodie! A ride that will make me throw up! And that's the Sledgehammer... When I came back today, the poles that were there last week are now assembled. All that's left is the seats, and the loading platform. They've been replacing the boardwalk from Coney Island to Luna Land. This is in preparation for the new gate and sign. Which also looks a bit cartoony. That seems to be the coherent theme of this area. Because of the spot that Luna Land is. It's easier to change the theming. This can be seen in lots of parks around the globe! There have been no other rides put in other than Sledgehammer. They are doing some last jobs on Cloud 9 and Freaky Frog. And are gonna start testing Boomerang. Little Nippers is done. If you are wondering where these photos are taken at. The close up photos are taken at the Boardwalk and Peter Kingston Walkway. The 'Railway View' is taken on Cliff Street. The 'God's Eye View' is taken at the LPS Office on Glen Street. And views of the Big Dipper and over Coney Island are taken from Harry's Park on Glen Street. (Named after Harry Sidler.) That's all for today! Next update will be whenever I get there!

This morning’s update Drop has been added after the block zone

Well here are some of my photos of the progress taken this afternoon: Steel beams sit on the future Big Dipper loading station: Overview of Maloney’s Corner and the construction going on: Foundations for the Big Dipper supports are preparing to be concreted: Good view of the construction of the revamped entry to Maloney’s Corner (though I reckon the other side of Coney Island should be opened up to the public as well which would make the back of the park more connected and feel truly permanent): Close up views of the (Whirly) Bug, Cloud 9 (which I also find to be a weird name for a ride), and the Freaky Frogs. Plus foundations for the Silly Subs and the Sledgehammer platform: Now this is something I’ve brought up before but I would really like to see the surrounding theming on the Tango Train, Volare and Wild Mouse to be actually finished during these renovations. There’s still minor touches that need to be done and it’s driving me nuts that it’s not completed yet. This is stuff I’ve enquired with the park about before and it’s still not done. So the question is when?

Yes, its not as simplistic as 'guests either go on rides or spend money in shops" and operators/designers do not try to "balance" those behaviours. As Rappa points out, guest satisfaction / entertainment is still the core product, and for that there are definitely some good quantative metrics used by industry leaders that design or operate parks to ensure that the average visitors does enough "things" over the course of a visit to feel as though, at the end of the day they got their moneys worth (It varies by the type of park) Guests that are being fed a good stream of entertainment will be happier and spend more, and linger longer and spend more. If they're not having fun they'll go home early. Excessively short queues are only a problem insofar as that you might be over investing and spending too much running a park that doesn't need all that, but if a visitor is experiencing 1 hour waits per ride, you can definitely say they won't get enough entertainment in their visit and investment in capacity is warranted (Eg extra trains, new rides etc) Edited just now by Gazza

Still trying to find out if this post is legit or not. So take with grain of salt.

I would say 15-30mins (max) waits on quiet days are acceptable and expected. And 60-90min waits on the busy days are also acceptable. I base that upon the ‘payoff’ that Australian rides offer (this is not Radiator Springs Racers or Pirates after all), comparable wait times of similar (say Magic Mountain or Knott’s) parks overseas, and historic wait times for Gold Coast parks up until several years ago. Now I think 40min waits are fairly common on quiet days and obviously 3 times that or more on busy days. I don’t think that is the mark that should be being aimed for. As Dapto Guy says above ‘he hasn’t felt that product (guest satisfaction) in a long time’. And this is my point and why change is needed. You need to he planning for worst case, not apologizing when it happens.

To be clear - Superman's "maintenance bay" slash transfer track, visible halfway through the dark-ride section is primarily a storage and inspection area you can clearly see while on the ride. What @Im Hungry referred to was not the superman storage area - but the area next to the launch track as has been mentioned. If you're on the left side of the train, and you look to your left - and down - during launch, you can see them. This area was used for the Green Lantern cars a few months ago too. I have seen Superman trains in the maintenance sheds behind WB Kids, and its quite a tight space, it must be nice to have such a roomy workshop below Superman to work on all the coaster trains. They have dollies. I think in most cases this is how they are shipped from the manufacturer, so its kind of like keeping the original packaging for when you move house... Depending on the design, the dolly is lined up and the car is slid onto it, or they remove the upstop wheels and crane it across. Some dollies are designed for forklifts (the below one has slots for forks on the other side) and others are on their own castor wheels to be rolled around.

Hey folks, it's been a minute since I was last here! Putting aside the usual cynicism we have for these types of statements, what's Randhawa's track record with making statements to build hype? Genuinely asking here. Also, given we're taking guesses here, we never saw the follow-through on the proposed hotel/resort project from a few years back. Is it possible that's still on the agenda? Would certainly be a carrot on the stick for the international market to come back over the next few years. I kind of don't see the urgency for a replacement coaster for Arkham. We know the gap in their line-up is the family market, so a good, well-themed dark ride that uses Arkham's building could be a smart idea. That, or they basically nuke Kids' WB Fun Zone and start again. Don't get me wrong, a Vekoma Flying Coaster or S&S Axis would be amazing, but it'd make just as much sense business-wise to focus on a more diverse ride portfolio. To my mind, that's what sells the season passes.

Bermuda's preshow wasn't good, but it did set up the ride really well. Toons was almost the exact opposite. Good preshow and made you feel like you were on an adventure, but didn't make a ton of sense. The best is EASISLY the original Batman preshow. If you scrapped the simulators and just put a few extra 'In cave' effects you actually could potentially have had a fully satisfying attraction just with that. If Batman Adventure: The Preshow was at Fox Studios it would have been the headline attraction. Second place to Gremlins, honestly it was almost 2 stand alone attractions in one there. Worst would easily be Lethal Weapon. Giant Drop's was also shit, but also went for all of 20 seconds, so hard to be mad at it. Similar story for Wild Wild West's original preshow. Also not a preshow as such, but the whole ToT thing was strange and unnecessary. I guess it gave a good chance for anticipation to grow but the whole attempt at a story was woeful. On the flipside, again, also not a preshow, but the walk through the wave on Wipeout always got me super pumped as a kid, and even waiting in there was really exciting for some reason. EDIT: Also not an Australian park, but the preshow for Hex at Alton Towers is phenomenal.

I've got something amazing to say. But not now. So I won't say it. So keep watching until I say I'm going to say it. But I'm not telling you when it is, so keep watching in case I say something.

It really depends what price you put on guest satisfaction (which is really the only product a theme park sells). For me, I’d certainly value that at 1 million for an extra train. And I really think its a long perpetrated myth that ‘locals spend nothing’ in the parks. The majority of guests are ‘locals’ these days.

Let's say by having three trains you can guarantee you can always have two trains running during the busiest 100 days of the year. If that second train conservatively improves hourly throughput by 200 (on Rivals it'd be much more), that's 1400 people back in the park potentially spending money on stuff on a typical 7 hour day. Let's say ultra-conservatively then that 50% of them spend an extra $20 on literally anything instead of waiting in a queue (my own knowledge suggests it's more like $50-70, but we'll go with worst case scenarios), that's an $14k extra a day. Over roughly 100 peak days of the year where the train will be running, that's 1.4m in additional revenue, which means a third train pays for itself in under a year. Even at a third of my already conservative numbers, you have an investment that pays for itself in under three years and generates six digit revenue every year for the life of the coaster. There's also additional on-flow effects from smaller queue times during peak periods which is best summarised as when you have high satisfaction rates with guest experience, folks spend more. Rivals has been doing 2+ hour wait times over the easter break. Arkham Asylum was consistently one of the worst waits in the park during peak periods. The years after Jet Rescue opened are widely panned as some of Sea World's worst. Exactly my point. Personally I reckon Dreamworld are fine for the next year or two with two trains - but as the crowds continue to come back in huge waves like they've done at Movie World the maths does check out.

When you're already spending millions on a coaster, surely an extra train wouldn't blow the cost out that much.

Because this will only have two trains so there won't be a need to stop a train there, and I think the stairs just come with it by default. It still needs to have a trim brake there since the latter half of the layout is designed to be taken at lower speed. 3 train models have a set of pinch brakes. 2 train models omit them, and note no air boxes for the brakes either.

You invest based on your "design day". https://www.theparkdb.com/blog/peaking-theme-park/ There are some days per year where you will be over that, but that should be like 20 days per year max.

That'd be worth $800,000 today!

I was legit about to post that comment too. It was posted on the Movie World Fan Club group on Facebook.

the superman maintenance bay is a huge inpark bay that they can just put coaster trains in to work on them. Saves having to shift them to the back end of the park to a maintenance shed somewhere

Please, Luna Park, don't depart from what there already is! I just want them to keep the neon Big Dipper sign and leave it as that.

Or you just got a bit too close with a drone ?

A small search on Google provided some (old) CCTV images of Steel Taipan's construction... It sort of gives us a better or unique perspective of the site and the development of possibly the transfer track for moving trains off and on the circuit.

Ugh. That is still such a stupid name. Not even "Whirly Bug" or "THE Bug"; just BUG. Sounds so underwhelming! I can't get over it!

The first big announcement = The date of the big announcement The big announcement will be they are building the Big Camera to be on par with the Big Pineapple Although I do wonder if there is a new partnership? “..Sony Pictures’ larger global strategy to grow and expand location-based entertainment by utilizing its strong global film and TV brands,” said Jeffrey Godsick, head of LBE at Sony Pictures Entertainment from Blooloop If that were to bring Spiderman, Men In Black or other Sony' IP, that would be a huge boost.