Richard

Planet SOS is a great show. It mightn't have the big names (like anyone these days knows who Leslie Nielson is though, sadly), but as far as being environmentally aware, it really hits the right spots. When those polar bears, after all that laugh-out-loud fun sliding down the ice tunnels land on the iceberg and begin to drift out to sea, it says a lot more than any words ever could, which is why Planet SOS is so effective. It's very simple, yet incredibly effective for what it's trying to achieve.

I think the "once in a lifetime" Disney trip is really a thing of the past. Maybe back when it cost a fortune to fly, back in the 70's and 80's. These days, you'd be crazy to drive for any more than a day to get there with domestic flights from anywhere to anywhere under $200 per person. I'm not saying they do the trip on a regular basis, I mean, it is a holiday, and people who go on holidays generally don't want to visit a place they've been to within the past five or so years. The reason you only go once is because if you're spending money on a holiday (or vacation if you will), you're not going to do the same holiday. Disney holidays aren't really the holiday dream they once were, because you can fly there in three hours, and you can buy a simple package straight from Disney that has your week set out for you. Unless you're doing it on the cheap, you're not going to have to go anywhere past disney.go.com or your local Disney store for your holiday. The Disney parks are destination parks. They're not the Six Flags or the Paramounts where you go to them every other year or more, which are the regional parks. You plan a trip around a destination park - it's the reason for your going, but a regional park you'd go to as another attraction on a trip to the area. For instance, a family will plan a trip to Disneyland and they'll see an ad for Knott's and then pay it a visit. Families plan a trip to the Gold Coast solely to see the theme parks. They're more destination parks than regional (but they're not so inaccessible that they're not also an easy way for a Brisbane or Gold Coast family to spend a day every few years). Wonderland comes in as a strictly regional park, with the exception of the wildlife park. You're not attracting people solely to see the park - they'll come to Sydney and spend a day there towards the end of the trip, which is what my family did on our family holiday in Sydney back in about 1992. I think it's exactly right that parks need to spend money to get more people through the door. A million guests a year is a lot, but you're kidding no one if you don't think that could double over the next ten years. Dreamworld's on the right track, with serious investments every few years, but I think Warner Village need to stop doing things "on the cheap" and really expand Movie World in particular. The park still has the same number of attractions that they started with! Of the Gold Coast parks, Movie World gets the most bloated when it's packed. Think about it, it has the same attendance as the others, but it's about half the capacity. There's no denying the quality of most of the attractions - that's why their attendance is so high, but while they keep replacing old (but still perfectly valid attractions) with new, that park is only going to go downhill.

It's coming closer. As of today, the Gallery system is totally finished. On the surface it's really not that different to most sites, but I designed a backend system that makes updates as painless as they can be (gone are the days from this site where it'd take me at least six hours start to finish to create a gallery). The database system has been finished for a number of months, it's just getting tidied up on the outside, and park and ride information is being entered. Right now it has 24 coasters in it and 11 parks. I've just got to tidy up a few things - get the news system talking to galleries so that an article can easily include photos, incorporate the forums into the design (which will be among the last things done) and find the "right" colour scheme. Right now it's white, highlighted with the same blue and green from Total Thrills. That's more than likely going to change. Unlike this site, which focuses on my own photographs and whatnot, the new one will allow you guys help contribute. Right now, if you've got high-quality (clear, crisp, resolution greater than 1024x768 and unedited) coaster/ride or park photos from around the country, in particular down south (I can cover the Gold Coast ), let me know (PM or email me) - don't send the images yet though, I'll let you know when and how to send them. You will be credited for your contribution.

For what it is - a water park included in the admission to the regular park, it's not really that bad. It's about on par with Wonderland, and it's certainly better than Dreamworld's three slides that are Blue Lagoon. Most of those sweet water parks you see attached to American theme parks are additional fee, with the exception of very few, and are really no better than Wet'n'Wild. They have these enormous twisted structures with dozens of slides on them, but they are just a few different slides, with four or more of the same slide (same turns and drops all along, just in a different order so they can fit together) for capacity reasons - most single-person slides have a capacity of under 200pph. I wouldn't like your chances of getting new slides, as great as it would be. Your current slides will remain as long as they can, until they find a few new type of fishs to stick in cages (it's about time they moved onto whales - I'm sure SeaWorld Adventure Parks in America can spare some of their Shamus ), but I'm sure every time the thought of reconstructing the water park has come up in the past, it's always been rejected with the words "Wet'n'Wild" and "Three Park Super Saver" included somewhere.

I think you've got it spot on there. The grass is always greener on the other side, and that certainly goes here. The Six Flags and whatnot might be very alluring when you're over here, that's human nature. After all, what could be better than 16 coasters in a single park. The rides are good, but the atmosphere is terrible or non-existant and the staff are uninterested or rude and things are just shabby in places, bordering plain disgusting. Honestly, you'll be hard-pressed finding parks as good as ours, including Wonderland, anywhere else in the world. Disney have about the only parks that left me truly amazed. Even Universal have a hard time matching our parks in terms of the overall quality - the sum total of rides, theming/scenery, cleanliness and friendliness. And you'd be surprised, it's really the last two that make most of the difference.

But it's not directly in the rain at all. Firstly you've got those outer white boxes which are weather-proof, then inside you've got coils of insulated, presumably copper wire. The only thing getting out, or into these things is some uber huge magnetic field. There's got to be a better reason that one ride, using LIMs can be perpetually exposed to water, while operating, yet one using LSMs can't operate if there's any water at all on the motors. I just thought I might also point out that a 54m (conveniently ignoring the brakes) tall drop ride will be falling for 3.3s, or 33s in 10 drops. A 119m tower, such as Giant Drop (again without brakes included in the height) falls for 4.9, or 19.6s in four drops. You've forgotten (or didn't know) that gravity is compounding, not linear.

Yeah, they were all at the Gold Coast. We're just waiting on Sea World and Wet'n'Wild now.

Yeah, they've clearly insulated them differently or something so that they can cool them quicker to allow the Disney-style dispatch times. They're clearly corrosion-resistant too, given the state of that stretch of track (DisneyWater™ isn't too kind to steel). Unless it's something different about the LSM system that causes electrical risk or whatever in rain which isn't a factor with LIMs, I'm pretty well stumped on this one.

My bad. I had custom titles enabled for no one but myself. It's all fixed and can be found right where I said it was, under Edit Profile.

You'll have to repost them - all attachments etc. were lost in the forum change.

It wasn't raining all day in Brisbane, and I assume it was the same down at the coast. I can assure you that while it is raining they're not running Tower of Terror. They'll even walk the track and mop the motors if it has been raining earlier in the day.

If you use the button at the bottom of a post, it will by default quote the post you're replying to - the feature is called "Reply With Quote" afterall. Try using the larger, button at the bottom of the thread, or use Quick Reply or just remove the quoted text from your post.

I think that'll be the ultimate fate of their water park. I think they'll keep it operating as long as they can, because it's popular and effective, but as remaining land is eaten up (with Shark Bay taking one of the last decent chunks of land left), I don't think it'd be any surprise to anyone to see it close to make way for other future attractions. It's not as if it's hard to justify doing either - they've got Wet'n'Wild down the road and it'll just increase the selling point of the hugely over-priced Three Park Super Saver.

The only thing that stops Dreamworld is lightning. High winds close Giant Drop and any rain closes Tower of Terror but other than that, the park operates in any weather. It's really quite an intriguingly nice place to be in a downpour if you're dressed appropriately for it.

Sure you can, go into User CP, and under Edit Profile, you can specify a custom title. There's no minimum posts either now, so anyone can do it. As for your PM, there's no record of any PMs sent to you recently in the database, and database entries don't just disappear, so I don't really know what's happened. Good to hear everyone likes it. Of course this is only the beginning. The theme will be modified to fit in with the new site's design, much like the old forums fit in with Total Thrills.

Yes, it's the chairlift. It wasn't really a tree that fell, it was more of a large branch - a thick (maybe 25 or 30cm diameter) gumtree branch, which snapped off the tree and landed on the cable. It didn't snap because believe it or not, rides are engineered to take a lot more force than they do in normal operation - for this very reason. As soon as they cut the branch away, they turned the thing right on again to get everyone else off the ride, so it was still operational (it was probably e-stopped in the first place as soon as an operator saw it), and I doubt any damage was done at all. The park was hit by a storm essentially out of no where. The wind knocked the branch over, onto the cable. Really, when you think about it, though it was a significant incident, it really wasn't as bad as you initially think. The ride will more than likely be back in a week or two, after they do some stress checking of the cable and supports, which will come back with clean results.

Okay, I've just finished the updating of the forums, which required closing the old ones, changing to the all new software, then upgrading to the latest version. All posts are in place, and you can log in with your regular username and password. Things like attachments, personal settings and whatnot are gone, but the core is there. There are a range of great new features that'll make the site more user-friendly. I'm not going to go through them all, because it'll take forever, but take a look around and you'll find plenty of things you like. You should find significant speed increases, particularly with searches.

Anyone else find the theming for Cyclone at least a little ironic right now? Everyone's reported fine and dandy, so it's an open floor for the varying degrees of humour that exist out there.

We can do without the potty humour, or in your case Slick, the totally meaningless humour. Chippy'll have a bit of trouble at least expressing his opinions on this one, unless he comes back from the grave.

Out of K'NEX? Aren't they a bit holey to make a flag look anything other than shabby? I guess they couldn't secure a deal with Lego, so just go to the next best thing I guess.

Anyone know the reason for the delays with Shark Bay (I mean aside from the fact that they started too late, and the "bad weather")? How's the structure looking? I can't imagine it's too far from at least appearing complete. Trouble securing enough sharks to make it worth while, or is Johnny just waiting until he gets his Great White to open it?

Yeah, that's from the work. I'll try and get the work done this afternoon - I should be able to get the new forums running by tonight.

I thought it'd be worthwhile adding an update since earlier this morning. I've done a test of the upgrade system, using a copy of the database I made this morning. It all went smoothly - no issues anywhere. I want to make the actual change some time next week, which will mean no more than an hour of downtime for the forums. This is the first step to bringing you the new site in coming months.

I've removed the Photo Album from the site (the link at the top is still there, as well as links around the place, which I'll be removing soon) to help some changes that are coming very soon take place. I'm sorry if you've lost some pictures there, but it's all for the best. The attachments in the current forums will be lost also, but the feature will remain.

Wonderland's certainly slipped a lot since 2002 when they got rid of the former Hanna Babera Land, but they do a lot of things better than Dreamworld. To call Wonderland an ugly park compared to Dreamworld is strange. There's not a park out there that's more inconsistently designed and themed than Dreamworld (hate to break it to you, but Movie World comes close, just their theming is of a higher standard, so it's much overlooked). At least do us a favour and compare it to something that deserves the recognition it gets like Sea World.