Richard

It is fundamentally cost-cutting, more than anything else. Why put four people on a ride when you could just as easily put on one, and just have queues 3x longer than they could be? Dreamworld's actually quite odd, in that most of the staff look to be quite a bit older than most parks. I'm sure the average age for a park employee at Dreamworld is something like 30. Go down the road to Movie World or Sea World. You're looking at an average age of probably 25. Warner Village do have an minimum age requirement as far as I know for ride operators, joz will be able to give the details, but it's something like 20 or 21. I'm guessing it's similar or the same at Dreamworld. Now, age doesn't mean anything necessarily. But Dreamworld's staff are notoriously slow and seem very uninterested in maximising efficiency. This hardly screams capable to me. Dreamworld does like "big numbers", but I guarantee you that most numbers listed on signage is what they got from the manufacturer, which is usually reasonable for ideal circumstances. Meanwhile, for Giant Drop to achieve a capacity of 800pph they'd have to dispatch both gondolas 50 times an hour, which is a 1:12 sec cycle, including load and unload (which is usually estimated as a 30 second period). Considering the ride's current cycle has a 1:00 wait at the top of the tower before dropping, I'd say this figure is pretty unrealistic. On their current cycle, assuming 2:30 including load and unload, they'd be able to quite easily achieve 384pph, which isn't all that bad. That's the sort of capacity that would result in about 1:30 queues on the busiest summer day, which those who've been there, know is about half what it'd normally be.

Again, contact the park about that one, frontdesk@----URL removed for non-compliance with Community Guidelines---- should do the trick. Try to use at least basic grammar and punctuation skills when you contact them though.

An Impluse would be in the area of 200ft tall - it's half the height of Dreamworld Tower. It is a launched ride, but it's also a very different experience, as those who have experienced both will testify. It has a capacity of 1100pph (from RCDB, based on the standard, 180ft version), but one thing I really don't like is the idea of a single train. One train is like a signal to Dreamworld staff that there's no hurry. Eureka Mountain (or Rocky Hollow, but it's not too relevant to my point) is the only ride at Dreamworld that ever runs "at capacity",which itself is very low because of the way the ride's length and blocking system - you're always seated and waiting for the block ahead to clear (or normally about 4 blocks when they're only running 2 or 3 cars). We need two train minimum, and operations proceedures to be able to keep up with it. Hate to break it to you Dreamworld, but you might have to roster more than one operator to operate a multi-train ride at a decent capacity. I'll kill (well, maybe wound :twisted: ) for anything from Switzerland, they're all high capacity, and they'll all put anything else in Australia to shame... not to mention it'll get people really gawking from their cars as they drive past.

Not a problem - interesting parallel nonetheless. From an actual design standpoint, the Giant Drop's structure is identical to Space Probe's, just larger. The track guage is larger, but that just means the gondola's contact points are also wider. As far as I know, there's no technical difference. What exactly do you mean by "rubber mounted contact points"? If you're talking about the wheels, yeah, all the wheels are all steel with a rubber (or plastic) compound tread. Interestingly, Thunderbolt at Dreamworld uses steel-only upstops (the rest are a very hard plastic wheel) - to prevent damage to the track, they'd use an alloy that's a softer metal than the track so that the wheels will wear instead of the track (Mohs scale, everyone). Regarding rubber compounds for wheels (again, I hope I haven't interpreted it wrong), I know that many modern coasters use a fairly recent product (maybe 6 or 7 years old) from DuPont known as Hylene PPDI. I don't know if Vekoma are using this on wheel replacements (Arrow shifted to it a few years ago), if not , it'd just be the standard poly-eurethane that most coasters used. This is fun. Keep 'em coming! 8)

True, I'm sure riding it I'm sure will change my opinion about it, to some degree. Though I must admit, I really don't think it is the sort of ride that'll rate up there as all time favourites. I'm of course by no means denying that it's probably a better ride than anything we've got in this country. I think the real issue is with the seemingly horrendous capacity and reliability of the ride. Dreamworld is the sort of park that could seriously benefit from some genuinely high capacity rides to really. Giant Drop is allegedly something like 800pph, and I don't think I've ever seen it run at more than about 200 on a good day. Cyclone's projection was 600pph, and the staff manage to get through about 300 or 400 if they're feeling energetic (15 minute dispatches are all too common during about 75% of the year). The list goes on. They need some rides that even the laziest of staff at Dreamworld (who I say have to be the worst of the worst) can get a decent capacity with. How Wipeout has the queues it does I don't know - it's a piece of cake to get people pumping through. I'll disagree with you there Slick. Thunderbolt wasn't just a little jerky - Cyclone these days is beyond a little jerky. Thunderbolt was, from day one, a torture device. It was one of very few rides that are actually rough even on straight sections of track. I've ridden it countless times, and I can honestly say that not a single one of those rides wasn't painful, and resulted in some sort of pain, except for occasions where tricks I've known. I'm happy for you to have your own opinions about the ride, and I'm glad you've got them, but hey people are different, and thankfully Dreamworld's upper management agreed ("It's always been a rough ride" - quote from a coversation with Dreamworld's CEO I had a few years ago). And just to correct you on one thing, Thunderbolt's listed official speed was 87.5km/h. Wonderland Sydney's Bush Beast is listed officially as 90km/h. Both rides will have had speeds both faster and slower than that, but officially, Bush Beast was and still is Australia's fastest "gravity" (ugh...) rollercoaster. Granted, it was a pretty fun ride (not exactly a thrill), and is a ride I'll miss for approximately the time it takes for something to take its place.

Any anomalies in the track would surely have an effect on the dynamics of the ride. It wouldn't really take more than a slightly less smooth section of track to really slow the train enough to cause problems. Vekoma wouldn't let such things pass though (as "bad" as they are... ), and certainly not in the short time it ran at Expo would it have caused any fatigue problems that might cause depressions or anything in the track (I doubt even today that any track has been replaced on Demon because of damage). The problem associated with adding spring-loaded wheels isn't so much with an incapability to add them to the trains, but rather with the way it'll effect the dynamics of the ride. Contact means friction, which means slower speeds, which essentially means even more valleying in the boomerang - which happens enough as is. They tried to get spring-loaded wheels happening on the Giant Inverted Boomerangs (Deja Vus), but that lead to repeated valleys in the boomerang, so clearly they've not yet worked out how to accurately simulate the friction that springs add to a ride. I know for certain that SFMM's Deja Vu removed the springs to increase uptime, and I'd guess that the other parks followed suit. From a technical standpoint, there is absolutely no difference between the train on Demon (an old model Arrow train) and that on Big Dipper/Cyclone (newer style Arrow train). Aside from the bubbly look and a few aesthetic and comfort changes, it is the same train as the old ones (Vekoma did add certain things to make the cable lift system and other things work correctly). Same track guage, same wheel guage, same cabin width, same seat and restraint height etc.

The age-old "Why Vekoma's are rough" discussions. This is one I've always been fond of (and I've participated in enough at ThrillNetwork, CoasterBuzz and Westcoaster ). New wheels do take a while to wear in, but they certainly won't be rougher than old wheels. See the graph I've attached out of sheer boredom to get an idea of the smoothness of a coaster with new wheels in relation to time (yes - I was very bored). You'll find it takes some time for an Arrow or Vekoma coaster with new wheels to wear in and peak its smoothness, and it'll slowly deteriorate over time. Cyclone's a great example for Gold Coast locals, and I'm sure Demon is the same. As for the idea of upstop and guide wheel spacing. It's a pretty popular argument, but there's a few things I'd like to say about it. The spacing of upstops doesn't contribute at all to roughness. Unless you felt the train drop and make contact with the upstops while upside down, this wouldn't make a difference. My best argument to put to rest the idea of spring-loaded side guide wheels solving the roughness issues is actually Runaway Reptar at Dreamworld. It's a Vekoma coaster that uses spring-loaded guide wheels, and I can tell you that it's far from smooth. If that ride were going any faster than it currently does (i.e. the speeds of a ride like Demon at 75km/h), you'd be beaten to a living pulp from the headbanging. They'll slightly dampen any heavy jolts, but they won't magically make them disappear. Flea, I know the jolts you're talking about in the loops etc. on Demon, and it's because of not-so-great engineering and transitioning, it's really not much to do with spacings with wheels. Though these might lessen the jolts, much of it comes from the sudden curve into the loop and the sudden shifting to the side of the track in the loop. Through the boomerang though, springs might prove more useful, but still, it's not going to do a whole lot. Softer restraints and more open cars would be the easiest way to fix this problem... or just keeping the wheels fresh enough. As for Space Probe, in a perfect world (conveniently remove friction), the speed will be directly equal to the acelleration (9.8m/s²) and the time it spends freefalling (before it hits the brakes). Of course, it's not a perfect world, and friction does take its toll on gondolas based on how much weight there is in it. The roughness sounds to me like it's coming from a lack of rail greasing. I know Giant Drop can often give a good rattle on the way up - thankfully it never does on the way down, as it's painful enough on the way up going slowly (it can sometimes give the neck a bump in an awkward way). If you look closely at the running rails of a Giant Drop from Intamin, you'll see they've got a good thick coating of grease, which allows the smooth and nearly frictionless descent (and is also why Giant Drop's so grubby and oily beyond the oil rig theme). Another day... another overly long essay on coasters.

G'day Chris, Can't help you with your request (not a huge carnival type myself), but I'd like to welcome you to Total Thrills. Feel free to contribute to existing topics, or start new ones if it's not been covered. Best of luck with the search though.

Deja Vu seems to be quite overpriced for what you're getting - and I'm not necessarily talking about the technical difficulties. It just really doesn't look to be the most exciting ride out there. Granted, it'd be a great experience, but not the sort of thing that would provide enough of a diverse experience to really make it a good perenially popular attraction, like Thunderbolt very much was (despite what you'd like to think about it). That, and the fact that it is a capacity nightmare. If Dreamworld is smart, they'll know that to get the most out of a new ride, it'll have to have the best possible capacity for the cost. Anything that doesn't have a realistic capacity of above 1000 pph to me would be useless. That's one of the only reasons that I think flat rides would be a good choice. You're paying maybe $6-8 mil tops for a ride that can suck up about 1000 pph with not necessarily as much staffing as a coaster would require. Of course, it's not what I would really want, but we're talking what Dreamworld needs. My mind is made up on the Intamin hyper or B&M floorless.

Warner Bros. only ever secured the rights for four films from what I remember. I think it's pretty smart given that the kid had already grown out of the role by the time the first movie was finished.

I'd appreciate it, as I'm sure would Intamin, if rather than directly embedding images (through the tags) from an external source - in this case Intamin's website - you either just use the tags, or attach them to your post using the "Add an Attachment" feature. This way you're not "leeching" the images, and not costing other sites in terms of bandwidth.

That's all, as I'm sure you're aware, the conditions of being a public company in Australia - all critical information must be available to the public. It's also why the Australian listed parks are not prone to even hinting at coming attractions - they're simply not allowed to (which is why coming here with "insider" information mightn't be the best idea). I'm not sure of the specifics of the KLSE (Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange), but I'm guessing that the information's accesible through their website, and might even be more specific and useful than the information available through ASX.

The Impulse route would be interesting, but that's the sort of ride you slot in anywhere it fits - I don't think making it the highlight attraction of a brand new area/land would be the best application of an Impulse, unless, as thunder suggested, it's stuck over way to the side somewhere. As for the 45º style of SFMW's - I've not ridden it, maybe someone who has could correct me (i.e. rabid), but from what I see, it doesn't look nearly as exciting as the standard version (aside from the novelty of perhaps slowing/stopping upside down), plus it takes up more space (but then that's covered by building it over Vortex). As an avid non-fan of flat rides in general (they have their moments, but so do coasters, 10 times over), I'd actually say that a collection of Huss Giants, such as the Land of Giants would be a pretty fun concept, and it'd be perhaps the easiest way to build some high capacity rides to really give the park the overall capacity it needs most of the year. The only thing is, these rides, from what I know, are seriously expensive - you're looking at a small coaster for each individual ride. They'd be relatively easily marketed in the park, particularly sticking a few "Southern Hemisphere's largest..." on a few ads. However, give me an Intamin hypercoaster or B&M floorless any day over a flat ride please.

I must admit, what they've done to Transylvania I really don't mind, but I've always been big on theme parks being bright and colourful. I know the theme has changed - it's less of an intimidating, delapadated "scary" as it a friendly, cartoony "scary", but I think it works well for Wonderland. As for the buildings - the first is undeniably a stock warehouse, presumably the Woolworths one we've heard about in the past. Crazy Clarks (or one of the equally cheap variations) built something similar out at the Port of Brisbane last year for storage before distribution and it, like this one, was truly huge. The Business Park is certainly not what I believe was originally invisaged back a few years ago, and I'd be lying if I said that it looks like a great development.

Cheers, that'll get changed some time soon!

Thanks for that link. I had looked on UsedRides.com a while back, but I guess I wasn't as successful as yourself in finding it. The strange thing is, they've hired a Dutch agent to sell the ride. That seems pretty odd to me, unless they've contacted Vekoma (who are Mesho's European partner) to help with the potential sale. You've just got to hpe that the poor park who eventually does buy it knows what they're getting themselves into.

Merimbula's Magic Mountain was done and up earlier this week. Also, I redid the Dreamworld gallery over the weekend. The old one, having looked back, was just plain rotten. The images are mostly old ones, but I did added 11 new photos: 6 of Cyclone, 1 of Runaway Reptar and 4 of the Tower. They're much nicer looking that the old ones. The colours aren't as messed, and they're now all standard sized (if you remember the old ones, the dimensions were all over the place). I'll look at doing the rest of the Scenic World gallery over the weekend.

It's a tragic thing to happen. Though if you, or anyone you know is in doubt about the safety of these rides, this might put your mind to ease: Based on what was said, they've had 10 deaths in the past 48 years. Assuming each year averages 10 million guests (which is certainly fair for the past 20 years, not totally sure on before that), meaning 480 million guests in total. That means 1 in every 48 million guests to Disneyland will die. I'd say that you have a 1 in 48 million chance of dying at the park, but most of the deaths were caused by some sort of stupidity. Incidents like this tragic one would probably be more in the 1 in 200 or 300 million range of things. Meanwhile, assuming there are 13 million cars in Australia (from ABS), and 1,800 road-related deaths each year (triple j Morning Show - Friday 5/09). That means that 1 in every 7,222 car owners can expect to die within the next year. 1 in every 11,111 Australian residents can expect to die on the road. Over at Westcoaster, it was quite interesting, and even scary, to see the number of members there that had just ridden it that morning. I just hope that they're able to get this thing operational for my trip in December.

I can't wait to see pictures of what they're doing down that way. Assuming it's all happening, what's everyone's picks for slides? Honestly, so long as they're on mats or tubes, and not body slides, I'm happy - besides, once you've got a set of body slides, you don't need more - they're all the same basic thing with not much difference between them. With tube slides, you've got a whole range of different styles of rides, and I think Wet'n'Wild has shown that.

I don't know if you "tried" it in Winter, when it was actually decent and refreshing, but on that day in January when we went before the heaters were in or on, it was pretty bad. You'll remember the floor and sides are made of a rubbery surface, pretty similar to what tartan athletics tracks are made of, and it had a habbit of rubbing off on that first visit, leaving the pools collecting lots of little chunks of rubber at the bottom. The strange thing was, it was still doing that by Easter - three months later. I can't imagine that stuff is much fun to clean out of the filters.

Well, the word "thrill" was used when referring to the rides the park would have. How the developers interpret the word thrill or kid I don't know. But hey, probably more than half of the guests at Dreamworld in a given day, queuing for the "big" rides, would be under 12.

Some once-again promising news from Melbourne. The Victorian Government has sold/plans to sell off the Melbourne Showgrounds. This is bad news, until you hear what they've got planned for it. Among things like hotels and shops and whatnot is a $100mil theme park, known at this stage as "Kids Kingdom", featuring thrill rides and the only thing that can possibly go with thrill rides it seems, an animal nursery. And this isn't a project for 20 years down the track - it's expected to be finished by this time in 2006 - that's just three years time! Certainly not to the scale of the fabled Paramount park, but still very promising news that I know I'll be getting excited about as the project moves forwards.

Fast Pass is included in the ticket price, it essentially works on a "first in best dressed" system. It's the Six Flags or Cedar Fair systems that cost money. Even if it did cost money, it's exactly the same as paying more for good seats in a stadium, or to some extent, buying a Jaguar XKR over a Hyundai Excel. It's not as if by not paying you're excluded from riding the coaster.

I'm going to have to ban discussions about the good coasters in California, Vegas, Texas, Florida and Georgia for the next three months. At which point, it won't matter to be, because I'll be too busy checking them out for myself.

Finally the "real" Whirlpool opens, September 20 at Wet'n'Wild. There's no denying that it's clearly not the same degree of excitement that you'd find on some of the slides, but it's certainly going to go nicely with the existing attractions. And of course, if nothing else, it'll mean 1000 people per hour less to deal with in queues for other rides. On that same day, they're kicking off the "Dive-in Movie season", with Matrix Reloaded. In honesty, it really wasn't as good as the first one (and to think it's still playing in cinemas), and it really did have a pretty unbearable middle (basically any scenes not in the matrix were pretty slow and uninteresting). Nevertheless, it's a good action film, and is among the best movies released in the past few years, and will surely please crowds at Wet'n'Wild.