Richard

I didn't realise they were with a disposable camera - in that case, they're pretty good shots considering the weather. With me, it's as if the moment I pick up a disposable camera, my hands immediately turn shakey, and my thumbs grow enough to cover the lens. Well, I can't wait to see the next batch of shots. The photos here are taken with I think three different cameras. Two are digital, one is an SLR (all the pictures of the NSW/Vic attractions are SLR). It sure makes a difference as you slide up the spectrum of cameras (believe it or not - it's not all in the hands that take the picture...).

Realistically, I see Luna Park Melbourne as a dead end. The park is essentially a mess. The Scenic Railway rides worse than even Bush Beast. A pretty good feat considering its biggest drop is all of about 10 metres. "The bare minimum" by the park's current owners has allowed it to turn into a disgrace. The remaining rides are old carnival rides which look terrible and ride the same. The staff are arrogant and rude (i.e. they have a "no camera rule", so when dad sits down on Scenic Railway in the row in front of his kids to take their picture while still in the station, instead of the attendant kindly asking him to put the camera away, she yells at him and proceeds to start an argument). One thing I will give the park is their food (served from a temporary tent) - best chips I've had in a theme park, and any park that serves Pepsi on tap gets at least one point in my book. But my point is, there is a lot more wrong with this park than meets the eyes, and I'm all for making the most of what you've already got before going out for new things (of course that means binning all of their existing flat rides) - a lesson some certain Gold Coast parks could learn. As for Sydney, I doubt we'll ever see new rides there beyond the Wild Mouse and other flat rides that are to be included in the rebuilding. I think if they took another shot at it, they could get a decent coaster in the park - I've thought about this a lot, and believe it could work very well. An Intamin hyper-twister style ride (not necessarily 200ft, but the key elements of a twister), using the silent elevator lift to peak, and filling the supports with sand and use isolator pads (as on Xcelerator and California Screaming), and you've got a silent ride. A well signposted rule that you can't scream on the ride would be enough for 90% of people (presumable the other 10% are the same ones that enjoy engraving their intials into the air ducts in Cyclone's queue, or rip off the paint in Scooby Doo's queue). Make the ride circumnavigate the park, with station etc to the cliff side of the park, so that'd be the "slow sections", and undercover, so virtually silent. With the majority of drops, overbanks, and general excitements of the ride on the left side, screams would mostly occur over there. Make it two loops around the park, and have as much of the cliff-side in tunnels or with reflectors or something (as with GhostRider), and you've got a ride that is certainly quieter than the ferries going past that should be rerouted to stop waking the yuppies at 6AM (not that that sort of lifestyle up in those awesome units wouldn't appeal to me ). You'd have limited hours (10-5/6PM), maybe more leeway on weekends, and that in theory should work. Because of the nature of Intamin track and minimal supports, they could be spaced in and out of everything that they plan to build, with track going silently above. By the way, the track is white, as are the supports. Give it a cool name (how about Screaming Railway - that just came into my head then), and you've got a ride that is 100x better than Big Dipper, with theoretically none of the complaints (like that has ever happened in the history of mankind - the yuppies complained that Jesus' cross disrupted their view).

Wonderland Sydney (formerly Australia's Wonderland) was built in the mid-80's by Kings Entertainment (of Kings Island fame). This company was owned by at this stage Taft Entertainment, who owned Hanna-Babera (hence all the KE parks having HB theming). They sold the company to Paramount in the early 90's. Paramount owned it until around 1998, who then sold it to Sunway, a Malaysian company, who renamed the park for the Sydney Olympics. It is still owned by Sunway Corp. The park was never owned by any Australian company. If you're going to blame anyone for letting the park fall into disrepair, blame Paramount, who didn't really care (after all, it's a park that gets less than half the attendance any of their other parks get, and the Australian dollar further lowers the income). They added Space Probe (7) to keep the park in competition with Luna Park, came out on top there, and didn't need to do anything more to win the Sydney market. Sunway have turned the park around amazingly. Though it definitely has a long way to go. Between my visit in 1999, and my next visit in 2002, the park turned from being a dirty poorly kept park that was bottom of my list, to a great park, that is now my favourite for overall quality in Australia. As for popularity, the park is certainly up there in attendance figures with the Gold Coast parks, and I can't see it being any less profitable then them. Now... the factory. My opinion is I'll believe it when I see it. If, if, Wonderland were to sell off some of their land to build a factory, why would they sell their main carpark, or any carparks. Wonderland have a huge amount of land. If they wanted to sell off land, they'd use excess land at the far ends of the block, not the middle, essentially in the middle of the theme park. They could be resurfacing the carpark (which does need doing), they could even be building the confirmed Business Centre. A factory is a pretty general term. What sort of factory? This is a residential area, I can't see too many neighbours letting something like this go ahead.

Maybe that comment needed some smilies or something around it - but it was intended as a joke. 8) By the way, you'd be really quite interested to hear to backgrounds of some of Warner Village's top guys (as I've heard it). Granted, they're probably the best in Australia at what they do, but you certainly wouldn't pick it based on what they were doing many years ago.

Well, our good friend King Neptune posted at westcoaster.net saying that Matrix is looking to be a walk-through attraction to replace Harry Potter. There could still be a chance for something more thrilling. I don't need the "Movie World is a family park" line, because as far as I'm aware, The Matrix is a very "thrilling" concept - it's the exact opposite of something like Harry Potter or Scooby Doo. Well, if it is the case that it's only the walk-through, I must applaud Movie World on taking what are easily the biggest sci-fi films of the past 20 years (no giant Star Wars fans among us I hope ), and utilising what is presumably pretty close to 100% exclusivity, to opening something even better than the "stunt" show we were all dying for - a Harry Potter for the big people. I'm not going to complain bitterly (that's of course assuming that I'm not doing that at the moment). I'm not even going to give my utterly perfect opinion on what they should have done. In the end, I could really care less. Just one thing's for sure - I'm not going to spend my $112 on a season pass, and probably about $20/month like I used to do (no wonder I'm barely scraping together the money for my US trip ). But let's just hope this is just a warmup to the big Matrix coaster that's coming in Summer to coincide with Revolutions.

There's still some verification etc., that needs to go on with the park before I can make the gallery officially available. But there's a treat (if you'll call it that) the faithful Forumers can have a sneak peak. We'll call it beta testing, won't we... http://oldsite.totalthrills.com/wnwgallery.php Take it for a cruise. Be sure to check out Whirlpool!

And won't that teach people to live in harmony with nature...

That's a very nice saving. It would be nice to see more people in the park over winter, and repeat regional guests are the way to go - they mightn't spend as much there, but the once-off fee is better than nothing.

You mentioned once that Sea World rents Pirates from Iwerks. Perhaps these "tough times" are limiting their entertainment budget (let's face it, it wasn't exactly bloated to start with), so they've bought a 3rd party video film, which would obviously be cheaper in more than one way (presumably it's 3D, not 4D with the special effects). But hang on... I'm not really buying all this "tough times" stuff anyway.

Just to complicate the matters, let's not forget that the S&S rides aren't drop rides - there's no 'dropping' involved - compressed air pulls them down and up using cable systems. So in actuality, it'd have to claim the tower ride record, which I'd imagine is currently held by some Observation tower type ride somewhere in the world. Then there's Stratosphere Tower's (which made a quick appearance in CSI on Tuesday) Big Shot, which would technically be highest (how's a man-made mountain any different from a man-made casino). Personally the idea of the 150+300ft ride sounds a bit more plausable than 450ft straight off. Not that the actual 400ft mark won't be broken by a tower ride some time in the future. As long as Intamin et al keep on introducing new concepts for their Tower Rides (gyro, floorless, standup, tilting...), then Dreamworld will be relatively safe for a number of years to come. But still, they should be aware that their records won't stay forever, and if they want to keep on top of the 'competition' (even if in Canada), they will have to bring us bigger and better things.

The Wet'n'Wild Gallery is now complete, and almost ready to go (just have to wait for various authorisation )! This completes the Queensland parks and reaffirms the fact that Total Thrills is the most comprehensive Australian coaster/thrill site. This will bring the total photograph count up to 333! I'm hoping for 500 by the end of this year, and many many more in years to come. Thanks everyone for your support! The conversations are getting better, as well as the general activity around here, which will lead to great things over time.

That's a really good pick up there joz! I would try and defend Dreamworld, but their use of the word "fully" kinda shoots them in the foot. Well, seeing as Dreamworld defines "fully" as "mostly", then I guess Movie World's also been "fully" operational this whole time.

Good to hear that they're back to normal. The theme parks here run much the same as the four major banks in Australia. They compete, but they do all get down "in secret", and get standardised entrance prices, and know that if one park of the three upped ticket price, they'd in the long run hurt themselves, for a little added profit in the short run. The Village Warner studios have seen many different production companies through their doors, and that can be clearly seen at: http://www.movieworldstudios.com.au/previo...ous_clients.htm. I guess it all bubbles down to costs - its a well known fact that you'll get world-class facilities for a fraction of the cost of filming in Hollywood etc. There was a clear-cut reason that The Matrix was shot at Fox Studios, despite being a Warner Bros and Village Roadshow production, but I can't for the life of me remember it. Something to do with the size and cityscape of Sydney I think.

Yeah - certainly not a computer freeze that would cause the ride to hit 180mph. Maybe a sensor issue, or a glitch in the system etc., but I assume that's what you meant. 99.9% of the time, a glitch will result in the ride stalling, especially with the timing required with the LSMs, and a slow magnetic pull back into the station (or if they've really stuffed the system, a winch does this job), but there's always that incredibly minute chance that something could go wrong in the right way, causing an over-fire. Rare, but I'll accept that it could happen (as did Intamin, hence installing the various backup safety systems).

This should help you (and anyone else): http://www.totalthrills.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=168. It's not the most detailed, but if you follow it, you should get somewhere.

I've had a few questions, so I've put together a short tutorial on how to attach files to your posts. Of course, using the Attachment system. Please note, for it to come up as an image, it must have one of the following extensions. GIF, JPG, JPEG, TIF, PNG or TGA. You can also upload just about any other file kind you've got (including music/sounds and videos). It's a pretty simple two step process. You can repeat the steps to attach up to 10 files. Once you've added the files, finish typing the message, or just click "Submit". If you go back and edit your post, you can add/remove/modify attachments.

I'm guessing it's a bit of both. It is quite common for people to mistake Dreamworld as one of the "Worlds", so it'd be easy to think that Dreamworld was under the same scheme. And when your competitor gets a front page mention (and I don't think any news is good news), this is certainly a good way to make your park immediately look like the better option to potential guests.

Brett Ratner (director of Silence of the Lambs "prequel" Red Dragon, Rush Hour 1&2&3) was working on a new Superman movie, with Anthony Hopkins (Red Dragon, Silence, Hannibal, Bad Company...) being paid a whopping $30mil to play Jor-El, Superman's Krypton father. However, this project was killed by Ratner, because he was finding it difficult to find someone capable for the lead role. As far as I know, until they find another directer with a little more patience (Brett Ratner is a younger guy who obliterated the great novel that was Red Dragon with his fairly dry and shallow rendition of it), the project is on hold. Wolfgang Petersen (Perfect Storm) has been said to be taking it on board, but all I care is that they get Hopkins for the supporting role. I'm probably going into a little too much detail for most of your likings, but that's life. I doubt Movie World have looked at this new film in much details, so I'd cross it off your list of potential new rides (though it'd make sense once the film comes closer) for the time being. They could always be referring to the Special FX show, which includes the Superman blue screen bit.

The speed you mention, which I believe was with people (officials) on board during testing, was 107mph. That's about 172km/hr. I'd expect both this speed, and 180, would be screaming into the brakes at the top, which I'm told is an interesting experience, as the brakes actually hold you for a short amount of time, a la Impulses.

Just a point: Cyclone's train is mechanically and structurally the same as the old style, the only thing different is the fibreglass shell. You'll also find that the paint doesn't affect roughness at all. You'll find that the new paint will usually be gone within weeks. If you want a smooth ride, new wheels and grease are the answer. They more than likely won't be bothering with anti-rust paint in an on-the-fly repainting like we're talking about here. This will be for aesthetical reasons, but even now, it certainly looks a lot nicer than Tower of Terror.

It's been confirmed as a Premier ride because of track that was spotted and photographed several months back. Whether or not that means it'll be launched isn't known, but one thing for sure is it'll be an amazing ride.

One of those Setpoint Swing Things would suit the park a lot better. It's an idea that has been done at several water parks around the world. They'd fit a water park a lot better, because of the crowd interaction and more fun feeling to them. An actual water coaster (Mack or Premier) would on the other hand need its own separate area, and I don't think is really the sort of 'togs wearing" ride like a Swing Thing is. Overall, something other than slides would be great (and I don't mean spas), and certainly a welcome change for guests.

I'm all too well aware of the fact that Movie World is a family park above all. Never once did I say I wanted a coaster, or a thrill ride. My argument against a show is solely to do with crowd management. My opinion is that a show wouldn't be done as well as it once could have been. Movie World is a very small park, with a pretty undesirable layout. It doesn't handle even small crowds terribly efficiently and easily. You've all seen Main Street after Police Academy, where it is impossible to get anywhere. During the Bat Spectable, it's near impossible to get out of the Southern end of the park. Adding more shows will reduce the numbers of people around the park for the duration, but look out when the show ends, particularly if they take the (pretty well thought out) Sea World approach, to synchronise shows (which is fine for Sea World, where its bigger, and more ways to get from A to B, but it mightn't work as well at Movie World). Really, it is my thought, and always has been, that whatever comes for Matrix (or anything in the future), should involve a major expansion, creating a loop at least around Maverick and Scooby Doo into Lethal Weapon. That'll let the crowds at least flow smoothly in a circle. Once this recurring problem has been solved, and I've not even talked about new (high capacity) rides, then we can put something in the Maverick building. Warner Bros. Movie World may have once been considered to be in competition with Universal Studios Hollywood, but I'd think that the Japanese Universal and Disney parks have pretty well fixed it. And if we're going to compare these two studio parks, then let's give it a go: Wild West Falls - Jurassic Park Batman the Ride - Back to the Future Special FX Tour - Special Effects Stages (Universal uses films people might know) Studio Tour (well and truly gone, but no loss) - Studio Tour (it's kept modern) Marvin the Martian - Shrek 4D, Terminator 3D Superstars (gone) - Spiderman Rocks! (though one, I know) Gremlins (gone), Looney Tunes River Ride- Backdraft Looney Tunes Revue - Animal Planet Live Looney Tunes Village - Nickelodeon Blast Zone Harry Potter - Mummy Returns: Chamber of Doom Police Academy Stunt Show - Water World Bold is the winner (of course, all my uneducated opinion), if there's no bold, there's no winner. Universal seems to come out on top to me. All that's left at Movie World is Lethal Weapon and Scooby-Doo. Two fantastic rides, but let's face it, bigger budgets would blow these two out of the water. Universal Hollywood also looks at least double or triple the size as well, so it might be possible to movie around there.

Well, if you've got pictures and you're willing to share , then feel free to use the Album, or upload them into the forums.

I'll accept SARS as a decent enough reason, but the war is a pretty weak excuse that many many industries are trying to use. Let's face it - it doesn't affect us, nor would it affect our theme parks. Also, Village Roadshow are again withholding dividend payments to try and let themselves cope. Some of the major shareholders aren't terribly happy either. The company isn't faring too well at the moment. You're quite right, domestic guests won't spend much, especially when they can get the same things for usually half the price elsewhere. Maybe, just maybe, if promotions were started where people could get in with discounts, and they had vouchers for cheaper food and/or merchandise, then they might be doing a lot better than they are. I guess it seems that getting their Outback Adventure up and running is highest priority for them. Which'll do a whole lot of good with no international market at the moment.