Richard

The coaster was sold to an overseas buyer for the pitifully low price of $140,000 during the auctioning off of Sega World. No idea exactly where it is now though.

The Arrow 4D rumour came from an alleged comment from the park, that the new ride (and we're talking back a few years now) would be the second of its kind in the world. At that stage, it was either an Arrow 4D, or an Intamin rocket coaster. The rumour then turned into the second of its kind in Australia, and everyone was thinking an Inverted. Obviously, the cost of a trip depends and length and size of the trip. I'm headed over at the end of this year, and I've been told US$100/day per person (on top of plane tickets) will give you the bare essentials (accomodation, food, basic entertainment). If you did things the "proper" way, and booked and scheduled everything through a travel agent, you'd get better value for your money obviously.

Well, the best coaster in Australia is the undiscovered gem that is the Merimbula's Magic Mountain Toboggan. No ride has boiled up the adrenalin like this one did to me. You have not lived until you've tried this thing brakeless. And in a voice slightly more irritating than my normal voice, I'd have to ask you to keep the heat down in here... unless someone's got some particularly juicy comebacks.

Well, I last rode Demon in July last year. It clearly had recently had a wheel replacement, judging by the newness of the wheels. And in all honesty (having ridden every east coast coaster within the last year), it was the smoothest looper in Australia (I would say coaster, but nothing will ever track as nicely as Eureka Mountain at Dreamworld). There was no headbanging at all, no vibrating and no other annoyances. The ride is certainly capable of being smooth, and I can vouch for that. The ride did come from Expo 88. When they decided to close 'Space Park' (it was originally meant to be permanent, but abysmal attendance proved otherwise), the ride was then originally supposed to go to Luna Park in Melbourne, to replace the Big Dipper (this is how the Tourism Minister managed to get the permission to knock down a protected ride), but some complications left Luna Park with a Galaxi, and the ride went to Wonderland Sydney. You can see some of the white paint under the worn sections of track (look just outside of the station in the curve up to the boomerang).

I don't work at any of the parks (thankfully ), so that allows me to give a good opinion of the place. Warner Bros. Movie World here might look shiny on the exterior, but to be honest, I think the park is badly designed and disorganised. I'm not sure about the European counterparts, but on the world scale, our park shouldn't be very highly rated. For every good employee, you've got two pretty ordinary/poor ones. Queues to buy tickets (or in my case, simply flash a card) often extend to close to an hour. Once you're in the park, you'll get people running rides who'd rather (and indeed do 90% of the time) be chatting with the others working there. I don't want to single out Movie World, but it quite honestly this is the only park in the chain that is anywhere near this bad (as joz will tell you, Sea World's staff are relatively perfect ). And as for the ownership of Warner Bros. Movie World Madrid. I've seen figures where 11% is owned by Six Flags and 6% by Time Warner. I've also seen 20% Time Warner, and 80% by Government, banks, local investors etc. Then again, the park's price has been stated as everywhere between US$380 and $430mil. Both Six Flags and Waner Bros. (Time Warner) do have a stake in the park, but the percentages seem to be all over the place. Six Flags does hold managing rights to the park (aparently though, they don't accept SF seasons passes, for anyone going that way).

Actually, if I'm not mistaken, FFS was taken down long ago. It can be seen over the hill behind Demon etc., with grass slowly engulfing it. I believe the park said it was gone for good, and I don't think it'd be worth much to anyone.

I'm lead to believe that the name that Village Warner are giving to the new Outback park is "Aussie World". Not the most original, but what have we come to expect from most Australian parks.

Wonderland is almost too cold to visit during the day many winter days, let alone once the sun has set. Right now its 6:15, mid-Autumn in Brisbane... and it's freezing, I wouldn't really want to be at any park right now.

I'll slightly repunctuate your first sentence for you... They've pleasant-ed it up a lot, but I wouldn't really call it theming (is a garden with gnomes in it fantasy themed?), unless your definition of theming is well... garden gnomes. Angry Beavers gets my vote. Thunder Dolphin is a very cool name (don't you just love Japanese culture, and translations ). I see nothing wrong with "Scream!", and Top Thrill Dragster just sucks too much to bother. As for the Z*nga's that seem to be the current craze. I like it (the Swahili names really do it for me too I guess).

I'd say without a doubt that Beastie was/is the best wooden coaster in Australia. Bush Beast was a pretty forceless ride that's overly rough. Scenic Railway is a boring slow ride that has been allowed to completely deteriorate into a painful ride. As far as I know, Beastie's closure was as a result of the size reduction and nothing more (it was at the furthest corner of the park). The park did look into relocating the ride elsewhere. Just because it hasn't moved yet, doesn't mean it's not going to. The ride could sit there for a good few years more with next to no maintenance (I see no reason to believe that they're not still maintaining it), and still be easily opened/relocated. There's still hope, but as has been said a fair bit around here (particularly recently), Wonderland has been jerking everyone around for the past few years, and you really can't know what to expect.

I would think having it in the actual coaster section wouldn't be too effective - a flash going off every 20 seconds would ruin the effects considerably. I was pretty amazed at the fact that they had no shop for Scooby-Doo, or any overpriced merchandise for the ride when it first opened. Any idea as to where the shop is going specifically? As you walk out the exit, to the left is the maintenance area, which has a transfer track straight down the middle, and obviously to the right is the "Spooky Castle Courtyard". the only easy way I can see would be to somehow put an extension on the building (tackiness alert!).

How large are the files, and what are the dimensions of them? You can upload into the forums anything that is under 2MB in size with any dimensions. The Gallery takes anything under 500KB and smaller dimensions than 1042x768. If you're having troubles, you could send them to me, and I'd upload them for you.

It hasn't been too bad, but there's no real need to bash the guy - whether facts are right or wrong. We can have a nice friendly debate without getting too personal. Again, it has been pretty amicable so far, and I think it can be kept that way. I don't really want to close any topics here, because that's not what I set out to do when I opened this site. There's plenty of other places I can be a Nazi. Think of this as a friendly piece of advice. 8)

They'd be pushing for any real space with the current lineup. My honest opinion is they should remove Metropolis, and replace it with a wooden coaster, similar in style to the Big Dipper which was of course what Metroplis replaced. They were supposed to get a looping Pinfari coaster, shipping delays was their excuse when the "new" Luna Park opened in 2001 and nothing more has happened. The park as a whole is just a big mess and when you've got a company running a park who think that they know what they're doing, but in reality are ruining the place more and more, you've got a pretty bad situation that'll be hard to ever repair.

... and for the better I think we'd all agree! "Amp it up!" That then instantly crosses out the idea that current construction is for a show, which I hope means ride.

A Reputable Australian Site™ said that Dreamworld has now been officially recognised by Guinness for Giant Drop's achievements. Dreamworld's Giant Drop is indeed the tallest in the world - regardless of where you measure from, or if you measure with a fictitious system where you randomly assign digits to each arbitrarily selected length and add all them all, and every forth is halved (suddenly it isn't sounding so fictitious). No idea as to when it will be made official. I'd imagine it didn't make the 2003 edition as they always seem to go on sale before the Christmas before (never figured out why ). I'd expect it to be in print for the 2004 edition, but no idea when it'll be on their website. Needless to say, I've never been a great fan or admirer of the Guinness system. Welcome along Alex - good to see a non-Aussie (or expat?) around here.

Not trying to cut in on Wayne or anything here , but feel free to upload any photos here. There's either the Construction gallery in the Album, or you could upload them to a thread here (up to 10 images per post ). Let's just hope that we're looking at a new ride - if they were doing a Spider-Man show, I'd imagine it'd go in the Action Man area (what are they doing with that these days anyway?).

Whirlpool, I must admit, was a pretty good attraction, as far as diversity goes. It is quite nice during the day if you get the chills to slip into the spas for a few minutes to warm down. Gas heaters scattered around the area also meant that when you got out, you didn't immediately freeze - you could gently adjust again. They certainly prove to be popular. Throughout the day, they were consistently used. There seems to always be plenty of room, but I think they'd be pushing it if they were to try and squeeze in the 20 people per tub that they've based the capacity on. Having said that, I certainly can't wait until the real Whrilpool opens, hopefully this coming summer.

I was a bit bored this morning, so I decided to add a feature that allows you to upload your own files to Total Thrills. It may make the Album a bit redundant, because you can upload multiple pictures into a single thread, but I'm sure the Album will still havea valid purpose. Enjoy it. You can upload files up to 2MB in size, and anything from images to movies to mp3s and so on. -rich

Yeah, I thought it was me too. I later suspected that it was something wrong with the server. Then when setting up new forums (www.the-bens.net), I found that it worked no problems, so I came back and had a closer look at this site... long story short, I fixed it .

That idea of Scenic World getting some sort of 'big ride' sounds intriguing (perhaps even a little absurd, but you have to dream ). The park is run very well it seems. Around 10 years ago, you saw a tired old tourist trap which was just an interesting side-trip. Go there today, and you'll see a well presented, neat place with a nice restaurant etc. It is by no means a theme park or amusement park, rather a tourist destination. The fact that it has 'world' in the name doesn't make it a theme park. They haven't opened Orphan Rocker yet. It's sitting there, dormant for the best part of a decade. Part of me says that they should finish what they've already started before embarking on something equally as challenging. Yet I also feel that you learn from their mistakes. Had they have gone with an reputable company (which at the time would probably have been Arrow), the ride would have been running 10 years ago. I think (or know) that if they were to embark on something else, they'd do it properly. Their most recent attraction, Sceniscender, was built by Swiss company Doppelmayr (as the ski season comes closer, you'll probably hear more about them from me), and maybe they've seen what else you can get from Switzerland (and I don't only mean alpenhorns).

As of just right now, the Login and "Keep me logged in" all work as they should. Now, it actually does keep you logged in. I know it was getting to annoy me. (the problem, for those that care, was an "http://" where there shouldn't have been one in the config) -rich

Very good to hear. They've really come out of nowhere with this latest news. I mean, there was speculation and rumours, but most of the talk ended a few weeks ago with the news that they'd cancelled all their current projects. Let's see this Shark Bay go ahead! I'm quite eager to see the Great White that they've had lined up all this time. Flea, be sure to post some of your photos in the album.

Whirlpool Springs is officially launching this coming Saturday. Having experienced it this past summer, I can say that I hope that it is a bit better heated in winter than summer. They say it'll be 36º, which I suppose will probably be well and truly double the temperature on some cold winter days. I'm sure this will serve to attract many people to Wet'n'Wild during winter, particularly with the way it is being marketed at this stage (just look at their main page).

Wow - that's certainly a promising sight. It is a bit early to start getting really exciting, but it is time that Wonderland got something new, and the park's officials seem to be well aware of that. We'll all need to cross our fingers and hope.