Richard

Did you ever ride in its heyday when staff were uniformed, in character and actually sold the experience? Your glowing descriptions of Looney Tunes and Batman Adventure are consistent with those rides at their peak (though BATR2 was always a rambling mess), but your unembellished description of Bermuda Triangle reads like the budget cuts version. Interesting tidbit while on Bermuda Triangle: the story goes that when Disney/Universal execs were out for an IAAPA convention at the Gold Coast years back, they were amazed at the quality of the ride, and gobsmacked when they found out the price it was built for.

The point @pushbutton made was clearly that Bermuda Triangle's pre-show contributed to the attraction as a whole better than the others. It wasn't the most sophisticated, but I'd absolutely agree.

@AlexB, you can disagree without writing a thesis about just how wrong you think someone is. For what it's worth, Bermuda Triangle had an effective pre-show that set into motion a cohesive plot that reveals itself steadily throughout the ride. The ride was corny, camp and ridiculous, but it was a better example of theme park storytelling than any other ride in Australian history, including those that you mentioned.

Regardless of your stance on thrill rides and their dominance at Movie World, one thing you can't say is that they're not high capacity installations. To their credit, Movie World has always installed high capacity roller coasters. The current issue is that they're not run to anywhere near the capacity that they should, due largely to really dumb operating procedures. Justice League was a decent attempt at a family-friendly dark ride. It's low capacity and also not particularly good so really not serving the same purpose that its predecessor or rides like Looney Tones or Gremlins did in that they were all (in their heyday) interesting rides with really high capacity. It's also worth mentioning that aside from Superman Escape replacing the Special Effects show and to a much lesser extent Scooby-Doo Spooky Coaster replacing Gremlins (SDSC being a thrilling family coaster, Gremlins being a horrific dark ride) no thrill ride at Movie World has replaced a family ride. The question is really whether having the extended pre-shows on rides and padding them out from 2-3 minutes to 10-15 minutes actually has a tangible effect on the park's ability to absorb people without feeling overwhelmed. My personal view on pre-shows is that they serve to make the last part of the queue a bit more enjoyable. They don't add time to the attraction so much as they take time away from the queue. A good feature to include if done well (even Disney and Universal struggle to make them compelling) but it's not that there's 50 more people on the ride because of pre-shows, there's just 50 less in the queue. For the record, I'd love to see one or two high capacity, compelling family rides on the roster at Movie World.

Easy mistake to make...

Looking at the three Intamin coasters on the Gold Coast with functionally identical systems: Superman Escape, Motocoaster and Jet Rescue. None of these need two stations with only one train obviously. It's just wasted time, and all of these rides could almost certainly be reprogrammed to use only one station with only one train, which is the case the majority of the year. There's a good case for two stations on Motocoaster and Jet Rescue with two trains given the short ride time, but the longer cycle of Superman could certainly be handled with one station and industry standard dispatch times for an overall higher capacity and lower staffing requirement than with two stations.

So much of the current capacity woes at VRTP stem from ridiculous policies rather than any discernible changes in staffing levels. Loading Batwing 4-at-a-time instead of 16-at-once for instance is a policy ostensibly aimed at keeping groups seated together but causes the ride to take what I'd consider an unacceptable capacity hit. It's a bit like the shouts for single/two riders. It works if it can be done in say 10 seconds. But beyond that the shouts get annoying and the delays become counter-productive. @skeetafly - our capacity stats all come from manufacturer/park/official figures. The ride's original manufacturer specifications suggest an overall 45 second load/unload and dispatches at 20 second intervals. Most of these figures can be taken with a grain of salt unless the park is Cedar Point.

I saw that and had a good read of those articles and edited it on the page. 1983 as mentioned in the newspaper clipping sounds good. But then I went back to an email from Anthea Hammon dated back to 2004 who said "actual construction began in 1984" -- it's perhaps likely that 1982-83 refers to fabrication/testing etc. while 1984 was when work started on the ride we see as Orphan Rocker?

I think there's enough omissions in the theming -- like bright red track in the subway section that could have been black or grey -- that losing the "reveal" wouldn't be a big loss to me if it had an impact on ride efficiency. While I think the ride would benefit from a more open style of station, I think there are operational issues that could be fixed that would have a much bigger impact. The real killer for this ride's capacity is firstly the pointless unload station and the amount of time it wastes during one-train operation most of the year. Other than that, the sheer amount of time that trains sit idle in either station for the whole process is ridiculous. Disney, Six Flags, Universal, Cedar Fair etc. would never devise operations procedures that have so much dead time, yet this is one of those things where our parks know better. Seeing those figures on staffing levels for the ride over here are enlightening. Six staff on a ride that I doubt ever tops about 600pph (three-minute dispatches during peak trading period seems about right)?!?

Yeah @reanimated35 a few more typos than usual in these last few... sorry about that! The original caption for the SpongeBob coaster if you're interested. We do actually try not to be too critical... I guess there's something about feeling the seat belt slowly soak through your clothes with the trapped moisture of the 50-odd other cycles before you that day. You then hope that they at least fully extend the seat belts each night for drying, but wonder just how dry they'd ever be able to get in a building full of water anyway. It never struck me as the most healthy aspect of Storm Coaster.

As for how much seating was added when Hollywood Stunt Driver replaced it: http://www.parkz.com.au/photo/2896-Hollywood_Stunt_Driver_cars.html

Mike won the biggest award in the theme park industry... and was an incredible entertainer. Why Movie World didn't bend over backwards to find the guy a new role in the park after the end of Police Academy Stunt Show is just insane. I believe there were redundancies involved when Police Academy ended so it may well have been a financial decision, but the fact that he went over to Dreamworld suggests he definitely had an interest in staying in the industry. The FOH was in the 'Blue Oyster' building at the far right of the set: http://www.parkz.com.au/photo/2436-The_Set.html. I would hazard a guess that this spot gave them better visuals for the various cues in the show. @AlexB, we only watermark the larger versions of the photos. That one can be seen here.

The revolving door of CEOs with no industry experience probably doesn't help. But if the current team understand the basic idea of offering a complete package as they've been demonstrating this summer, they might just have a shot at commissioning a thrill ride that neither spins nor is geared towards 10 year-olds. The update refers to top-40 more as a genre than as a reflection of current charts.

Given the media took "No comment" to mean "We are 100% building a Disney park in Australia", it's not surprising that they're trying this angle now. Neither Disney or Universal -- who likely have a very long-term licensing agreement for Jurassic Park theme park attractions regardless of who is a part-owner of Legendary -- are going to be in any hurry to sell any rights to a company to build an Australian park that would be heavily marketed to a Chinese audience in direct competition with their own strategies in Asia.

I wouldn't doubt that there are environmental, health and safety concerns that pose challenges, but keep in mind that this is a global industry that develops safe and lasting coating products and methods for applications far more demanding than roller coasters: bridges, ships and aircraft to name a few.

It's definitely not in pristine condition by any means... but has certainly held up better than just about every factory painted ride built here since its relocation to Dreamworld. Track and supports were fully repainted in 2001 -- the track is a brighter shade of yellow. For what it's worth, Corkscrew at Sea World is an example of a ride kept immaculate with regular touch-ups and many complete repaints throughout its life. Granted it was in the ride's best interests given the exposure to sea air, but it is certainly an achievable process that is a regular occurrence on steel coasters around the world. A once-in-15-years repaint isn't quite the impossible feat or unnecessary burden that some have suggested.

Hot Wheels sets seem to generally feature orange track and dark blue supports. I suspect it was debated, with yellow and light blue is basically the same thing winning the argument for a relatively low-budget project at a park that has historically favoured economy over aesthetic. The ride's paint has held up remarkably well over 15 years; you only need to look at how Superman Escape had faded or how Thunderbolt was looking after a similar length of time between paint jobs. The real puzzling thing is that though it might not have needed the work done right now, but moving inevitable maintenance work forward a few years could have really made the transition far more noteworth, and the new theme far more recognisable.

That to me is all that it is really -- I should have clarified that I meant the blogs/FB pages that share stuff without attribution. Just a link or some kind of acknowledgement to the original source. It's not just polite, but it also makes the article read better and lends credibility. I know I'd rather read articles/blogs that show some degree of depth to their reporting.

No question... it's one thing that every little blog and Facebook page seems to get the scoop just after it's posted here, but it always amuses me how much the Gold Coast Bulletin like to "borrow". In the past they've lifted entire posts and articles verbatim from here without attribution.

Please let's not get into this again. As I've said before what's done is done. Individuals took certain foolish actions and the park responded accordingly. Everyone here has expressed the blatantly obvious about the stupidity of these actions. It's done.

I've eaten enough theme park meals that run the gamut from average to horrible that I don't see theme park food as some holy institution that should be protected. Many parks both here and overseas should honestly be ashamed of the food they dish up, the service they provide and the prices they charge for it. I don't particular advocate external brands in parks but it's worked in the past for Disney of all companies so I wouldn't outright dismiss it. This idea of external operators and rent share arrangements is complicating the matter too much. If they pursued this they'd purchase franchises outright and integrate it into their operations and manage staffing etc. accordingly. Newer franchisors like a Guzman y Gomez would probably let the park dictate the terms more than say McDonalds, but one thing you'd be pretty certain of is that the park would set their own pricing. You only need to see what franchised food outlets in airports, stadiums etc. charge to know that.

With most modern coasters it's rider noise (screams etc.) that carries much more than actual mechanical/structural noise. Ride noise can be almost completely dampened, even on particularly loud track styles like B&M. Rider noise would be the main limiting factor with utilizing the area behind Wild West Falls.

Certainly not saying that big stuff doesn't happen on the Gold Coast. But I'd definitely say that the vast majority of plans announced at this early, exploratory stage don't happen.

Wet'n'Wild basically doubled in size as a result of WhiteWater World joining the party. While our parks are currently in a race to the bottom to see who can offer the most bare-bones experience for the lowest price, I have no doubts that any serious competition would be met with a fairly serious attempt to maintain market share. For one thing, I wouldn't expect a $2.5 billion investment anytime soon. Assume 10% return, that's $250 million a year. At 40% operating margin that's $625 million revenue. At $100 per capita spend (about twice what our parks currently get) that's 6 million visitors a year. A budget of half that would be a gamble. Invariably these big ambitious "theme park" plans turn out to be mostly hotels, casinos, conference facilities, shops and golf courses. And typically don't happen...

There's something inherently puzzling about choosing to theme a thrill ride to a range of toys whose target market barely reach the height requirement.