Richard

Nothing advertises a water park better than having people stand for excessive amounts of time in a queue that overlooks it. Of course the beauty is the slower they run the ride, the longer people have to (perhaps "get to" is the phrasing they'd use) look at the park. With little hyperbole Cyclone in its original state can't have been far off from having the most poorly designed ride queue at any theme park anywhere. Who'd have thought they could actually make it worse?

Of course they're going to try and get as much as they can out of the Government, as any large business does. In all likelihood the numbers add up such that they'll be able to proceed with minimal financial assistance, and that anything they can get from the Government only serves as an added incentive to go ahead. I really must say I don't agree with the way that big business uses its weight and influence over governments for their own financial benefit, but it seems to be the way things go these days. On the unrelated matter of Speed Racer, I read somewhere recently that it had an $80 million marketing and advertising budget for merchandising alone, so I wouldn't be holding my breath for any profits to come out of it. I thought that parts two and three of The Matrix were proof enough that the Wachowski Brothers can't make a decent film to save themselves...

The pump on Motocoaster is a smaller one than most previous hydraulic coasters as it is designed to run constantly rather than intermittently. By simply using a larger pump and then having enough capacity in the accumulator tanks will satisfy the demand for multiple launches. In this sense it's really like your average household air compressor -- just a matter of having a motor and tank large enough to handle the amount of air required. As far as leakages, of course it'd be an issue where the more piping there is, the greater the risk, but it'd be no different from if it were a longer single launch for instance. I'd think a booster launch is one of the better benefits of this technology over the cable launches, which in turn has been one of the advantages of LIM/LSM to date. Whether this is how they go is another matter, but from a technical standpoint there's no reason it's not possible.

No doubling up on any of the launch equipment is needed. The great thing about the latest incarnation of Intamin's hydraulic launch technology is that it's not a centralised system; rather it features centralised pump and accumulator but from there the hydraulic fluids can be pumped more or less anywhere for the actual launch with little else needed by way of infrastructure. It's just a matter of having a system that meets the demand of the two launches.

FHM contacted me asking if I wanted to contribute to the article, and that was pretty much it.

You can guarantee that the closure is indeed related to upcoming construction. Haven't you ever been to Sea World? The train most definitely does run on rails... the map even shows this. The park is basically broken down the middle by the train line, which runs around the perimeter of the back half of the park. It runs along the eastern edge of the park, behind Corkscrew and I'd expect that the construction site access point will be along here, with trucks etc. coming straight off Sea World Drive onto the site.

As a general rule, if it's on one of our database pages and doesn't include phrasing like "at this stage..." or "rumoured to be" etc. then you can be pretty sure it's true.

That's really my point -- most of the new stuff ProSlide is coming out with these days is just variations and amalgamations of their existing concepts. Nothing wrong with that as such, but these two water parks are fairly unique given how close the competition is, so for either to get ahead of the other, it'll take something alternative, which is where other manufacturers like Waterfun can hopefully step in. Unfortunately I don't think there's much pressure on the industry because there aren't too many examples of competition like WWW/WnW out there in need of alternative manufacturers for novel attraction styles and ProSlide well and truly has the market cornered. Obviously there's still lots on offer from ProSlide that would be new to Australia and no question they've most definitely earned their popularity as a ride manufacturer, but the majority of it has that feeling of familiarity, especially in the context of the two Gold Coast parks. If it were up to me, Wet'n'Wild would be decked out with basically the entire ProSlide range, because capacity-wise the park needs it, but I think increasingly we'll see the park really competing with alternatives to ProSlide, like SurfRider or evidently this Sidewinder.

Promising to say the least. With ProSlide's range more or less been and done it's good that they're expanding into new territory rather than trying to one-up WhiteWater World's versions of the same slides. I must say I've always been intrigued by the Sidewinder since it first came out several years ago, but with that said there's a handful of other attractions I'd pick ahead of it because it does just seem like a smaller and less impressive version of the Tornado.

But then all a developer has to do is take the Council to court over such double standards and the restrictions will invariably be overturned. My feeling, as discussed in topics about Sea World Eye in the past, is that yes I'd love to see such taller attractions permanent fixtures at the park to make the most of its incredibly unique location, but not at the cost of one of the few remaining unspoilt areas on the Gold Coast. As for Ron Clarke being an anti-development mayor; if there's one thing the Gold Coast needs, it's someone to step in and stop the endless irresponsible development that the city is seeing. Fact is infrastructure is not keeping up. There is nothing wrong with progress, but what the Gold Coast has seen in recent years is not progress, it's rapid expansion with little concern for the ongoing repercussions of it. I can't understand why anyone would argue that there's something wrong with residents wanting to keep one final vestige of oceanside land in the area free from highrises.

My thoughts are that the integrated branding needs to be rethought substantially. The whole website feels way too cluttered and in that sense takes away from their biggest asset -- the Gold Coast theme parks. Their MyFun branding is a huge asset that they'd be crazy not to use for their new aquisitions but they've expanded a website that was designed for their six Gold Coast properties to include all their others. In regards to annual passes, it seems like such an obvious opportunity if their three-park pass was expanded to be a company-wide annual pass for the same price. Of course, now that they've got some national and international properties, it's a very easy way to boost the value of the passes with very little in the way of added costs. The only reason that Six Flags etc. are able to offer such seemingly generous annual passes is because the buyer in all likelihood would typically only visit a handful of other attractions at the most. On top of this, buyers of such passes at their other locations -- e.g. a family in Sydney buying them at the Aquarium because they are planning a Gold Coast trip in six months -- gives WVTP an immediate edge by securing their purchase long before their competition is able to have any influence.

The user's content page is slowly on its way. Hopefully I'll get some time in the near future to sit down and get it finished off. I was thinking the exact same thing about ride profiles the other day. I'll be making it so that it appears in the list, much like company/resort boxes on park profiles.

That 'rather pointless tunnel' was to shelter the skid brakes, which lose effectiveness when wet. We've got a whole heap of photos of the ride if you've not already looked: http://www.parkz.com.au/photos/AU/Gold_Coa...46-Thunderbolt/ All in all it was a pretty miserable ride. Forget trying to figure out what was wrong with it; you'll have a hard time finding anything that was right with it.

All other aspects of the ride aside, the single biggest problem with Motocoaster is its restraint system that is uncomfortable and leads to a dismal capacity. The family vs. thrill ride thing has been done to death, but at the end of the day I couldn't care less who they market it to because if it's a pain to queue for and a pain to ride, then it's of no interest to me.

Rest assured neither served any meaningful purpose to either attractions. Lethal Weapon's was just a car chase scene from one of the Lethal Weapon films. Not sure which film exactly but Mel Gibson was well mulleted, though that hardly narrows it down. In true 80s/90s action film fashion, the picture was so dark that, coupled with the projection quality and ambient light, there literally wasn't a whole lot to see. Wild West Falls' was a montage of Warner Bros. westerns. Perhaps ironically for a film about movies at a park called Movie World, it contained only still photos. It featured an ambiguous narration ("You're looking at a place that can be any place. East or west of the mighty Mississippi, north or south of the whole new continent..."), which served no purpose to tie the film in with the ride. It's been Dodge City, Cheyenne and a hundred other places...") which made no attempt to tie the film in with the ride. I'd imagine that this film was originally produced for the Warner Bros. studio tour in Burbank, California because it makes no sense that they'd intentionally produce something as irrelevant as this for an $18 million ride. Given that for a long period these were the only two major rides in the park, you'd typically ride both many times, so they quickly became incredibly irritating. I'm all for meaningful pre-ride films which contribute something to the storyline of the ride (e.g. Bermuda Triangle), but these two were nothing short of pointless. Be thankful that they're gone.

Most would attribute that to Disney's 'dark period' of cost cutting and mismanagement through the 1990s and early 2000s under the helm of Michael Eisner. A number of things at Disney went somewhat pear-shaped (by Disney standards) but it appears that the 50th anniversary celebrations were a turnaround in many ways for the park, company and managerial environment. So that then begs the question, is this Dreamworld's dark period? And perhaps more importantly, is there light at the end of the tunnel? As for Eureka Mountain, just about every possible conceivable situation has been discussed to death on the prior pages of this topic. I've got nothing more to add that hasn't been said countless times already.

Tony I essentially agreed with what you were saying; just expanding on the main aspects that I'm "cautiously optimistic" of. Yeah don't get me wrong; I'm not saying that spending money on a show can't improve its quality. Fact is to produce a 'blockbuster' show significant funds do need to be injected. There's no two ways around that. I mean they're spending around $7 million on 'Hollywood Stuntdriver' so evidently their goals and expectations are for a high quality production. As it stands, Police Academy was without a doubt one of the best theme park shows out there. Overlooking the dated/simplistic set, from a pure entertainment perspective it rivals any big budget show from Universal or Disney that I've experienced. It will be very difficult for this new show to live up to its predecessor, even with all the money in the world, which really was my initial point.

I must say I don't know how to feel being told I make no sense by someone who at one point in time on this site engaged in heated arguments with himself logged into two accounts at a time. You seem to have completely missed my point and gone off on your own tangent. But in this sense competition really only matters in that it creates an environment where creating successful attractions is more vital. Outdoing the competition is in the sense of the park capturing a percentage of the market from competitors; not "one-upping" them on a specific attraction which you'll note our parks almost never use as a competitive tactic. Note that 'attractions' is used in the sense that it refers to anything at a theme park, be it a roller coaster, family ride, show etc. Shows are immeasurably harder to pull off successfully than a ride. You need not look any further than the pure number of shows that have been axed at Movie World over the years to see that it's in no way the same situation as when building rides. Most rides are built by companies who specialise in this task and through their expertise can deliver a product that meets expectations. Unfortunately there are so many more variables at play with a live production that there's no such thing as a turnkey show which generally leads to them being developed in-house by people, though often talented at what they do (i.e. running a theme park), don't typically have the skill set required to produce the sort of entertaining show most park-goers expect. Even seasoned industry veterans can and do miss the mark because of the nuances of the average 20 minute theme park show, coupled with necessary budgetary, talent, etc. constraints.

I'd very much hope that is the case, but unfortunately increased competition can't do much for a poor script. This isn't the sort of attraction that they can simply throw more money at to outdo the competition like they can with a roller coaster or other physical attractions. In this respect the stakes are a lot higher than they otherwise would be because the quality will come down to intangible aspects of the experience rather than higher, faster, longer etc. (forcier?) that are the makeup of quality for traditional rides. I just hope that in terms of production they've gone more along the lines of Australian Outback Spectacular and outsourced aspects like script development etc. which I think history has shown tend to be out of the scope of in-house creative teams, at least for show like this which are intended to be major attractions.

I understood full well what you were getting at with your post. In regards to the ride's capacity, you said that the queue is incapable of handling the number of people wanting to ride; that it is physically not big enough to handle these numbers. I merely suggested that if this is a problem then the queue's design isn't the problem. The problem would lie in the ride's operations as a ride of the theorhetical capacity of Motocoaster should have no problems handling the sort of numbers that it attracts. The fundamental flaw in your argument is that obviously can't make a direct comparison to one ride which has a single queue that starts and ends (e.g. The Claw) and one which splits into several different areas (Motocoaster). In the course of a single day, when the ride would see upwards of 3,000 riders (over 5,000 if we take the 750pph figure). If 50 of them need the queue explained, that is somehow unreasonable? Tell you what, ask the average ride operator how many times they need to explain how the harnesses work, how often they need to ask riders to remove loose objects, or how often they are asked if a certain ride is suitable for person x and then tell me that 50 people needing a queue explained to them is unreasonable. Are these purported problems so bad that trains are dispatching with seats empty because these few riders delay the queue enough to mean queuers aren't reaching the load station in time? This seems to be a gripe based on getting stuck behind stupid people in the queue rather than a genuine problem with anything.

Hang on... what's the issue exactly? Queue length and people getting confused are two totally separate issues. Operators assisting people through the queue 50 times a day isn't that much considering the average theme park goer checks their brain at the gate. Most reports here seem to suggest that whether they're running both trains or just one, dispatches are few and far between. With the ride's listed theorhetical capacity (750pph), it should be handling a full queue with ease. If it's not then the issue most definitely points to operational inefficiencies, not queue design issues.

Is there a Bugs Bunny cartoon that doesn't involve characters getting shot? Everyone knows that cartoon guns only singe the fur/feathers and cover the face in soot. It seems to me that the logical storyline would be that you start out on Elmer Fudd's hunting team in rabbit hunting season. When you 'get one' they respond with a plume of smoke and flip to reveal a blackened yet still living rabbit. Daffy would be hanging about to tell you where they are. Then Bugs comes out and changes it to duck hunting season and you start going after them with Bugs this time helping you out. Then Daffy/Bugs have their scuffle over which season it is and finally settle on "hunter hunting season" at which point you go after Elmer, with a great opportunity to shoot the other team's vehicle to make them spinout, as on MIB. Throw in a few gags like water tanks that leak on the other team when you shoot them and it could be a lot of fun. Really good idea this one. Seems to me like it'd be a perfect candidate for the much-lacking western area. I thought about it replacing Looney Tunes River Ride but I think that'd go better with a major overhaul.

Thanks to everyone that participated! We had nearly 200 photos added in March, which is a truly great effort by everyone. The top five (excluding myself) for March 2008 was as follows: Gavin Seipelt: 84 Dean Wright: 59 Patrick FitzGerald: 11 Paul Hollibone: 5 Vinnie J: 2 Congrats to Gavin for winning the prize with most photos taken in the month. Stay tuned for more competitions in coming months. We now have a fully functional photograph rating system in place so the next competition will probably be a "best rated" competition where prizes go out to the user with the highest rated photo.

Village Roadshow are notorious for getting ahead of themselves by announcing these sorts of things (Sunshine Coast Wet'n'Wild, Australian Outback Spectacular) only to watch them disappear or be delayed by years. I'm not saying this is the case here, but it is something to keep in mind before getting too excited. Victoria is a suitable place to build parks. My concern is that the climate there is more suited to seasonal operation, but a plan like this which is seeking to become a major destination can't easily be achieved without year-round operation. As far as a comparison to Queensland's climate goes, we do have a wetter summer but then we have 6-9 months of perfect, mild weather. We've also had our first wet summer in about a decade which I think took our parks off-guard as increasingly in recent years they've put a lot of emphasis on the peak season and I think we may see that change as they try and get more balanced attendance throughout the year in light of a return to normal weather patterns. I'd hate to see a carbon copy of Animal Kingdom or Busch Gardens Africa. I'm always wary when I see name-dropping of similar parks because it seems like a recipe for plagiarism. The last thing I want to do is go to a park that's a two-bit clone of one of my favourite parks.

At least it's easy to get to.