Richard

You're right I should drop everything I'm doing, come home and plagiarise an article everyone can just as easily read on the Gold Coast Bulletin site. Apologies to everyone; you can be assured it won't happen again. The problem is still that even if they were to amend the local planning legislation to allow for a distinction between rides and other structures is it's setting a precedent. In terms of visual impact I'm not seeing a huge distinction between a 60m tall ride and a 60m tall block of apartments. I've said many times before that I am ultimately for a Sea World Eye style attraction remaining permanently at Sea World, but not if it comes at the cost of opening the floodgates for high rise developments on The Spit. The ride won't do much good if it's surrounded by apartments. I'm still concerned that having the Eye or similar as a permanent attraction would indirectly damage the area. No one wants to build sky scrapers at Coomera so it's never been an issue there. I personally think that at the very least it'd be nice to keep a beach at this end of the Gold Coast where the sun doesn't disappear behind buildings at four in the afternoon. If they can manage a legally watertight way to let Sea World keep such a ride and stop other developers then go ahead by all means, but the day we see a high rise on The Spit will be a very sad one and the loss of one of the last decent spots in the area.

The programme Dreamworld is involved with is designed to boost numbers of the sub-species and allow for continued genetic diversity. As Bambi-esque as it may seem to take the cubs away from their mother at such a very young age, it's in the best interest of the sub-species and even the cubs themselves. Medical checkups etc. are very difficult with unwilling tigers. I've heard nothing about the new cubs being integrated to display enclosure of Tiger Island. The huge physiological differences between Bengals and Sumatrans alone makes this very nearly impossible. They'd need a separate enclosure.

Fair enough it doesn't interest you, but Happy Feet was a huge success. It didn't do quite as well as Shrek or The Incredibles for instance (it wasn't off by far however), but it's one of the highest grossing Australian films in a long time. It had one of the best casts you could ever possibly see in an animation and critics regarded the CGI as some of the best to date. Given it was also a Village Roadshow production, securing everything necessary to produce a theme park attraction would be relatively easy.

I don't think it needs to be mentioned again, but Wikipedia is able to be edited by anyone so often you can take claims like this with a grain of salt. Having said that, I found the reasoning given for the alleged removal of Thunder River Rapids as an interesting discussion point. If there were a genuine concern for water restrictions, the last thing they would have done is build a full-scale water park which sees far more water disappear each day through evaporation, spillage etc. than a ride like Thunder River Rapids would use. I'm of course speaking hypothetically, but this kind of justification would be - at best - a copout on management's part. Nothing more than an easy way to cut costs by removing a major ride and still look like the good guy by playing the 'water crisis' card. (T-bone's post regarding Eureka Mountain has been moved to the appropriate thread. He raised an interesting and valid point but this isn't the right topic for it.)

Well, it's been a while, but finally Roller-Coaster.com.au has extensive WhiteWater World photo galleries. We have high quality photo galleries of every attraction at WhiteWater World with a total of over 90 photographs. Galleries: The Green Room Gallery (8 photos) Cave of Waves Gallery (7 photos) Nickelodeon's Pipeline Plunge Gallery (7 photos) Super Tubes HydroCoaster Gallery (18 photos) The Blue Ringed Octopus Gallery (11 photos) Temple of Huey Gallery (5 photos) The Rip Gallery (6 photos) Wiggles Bay (2 photos) WhiteWater World General Photographs 2007 (20 photos) See all of our WhiteWater World galleries here. So... why the delay? Starting late last year there were some issues between Roller-Coaster.com.au and Dreamworld / WhiteWater World. I won't go into detail on the matter, other than to say that it was in relation to Roller-Coaster.com.au and my own copyright/intellectual property and as a result we simply weren't prepared to continue our unpaid promotion of their parks. Recently the issue was resolved in a professional and amicable manner and as such we felt it was once again appropriate to resume coverage of their parks.

Linear induction is a system of propulsion that can reach speeds with unparalleled control - it's used in many industrial settings for this very reason - however it's an inefficient method which isn't well suited to high-speed applications, demonstrated by the whopping 25 megawatt figure for a ride like Kingda Ka. Tower of Terror's original promotional material suggests it uses 2.2MW per launch but I've seen a lot more external sources suggesting it's actually around 1.2MW. I would hit the books and determine the power a LSM system would use to reach the 206km/hr mark, but it's pretty clear that it'll be lower than what Kingda Ka uses. LSM has many setbacks that largely stem from the fact that it draws all its power in one short burst (requiring huge power capacity) and that it requires absolute precision for the launch to go well, with every different component (each individual stator that span the length of the track and the car) constantly communicating with one-another to determine position and speed. By comparison a LIM powered ride faces the same problem with a burst of power, but it'll more or less work every time. The hydraulic system on the other hand has a hydraulic pump which is operating the entire time to "charge" the system for launch but uses no more power than the average roller coaster lift hill motor (around 150,000kW) so it requires no amazing infrastructure (Superman the Escape at SFMM for instance has its own dedicated power line).

Hydraulic launches are no more efficient than other launch systems. A LSM launch is an incredibly efficient system. They operate at up to 97% efficiency when negating external factors such as air resistance and friction, and are about twice as efficient as a LIM launch. As a pretty crude guess based on some figures from Intamin, a hydraulic launch on Tower of Terror would use nearly twice the power it currently does. The only real difference is that instead of drawing it at once, it is a more gradual process because of how the launch works. Consumption is comsumption though. If Dreamworld did go carbon neutral (try and get that one past the board of directors), the first thing to do would be rip out Tower of Terror and pretend it was never there.

I'd recommend starting a new thread in General Thrills if you want any help with info for your assignment. Tower of Terror can most definitely go faster than it currently does, which isn't saying much given how much they've toned down the ride over the years in an effort to reduce wear and thereby cut costs. With organisations like the ACCC and other consumer watchdogs, you have to wonder how they get away with so much promotional material that falsely advertises a ride which will take riders to 160km/hr. Of course, it can also go faster than its advertised speed of 160km/hr. In the interests of longevity and efficiency, the LSM system will have been designed to handle much greater speeds so as to reduce overall stress on the ride. As for converting the ride to a hydraulic system, it'd be a completely pointless retrofit. Very nearly everything but the actual tower would need to be completely replaced. The downward sloping track would cause problems for cable tensioning and car weighing (to determine the required launch force), so the track is gone. Millions worth of electrical, electronics and computer systems need to be replaced. In terms of cost it would be more or less what they paid for the ride originally.

As I mentioned above Wild West Falls, Dueling Dragons and Big Thunder Mountain use concrete faux rocks/sculptures. In regards to making them, I went over this briefly above but I'm sure if you check Google you'll find some sites that go into greater details should you wish to make one yourself; be warned it'd be a pretty costly procedure. There are probably even a few lifestyle or gardening/landscaping magazines that go into such things if you look around enough.

Of the remaining penguins there are a few which are fit for breeding, but they will also be relying on a nationwide breeding programme to boost the numbers.

I think it'd be wrong to automatically assume that WVTP's parks follow the same geographic breakdown as Dreamworld. Their well-known and diverse ticketing options alone would skew their results in favour of interstate visitors who in the past have forgone a visit to Dreamworld in favour of WVTP because of the three-park pass. This is in fact one of the key reasons WhiteWater World was built. Don't forget that WVTP's combined attendance figures now include Paradise Country and Australian Outback Spectacular, which contribute a significant portion to the total; probably in the area of 10 per cent.

Granted, the park performed above Macquarie Leisure's financial expectations, but these expectations are taking into account the bottom line, ROI etc., moreso than overall industry trends. The Attendance up across the board article was looking at the industry from a non-fiscal view, from the perspective of market trends and overall industry performance. There are other articles looking at the financial side (this one, one for Dreamworld and one for WVTP), so it would have been redundant to bring in these aspects for another article. Given the park is only in its first season of operation, they can only really rely on the financial aspects to set expectations as there's no benchmark. Macquarie Leisure are also very conservative in terms of setting goals and expectations; I'm yet to see any results from the company where they didn't exceed expectations, typically by significant amounts, suggesting strong financial strategies but very grounded growth strategies. From an industry perspective the park did get off to a slow start, though by no means a 'bad' start. You can guarantee that if we had a better start to the year in terms of weather (it was pretty strange weather up here for about three weeks from the last week of December), WhiteWater World would have had even stronger figures for January.

Corkscrew is nine storeys high believe it or not. I expect that if they wanted to put this ride in the park there wouldn't be too many planning hurdles to jump through.

I'm also curious about the Scooby-Doo Spooky Coaster queue problems. It's a high capacity ride, the queue's airconditioned and it moves fairly quickly. At its absolute worst it runs at about twice the capacity of Cyclone at its absolute best (which literally never happens these days).

You raise a very good point about the park's recent history. In the past six or so years Dreamworld's attendance has increased by more than 40%. Over 400,000 guests per year, or an average of 1,100, more than used to attend the park. The alarming thing is the park's capacity hasn't increased by anywhere near 40%, and I don't think there's any denying that even back then the park struggled in terms of capacity and efficiency. I just can't imagine how a park that's always been stretched pretty thin in terms of overall capacity is able to handle these numbers in a way that doesn't detriment the average guest's experience.

It seems obvious that something went wrong with one of the projectors; Shrek 4D is without a doubt one of the best shows doing the rounds these days in terms of 3D effects. It also seems logical that they go ahead as usual with the show using a single projector because there's really nothing else they can do short of pointlessly shutting down the entire attraction and disappointing all the guests. With Shrek 4D they upgraded to digital projectors, so I wouldn't think that the lack of a projectionist would have made any difference to the problem at hand. The park's regular tech services team would be able to handle all but the most technical of problems, which would have even a qualified projectionist calling the manufacturer for specialised assistance. I think it goes without saying that the park was well aware of the problem. If the average parkgoer can tell there's a problem, there's little doubt that those charged with operating the attraction were aware of it and onto it.

CEO says new thrill ride for 2007 Wednesday 7 March 2007 - Dreamworld Greg Shaw, Chief Executive Officer of Macquarie Leisure Trust Group, owners and operators of Dreamworld on the Gold Coast says that 2007 will see the company ready to invest in a new thrill ride for the popular theme park. Read On...

The short answer is an emphasis on annual pass sales in the early months of 2006 has paid off spectacularly. Also, when you look at the park's last few years, we have seen something new added every year since 2003, so they're not quite as starved for new attractions as is often made out. For the average family it's without a doubt the best theme park on the Gold Coast, and the numbers reflect that. Later this week we'll have a few articles on the main page that go into the Gold Coast parks' performance and future so keep an eye out for them.

The latest article you mentioned has been modified to clarify Sea World's performance - the park is actually well ahead of the same results this time last year in terms of attendance.

When it comes to council approval, they simply can't and won't play favourites. A business that has been around for decades is no different from a new developer if they both want the rules to be bent in their favour. The moment the local council greenlights a permanent 60m tall addition in this area, the floodgates are opened. The local council will naturally deny such high-rise developments but they'll quickly be taken to court. Having a 60m structure will quickly set a nasty precendent and make preservation of the area pretty difficult. To say that those against developments on The Spit (namely those associated with the Save our Spit campaign) are somehow oblivious or ignoring obvious litter and pollution problems on The Spit would be pretty inaccurate at best. I'm trying to understand how rubbish problems are relevant to allowing high-impact developments in the area. Because there are issues there, it's an area not worth preserving? I would love to see Sea World keep the ride or build a similar one. I think it's a great addition to Sea World and complements the park's other attractions perfectly and be a unique opportunity for a park that's in a truly amazing location. However, if the price we pay for keeping this ride is degradation of the surrounds, then I'm not totally convinced it'd be worth it. I'm not sure it's a terribly moral viewpoint that Sea World should be allowed to keep the ride but other developers should be denied the right to build structures of a similar size.

Scooby-Doo Spooky Coaster's facade is different from the others you mentioned in that it is made from polystyrene. The others are concrete. The steps for foam-based sculptures like SDSC is basically they start with large blocks of foam and carve out the required shape. It's then coated for protection with fibreglass or polyeurethene and the texturing is finally added - in this case they had to give it a rough stone-like texture. Concrete sculptures are generally made by creating a form in the rough shape required, typically from chicken wire. Concrete is then sprayed onto the form and sculptured and textured and painted to create the desired finish. Disney use some pretty advanced techniques for creating faux rocks, benefiting from 50+ years of creating them. If you've been to a Disney park you know it's almost impossible to know whether a particular rock is real or fake.

The Gold Coast City Council faces a pretty interesting problem with this matter. I'm sure they're not taking issue with Sea World wanting to keep the ride or install a new similar one. The real issue is that if they grant permission to Sea World it sets a dangerous precedent where property developers can easily argue for high-rise developments on the spit, and with Sea World given approval for a permanent wheel, the Council would have little ground to stand on. I think it's of paramount importance to the Gold Coast that The Spit remains untouched. The last thing the area needs is an extension of the abomination that is Surfers Paradise towards the north.

Our subscribers-only "Subscription Secrets" forum is operated on a strict code that information in there stays in there. Because of our own publishing timelines it's not always possible to release information as soon as it is made available, so this forum acts as a way for us to reveal certain things to subscribers ahead of schedule. We're certainly not descriminating against non-subscribers. If it weren't for this system, information like this would just sit on the backburner until it's ready to be published, which would be a bit of a shame. If you want to stay on the cusp of theme park news in Australia and have the $20 it costs for a year then you're welcome to subscribe and join in these discussions. For those interested, we don't reveal "insider" information (i.e. that obtained from employees/contractors at various levels within the organisation) but rather that which we have managed to obtain from a variety of external, typically public sources.

I can assure you that there's nothing noteworthy in terms of construction happening at the park right now. There's a huge amount of site preparation and preliminary construction that needs to take place before anything "exciting" arrives. There will be a lot happening in coming months, but don't expect much just yet.

The "Off-Peak Day" ticket is a daily ticket so you only have to buy one for the entire journey; the trip will be $4.80 total, not $9.60.