Richard

I've moved the POTC discussion to the General Thrills forum - it can now be found here.

This is the first I've heard of a Pirates of the Caribbean book. I was under the impression the Disneyland attraction was an original concept developed by Disney.

If they were closing the ride permanently then they would say that so I wouldn't be too worried. If they only updated the website with that information yesterday then it's possible they found something wrong with the ride (such as cracking in the track) which required its immediate closure. Obviously if this were the case then there's no way they'd know when it's going to reopen. I'm sure we'll get the full picture in the next few days, but until then it's a bit premature to be worrying about the future of the coaster.

Seems only natural you counter Wet'n'Wild's beach volleyball courts with a bit of netty. WVTP won't know what hit 'em.

It looks to me like their web server has suffered some problems over the weekend and it's affecting all WVTP websites. I'm sure they're working hard to get the situation resolved as it's hardly a desirable situation to be in considering the websites have become such an integral part of ticket sales in recent times.

You shouldn't have any issue getting a taxi at any time. I would probably expect there to even be a taxi rank at Dreamworld for the night. http://www.regenttaxis.com.au/ I'd also look at the event's website (http://www.odysseynye.com/event-info/transport.aspx) and consider contacting them if you're still unsure.

I can once again assure you that the Rocket slide at Jamberoo will most definitely be a LIM powered, not maglev - they are (incorrectly) using the term maglev as a marketing term so that the average person can roughly understand what's going on.

That's an instant ban...

I have moved all our posts relating to ticket pricing to the WhiteWater World pricing discussion topic just because it was getting a bit off-track here. If you wish to discuss the tickets and pricing do so there.

It's standard practice for major destination parks in America to have a cheap pass with blackout dates at peak periods. There are two distinctions however between that and what WhiteWater World are offering: They offer more expensive passes that give you less blackout dates or none depending on how much you're willing to spend. The best time to visit a water park is during the summer. This would also be the most likely time anyone would buy an annual pass. At a theme park like Disneyland it really doesn't make a difference when you visit because it's not less appealing in winter. If I were a local resident, I'd only ever buy an annual pass to visit in the summer. You've really only got from about mid-October to March to make full use of it and through December to February is when you're going to most want to use it. Half of the main window of opportunity is gone with blackout dates. I know I'd be thinking twice about getting one.

If you're going by Colossus at SFMM you've chosen the wrong wooden coaster to benchmark. Thanks to several major reprofilings of track sections and, more recently in the interests of reducing maintenance costs, replacing of nearly all of this coaster's wooden track with steel i-beams, Colossus is one of the most neutered wooden coasters out there. An hour down the road is GhostRider, a prime example of how a wooden coaster can be done perfectly in this day and age. I haven't ridden Silver Bullet, but when I was there GhostRider was without a doubt the most thrilling attraction at Knott's. This isn't directed at anyone in particular, but I always find it ironic when people say they don't want a wooden coaster and then cite Bush Beast or other equally lousy coasters as a justification. By that same thinking I could disagree with a park getting a large B&M looper because Thunderbolt was a bad ride.

I suspect that given they're holding off on the park-changing system until February that they will not be selling such tickets during the holiday periods and, like the annual passes, they will only be available in the low seasons.

As far as I'm concerned the jury is still out on value. At this stage I wouldn't want to predict which park of the two is better value for what you pay. Until WhiteWater World proves it can provide a genuine full day's entertainment then really the attractions it has in relation to Wet'n'Wild are pretty irrelevant. One thing I am a bit worried about at this stage is this precedent that a park can charge the same and deliver only a fraction of the results. Again, until I've been to the park and spent a day there it's impossible to know, but I'd hate to walk out the gate at 2pm because I ran out of things to do, and know that they're charging the same as a park like Wet'n'Wild, where I know that my money will result in a reasonably full day. The annual pass situation seems just plain bizarre. I'd completely understand if they offered a more expensive option that has no blackout dates, but to have a single option that seemingly restricts the holder from much of the summer period seems pretty unusual. It's obviously in relation to the park's small capacity but there are better ways of doing things. It seems like it'd be a bit more responsible if maybe they had a condition that an annual pass holder can't enter the park until say midday during holidays and only if the park isn't near capacity. They could even wow us with an automated passholder hotline and webpage so that a passholder can know before they turn up. For the record, $125 is great value (perhaps even undervalued - there's a reason that WnW's annual pass is dollar-for-dollar the most expensive annual pass on the Gold Coast), and it's interesting that they've actually undercut Wet'n'Wild after every other price at DW/WWW being higher than down the road. I just wouldn't mind seeing a $150 (or thereabouts) pass that means the holder can visit whenever they wish. Blatantly putting "12 Months of Fun" on the pass logo seems a bit much too considering that there will most likely be three or more of those months where the holder can't visit. I'd also love to see a $200 or so combined pass. If they're not going to try and beat WVTP's splendid annual pass deals, then why not give an option WVTP will never be able to match, the ability to easily hop parks on a single annual pass.

Great to see that Macquarie Leisure have acknowledged the fact that the park is considerably smaller than Wet'n'Wild (which itself bursts at the seams on busy summer days) by capping numbers.

Great info. Obviously the system will need to be able to differentiate between a heavy boat and a light boat and adjust the average output force as needed. Again, whether this is by variable current or by on/off is anyone's guess. Either way we've got a lot of processing going into determining the boat's speed and it'd come down to which method is more efficient.

I don't think Superman Escape is too short, it's 1:40 long which is not much shorter than most large coasters in Australia. Didn't think we'd ever need to give English lessons here, but here I go: Quick primary school lesson in comparatives and superlatives: A comparative is an adjective/adverb that denotes a greater (or smaller) value than another which it is compared to. Typically noticeable by the suffix -er, such as greater. Some words have special cases, for instance, better is the comparative form of good. Many words instead use "more" because the suffix doesn't work, especially if it's a longer word (able, more able; courageous, more courageous - not abler or courageouser). A superlative is the greatest degree, such as best, greatest, most outrageous. "Better" already means "more good". "More better" is effectively doubling up on the adjective because "more" is already included in "-er". Because neither of these have any value attached to them, adding the "more" at the front adds no greater value to the adjective.

Regardless of your preference, there's no way you can say that wooden coasters have passed their used-by date. Companies like Intamin, The Gravity Group and GCII are doing things with wooden coasters that simply weren't possible in the past. In terms of perfection they are building on close to 100 years of cumulative knowledge as to what works and what doesn't. Steel coasters have only really started to come good in the past 10 years and still have a long way to go before we see the same levels of consistency as with wooden coasters these days. Every year we hear of B&M steel coasters that miss the mark when it comes to excitement or whatever, yet I struggle to think of a single modern wooden coaster that hasn't opened to rave reviews. It's my personal preference that you can't top a wooden coaster for overall ride experience. I love steel coasters, but there's nothing better than a simple wooden coaster. Most recently I rode the Coney Island Cyclone, a ride that'll be celebrating its 80th birthday next year. It's anything but a tame coaster too; a testament to this fact is its numerous clones around the world. To think that people 80 years ago were experiencing the exact same thrills that we can today is a pretty amazing thought when you put it up against other forms of entertainment from its period - their films and music were simplistic and they didn't have video games etc. - all things that have given today's generations far higher tolerances when it comes to things like adrenalin and excitement in general.

I'm really not a fan of the robocoaster concept. It just seems so uninteresting and not all that exciting. To me it looks like a more technologically advanced (and far more expensive) version of those Gyro rides you see at small carnivals or the markets, and about as exciting as one. It's an example of a concept being driven more by strong marketing from its creators than a natural quality.

Firstly welcome along to the site. It's always great to see new members contributing. The loops they refer to are in fact the ride's helices - horizontal loops, not vertical loops. http://www.roller-coaster.com.au/gallery.p...59&image=19 As far as attractions for the new water park go, everything listed in our WhiteWater World Profile is what the park will be opening with in two months. There won't be any other attractions added between now and then.

Yeah these are most definitely the names for the opening attractions. Believe me when I say the last thing on anyone's mind at the park is expansion. The names do seem a little out there and obscure at best. They're the same kinds of surfing buzz-words you find on an old afternoon kid's programme, which I suppose would be the ideal market this theme will appeal to. You also do have to understand that Dreamworld does have a sense of humour when it coes to this kind of thing - The Claw and Cyclone's theming are two very clear examples of a tongue-in-cheek approach to both those themes.

Tickets are $126.50 at Ticketek. Sounds very impressive. It's great to see one of these night events finally taking things up a notch with the live music and actually getting some quality bands. Grinspoon are putting on an amazing live show at the moment and you can't go wrong with Butterfingers. Can't go wrong with free drinks, good music and thrill rides. My plans for New Years will again be at Woodford this year, but Dreamworld sounds like it might be a place to be if you're around.

We have introduced a new gallery system that adds to the existing gallery system. For the old members, it's almost identical to the style of gallery that we had on Total Thrills (though automated). The existing style of gallery with the resizing popups is remaining exactly as it is, but under each caption is a "LINK TO IMAGE", which will take you to the new system. The new system means you can link directly to any image in the gallery so you no longer have to post the tiny thumbnail or the large version of the image if you wish to link the images in our forums or on another site. It's also ideal for dialup users because our full-sized images are sometimes upwards of 500KB. With this new system they see a reduced version that's under 100kb. It also features the improved thumbnail index system that the existing gallery has. An example of this system can be seen with our recent WhiteWater World update: http://www.roller-coaster.com.au/gallery.p...159&image=1

Pre-emptive price rises are not a justification for future additions. Would you pay to stay at a 3-star hotel that charges 5-star rates, simply because next year they're going to be upgrading the facilities to bring it up to 5-star standards? I don't think anyone here has an issue with the parks increasing prices. The issue is more to do with the price bracket Dreamworld have decided to go with for their annual pass; charging far more than seems justifiable by the park's overall quality.

The maglev system that Jamberoo have mentioned is identical to WhiteWater World's system. For some reason they've decided to call it maglev, a name which is an inaccurate description of the propulsion system at best. The Jamberoo Rocket slide will not be a maglev system. In fact it's just the opposite, as the boats will be magnetically stuck to the floor of the slide because of how they work, not levitating as the word maglev implies.

Those are scream shields that Disney were required to install due to close residents. I don't expect Movie World will have to install them because Batwing is far enough away from the nearby residents that it shouldn't require them. Wild West Falls is the only ride in the park which has noise shielding (the wall down the left side of the final drop), and this is because the ride is quite close to the local residents. If Superman Escape got away without any noise complaints, Batwing will be fine. At Disney's California Adventure they detract quite a bit from the ride, so I'd hope they're not installed here.