Richard

I wouldn't say they're trying to get the Gold Coast's tourists as such. Water parks are very regional by nature and you won't find many people will base a holiday around a water park unlike theme parks. I can't see it having a profound effect on Gold Coast attendance figures (certainly not the way Whitewater World will no doubt affect Wet'n'Wild), but I have no doubt it'll do very well by itself and attract very healthy numbers from Greater Sydney. If they play their cards right, I have little doubt that Jamberoo could, 10 or 15 years from now be far more than Wonderland Sydney was. So long as we see the Eddys retain control of the park it'll go places.

Article: Jamberoo unveils $20 million investment plan Monday 18 September 2006 - Jamberoo Action Park The small family owned park on the NSW South Coast has recently announced its plans for the rollout of $20 million in new attractions. Read On... Well, is this not the most unexpected and exciting news we've heard from NSW in a while. I think it's great to see a park stepping up to the loss of Wonderland and making genuine steps in the right direction.

Also, feel free to add a quick review and rating for Tornado on the main site. http://www.roller-coaster.com.au/ride.php?rid=206 (Click Add Review up the top right)

I fully agree. The brightness will not be an issue if it's complemented with some nice gardens, decent footpaths and just good landscaping in general. Theming elements here and there that allude to the park's surf theme but don't try and overstate it would also be welcome. I think that bright and happy colours need some kind of grounding to work best, and I don't think anything does this better than some quality tropical gardens.

Yeah I fixed the problem shortly after GoGoBoy told me about it - everything should be fine with it now.

Just quickly, I've updated this gallery to include three new images which I left out originally. #14 (last on Page 2) shows a different angle of Tower 2. #28 (fourth on Page 3) is a good angle of the entire Nickelodeon area. #34 (last) shows the plaza that's being built out the front entrance of the park.

Article: The Wiggles celebrate 15 years at Dreamworld Saturday 16 September 2006 - Dreamworld The hugely popular children's band have celebrated 15 years together with a show at Dreamworld, home of Wiggles World. The popular theme park attraction also celebrated its first birthday on Friday by opening its latest children's ride, Dorothy's Rosy Tea Cup Ride. Read On... Photo Gallery: http://www.roller-coaster.com.au/gallery.php?gid=157

The similarities are really in terms of the styles of attractions that are found in the area. I'd say that in terms of actual area, Whitewater World's children's area is probably the same size as Buccaneer Bay or maybe even smaller. Wet'n'Wild has considerable general pool areas around it that it doesn't look like Whitewater World will be getting. It does however certainly have more attractions. As you can see in some of the photos, it's an absolute mess of platforms, ramps and slides. I agree with the orange-ness of it. Hopefully once it's fully landscaped and paved we'll have something to take away from the nearing gaudy colour schemes we're currently seeing. One thing is for sure, they'll certainly get looks from the highway.

Wet'n'Wild is heated to 27º all year round, so the water isn't ever going to be lower than this. I'd imagine in summer it gets somewhat higher than 27º, because I couldn't imagine they'd have any cooling systems.

The latest construction update can be seen here: http://www.roller-coaster.com.au/gallery.php?gid=156 I too will be interested to see if they go for a "Dive-In Movies" style of attraction. Surely their affiliation with Nickelodeon will be used in some similar capacity.

I'm pleased to announce a new partner website which Liam Schembri (Flea) has introduced this all new website, ThemeParkVideos.net. The site is like a YouTube that deals exclusively with theme park and roller coaster videos, allowing users to upload their own videos and let other users post comments and rate their creations. Registration is free and only takes a second. If you've ever wanted to share your theme park videos, now you have an easy and central place to do so. Once you're videos are posted you can share with the world by linking them in your forum posts at any site.

A popular misconception seems to be that opening days are any busier than other days. Very few people in the scheme of things actually take note of opening dates and actually make the effort to visit on that day rather than any other. It'll be busy because it's the holidays, and Tornado will in all likelihood be the most popular attraction, but it's also a high capacity ride and there are plenty of other rides in the park that'll take a lot of the crowd and give you plenty of other things to do if the queue is too big.

Work is slow going on this coaster as it is not a priority for the business, and as such they can't really allocate significant personnel nor time to the project. It may see the light of day sometime in the future, but not even they know whether it will operate or not. Factors that contribute to its incredibly lengthy construction and testing period include that it was 100% designed and manufactured in Australia, as more or less a first attempt at building a coaster from scratch. This isn't to say that they weren't completely qualified engineers etc., but as you can imagine there is a lot of specialised knowledge that often you have to find out the hard way. In recent years it's not been a priority because of all the other redevelopments that have been taking place, which are more important and valuable to Scenic World.

The Giant Inverted Boomerangs use cable elevator style lift hills, with no anti-rollbacks etc., so the issue of stalling on either lift is not an issue (or rather it shouldn't be). I'd like to think they're using an electromagnetic release mechanism that allows for an automatic release in the event of a power outage, or at least a manual way of releasing the train which requires no power. The three Déjà Vus had a lot of issues of the train valleying either in the boomerang or between it and the loop or between the loop and the second lift hill. They all had emergency platforms installed in the boomerang and each had its own different style of ramp installed at the bottom for the other valleys.

There isn't one in Germany - that was Gazza's point. He was referring to the one in Spain.

Out of respect for Dreamworld's own publicity intentions, we have decided to remove the logo from the website. Note that the logo wasn't aquired through a leak in the company nor any other illegal means and is in fact publicly accessible for anyone with the initiative to find it. For those that saw it, you had a special chance to view the logo before anyone else. For those that didn't, you'll have to wait until announcements take place in the near future.

The latest feature at Roller-Coaster.com.au will hopefully be one of the most useful components of the site. We've introduced a new section on park profile pages called "Nearby Parks". This shows you parks within the nearby radius of the park you're looking at. It also shows their distance away with great accuracy. We currently have distance listings for most Australian parks, major and minor. See Dreamworld's profile as an example: http://www.roller-coaster.com.au/park.php?pid=1 This is the first of many planned geographical features to be introduced to Roller-Coaster.com.au in the near future.

Article featuring the logo: http://www.roller-coaster.com.au/article.php?aid=114

Article: Tornado prepares to take riders by storm Friday 8 September 2006 - Wet'n'Wild Water World Australia's first Tornado will open next Saturday at Wet'n'Wild Water World on the Gold Coast. Read On... Also the press release can be read here: http://www.roller-coaster.com.au/release.php?prid=53

SANDUSKY, Ohio, 2006 – Cedar Point will take guests to a new frontier in 2007. The historic amusement park/resort has announced plans for a new roller coaster for next summer named Maverick. Located in Frontiertown, Maverick will treat riders to multiple terrain-hugging elements that have never been experienced on a Cedar Point roller coaster. Guests will begin their adventurous journey on Maverick by boarding steam-era-styled coaster trains with an ultra-sleek profile that will carry them along the 4,450-foot-long course. Linear synchronous motors will propel the train to the top of a 105-foot-tall first hill. From there, it's not straight down – it's more than straight down! Maverick will take its passengers down to Earth at an astonishing 95-degree angle at speeds of up to 57 mph to within five feet above the ground! From there, the train will hug the terrain as it twists and banks around hairpin turns with quick but smooth changes in direction. Throughout the 2-minute, 30-second ride, passengers will also experience eight "airtime-filled hills," three inversions and a second launch through a dark tunnel that will leave them in awe as they reach speeds of 70 mph! Read more at PointBuzz - http://www.pointbuzz.com/maverick.htm (includes photos, videos and more) I haven't been following this one (I knew it was Intamin and I knew it was red is pretty much it), but I'm amazed by what they're doing here. I guess when you get to where Cedar Point are you start to get really creative with things. Plus what's that now, four launched Intamins in a row? I've always been a huge fan of terrain coasters, and I think fast and low banked turns and s-bends are some of the best and most underrated elements out there. Everything about this coaster is so RCT... from the fast lift to the second launch and the crazy length. Gives me reason to get back and get to Cedar Point finally.

This certainly is interesting. I'd hope they plan to extend and perhaps rethink parts of the Big Red Car Ride if they plan to install it. No doubt Dreamworld's playing some part in it. If only someone had spotted the Six Flags suits who have no doubt given Dreamworld a visit. Just think of the rumours it could have started.

It's all about a time and place. Whether you're a fan or not doesn't make it OK to publicly condemn someone just days after they were killed, especially when it is so irrelevant to anything right now. I agree of course that the 6:30 slot is a laugh. I don't think any remotely educated person considers it anything other than light entertainment. I'd be surprised if there were any scientific links between animals being under studio conditions and elevated stress levels. I have no doubts that no animals were physically harmed in the process, and I'm certainly not going to take science lessons about animals' hearing abilities from a feminist who likes to prove how well she can look things up (if you haven't read her initial article that prompted this backlash, do so here). Fact is, more acute hearing doesn't mean that it'll damage the animals hearing, nor make it more stressed even. The big ole' catch 22 of course is that if Steve Irwin wasn't doing this, taking the animals onto Jay Leno, then he wouldn't have had 5 million viewers at home watching, getting interested and doing something. If at the end of the day every single one of these animals goes back to what it was doing and lives out its life, then no harm done, simple as that. Any perceived negatives are far outweighed by the positive things it does. Whenever something happens like this there's always a few has-beens who seize the opportunity to get a few more minutes of fame. If only we still had Beauty and the Beast, then we could at least concentrate it to one place.

I'm not so against the idea of introducing other components into the water park that make it more appealing to this particular market. It's quite obvious that they're trying to change their image before Dreamworld's water park opens so that their reliance on the traditionally strong family sector doesn't hurt them when Dreamworld comes along and takes a few hundred thousands of their guests. It's starting to look like the FlowRider would be absolutely at home in this setting. I'd wonder if Dreamworld have entered a exclusivity with Wave Loch, because I could see some of the better models being very much at home in this teen-oriented section of the park. I'm also pretty interested to see the stage they've got listed alongside the halfpipe and beach volleyball courts. This comes from someone with no interest whatsoever in most of the 'music' our commercial music industry churns out, but in terms of creating a great vibe and party atmosphere, a summer night at a water park with some live music will absolutely succeed.

Marketing is marketing. I don't think you can condemn them (from a business perspective), for chasing this market. I am just pleased to see that this time they're not devaluing the rides as they did with the Superman Escape campaign, where no one could have guessed they were advertising a roller coaster, no less one themed to Superman. I agree that it's a pretty tacky direction to take with the advertising of a water park, but when you're faced with the introduction of a new full-scale competing park down the road, I think any way you can distance yourself from the traditional water park experience is a wise move. I totally agree that visually the new ads are great. In terms of the photography, I think they're close to the best ads we've seen for a theme park.

I'd actually say they're clearly going for an older market than with Superman Escape. I don't know their exact intentions, but it seems to be targeting 17-18 year-olds, whereas Superman was after probably 13-17. I have a feeling the goal might have been 17-25 with this strategy, but to me it's not going to capture much of the over-18 market, though I think that their targeting of Schoolies week will pay off.