Richard

Want to ask if it's operating today? This is the place... no guarantees you'll get an answer though. If you are at Movie World and can report that it's running, delayed, temporarily closed, how long the queue is or if it's one or two train operation then please share... even if no one asks.

I'm all for calling out the Bulletin for sloppy journalism, but labeling the track magenta is perfectly fine regardless of how the park chooses to describe it for marketing purposes.

Here's the data for anyone interested, converted from JSON to Excel with a bit of colour coding and wizardry thrown in for good measure. I've also attached a screenshot to show the incredibly complex steps for finding the data. @Skeeta from the looks of things you'd want to neck it in about 32 seconds because once the lift is is over that beer is gone. (Pointless but probably necessary disclaimer about following all rules and not taking loose items or food and beverage onto rides with you.) HyperCoaster Stats.xlsx

It's a very simplistic view to suggest that the Ariadne plan was an election promise to securityholders, so to speak. It was a set of alternative viewpoints that served to highlight various inadequacies they saw in the company's current strategy. Considering they were only ever seeking a minority of seats, it's utterly ridiculous to think that this was about anything other than working collaboratively for the benefit of the company. The inference here is that they were so keen to get their hands on those seats and the associated benefits (like that juicy ~$150k salary) that they invested $100 million of their own money and just said anything they needed to "win".

Not sure why this debate continues. The ride is the same model and has the same stats as The Claw: swing height is ~28m and it has 32 seats. It's 13 years later so naturally the ride design has undergone some evolution which are most evident in the redesigned structure/mechanics and different restraints, but it's fundamentally the same ride.

You seemed to single out two rides with on-board audio. I don't recall reading about (nor have I witnessed myself) any recurring/ongoing issues with audio Wild West Falls?

Who said anything about audio on the trains? I know I've been pretty vocal in the past about how pointless and poorly executed it is on the rides that have it in Australia, which is why I'd only opt for fixed speakers that actually serve a predetermined purpose.

It does strike me as a lost opportunity to use it for the ride experience by having it facing riders as well. Maybe it's a little too close to what Arkham Asylum tries to do, but Joker music on the lift hill and the face lighting up to coincide with a Mark Hamill laugh as the train nears and crests the top. It justifies the existence of the head and gives the ride something of a theme without going overboard with an attempted storyline.

Yeah sounds like an annoying quirk of the software more than anything @Reanimated35. @diesal11... we're a bit hesitant to include too many negative reactions because in the past it devolved into pettiness. I see room for maybe one or two more reactions but we shouldn't offer too many. At the end of the day it should be about posting a reply to keep the discussion going.

Not quite. G-forces are a product of speed and directional change, i.e. the track curving. All rows of seats are travelling the same speed at any given moment, but they will be on different sections of track and as such experience different forces. The easiest example to think of is heading over the top of a lift hill. While the front rows will creep gently into first drop experiencing essentially no forces, the back row is often whipped over with a burst of negative g's.

Broad appeal. Absolutely these rides tick many boxes, but neither are the cross-generational experiences that they replaced. I think you're diluting the definition suggested in the article to argue that these are robust family rides. Justice League is a lifeless ride experience. You only need to look at how Six Flags implemented the same ride concept to see it done correctly. The dinky ride system at Movie World undermines what could otherwise be an exciting ride. Unless you're one to chase high scores, how many members here ride it on every single visit as they would Superman Escape etc.? Storm is a visually intimidating ride. The fact is that most kids will enjoy just about any ride, if you can get them on it. I think an important tenant of a good family ride is having moments of speed, height or intensity downplayed as much as possible.

Trim brakes aren't always a simple maintenance measure. Particularly on a large-scale, custom layout coaster like this you'll find that the engineering errs on the side of caution when it comes to ensuring it makes it around the course. Obviously you can't speed it up later if it's too slow so you naturally design the ride towards the upper end of speed/force requirements. Considering variables like temperature, wind, rider weight and distribution, cycle times (how much time wheels/bearings have to cool down) etc., it's inevitable that they build wiggle-room into the design that allows them to slow it down if need be. To mount brakes you need track that is perfectly straight. Vertical curvature is generally fine but you can't have any lateral movement for the fins on the track to pass cleanly through the slot on the carriages. So given that they designed the ride with sections of track with this straightness in mind, it makes sense that they're fabricated with the mounts to facilitate easy installation of trim brakes as needed. The fact that these sections exist is definitely not an indication that trim brakes will feature.

Exit path. The entry ramp is wider to accommodate all four queue options.

I love how the public thinks... Mishka/Little Bear is going to really suit a 2m / 300kg bear in a few years time. It's like having a pet bird and naming it Egg. It's 2017... they should have just gone with Beary McBearface and made everyone happy.

The series of events that led to the ride's delayed reopening and its almost immediately closure for maintenance are dubious at best. This is the same park that hosts a free (for pass holders) Wiggles concert, and then boasts about how well the recovery is going based on an attendance increase that saw no corresponding revenue uptick . Appearances are everything, and it's abundantly clear that the overarching business strategy is to create the appearance of a thriving theme park

Yeah... still perplexed by that mess @Skeeta. It's like someone wanted the minimal aesthetics of a-frame supports despite it not being possible from an engineering standpoint.

Polar Pre-school was the original name: https://www.parkz.com.au/photo/7121-Polar_Bear_Shores_extension/gallery/sort/newest/location/ride-14/offset/2 A few options for future cub births: Bear Babysitting Ursus maritimus Maternity Ward Tiger Island

General comments about reactions: Still toying with the exact ones we'll end up locking in. No reason for both an upvote and a like... but I think we'll switch out the heart for a thumbs up. I think a "wow" makes sense @Santa07. I'll see if one exists that matches the style of the default ones. Kool-Aid... it'll stay if people use it correctly. Not seeing much evidence of that in here. @Reanimated35: Pagination, top menu colours, Unread Content/Mark Site Read bar Yep... need to fix these colours. For some reason they're not ones that can be edited in the theme editing system (most can be) so it'll require a manual CSS overwrite. Same with padding out the Unread Content link bar. Reaction count on profile page Not sure why they decided to show the total count for reactions that have a zero value. I'd hope that Invision fix that bug in the software in a future update. Admin colours Wanted to give Parkz Crew more differentiation given that the bold red banner had to go. Not sure whether admin should be red and Parkz Crew something else a bit bold or vice versa. Blue header bar We'll probably keep this blue until it changes on the main site as well... which I'm not sure will happen anytime soon (i.e. until we do a full redesign, which isn't on the cards just yet). @themagician: Overlapping text Yeah noticed this... hopefully we'll find an easy fix for it soon. @Santa07: No more self reactions... that was just enabled temporarily while I was testing a few things.

We've updated the forum software today. Aside from the obvious visual changes there's the addition of a few new features, most noticeably reactions instead of votes. Gone is the crude and often political system of voting posts up and down. Instead you can choose to react more akin to how Facebook works now. Current reactions are as follows: Like (+1 to the poster) Haha (+1 to the poster) Confused Sad We're no longer assigning negative votes to posts as the new system is a bit more nuanced. We may add some others down the track that are more fun and unique to Parkz. Bugs / Errors / Glitches If you encounter any glitches or design quirks throughout the site that you think probably shouldn't be there, feel free to grab a screenshot and let us know.

I'd agree that Dreamworld is a oversized park @AlexB. They could safely lose all their undeveloped land and still have loads of room to grow for decades to come with land within the traditional park boundaries that's either no longer used or has never been used. The issue I have is that you really should expect bigger plans to remain competitive when their popularity and product offering is continually being dwarfed by competitors. We see Village Roadshow down the road using every remaining inch of land they have to build a tourist destination. They're catering to an incredibly vast segment of the market and everything about this plan is designed to create an all-inclusive holiday destination that keeps people on-site and away from competitors. Those same charts that Ariadne uses to highlight Ardent Leisure's lack of investment and missed opportunity -- namely the year-on-year and projected growth of tourist visitation -- should be every reason not to sell off land for the paltry price of $1 million a hectare at a time when your current competitors are ramping up their offering and expanding well beyond the confines of the traditional theme park. The amount of space Dreamworld have both within the park and surrounding it is their single biggest long-term strategic asset. $25 million for a theme park of this size and profitability isn't a one-off investment that you fund by extraordinary means, it should be what they're spending every few years on a robust mix of major and minor attractions.

Sorry missed this one until now @AlexB. Yeah if you have already purchased t-shirts from us in the past then where possible we'll send something different. If there's nothing different available we'll get in touch and let you know your options.

The opening date was pushed back to 2018 long ago. The construction that has happened so far is likely because contracts were already in place for this component of the job. More accurately, they're way ahead of schedule; things will likely slow down from here on in.

A few months ago it was all about imagination, now it's about experiences? Sounds like precisely the opposite of of identifying their core values. It's laughably over-the-top and transparent use of a buzzword in place of actual substance. It's a nervous brand totally unsure of who and what they are, run by a management team that has no gut-level understanding of the theme park industry, or even what Dreamworld is. Adding the word 'experience', 'magic' or 'precinct' to everything doesn't make it so.

Those stats mentioned by Mr Sharry -- 15m tower, 120°, 64km/hr (18m/s) with a 28m maximum swing height -- are the same as The Claw's stats. If this ride is actually any bigger than The Claw then it's a result of minor changes over the years to the exact same model from Intamin, rather than an actual larger version of the ride.

The documents on the website indicates that they think that the Gold Coast tourism and theme park industry is a viable one with solid projected growth. They also note that Ardent have significantly under-invested in development CapEx for their parks. From a stakeholder's perspective, the question is whether the capital required for Ardent to turn this division around is best served in that capacity, or would be better put to use fixing the botched Main Event roll-out in the USA. As it stands Ardent's current management want to have their cake and eat it too; they insist that they couldn't possibly want to sell the park (despite doing everything possible to indicate that is in fact on the cards), yet they are also doing nothing to suggest that they realise the kind of investment Dreamworld needs to rectify not just the fallout from what happened on Thunder River Rapids, but from a strategic and deliberate starving of capital for their 20-odd years of ownership.