Richard

You seem to feel exactly the same about Disneyland as me. An amazing place, but a bit sorry in places (namely Tomorrowland). From the sounds of it, you did a lot more than we did when I was there. We had three days between both parks, and took things leisurely, but looking back now there is so much we missed. We caught most of it again in Orlando, but it's still always good to be able to compare the two (and in the case of Disneyland vs. Walt Disney World, they're normally very very different). And you've also just made me really want to get back over there. Disneyland Resort's not even on my current travel intinerary for next year, but I'm feeling more and more like going back, especially because there's not going to be room for Orlando.

I've got some photos that I'm yet to put up (I'll get to it eventually), but the ride was completed and looked only a few weeks from being opened. If it's not opened yet I'd be surprised.

Is the air compressor for the "rods" in the station, or whatever you want to call them? I just assumed they were hydraulic because that would be the logical choice for what they're doing, especially given the different properties of air versus liquids.

Journey to Atlantis was one of the most stupidly themed rides I've ever ridden, and was just a generally uninteresting ride. I've only ridden the original Orlando version, but most reports suggest that the San Diego one is even worse. I'd like to see anyone find room at Sea World for "a lot more rides". Outside of that small patch of land over by Corkscrew, there's not really room for much, and even there if you squeezed in two flat rides I'd be surprised. Until that water park is gone, we're not going to see much in the way of rides (outside of that expansion of Cartoon Beach we hear about). joz, I know what you're going to say, but if 15 years from now that thing isn't gone, then I'll be very surprised (I'm looking forward to that 2019 posts which quotes what I said here and says something funny about me being wrong ). I'll even settle for a water coaster, the ride which only those that haven't experienced seem to think is a good concept, if it helps clear that prime real estate.

I decided to remove the sound from the final edit because the ride is very quiet. All you can hear is people talking and in one section the incredibly loud sound of Wild Thornberry's, so it's not worth the fuss.

I'd say it'll be a much better experience than La Revolucion, which is one of my favourite flat rides. As with any ride a video just doesn't do it much justice. Pulling into Dreamworld today and seeing it in action was the first time I've been excited about this thing. You should find the spin to be fast enough. Any faster and you'll start to detract from the ride. Construction gallery can be seen here.

Check out the Roller-Coaster.com.au Videos section for the first-ever testing footage of The Claw at Dreamworld. The video can be seen here. Photos from today will also be put up later tonight. Unfortunately no actual photos of the ride in motion, because it was a tossup between getting video footage or getting photos, and I think videos are much more interesting for this ride. The ride is amazing to watch in motion. It's the first time a ride's made me say "wow" in a long while. A very impressive ride to watch, and I can't wait to ride it two weeks from now.

I'll see if I can get out there tomorrow. No promises though. There will likely also be operation photos, videos and reviews prior to the ride's official opening date.

Find yourself a physics textbook and find the section on "magnetic induction" if you're interested in it. It's not an overly difficult concept, but I wouldn't want to try and explain it in any greater depth here - it was a whole chapter in my university physics textbook.

I'm sure if you did enough digging, you could get your hands on copies of reports from the appropriate authorities. I don't think the information was ever made public, though I was abroad for most of the time this was going on. What's rude about my response? I answered your question.

It wouldn't have reopened just a few weeks later if they didn't know what happened.

If you're going to Sea World for thrills, you're really missing the point of the park. I do think that they park could definitely do with some more rides, especially something a little more thrilling, but you're pretty shallow about parks if you think Sea World's doing anything wrong.

It's a maintenance car and is fixed in place to allow maintenance work to go on.

On the backs of the gondolas are parallel magnets, aligned as N-S, such that they attract each other, and more importantly there is a horizontal magnetic field that moves from the North to the South edge. The fins seen on the towers are made from a non-magnetic alloy of some sort. I couldn't say for sure, but I'd expect copper and aluminium to be present. There is no magnetic attraction or repulsion present in slowing down the gondola. There is no attracting, no repelling or anything like that in the braking system. What does go on is a concept known as magnetic induction, and involves Faraday's Law of Induction and more specifically motional emf (electromotive force, synonymous with voltage). What this basically says is that when a body (the alloy fins fixed to the tower) is subjected to change in magnetic field (the magnets fixed to the gondola), two things will result: a force opposing the direction of motion (the braking force) and a current (which is what causes that hum when it hits the brakes). The current is a constant (based on the parameters of the setup - magnet strength and separation, alloy composition etc.), so therefore the force is a variable, i.e. the braking force is proportional to the speed of the gondola. This means a few things - the velocity of the gondola after some time in the braking will reach a constant speed which it cannot go below, as magnetic induction cannot physically stop a moving body. The two "arms" that the gondola hits coming into the station would actually be hydraulic, not pneumatic, and serve the purpose of slowing the gondola to a gentle stop. It is in no way reliant on electricity and the system is 100% failsafe.

It can't be that difficult to keep it to the thread you created to discuss your trip.

Keep it to one thread please.

The posters are still around but the link's become somewhat lost. They can be found here. Thanks everyone for the support of the site. Remember I'm more than open to comments or suggestions about it. If you've got something, let me know or post in the Site Issues forum.

Give this a look. It's nothing special in terms of the quality of the footage, but it should give you an idea of the quality of the ride. This was taken over 18 months ago and not all the effects were running at that time. I'm yet to see it since its recent "retheming" as a result of the fire that occured last year, so I can't say whether it is better or worse than what it is in that video.

Of course, if you want to help me make a living from this site, get buying!

I believe it spent some time in an Adelaide park before being purchased by Adventure World. While it was in Adelaide it remained the same as when in Luna Park. Its lifthill was modified when Adventure World from the spiral system (where the cars had electric motors built into them) to a standard straight chain driven hill. I'd say the most logical reasons for these changes were availability of spare parts and reliability of the system.

The newest Vekoma SLC is Gauntlet at Magic Springs and Crystal Falls, built this year at a cost of $7m according to RCDB. The two newest B&M Inverted coasters with cost information available at RCDB are the forthcoming Silver Bullet at Knott's ($16m) and Talon at Dorney Park ($13m). Both of these rides are a good 300m or so longer than the SLC, both would induce significantly larger construction costs because of the scope of these projects and their integration into existing areas of parks. Both are custom designed. Meanwhile Magic Springs' SLC isn't custom designed - it's one of about 30 - so R&D and design costs incurred Vekoma would be insignificant at best. Now comes long-term costs. It's no deep secret that Vekoma coasters cost more to operate smoothly in the long run. Unfortunately most parks aren't willing to go as far as they could to keep the rides in order. See Lethal Weapon for an example of this. Most of the year there's one train in parts being worked on. When it's finished they take the other one off, usually trying to get them both running for peak periods. It wasn't that long ago that both were consistently operating, even during the low periods. Even Six Flags manage to keep their B&Ms running smoothly, so seemingly not much needs to be done. Case closed. In case you're after yet another argument, Vekoma fabricate in Europe and ship parts. B&M subcontract to "local" suppliers. Why do you think Lethal Weapon cost $16m, whereas its American counterparts cost half that (and less at the time of its construction)? On that same token, why was Luna Park's Big Dipper cost almost on par with other installations by Arrow in America around the same time? Just a coincidence that Arrow subcontracted fabrication to local companies? In short the cost of one manufacturer over another is getting ever closer. Why any park would go with Vekoma for their "older" concepts is beyond me (outside of package deals).

In a normal week, if I spend two hours working on the sites then I've done well. That is to say, no, it's anything but full time.

I thought I might let you know what's going on with this site as we speak. There's a brand new site design for the main site coming soon and appropriate forum style to match. The new design will be much more compact and more efficient, plus a lot easier on the eyes. It's a complete rebuilt from the ground up, but nothing will be lost in the change thanks to the database driven backend. A new key feature will be a site search system that lets you find exactly what you're after far quicker. The system will search all areas of the site (articles, database and galleries) and display them all at once so you're guaranteed to find what you're after. I don't like to set dates for anything, because I never actually meet them, but it will be ready *soon*. No previews either; I figure you can all wait and see. Rest assured that the design is a huge improvement on the current design, and it takes into account some of the responses I got from the survey.

So Kumba, an African themed ride is "too American?"

Mega Drop is a pneumatic launched ride. That is, riders are launched towards the ground (with an initial launch force of -0.5Gs - freefall as with Giant Drop et al is 0G by definition). Also having said that, the speed of this ride is only around 75km/hr. I'm not sure what your paper's reading to get 200km/hr. I worked out the other day exactly how fast it would need to launch you towards the ground to achieve 200km/hr. I can't remember the figure I got, but you're talking speeds that cause the human body to become not much more than a ball of jelly in a fraction of a second,