Richard

The problem with that plan is that the magnetic field of a bar magnet is radial. There will be just as much repelling from the forthcoming magnets as there will be from those they've just been past. The angle of 45º wouldn't make a difference the the forces (if it did, then an angle of 60º or 89.99º would be more efficient). What you're trying to do is break the fundamental nature of the universe by creating more energy than you put in. In reality, what'll happen is it'll slow and eventually stop. In a perfect situation, the body will slow as it enters the magnetic field, travel at a constant velocity through it, then speed up to the original velocity as it exits.

If that's what you're after then your best bet is to get in and build it yourself from scratch. Substitute LIM for LSM if you want to make it a bit easier to build. A working model of Tower of Terror would be reasonably simple to build if you know what you're doing.

The ride system is to be built by Premier Rides. Evidently it's using their water coaster style of track.

Paramount's Kings Island announced very recently a very cool Italian Job themed coaster. Check it out here. Think Test Track (great analogy seeing as there can't me too many others here who've ridden this ), only a coaster instead of a people mover. It's jam packed with special effects and has two LIM launches and very nifty themed cars. This is the first new ride that's actually gotten me excited in a number of years, to the point where at this stage (and if when it opens next year it lives up to the videos) my travel plans for next year are being based on this attraction. Anyway, I just thought this would be the ultimate style of ride for Movie World. Obviously find a movie in the Warner Bros. catalogue and integrate it with the film's launch. I just can't think of a more appropriate ride for Movie World. It doesn't look hideously expensive (Paramount work with budgets more in-line with our parks than say Disney or Universal), it'd have a capacity around the same as Movie World's existing rides, so nothing that's an overkill for capacity. It'd be a thrill ride, in every sense of the word, but it wouldn't be the sort of thing that sacrifices thrills and speed for theming, which I know seems to be high on Movie World's agenda these days. Extend the path beside Wild West Falls, and use the hill behind Wild West Falls which is currently used for storage. Just find us a movie coming out in around 2006 from Warner Bros. that this sort of thing would fit and we're set.:cool:

Correction: he broke the rules, as outlined in the Community Guidelines.

I wouldn't rather nothing at all, I never said that. I'm completely indifferent about them. Xcelerator would be just as good with or without the overbanked turns. There's not too many people who have ridden it that wouldn't agree to some extent with this. Storm Runner's only 150ft tall. That's a fair cry from 400ft+ we're talking about here. The point is, rides built for height and speed are done for those reasons alone. It's been this way for the last ten years, and as these stats become bigger and bigger, it increases the costs more and more, to the point where there really is no room for anything but the bare essentials.

Having a hotel or two doesn't make a park a "destination park", its attendance does. Alton Towers, and its hotels are aimed at people looking to spend a day or weekend away. The use of the phrase "short break" is found throughout their website and on press releases etc. People don't go there for Alton Towers, they go to Alton Towers because they're there. I don't know, maybe joz can clear it up for us, but I'd doubt you'd bump into too many people while there without a familiar Birmingham or Manchester accent. Australia has many regional parks already. See Luna Park (Melbourne and Sydney), Jamberoo Recreation Park, Merimbula's Magic Mountain and the list goes on. These parks are currently achieving attendance under around 500,000 per year and it's no surprise why. Attendance breakdown for Dreamworld leaves only around 400,000 guests per year from Queensland (which isn't just SE Qld, but families who are attending Dreamworld as a "destination"), only a third of their total attendance - in some years more people actually visit from interstate than from Queensland. There's room for more regional parks around Australia, but given our population, there's no way you can expect attendance even a fraction of what regional parks in America get (the average Six Flags would be 1.5-2 million guests per season; only six months of the year).

US$25 million is already a huge investment for Top Thrill Dragster. With the amount of track you'd need to add to such a ride, even with trim brakes, to make it of reasonable length, you'd be looking at millions and millions more. Let's face it, people are flocking to these sorts of rides because they're the tallest and fastest and they really don't care that there's not other elements. Anything else is really a letdown after an incredible launch like that. Xcelerator's biggest downfall really is the two overbanked turns. They're nice, but it's such a huge letdown after that incredible launch and tophat.

The problem as you get faster is things need to get bigger. You're looking at a pretty big (300ft+) airtime hills, some pretty large helixes etc., which all adds up to millions and millions. To double the ride time, you've probably easily doubled the cost. For instance, a helix at 195km/hr (i.e. at the bottom of the drop), exerting a constant force (at every point in the helix) of 4Gs positive and no lateral forces, banked to 60º throughout will have a 170m diameter and add only 10s to the ride time. And in reality, it'd be larger than this, mostly for transitioning reasons to keep forces reasonable throughout. Find me any park that has this sort land sitting around that couldn't do with it for future expansions.

Alton Towers is in the United Kingdom. Off the beaten track there means two blocks away. Alton Towers is only around 30 minutes from Birmingham and Manchester and under two hours from London. Another thing with Alton Towers, unlike our parks or those in Orlando, it's a regional park, like a Six Flags, not a destination park like those at the Gold Coast or Orlando. There's really no significant destination parks in the UK, unless you're willing to count sleepy seaside villages with parks like Blackpool Pleasure Beach.

In terms of a park, Dreamworld is a much nicer place to be. SFMM was like a ghost town when I was there, where literally the only rides operating were 13 coasters, two log flumes, a river rapids and some upcharge things. No flat rides, transport rides, and certainly no non-ride entertainment. However, in terms of capacity, SFMM surely do have Dreamworld beaten. Aside from X and Goliath, all coasters were running multiple trains (and given our visit was in the off-season and both these rides now have more trains, I'd put it down to "annual maintenance") and operators were certainly more keen on getting people moving through than Dreamworld's are.

That's right, park policy is to check restraints, so this guy must be lying. It'd be a great world if everyone did everything by the book. I agree it sounds odd, but why doubt the guy? I know I've had the same thing happen on rides at Dreamworld in the past.

Islands of Adventure fails in one key area - crowd management. It is far far far too small for the attendance it receives. It is just painful to get from one place to another unless the park is virtually deserted. We needed to get from Jurassic Park to The Lost Continent in 20 minutes to get seats for their Sinbad show. Look at a map - it's about a 150m or so distance. We didn't make it, in 20 minutes! Then there's horrible bottlenecking at the key ride destinations which make it impossible to get through. Also, if you're going to offer free locker hire for rides, make it so that there are enough. The rides aren't all great. Outside of the two/three B&Ms, there's in fact very little of interest. Dudley-Do-Right Ripsaw falls is nothing more than your average flume with a very nifty drop and some cardboard cutouts - it's like Six Flags style. Dueling Dragons for our entire visit (12 days in Orlando, with probably half a dozen visits to IOA) ran only one train on each side. We queued for over 90 minutes at one stage because of one-train operation when there were two trains for each side (a total of four spare trains) free in the storage shed. Jurassic Park River Adventure was tacky and a fraction of the ride it was in Hollywood. Animatronics didn't work, some of the dinosaurs were falling apart. In short, when you want to try and compete with Disney, you've got to actually meet their standards, that's what I don't like about it. Islands of Adventure tries to be a Disney-standard park when it's really not. Back on topic a little more, in regards to issues of State Government support. I'm not totally convinced Queensland will exactly save a park here should they go belly up, but there sure are incentives from the Government, including investment money. Why not? Tourism is one of our key industries and theme parks are pretty integral to that. No government in Australia will support anything that isn't in the best interest of the community they represent.

I'll refer you to a TR recently posted at CoasterBuzz. The person who posted it is a German coaster enthusiast providing an honest opinion of their day at Dreamworld. You'll see that on the whole they enjoyed the park experience, but left as I suspect many guests do, annoyed at the capacity and needlessly long queue lengths. http://www.coasterbuzz.com/forum.aspx?mode...d&TopicID=38964 Quotes to note: So we went to Whipe Out, a Top Spin type ride. We only had one load ahead of us, still we waited about 15 minutes. [Cyclone] had a dispatch rate of about one ride every 10-15 minutes. We calculated that we had about three trains ahead of us. Our wait amounted to 45 minutes. (Cyclone) One dispatch every 5 minutes. (On Giant Drop's capacity.) Dreamworld badly needs to work on those dispatch times. It might not have been such a busy day (July 19th), but the unnecessary wait definitely spoils part of the fun. Also note that below, another foreign member posted much the same comments regarding their own experiences with Dreamworld earlier this year. To those "defending" Dreamworld on this one. I don't hate Dreamworld or have any sort of grudges. As I've said countless times before it's the park that sparked my interest in theme parks and I really have nothing but respect for the park. This is an issue that is seemingly oblivious to Dreamworld, or one that they think about much differently from myself. I want nothing more than for it to somehow be resolved. There is a problem, and I honestly believe it can be fixed.

I'd like to hear your reasoning behind "Walt Disney was such a jerk". Just on EPCOT (Experimental Prototype Community/City of Tomorrow), it was all set to go. Plans were being drawn and finalised, investors and corporate partners were in discussions with Walt and his EPCOT team (they were more or less his closest and most senior Imagineers). Walt died in 1966 but the work continued on plans for EPCOT and even gave them fresh interest and inspiration to complete it. After he died, his brother Roy Disney (Snr.) was now in charge and wasn't quite the dreamer that Walt was (he was the financial brains behind the Disney empire). He wasn't convinced it would work and is quoted saying to Marvin Davis, the guy in charge of EPCOT's team, "Marvin, Walt's dead," which was more or less the end for EPCOT and in its place the Epcot Center (now just Epcot). Dreamworld's location is key to its success. It's on the major highway from Brisbane to the Gold Coast and only twenty minutes from the heart of the Gold Coast. Even so, take Knott's Berry Farm or Disneyland - they're half an hour or so from Downtown LA. Six Flags Magic Mountain is more or less out in the country, I think it was around an hour fro Downtown.

Because industrial companies are really likely to buy plots of land with a rotting coaster in the middle. I really think that trying to hold onto Bush Beast would do more harm to the NSW/Sydney theme park industry than anything. Then there's my further question regarding Beastie, which is a far more culturally and historically significant attraction. Funnily enough, I'm also having trouble seeing how Bush Beast is at all eligable for a heritage order based on the Heritage Council of NSW. Below is the simplified criteria. Tell me where it fits in with any of these. an item is important in the course, or pattern, of NSW’s cultural or natural history; an item has strong or special association with the life or works of a person, or group of persons, of importance in NSW’s cultural or natural history; an item is important in demonstrating aesthetic characteristics and/or a high degree of creative or technical achievement in NSW ; an item has strong or special association with a particular community or cultural group in NSW for social, cultural or spiritual reasons; an item has potential to yield information that will contribute to an understanding of NSW’s cultural or natural history; an item possesses uncommon, rare or endangered aspects of NSW’s cultural or natural history; an item is important in demonstrating the principal characteristics of a class of NSW’s cultural or natural places or cultural or natural environments.

The story with that goes as follows. Walt Disney had a lot to do with the 1964 New York World's Fair - he designed quite a few attractions for companies (it's a small world for Pepsi, Carousel of Progress for General Electrics). The man behind the World's Fair, Robert Moses wanted Walt to build another Disneyland on the east Coast. Studies proved that it was feasible to build another park on the east coast, but New York wasn't the answer, for reasons rabid was alluding to - weather primarily, but also have easy access by car. He bought up a lot of land (it's something like 46 square miles). Initially it was to be used for Walt's dream of EPCOT (the real EPCOT, not the Epcot we see today) as well as theme parks and resorts. Long story short, he created the Magic Kingdom. Competitors saw the very lucrative market. Beer company, Anheuser-Busch, acquired SeaWorld and Cypress Gardens, which, along with Busch Gardens, were the only competitors. Universal also came in with Universal Studios in 1990 and then Islands of Adventure more recently. Warmth, as well as the fact that the Gold Coast was already a key "weekend holiday" location for SE Queenslanders would be among the key reasons the parks were developed at the Gold Coast, not in the more populous areas of the southern states. Substitute Disney with Sea World Property Trust (now Warner Village Theme Parks) and Dreamworld with Anheuser-Busch and ignore Universal and you have two destination holiday areas that are strikingly similar to one another.

More or less what joz said. The success of the Gold Coast as a place of theme parks is not really a result of the Gold Coast being a key tourism destination, it's very much the other way around. From this stems the fact that no other theme park development has been up to the standards of the Gold Coast. Nothing illustrates this better than John Menzies, WVTP's CEO. Over 30 years in more or less the same job (albeit, his responsibilities have significantly grown as Sea World's attendance did, and the introduction of Movie World, Wet'n'Wild and Paradise Country) shows a passion for the industry and intuition which simply must be there unmatched in Australia or virtually anywhere in the world. Almost all our other parks, Dreamworld inclusive have all been steered by someone that seemed to be in it for anything but long term; a plan in which failure seems to be hardwired (be that in the sense of just a pathetic attempt, or a good plan that through mismanagement or ulterior motives fails). Dreamworld's come close to some undesirable outcomes more times than you'd like to think. I agree very much that all it will take is one park elsewhere that is done well to show the Gold Coast parks how it is done. We needn't be talking something the scope of Islands of Adventure either. That park was a hefty USD$2 billion, on land already owned by Universal (Vivendi at that time). Word has it they're having serious problems with the investment, as profits from the park aren't doing much towards paying of this $2 billion loan, instead relying on revenue from other sources (Universal Studios etc.) to meet interest repayments. I'm probably also one of the only people out there to think that IOA is a joke as a major theme park, but that's irrelevant. Something that simply shows knowledge of the industry and a respect for what it can offer will do wonders in Australia. I'm not talking everyone's dream parks or anything, just something that doesn't rely on gimmicks, of even the fact that it may be located an untouched market (thereby "milking" the area of everything it's worth). The funny thing is, I just wanted to post a quick few words, not something like this.

I've spent much of my free time this week working on a completely redesigned gallery main page. Nothing's changed on the individual gallery pages, but it should be a lot easier now to get from place to place in the gallery. See it by clicking Gallery up above, or here. Changes: Use of dropdown menus to reduce size. "All Galleries" list can be ordered based on date or name. Galleries can now be selected based on park, coaster and ride/attraction. "Latest Photo Galleries" now contains the latest five and includes a description and thumbnail. If you've got any problems, comments or further suggestions for the gallery then let me know here.

I'd rather you posted in the appropriate forum, or not at all. If it's something you wanted to post, then why not go straight to the proper forum and post it there, instead of a totally unrelated thread in a different forum? Really, the forums are set up as they are so it's easy to find information on a specific topic. If someone wants to know when The Claw starts testing, why would they look in this forum or thread?

What exactly does The Claw have to do with this topic? Really, there's a whole forum for Dreamworld with countless threads about this ride, and you choose to post it as a totally off-topic point completely out of nowhere.

Nebuchanezzar,take a read of the Community Guidelines. In short, capital letters are your friends at the start of sentences. There was no corrolation between the woman dying on Goliath and the high G-forces. The woman had a brain aneurysm which can burst at any time. Scientific studies, even those funded by the infamous US Senator Ed Markey have shown this to be the case.

Seen how the cars make the fog in the tunnel go crazy as they pass through? A 3 tonne car around 5m wide hitting a hole not much wider would definitely cause vibrations. I don't even doubt that the Ropers could feel it at their home. Having said that, their case is totally off base and I don't think there's any chance it'll go much further. If appeals get turned down (can't see that happening), then Alton Towers would sooner buy them out than dismantle a £7m (AUD$18m) attraction that is also one of their signature attractions. As far as I know, it already uses all the standard noise-dampening techniques already, and scream shields would ruin the ride and I think be totally impractical on a ride like this.

To do that you'd need a very simple helix and even then a lot of specific information about that exact section of track. I don't know what forumulas HowStuffWorks has listed, but I can assure you that they don't take into account changing speed, banking (which also varies throughout the helix), non-circular shape and a host of other variables that are working. Good luck even finding rough approximations any of it either. Ultimate Rollercoaster suggests it's 4.5Gs sustained for six seconds. They're a reasonably reputable source, and I'd certainly agree with it. I'd say yes, with near certainty that it beats out Nemesis. It'd probably be the most highly regarded helix in terms of intensity of any coaster.

A bit harsh? I said, "It's truly an amazing ride, but superb up the front." What more could you possibly want?