Richard

Last update was last Friday. I haven't seen it since then, but I can't imagine that it's progressed that significantly since then. The footers are reasonably fresh, and they alone will take a few weeks to set properly, so you can't have anything attached to them until after this. I may be there some time on the weekend. I'll be down at the coast, but I don't know if I'll be able to get to Dreamworld. If not, there'll be the usual update next Friday.

Gotta get people in and looking at the site. That content doesn't look at itself you know!

Well, Disney etc. don't use electronic systems. That's only select Six Flags parks with QBot. The most painfully obvious answer to that problem would be to use a waterproof device. Disney's are printed on small pieces of plastic-coated paper. I'm not sure I'd trust people to not loose them on slides, and I'd hate to be in filtration maintenance if this were the case. Still, I think there'd be no need for them at Wet'n'Wild. You'll never queue more than 15 or so minutes for anything. FastPass and similar are really designed for two or more hour queues, where guests really do get ticked off and start trashing bins, benches and lamps.

Well, though I've said I don't think the system would be of great benefit at WnW, I'd say you'd do it exactly the same as they do locker rental and "Splash Cash" - you get a waterproof and unbreakable wristband that you'd scan. Blizzard Beach didn't have FastPass. Instead they just went the traditional way and just built heaps and heaps of slides. Hardly made a difference when I was there. It must have been the coldest day Florida's ever had - we were experiencing sweltering heat (like Aussie summer) in the middle of winter, but by the time we came around to do the waterparks it turned freezing.

At Disney parks, every guest is given the ability to get a FastPass for any relevant ride, and are limited to just one until their timeslot opens up. They issue a certain number per hour for each ride, somewhere around about a quarter or so of the ride's capacity I'm guessing. Universal have a similar system, only you have to be either a resort hotel guest, or pay an extra $30 or something for the thing. Six Flags also have an upcharge system. Anheuser-Busch (Bush and SeaWorlds) to my knowledge only have an odd system for platinum pass holders (season passes come in a range of different packages at different prices), where they get reserved premium seating for shows (more comfortable chairs in a better spot and everything), and they can ride twice in a row on any ride without re-queuing. The only problem I see is that if Australian parks were to get it, they'd make it upcharge like most do. The system works absolutely perfectly at Disney - far better even than the upcharge systems. But I'm really not sure Australian parks would see the value of this, or how it would improve their parks. What I can see is a few upper-managements going on a trip to Orlando, seeing Disney's FastPass, noting how fabulous it is and praise the hell out of it when they get back, then proceed to install the same thing, with a $30 pricetag on it. I can also definitely see Movie World benefiting from such a system, more so than any other Australian park. The only attractions you'd really need it for would be Scooby-Doo, Lethal Weapon and Wild West Falls - all of which are high capacity rides, but really do suffer in peak periods because it's all the park's really got when there's not a show on. I've been to Wet'n'Wild on packed days, though I'm not sure they really would need such a system. Most rides are bearable to queue for, even when the place is packed. I personally think they'd benefit much more just by adding more slides. Nothing groundbreaking, but just some things to take the stress away from the few slides they do have.

I know Dreamworld does have it's own equivalent of Kevin or two, who have their own phenominal counts for some rides. Riding TOT 15+ times in one day? I'm all for marathoning on rides if that's your thing (I probably would have once upon a time), but having to put up with that unbearably slow elevator 15+ times? I can barely stand that thing once.

I'd be interested in discussing the idea of virtual queuing, though this isn't the place. Feel free to create a thread in General Thrills.

I'm flattered that you're all doing Google searches for me. That Chernobyl site is pretty cool. It's all so creepy. Reminds me of a film I saw a few weeks back, K19: The Widowmaker, about the first Russian Nuclear sub and its problems that lead to some pretty nasty radiation poisoning. Films don't get to me too often like that, but this one got me feeling a bit queasy by the end. I'll move this over to Chit Chat.

The manufacturer's specified figures are generally the maximum achievable under normal operating conditions. You don't need super-ops, you don't need patrons with a degree in "ride getting into quickly", an ethical manufacturer (i.e. most still in business today) who doesn't want customers coming back complaining that their ride has a lower capacity than advertised. Taken into account is load/unload, checking and that. A very simple illustration of this is Movie World: their three major rides, each with a manufacturer-specified capacity of 1,000 pph quite comfortably attain this capacity year-round. Cedar Point is know, renowned even, for operating it rides at colossal capacities - attaining the specified capacity easily. Some of the rides at Dreamworld, Cyclone for instance isn't a manufacturer's, but the park's own target. 400 pph for Cyclone was what the operations department was aiming for, so hence you'd assume that it was well within the realistically achievable range. Meanwhile I haven't seen it operate at more than half that since early 2002.

With your first two points you've missed one major key point (that was constantly repeated throughout the article) - differing attendance is totally irrelevant because of the way this system works. The actual values were attained more or less through timing the dispatch time. Essentially, time the time it takes between dispatches (or the time between cresting the hill, or any other point of a ride, so long as its consistent throughout), 60 divided by this time will give the number of dispatches per hour, and multiply this by the number of riders in a full load. The same was not done for Cedar Point, because reports consistently state that their rides operate at the listed capacity, execpt in extenuating circumstances, such as Top Thrill Dragster's reliability issues last year (which was resolved before the season was out). If you don't like my actual values, then take the blissfully optimistic official values given next to it. I used those figures shortly after in the article. I'd like to do some more comparisons, especially with Disney as they, like the Gold Coast parks, are destination parks. The problem is that with a plethora of shows, in-street entertainment, walkthrough attractions, and so many areas that are so nice that you could just sit down for two hours and take in the sights around you, it'd be next to impossible to do a similar comparison with a Disney park. I'm plucking this out of thin air, but I'd expect a large Disney park such as Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World, factoring in everything, to have a ratio of at least 0.2 or more - without doubt higher than Cedar Point.

I'm just curious, do you think it's a little much for me, a theme park critic and paying customer, to expect anything less than the absolute best? I say strive for the best. I know there's no way Dreamworld could achieve it, even with a big shakeup in the operations department, simply because of some things Cedar Point has going for it (guests there are said to be more in-tune with operations - they know how the park works the rides, and know what they have to do), but that's no reason not to give it a shot, and continuously guage yourself against the best. Thanks for correcting Police Academy Stunt Show, I don't really need to change what's above, because that increase of 200 results in a capacity increase of 50 guests per hour, and consequently changes the ratio by 5.4x10^-4 (that's 0.00054).

I don't think it was unfair to compare it to Cedar Point, as I did state it was used as a benchmark. I used the park which is undeniably the best capacity in the world. What would have made more sense, using a park rated say 47th in the world? OK, I touched on the comparison between the other Gold Coast parks, but I didn't give figures, namely due to the high show content, and walkthrough/animal attractions at Sea World and Movie World which are hard to effectively guage in terms of pph. The rough figures I did use still came out with much the same result - Dreamworld is far behind. I've assumed an hourly capacity for Warner Bros. Movie World of around 5200. I based this on: Attraction Capacity (pph) Scooby-Doo Spooky Coaster: 1000 Wild West Falls: 1000 Lethal Weapon: 1000 Looney Tunes River Adventure & Village: 1000 Road Runner Rollercoaster: 500 Police Academy Stunt Show: 400 (1000 guests at each of the three shows averaged out over the whole day) Star Parade: 250 (as above, 2000 guests at the single show) Movie World is almost spot on with these figures. The only questionable one is Lethal Weapon, which will get up to 1,000 pph with both trains and a good crew, not all that rare. If you know exact capacity of the shows, I'd like that, because I just estimated for each, which I can't imagine being too far off. For simplicity's sake, we'll take the attendance as being the same as Dreamworld, 92,000 per month. Warner Village Theme Parks don't release exact figures for individual parks, but I remember a year or two ago the combined attendance was around 3.3 million. I got 0.06 - twice what we got for Dreamworld, which you could have told me, simply because the hourly capacity is twice that of Dreamworld. The article seems to have deleted half of itself, but it's all back now. Sorry for any problems this has caused!

I'd say, given this topic's a year old, the site's gone or been changed.

I was bored enough, and it only took a few minutes to do, so I've extracted JPEGs from the PDF (they're about 140k each). By all means, if quality is what you're after, then you can't go wrong with djrappa's PDF original.

As far as crude Aussie humour goes, King Billy Cokebottle was always my pick. Apparently that sort of stuff isn't politically correct these days, but his tapes contained some of the funniest things I've ever heard. <--- You all know my standup comedy pick though. Back on topic though, I'm having trouble picking the best of those four. I haven't been to Luna Park Sydney in its current incarnation, so I'll skip that one for now. I'll put Luna Park in Melbourne last, because the place is compeltely emotionless and sterile thanks to the fix-up they did in 2001. Scenic World - I love the place, but I can't compare it to Wonderland. It's just so very different. You'd go to each for completely opposite reasons. Wonderland on the otherhand was always a fairly fun park. I can't really say I ever went there and didn't enjoy myself.

Dreamworld, the inefficient park? Article found here: http://www.roller-coaster.com.au/article.php?aid=14 Please ensure you have read the article before commenting.

Here's the article: Dreamworld, the inefficient park? (Discuss that article further here.) All that blurting what I think they should build will do is make me sound pompous and stupid. I frequently commented on the park and how I thought it was looking, passing on areas that I thought could be improved upon. I have no doubts that he is quite familiar with B&M and their work, though naturally I never asked him. You're underestimating the whole Australian amusement industry if you think they're that isolated from the rest of the world.

Gazza, I started writing a response to your post, but it's become quite long and uses a lot of figures and other mumbo jumbo to prove my points, so I've decided I'll post it as an article on the main site. Just so you know, it'll be up later this afternoon or evening.

I'd still call them attendants rather than cast. They're splitting guests into groups and directing them through the ride/pre-ride sections. Cast are the people who get into costumes and entertain people, having no attending or operating responsibilities. These people are involved in the operation of rides and attractions. I fully agree that you should be paid based on your training. If they stuff the rosters and end up having to put operators, who are fully trained to do the lower jobs, as attendants, then that's their problem.

Attendant would be say the briefing guy in Bermuda Triangle, or the people with the cheap tuxedos who take you into the library and give you the talk on Batman. I'd say for simplicity that anyone who doesn't push buttons controlling the ride is a ride attendant. Because there's not much that can go wrong with their job, they consequently have no weight over their heads. No more or less integral to the operation of the park, but still a much smaller responsibility. John Menzies (or Peter Hearne in the case of Luna Park) has a great responsibility. If he presses the wrong button, so to speak, then there'd be big problems. That's the fundamental theory of the ratrace; more responsibility, more money.

But it's not really the same responsibility. Who has more responsibility on a ship, the captain, or the waiter who serves dinner in the aft seafood restaurant? Strangely, not a coincidence that the captain on most cruise ships is a high-paid westerner, while the crew are mostly from third-world countries and paid accordingly.

I think you're a little confused. This is a topic about Demon going to Dreamworld, which you started. You're probably most likely looking for this thread, in which people are posting and discussing old Wonderland maps.

I've not ridden an Intamin Gyro Swing, but I have ridden Knott's Berry Farm's Chance Revolution, a ride that's almost identical to the smaller version of Intamin's Gyro Swing, with the exception of having inward-facing seats instead of outward. It's not an intense style of ride, but it is a very enjoyable and exciting ride. You swing to angles much greater than 90º (around 120º or so sounds abour right), so you're effectively upside down. There's absolutely no comparison between this style of ride and say a swinging ship - either Sea World's non-inverting style or Wonderland's full revolution model. Unlike a swinging ship, it's not nearly as nauseating, and the spinning greatly enhances the ride. Anyone else a tad let down by Dreamworld's choice of a smaller model? I mean, when Knott's installed their similar-sized version, it was done so with little if any fanfare. It was really just a small size-attraction to increase their offering. Now we're getting the same as a signature attraction. Out the window goes their whole alleged motto of "biggest and best in the world" - even though they'll still claim they are.

Beastie Bush Beast A bit of a difference between the two. Wooden coasters can be relocated. There's really nothing stopping it from happening, but I think with a ride like Beastie which hasn't operated in a few years and I'm sure wasn't in the greatest condition to start off with, it'd be a lot of bother, with only lukewarm results at best. Not sure why you'd need Beastie with Reptar right there, a much better example of a family coaster. You're still not understanding. No rides at Wonderland Sydney would be viable investments for a major park like Dreamworld. They've operated for up to 19 years at a very well known Australian park. People know these rides and consequently they won't attract guests to the park. These are my opinions - opinions shared by Dreamworld's management.

I'd estimate it at being around a 10m square, perhaps up to 15m. Very small. I forgot to add, the path will be rebuilt extending around the front where the Sandwhich Bar's outdoor eating area was once found. I'd guess that like Nick Central, they'll open this new pathway up as soon as possible, much before the ride actually opens, so as to remove the stress that the detours are causing on Nick Central.