Richard

Yeah, I think that's absolutely right. They really need a lot more slides - as it is, they've got what, about 12 or so slides. Meanwhile, as I said in my previous post, there are theme parks whose "small" water parks are getting slide complexes with more than 12 - added in just a season. The only way you can fill a day at Wet'n'Wild is by re-riding things like Aqua Racer, and though tremendously fun, it's good to have such a variety that you don't need to spend two hours doing that (two hours out of a seven hour day is a lot). The Australian public just doesn't yet know what real water parks are made of.

Regardless of how you think Wonderland has treated you or employees of the park, I don't think it justifies some of the negativity that is in this thread. I'm all for free speech, but if all you're going to do is bag the place, then it's going to get very tiring very quickly. You know what's odd? That Warner Bros. Movie World has had frequent deals (including right now) that get you a year pass for just a day-and-a-half, same goes for Sea World. Together they bring in more attendance than any other two parks in Australia (you'd be looking at a combined total of close to 2.7 million in most recent years). Dreamworld it seems is really the only park that doesn't offer frequently discounted year passes (not by coincidence; I'd bet that they've also got the highest number of passholders of any park in Australia). This is an absolutely perfect technique for marketing - one that's used by Cedar Fair, Six Flags and other market leaders in America. You're pretty well guaranteeing guests through the gates. Spend say $50 over the course of the year (which is probably well under the average season pass spending per year), and that's $50 minus costs that the park would otherwise not have gotten. If the treatment to staff is as bad as you're suggesting, then why isn't everyone getting out? Don't tell me that there's no alternatives for a hardworking, polite young person out there in the workforce. Let's be friendly to others, regardless of their opinions. It's one thing to disagree, and simply state so, but to start flaming etc., because they're "wrong" in your eyes is unnecesary. This goes for everyone.

Well, I got out there today. And from what I saw of Whirlpool, given that I didn't ride it, it's a pretty lame ride. It doesn't seem that much faster than Calypso Beach, not to mention it's tiny in comparison and not exactly the prettiest thing. From what I saw, there's not really any smaller whirlpools or anything to spin you or create rapids or anything - it's all pretty much a continuous one-way, gentle spinning. To be honest, there's a council-owned swimming complex in Brisbane I know of that has a better whirlpool than this one. As I guessed, it's just meant to be a way to suck a few more people out of the spilling queues on other rides. It's by no means a destination ride, and was never meant to be. Now, a new tower complex with a half-dozen new tube slides would be my ideal people-sucker (and you look at what some of the relatively small theme parks in America added to their water parks this season - i.e. SFWOA or Dorney Park's colossal things), but considering the scapegoat that is the world economy crisis, you can't expect much.

On that note, I'm pleased to announce the definite inclusion of the following attractions in the calendar, thanks to Warner Village Theme Parks. •Lethal Weapon (Warner Bros. Movie World) •Corkscrew (Sea World) •Viking's Revenge (Sea World) And others which I won't mention. I've gotten a few orders, but we really need more - sooner rather than later. You've only got two weeks today, so get your credit cards out and get ordering! Remember, if you can't pay by credit card you'll have to contact me ASAP to get details on paying by cheques or other methods. www.totalthrills.com/calendar.php

Fair question, I'm glad someone asked it because I didn't cover it anywhere. Permission has been asked from most major parks who are intended to be included. Notification has been given, and if in the 2+ weeks I haven't gotten a reply, saying either "Yes..." (or "Yes, but...") or "No.", then I can assume that no reply means they simply don't mind either way. The final design won't be in until December 3 for printing and although I don't want to change it, if I get a request from a park that they don't wish to be included, then it will be removed and replaced with another picture from another park. As I'm sure you know, professionalism is my game. I'm not here to make a fool of myself, or get myself into trouble. By the book is how I'll always operate around here.

I presume if it wasn't the Scenic Railway, then it was Metropolis, which is of course a Pinfari Galaxy (RCDB says its SDC, but I'm pretty sure it's Pinfari). Scenic Railway is a horrid ride in its current state. I think that its top speed to roughness ratio would leave it as by far the most painful ride in Australia - I mean it's by far rougher than Bush Beast as is, and it only tops out at like 30km/h. Anyway, if I were a spoilt wannabe pop star, I know I wouldn't put myself through a ride like Scenic Railway. I guess Luna Park's management are smart enough to not put people on it.

It should still accept AMEX - it just won't be able to convert directly to AUD. Your bank will do that for a slight charge, which certainly isn't nearly as much as the time and frustration sending a cheque in the mail is. You might end up paying $26 or something - it won't be significant. If you're trying to pay with AMEX, don't change it to AUD - leave it on USD and it will work fine.

There's no way you can know without contacting the agents, and they're basically not going to waste their time unless you're acutally a serious potential customer. Maybe if you've got a farm between Melbourne and Adelaide they'd let you know... But my best estimate would be $500,000 - $1 mil. Anything higher and I think you'd be kidding yourself. I mean, John Longhurst paid $4 mil for it in the early 80's and it's only gotten worse since then. I'd like to think that the rate of depreciation is higher than the inflation rate over the past 20 years.

MORE INFORMATION AVAILABLE HERE I thought this would be interesting to do. Using a collection of photographs featured on Total Thrills, I've designed a calendar for 2004. It features thirteen high-quality, glossy photographs of roller coasters and other rides and attractions around Australia. Rides include: •Thunderbolt (Dreamworld) •Cyclone (Dreamworld •Scenic Railway (Luna Park Melbourne) •Bush Beast (Wonderland Sydney) •Wild Mouse (Aussie World) •Crazy Mouse (Brisbane Ekka) •Orphan Rocker (Scenic World) And of course six others from some of Australia's best and biggest as well as least known theme parks. The calendar is just AU$25.00, including postage+handling! They are being printed by a company that specialises in calendars. They're not an inkjet home-brew job by myself. We need to sell a minimum of 15 calendars (but we're not limited to 15). So buy one for yourself and a few to give away. ALL ORDERS MUST BE RECEIVED BY WEDNESDAY DECEMBER 3! Shipping will be done in mid-December for arrival prior to Christmas so you'll have time to wrap them and give them away. Orders must be from within Australia. Payment is by credit card. If you wish to pay by cheque or other, email me. MORE INFORMATION AVAILABLE HERE

Not only is this adequately on topic, but it's also very interesting reading. Bush Beast, if it were to run properly would need more than what an in-house maintenance team could do. Call up the Gravity Group, and pull the plug on Bush Beast for six months and you'd have something to write home about. The current way of operating appears to be replace wood only when there's nothing there. It'd be so much cheaper and cost effective to pull the plug and see what they can do from scratch with a decent design (look at PGA with a clone of Bush Beast - as rabid will tell you it's just as bad or worse). I think it's obvious that Sunway are in it for the land. The Wonderland management team are certainly there to run the best park they can - they're pretty much all seasoned experts that were lured down from the Gold Coast parks, but sadly Sunway aren't. The park's profitable, I don't think there's any denying that, but it's a shame Sunway don't seem terribly interested developing what has the potential to be a world class theme park. I think Wonderland's management team do a fantastic job with what is obviously a very tight and limited budget. I mean, the place is hardly perfect, but it's leaps and bounds over what it was when they first picked it up.

I mentioned earlier that there's a Sea World video coming. This is slightly different. I haven't gotten around to actually making mine yet, but my brother, who actually shot the footage, played around and came up with this: http://www.totalthrills.com/swvideo.php I might get around to making what I wanted - which was to be significantly longer and have a little more to it. This one is just a three minute video synchronised with the song (Ben Lee's Nothing Much Happens). Comments etc. are greatly appreciated!

I do agree with rabid in that Dreamworld's operations department would really show how not to do a ride with a "Perilous Plunge". As for the argument that Dreamworld doesn't need any more water rides because of the two they've already got, I'd say that certainly in Australia, there really is no limit to the number of water rides you can have. I mean, Thunder River Rapids is pretty well a high capacity no-brainer, and it manages hour plus queues without any effort. Rocky Hollow is exactly the same. Now, maybe for capacity reasons alone, there's no need for a Perilous Plunge type ride, but I'd think if they went for some of the less risky styles of water rides - even the standard version of the shoot the chutes, they'd have a ride that though certainly not a signature attraction, would definitely be a very popular and welcome addition at Dreamworld.

While at Sea World yesterday, it was pleasing to see how construction progresses on Shark Bay. It has been suggested that construction is behind by two weeks or so, and they're aiming for a later holiday opening date. It's actually quite a large area, as you'll see from the 10 picture construction gallery here: http://www.totalthrills.com/sbconst.php

Yesterday, after initially disappointing weather, it managed to pull through and we got a nice day down at the Gold Coast. I also managed to snap 264 photographs all day, which means a fairly big and all-inclusive update to the Sea World gallery. This sets the tone that I want to carry through with future updates, where instead of relatively small ones with 10 or 15 photographs, I'll have 100 or 150 in each gallery. It'll be a lot to get through, but it'll make for some very complete galleries. The video I mentioned in another thread (for those that haven't read, essentially a small film of 15 or so minutes, capturing what Sea World is), will also hopefully be on the way in coming weeks. I haven't yet looked at the footage we took, but I'm sure there'll be enough to work with.

Am I to assume the Tumble Bug you speak of is the classic Harry Traver ride. Kennywood has one, and from what "they" say, it's certainly a lot more fun than it looks.

A little side-tracking's okay, so long as it's interesting. There is another thread where the Giant Drop/Space Probe found themselves (here). By all means keep this discussion going for its original purposes, and I'll make sure things don't go too far from the topic at hand. I mean, the comparison of the two drop towers is quite relevant to this discussion.

Yeah, let's clear this all up... There are two Boomerang Bays coming to Paramount parks next year. Paramount's Kings Islands are replacing/renovating their Waterworks water park, to make what sounds to be a very serious attempt at an all-inclusive and well themed water park. As rabid said, Paramount's Great Adventure are also adding a Boomerang Bay, replacing Stealth. They say that the park wasn't correctly targeting its major demographic (families) with Stealth, and it sounds to be a fairly rotten ride with dozens of design flaws, so they're doing the smart thing and removing it. With a rumoured stopover in The Netherlands (you know, California to Carolina... it's practically on the way) for a bit of a fixup. I'm moderately interested in the new flyer for Canada's Wonderland. It's the Zamperla model, which they say is by far the worst of the three (as you would expect, I suppose). You say it's Tomb Raider themed? Sounds cool, but I'd keep in mind it certainly won't have a squillionth of the budget of PKI's version, so I'd say anything they do won't exactly do the Tomb Raider franchise proud - of course I'd love to be proven wrong.

Yeah, it looks interesting. I'm not sure how well it'll come off as "Australian", but it looks like it's going to be very interesting nonetheless. I like how they mentioned the Gold Coast - somehow I don't think we're going to see the park themed with sky scrapers, nightclubs, cheesy tourist attractions and theme parks. 8)

I think Dreamworld on the whole do a decent job with theming, given what they've got. I mean, it's certainly not top priority with new rides, like it would be at Movie World, and I don't imagine it is given the budget it would need to truly be good. I mean, look at Tower of Terror - any storyline they've got going there isn't exactly obvious, nor would it make much sense (one minute you're in what resembles a mine shaft, the next you're walking along a narrow walkway with tiny dots resembling cars below you), but what they have done is pretty decent, and on the whole reasonably convincing. Plus if the sound of cars launching every minute doesn't give you the chills, the airconditioning set to approximately -190ºC surely will.

I assure you that Cyclone takes the inversions at roughly the same speed as Demon. They're roughly the same size (because of how they used to design inversions), and if it were any faster you'd have extreme g-forces, and too slow and you won't have the speed to make it through, or centripetal force won't be enough to hold the train to the track and you'll have all sorts of awkward sensations. As far as I'm concerned, the vertical loop and sidewinder/boomerang are all nothing inversions. They don't provide any actual physical sensations. If there were corkscrews or zero-g rolls or whatnot involved, it'd be different, but as they are they don't really give anything. Cyclone really is the better ride. I honestly don't see any comparison in terms of ride quality and substance. Nightshifter, I'm not sure if you've ridden Cyclone (or Big Dipper for that matter), but personally, having ridden both many many times, I can confidently say that Cyclone is the better of the two - and I'd like to think that's not just my opinion, but rather common sense.

I think there's still a comparison to have. After all, if you can compare rides like Tower of Terror to Runaway Reptar, then I think Demon to Cyclone is fair. Now, I voted for Cyclone. Let's go through my reasons: Ride Substance Cyclone is a considerably longer ride. Whereas Demon simply takes six inversions in quick succession, Cyclone has the lead up to the two inversions in the form of the fan turns, s-bend and helix. Demon is "bam, bam, bam and back again". Trains This is more trivial than anything, but I'll compare the trains for you. Cyclone uses the Arrow restraints which to start off with are a lot more comfortable than the Vekoma restraints. Now, Cyclone has these nice soft things that make any (pretty minimal) headbanging bearable, while Demon's rock hard things aren't too kind on the head (thankfully it too is fairly light on the old head... at least on all of my visits, some of you might disagree). The rest of the trains are essentially identical, so there's little use comparing it there. Aesthetics I discounted this one for my vote, because I'm giving my opinion on the ride, not the ride's surroundings and prettiness. I mean, if it came down to surroundings or how it looked, my favourite ride would be Luna Parks' Scenic Railway, but you don't see that happening. I've included it here as a disclaimer - you'll see it's favouring Demon. Cyclone has a bright and chirpy colour scheme, which I personally like, but all that does is highlight the dirt and roads under the ride, and the hideously plain station. Meanwhile Demon's surroundings combined with the black paint create excellent atmosphere. Plus those black steel "jailhouse" air gates in the station add nicely to the anticipation. Dreamworld tried their hardest with a storyline for the ride. I think they did reasonably well, but as we've come to expect, it slowly becomes less and less "complete" until it's pretty well all gone. I'm sure many of you who've been there recently wouldn't even know that the faux news updates featuring Gold Coast newsreader Natalie Gruzlewski even existed once upon a time.

I don't think much more needs to be said than what has already been said. Just be happy with what you all know already, and rest assured that I'm sure you'll be happy this time next year.

The problems with the ride at Knotts is pretty much confined to Knotts. The overkill restraints that they have were an order by the State of California. And the capacity issues seem to largely be brought about by the series of incidents that have happened on the ride which have meant that it was either impossible or inefficient to actually run more than a single boat on the course. I'd imagine it was designed to run three or four boats with ease, but the current restraints don't allow that. I personally don't think Dreamworld's crews would allow it either, to be honest. Remember that Oakwood (home of Megafobia) in Wales built a near-clone of it (it is oval shaped rather than figure-of-eight), and though it is less publicised, I don't think there have been many issues with capacity or whatnot that plagued Perilous Plunge. It's probably not anywhere near my number one choice, but it's a great looking water ride - a sort that Dreamworld doesn't have. If they could find a way to slot it over near something else (I could see it built over Cyclone's helix area - tucked in that corner), and keep the Thunderbolt area open for some real rides, I'd be in heaven.

Yep, the information you've read somewhere is correct. Luna Park Melbourne is being sold. Who knows the reason behind it - it's getting more and more popular by the year. My guess is that, coupled with the increasing popularity of the St Kilda area has lead to a boost in the value of the real estate. We're talking in the 75+ million mark for the land the park is on, so my guess is if the owners sell now (given that the real estate market is pretty high), they'll be making a serious killing on it - making the operating profits seem insignificant. Here's the press release: From that, I definitely get the feeling that they purchased an underperforming park, did the necessary to keep it running and boost the value a bit, and waited for the market to get to the right point, and collect a cool return on the investment. Kind of like all those couples who move from old house to old house renovating then selling. Sad? I think not. The park's staying - there's no doubt at all there. New owners might mean some more capital expenditure in the future. I know the Scenic Railway needs a heck of a lot more than a lick of paint to make that thing remotely enjoyable again. What was the site you found the link to Total Thrills at? I'm curious to know (plus my usage statistics for this site aren't working too well).

Yeah, I caught it (thanks to daylight saving, when you got me in MSN, the show had only just begun). All of the Discovery coaster specials are the exact same thing, just with different rides. Only coaster shows use this format of documentary, and quite honestly, it's a horrible way to do the shows. They essentially create about half a dozen sections, each of which could be considered an introduction, and simply play them in a line. There's no real content to the shows, and the conclusion is usually terrible. One thing I love is how obviously fake everything is. They get bystanders near Xcelerator and Dragster to do the stupid "swivel of the head", which looks stupid. The "extreme riders" are all people who've ridden the things way too many times to get anything much out of the rides (they're generally local enthusiasts), but they're still putting on the whole over-the-top excitement thing while giving the on-ride commentary. The remaining three shows are all different ones - which means I can waste another three hours this week.