Richard

There are two different kinds of sleds which these rides can have. The first are the sliding version, which utilise two rubber wheels and a pair of runners at the back which are basically plastic blocks. The second are the rolling version which have just four wheels. The benefits of the sliding ones is they're almost impossible to tip because the sleds can roll sideways just as easily as they go forwards so they'll naturally bank the turns with very little effort on the rider's part. The second kind because they're running on four rubber wheels rather than slide pick up some mean speed but in order to get them to bank they require some cajoling on the rider's part. The faster you go on the rolling version of course the further you have to bank, the harder it is to bank and the less time you've got to do it in, which makes them quite easy to tip. The rolling version is also significantly faster than the sliding version and this is why you'll see a lot of rides with these with signs every turn urging riders to slow down. To give you an idea of the added friction of the sliding ones, they can't operate on a slope less than 12%. A lot of the rolling ones need to be be fitted with in-built brakes that cap the speed because they're capable of insane speeds. Jamberoo uses the sliding sleds, most other toboggans around Australia use the rolling. The difference is immediately noticeable to anyone who's ridden both kinds - Jamberoo's are impeccably smooth around the turns but the speeds are never huge. I really like Jamberoo's two as enjoyable intermediate sort of toboggans. They're far from the most intense or fast we've got but the sacrifice you make with the faster rolling ones is the ever-present threat of taking a spill -- which in itself I suppose adds to the ride a bit, but it is far from enjoyable when it happens to you. In my view Merimbula's is the fastest and most intense toboggan we've got. No others here compare to the final few turns if you're taking it without brakes. I've only ever taken a stack on the one at Corin Forest which I'd rate as number two.

There's no sensation of going upside down other than what your brain creates, normally due to the visual cues available on looping rides. The only sensation will be that of high g-forces for the duration of the loop. Visually I guarantee all you will see is what just a constant upward curve and likewise the physical feeling will match this. I would expect that the water will make it through the loop the same as riders do so there shouldn't be any need for additional water. This whole concept really doesn't impress me at all. I believe there are much more exciting things being done with water slides than loops.

Prior to Wet'n'Wild being sold by its original owners they were in fact planning to build a looping slide. A gimmick of epic proportions if there ever was one. You won't be able to see anything other than the slide around you so the effect of being upside down will be totally lost. Ever closed your eyes on a coaster's loop? That's all this will feel like. Not to mention it'd be a capacity nightmare.

On that subject, Village Roadshow refers to their theme park division as Village Roadshow Theme Parks however the company still trades and refers to itself as Warner Village Theme Parks. It's quite correct to refer to the management or parks collectively as WVTP.

You'll have to go and re-upload those photos (click the edit button at the bottom right) because for some reason these photos appear to have not uploaded correctly. There is an ordering problem with ride galleries at this stage which I hope to get resolved shortly. The site is launched more or less, but the forum changeover is basically just on hold until I get enough spare time to change the database over which is a fairly lengthy manual process. Once everything is 100% in place we will be holding a photography competition so stay tuned!

Article: Dreamworld, WhiteWater World report six month growth Tuesday 22 January 2008 - By Richard Wilson. Despite South East Queensland's first truly wet summer in a number of years, Macquarie Leisure's theme parks have performed admirably against the same six month period a year ago. Related Parks: Dreamworld, WhiteWater World

You'll rarely find me without thongs at a park (or anywhere else) as I'm not really a fan of shoes. Most rides you'll be fine to wear them on. With certain inverting rides, especially those without floors (inverted or floorless coasters for instance), the common practice at parks over there is to sit on them. Just remember to call them flip flops if you decide to ask an attendant if it's OK to wear them on a ride. Asking if you can wear thongs will probably be met with odd looks in the States.

My personal gripe with Movie World's system is the lengths they go to clearly in the interests of revenue raising. They go well beyond general safety into borderline obsessiveness. A pocket with a zip or button should clearly be exempt as should a park map. We've discussed ad nauseam how the average pocket contents (excluding bigger things like phones or cameras) are extremely unlikely to cause any injury or damage. The most perplexing thing however is despite all this, if you're wearing thongs or sandals then that's totally fine to ride in. At the end of the day, Movie World obviously has spent a significant amount and need to justify that capital expense by maximising their earnings from it. On paper such a system creates a better experience for the guest by maximising safety on rides and reducing load/dispatch times so making queues shorter, but to me these benefits have been lost along the way and it's become a totally money driven operation that I think has a more negative impact on guests than anything else; we've all seen people arguing with the attendants over things in their pockets, right? I do quite like the term 'bouncers' though; seems quite an appropriate term for the job.

WVTP have in the past few years added Superman Escape, Batwing and Surf Rider. Of course they're going to take a break from adding thrill rides for a while so they can focus on other important markets their parks cater to. They've also already announced their major attractions for this year so it's really nothing new that there won't be any "giant thrill rides" in the immediate future. There is a trend at one park towards cheaper (often money-driven) attractions while at another they continue to add world-class traditional theme park attractions. You might have had a better argument if you at least paid some notice of the fact that the first company also said they're no longer interested in innovation nor thrill rides. I think most people who have been critical here have been so based on the information that was available in the article and I don't think anyone has been deliberately omitting that WVTP said there are no thrill rides on the cards to present a biased argument so much as they have been simply because this is a topic in the Dreamworld forum about Dreamworld.

I don't know about those Tornado ones. The guy that hit the tube in the second one probably got a good shakeup but it doesn't seem that there were any injuries. Regular teenage water park fun I say; who didn't do this kind of thing at the local water park when they were that age and surrounded by mates? I particularly like the whistle that blows a few seconds in as the attendant actually tries to stop them.

I hadn't read that article until now (http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0...95-8362,00.html). It certainly amazed me how plain uninspiring Gregg's comments were. He has said straight up that they want to move away from conventional attractions into cheaper skill-based attractions (which are typically upcharge). To top it off he's even gone and said that they don't even want to take a gamble on new technology. Certainly a change from the quote attributed to him in the Motocoaster press release, "This new attraction shows Dreamworld’s commitment to introducing cutting-edge ride technology and new experiences to the Australian market". For what it's worth, I think if Dreamworld were so confident in experiences like FlowRider as the future of theme parks, we'd have seen them install half a dozen of them and have it included in the admission price. The other thing of interest is the comments by IAAPA chief Charlie Bray have absolutely nothing to do with digital/interactive attractions; those comments were entirely about utilising social networking sites and Web 2.0 style technology to its fullest to engage with and communicate with the market. On that I couldn't agree more with the comments of AJ of East Brisbane. It won't be long now before the market cottons onto these slick marketing techniques and dismisses them completely. It is refreshing that WVTP at least understands the market well enough to know that the time-tested theme park model will deliver them long term success in a much more reliable manner than cost-cutting new age fads.

Well that's about the ugliest thing I've seen. Great idea and certainly something long overdue for our parks, but I find it a bit ridiculous that the best they could do in this day and age is a whiteboard with magnetic dots. I find it hard to believe they couldn't spend a few hundred bucks on signs to go with some LED screens. It also couldn't cost too much in the scheme of things to set up a wireless network between them all so they can be synchronised with minimal effort. This kind of thing is not just a benefit to the guests but it can also be a very valuable tool in altering behaviour to ensure that the crowd is evenly distributed and thus be a key instrument in the park's yield management, but it can only work in this manner if it's a true realtime system. They'll have to replace these signs out the moment they add a new ride as not only is there no room but they're ordered in terms of overall popularity. The names of the rides are devoid of the correct formatting that WVTP are typically very conscious of and strict about. Using the logos rather than written names would have made reading this chart much easier to follow. I'm all for this type of signage, but it seems to be something that has avoided any consultation with marketing or design people within WVTP judging by the fact that it looks more like a classroom whiteboard than something you'd see at a world-class theme park. The ideal solution would be a neatly designed sign with the ride logo/name printed and a 3 digit LED display for the wait time followed by "min" and the ability to add more attractions as time goes on. The time and money it'll cost to have an employee running around keeping them up to date and ensuring that no one has tampered with them would surely quickly escalate beyond what centrally-controlled, scalable (i.e. able to be added to and changed with new attractions) digital signage would cost to install and maintain.

In regards to the overwhelming response to the ride, I don't think it's because they hyped the ride. I don't think it's because of confusion between a teen thrill ride and a family thrill ride. I think it genuinely falls down to the fact that it's a poorly designed coaster that completely lacks pacing. I put our on-ride video of it up on YouTube and the response there is presumably largely from regular park goers rather than theme park fans as it has been here. The general concensus is overwhelmingly that it is not a terribly enjoyable ride and that it has comfort issues that could have easily been addressed within the R&D phase of its development. The comparison I like to make is one to the Rugrats or Roadrunner coasters, both rides that are targeted more so at younger children rather than families and teens like Motocoaster. Honestly, aside from that initial launch and first turn or so of Motocoaster, there is absolutely no denying that both these children's coasters have a more enjoyable layout which is more exciting from start to finish than Motocoaster.

Attrocity? Give us a break. Why not instead of complaining here about something on Wikipedia you actually take some action and fix what is obviously vandalism that exists solely to rile up people like you? Half of what's written on that Dreamworld page is garbage. Is it just that when someone writes negative stuff you get offended and for some reason take it persoanlly?

Yeah I want to play around with the design of the login box; for now I'm just happy it's working as it should.

Interesting fact. But also a load of nonsense. You're actually saying that in every circumstance a ride that is popular and able to be justafiably maintained will eventually be removed? Simply because "the world moves on"? If you look at it on a world scale, the average regional theme park does not work on the model you have described. Most parks keep attractions until they are, as you said, unserviceable, unpopular or they are in the way of future expansion. Whichever it is, when an attraction needs to be removed, you'll see that it is removed swiftly and more often than not replaced with something else. There's no time when "the world just moves on"; most US parks feature a range of attractions dating back to when the park first opened. These attractions add much-needed depth to theme parks. The way I see it, new attractions promote growth in attendance, while the number of attractions justifies ticket price. We see ticket prices going up every year yet at the same time we've seen the park's number of attractions actually decrease. This is a totally unacceptable situation. I can assure you I couldn't care less either way with Eureka. It was a good ride but I'm not losing sleep over a theme park attraction. The point most people here are making is that either it should be removed and replaced with something new or brought back into service within an appropriate timeframe. The ride has simply been boarded up and we've seen no action since. I also struggle to see how anyone at Dreamworld could see its closure as beneficial to the park's image. We've got the remnants of a water park, a faded, disused chairlift and now a roller coaster cheaply boarded up. Guests do notice these things, and there's no denying that they reflect incredibly poorly on the park.

The system now features a popup calendar so you don't need to manually enter the date at all. This was always my intention, just never got around to it until now. Yeah? That used to be the case; in the latest version of Firefox and IE I can type the full name. I'm also looking into those errors you're getting on the profile page; one of them should be resolved now. The new forums will use the exact same username/password as you have here. If you've registered a new account on Parkz it will be wiped when the switch happens. The forums should open on the new site some stage in the new year.

I'd think that weight and size considerations would severly limit how much of the existing technology from Batman could be recycled into a completely new style of attraction. That and the engineering costs to integrate the two systems would be a very significant factor; certainly more than using Intamin's off-the-shelf vehicle design. I'd also hate to think of the kinds of maintenance issues that would result. I'd also wager that motion base technology has progressed significantly over the 15-odd years since Batman was built. Frankly I'd rather see them keep Batman running, though no denying it's needed an overhaul for years now and the second film was always a complete joke compared with the original. Movie World can't just keep replacing old attractions with new ones if they expect to be able to keep up with growth.

Sorry for the delay in response but I've been away the past week. That error should when adding photos should be fixed now. I like the idea of auto-filling the tags box from the park/ride pages. I'll definitely get it implemented. I'll also look at preferencing rides in the same park. At the moment I find it really quick to select the ride by clicking on the menu and typing the name until it is selected -- this is a functionality that both IE and Firefox now have, which is why I made it dropdowns rather than use an AJAX autocomplete box here.

Maybe "Cathy Freeman's Minka Bird MegaCoaster" to satisfy the need for a sportsperson endorsement, or "Nike's Cathy Freeman Minka Bird MegaCoaster" so that they also have a brand affiliation which means they can sell products with other companies' logos?

Should be right with rides now.

Ignore any forum-related errors for now. So long as you can log in and stay logged in that's sufficient; we won't have any of those issues when we go properly live as the forums will be a direct switch from these ones.

Email notification won't be happening at this stage. If it is implemented down the track it'll most likely be such that you receive an email per batch of photos approved. I've added a thumbnail to the box so you know which photo you've just uploaded and that it's gone through fine.

You might be right. See how that goes.

Try logging in here: http://www.parkz.com.au/forums/ and returning to the main page.