Richard

The Goulburn Pictura "theme park" sounds like it may fit the bill for the second $260 million park. Hong Kong Disneyland was USD$1.8 billion all up - about AUD$2.4 billion by today's exchange. This is abnormally high for a park of its size because there were numerous construction hurdles such as the fact that it is built on reclaimed land and the construction of a 12ha lake for irrigation. $340 million would without a doubt result in a park of greater size and higher standard than our Gold Coast parks. It's by no means a small sum. If Dreamworld were built today from scratch, using today's dollar value, it would have nearly $100 million left over at the end of construction. This gives you an idea of what this amount would be capable of.

Article: Village Theme Parks introduce new ticket options Tuesday 10 October 2006 Adding to their popular 3 Park Super Pass, Warner Village Theme Parks have introduced two new multi-park options to give tourists more flexibility in selecting a theme park package. Read On...

Great find! Well, this is most definitely true, verifiable at the Robert Walters website: http://www.robertwalters.com.au/en-aus/vac...acancyId=197959 The definition of theme park can be pretty loose in this country. In the past it has included just about any style of tourist attraction. Having gotten this comment out of the way up front, this is one of the most promising pieces of news to come out in recent years. $340 million is an incredible figure that could see a park that outdoes any of the Gold Coast parks and then some. Likewise with $260 million anything can be achieved. I've searched every online avenue I can think of with limited results. I'll see what I can drum up in coming days. Anyone who lives in West Sydney or Southern NSW I'd recommend contacting your local council to enquire about any theme park projects going ahead. Depending on where they are in these projects, there will definitely be something out there available such as planning permits etc., and it should be publicly accessible. West Sydney Theme Park: http://www.roller-coaster.com.au/park.php?pid=57 Southern NSW Theme Park: http://www.roller-coaster.com.au/park.php?pid=58

Oh absolutely. Fill us in on the Snowy River Rampage story. The dozen or so of us who were there that day have been in the dark for 2.5 years now! As Clint said, this has been great reading. I'm sure you all still have plenty more to coem. Just a shame it takes the closure of the park to get all this out - makes you wonder what's gone on at our Gold Coast parks behind the scenes over the past 20-odd years.

Whether or not you agree with the original poster doesn't mean you can insult the member. dreamworld_rulz is entitled to post his opinion here, and he also has the right to do so without members making unwarranted personal attacks. This is an interesting discussion, but let's keep it to the topic and not make it personal.

I'd say the thing Warner Village are most worried about isn't so much the loss of guests to WhiteWater World, it'll be the loss of sales of The Theme Park Passes Formerly Known as 3 Park Super Passes (TTPPFKA3PSP for short...) to World Passes. A lot of tourists will have previously overlooked Dreamworld because they've already forked out a lot of money for their 3PSP. Now these tourists are faced with a big question - Warner Village's three parks for X amount, or Macquarie Leisure's two parks for Y amount? Invariably the people most affected by these decisions will be nearly all people who want to visit a water park. If they didn't they would most likely choose the Summer Pass and go with Movie World and Sea World. So the choice is really down to the brand new, action packed yet small WhiteWater World versus the older but larger Wet'n'Wild. WhiteWater World will most likely play up the newness and the many Australia-firsts. Wet'n'Wild are focusing on their size and their well-established image as Australia's best water park. It'll be really interesting if Macquarie Leisure add a third gate and make things equal. We'd be talking 5+ years down the track, but throw in a resort and you have Australia's only all-inclusive theme park destination.

The coaster operated at Sea World for 21 years. Not bad for a piddly little travelling coaster. It was an old attraction that was well past its used-by date and at the time of its closure they had bigger plans for the site. http://www.roller-coaster.com.au/coaster.php?cid=14

I've got issues with parks operating at reduced capacity when queues are excessive. 30 minute queues should be the limit for "reduced capacity" as far as I'm concerned. You're there late in the day so it's impossible for you to have the full picture - as nev said there could be many reasons that the queue was at the length it was. If Lethal Weapon was running two trains (which takes tremendous dedication from the operators to make work efficiently) then I'd hazard a guess and suggest that Superman wasn't running a single train all day or if it were then it was for a different reason. I can empathise with you because Superman's two station design means that there is an exponential difference in capacity between two trains versus one. A ride designed with two stations should only operate with a single train when there are nearly empty queues. I experienced the same problem on X at SFMM where they were running only a single train but because it has two stations there was an agonising delay between dispatches (which, coupled with an earthquake, led to a queue of something ridiculous like 4 hours). If there were a way on Superman to load and unload on the normal load station then I'd have no problems with running a single train. Surely this too would cut down on staffing costs. Just lead guests through from the load to the unload station and put up a fence keeping them back from the unload track etc. directing them to the giftshop. I'm not sure about the exact details of the PLCs and mechanisms that control the restraint lock/unlock etc., but I'd imagine there would have to be a way to quickly bypass the unload station. Back to the original post, if you are upset I would recommend writing to the park and expressing your opinions to them (politely and logically if you want a response). Unless you experienced a full day at the park it's a bit presumptuous to really come to any conclusions about why they were running a single train, especially because by the sounds of things the rest of the park was pretty much at peak capacity.

I'm finding it very interesting that Wet'n'Wild are taking the offensive. Their goal is to convince people NOW that they should go to Wet'n'Wild so that people make plans for the summer, before they know about Dreamworld's.

Personally I'd say never, to be realistic. I'm not being negative at all, but Australia has neither the population, nor the exchange rate to support a park the size or quality of Universal Studios Orlando or Disney-MGM Studios. These parks can afford to invest huge amounts into creative development and R&D that allows them to have such vastly unique and breathtaking rides. Movie World is a great park and does some cool things with off-the-shelf rides, but unless our attendance multiplies itself by about five, we're never going to have the edge of companies like Disney and Universal who are able to pour tens of millions into just developing concepts for rides - years before any signs of construction. They're easily one of the best in terms of ride quality in its attendance bracket, but when you consider that Disney-MGM and Universal Orlando get 9 and 6 million guests a year respectively, compared with Movie World's 1.3-1.5 million, you can see how there's always going to be a big difference between the parks.

Almost time I did a revised version of the article. The three attractions since it was written have very close to redefined the entire park. I would almost definitely agree that Universal Studios Hollywood isn't as good as our Movie World. It's a park that is quite literally within the Universal Studios frontlot and many of the attractions such as Backdraft or Mummy's Revenge are found in converted soundstages. This coupled with the incredibly hilly terrain it is found on has very much limited what they can do and how much they can expand. Universal Orlando however is very nearly the quintessential movie park.

Article: Competition prepares for full gear as WhiteWater World shapes up Monday 9 October 2006 Competition at the Gold Coast theme parks is firing up and the Gold Coast's newest park, Dreamworld's separate WhiteWater World water park, is only fueling the fire as it prepares to go head-to-head with Wet'n'Wild Water World (pictured). Read On...

I found the small body version to be painful and really not all that exciting. The Behemoth Bowl meanwhile looks great and the capacity will be awesome. I'd hate to see the queue for the single rider version on a busy day - Wet'n'Wild in Orlando had two for a reason. (It's most definitely a Behemoth Bowl going in.)

How does that work? What relevance is "nearly 50% of American parks" when 0% of Australian parks have it. I for one believe that this kind of attraction will be a very welcome addition to Australia because it's a very unique style of attraction and so different to anything we've seen here before. Wet'n'Wild, Sea World and Movie World are all owned by Village Roadshow and for this reason they are all such different parks with different focuses. Putting Sea World directly up against Dreamworld involves putting it up against Movie World at the same time. Competing with yourself is a very expensive way to shoot yourself in the foot. Let Sea World grow as a world-class marine park and leave the "traditional" theme park experience to Movie World.

Impossible to say for Sea World, Wet'n'Wild or Movie World because Village Roadshow don't release specific park attendance figures. Dreamworld attendance is at over 1.4 million per year now. It'll break 1.5 million in the next year or two. Sea World is well over 750,000 - more like 1.2-1.3 mil would by my best guess. Likewise Movie World is well over 1 million itself, most likely up at the 1.2 million mark itself.

In terms of information on this ride, you can't go past our gallery here. It contains four pages of captioned photographs of the ride that cover pretty much everything you could want to know about the ride's design. http://www.roller-coaster.com.au/gallery.php?gid=11

In case you haven't noticed, we've been suffering in recent weeks from increases in the amount of spam that has been posted. In ever single case this has been the result of automated systems that simply go around the Internet to every forum they can find, automatically register (they have cracked the image verification system used by a lot of different forums). There are tens of thousands of sites being affected daily by this. The only reason they actually do this is not to get users of this site to click their links (as you might think). Rather, it is so that when Google and other search engines index the forum topics, they see the links to these sites and the words used in the link which increases their own rank for when people search for certain things - be it discount pharmaceuticals or whatever. Until Invision Power, the makers of this forum software, introduce upgrades to their image verification system (which are on their way soon), there is little we can do to prevent it. There's no need in posting in these topics. If you want to do something click the report link that will let our staff know. The threads are immediately deleted, the user's accounts posting them are immediately deleted, and their email address domain names are permanently banned from signing up. Just ignore them and carry on browsing the site as you normally would and we'll take care of it. It's frustrating I know (especially when I'm the one who has to delete the accounts and ban the email addresses), but there's little else we can do. Any of you who post regularly on other big forums will know that it's a universal issue.

http://www.parkz.com.au/forums/in...p?showtopic=439 The news broke here first as always.

Simple answer. You've only calculated the free-fall component, which makes up only half of the weightlessness. Riders experience weightlessness from the moment they hit vertical on the way up because at from this point you are accelerating (negatively) at the same rate as gravity (as there is no upward acceleration from the ride), until such a point Throw a balloon full of water into the sky. It'll become a jelly blob (i.e. weightless) from the moment it leaves your hands until when it returns, not just on the way down. Remember that the height of 115m includes the curve to vertical, during which you are very much being affected by gravity. The height of this curve is roughly 45m, so the length of the vertical track is only 70m. Plug this into the equation and you'll end up with a result of 3.77s x 2 = 7.55s total weightlessness. Factor in track friction, air resistance and the fact that the 45m figure isn't 100% accurate and you'll find the 6.5 seconds.

I think I'd look at it a bit differently. It's a shame that WVTP chose to spend $20 million in the space of a year when this could have much more appropriately been spread out over the course of the five years or so that they've desperately needed this expansion. Whether or not they knew about WhiteWater World when they decided to add these attractions doesn't matter. The park has been splitting at the seams for years now. WVTP was blessed for over a decade with Wet'n'Wild being the sole standalone water park on the Gold Coast. It wasn't hard to see that with their attendance skyrocketing despite no new attractions that someone else was going to cash in on it, and Macquarie Leisure/Dreamworld was the most likely candidate. They will most likely suffer an attendance hit that is pretty significant, but I would guarantee it would be much more without this $20 million. Can you imagine anyone choosing Wet'n'Wild, with nothing new in five years (ignoring Whirlpool, as most visitors tend to do), over the cheaper and newer WhiteWater World with attractions that are almost all exclusive to the park?

Welcome along. Great to see someone new contributing. (Now get ready for a good old debate. ) Attendance at Dreamworld is only at about 1.4 million guests a year. Still a good few years away from the 2 million mark. Ignore what USA parks are doing. The conditions under which they operate are irrelevant to the year-round situation we have here. For one thing every seasonal park in the USA makes an outright loss for no less than 6 months of the year (many parks run at a loss towards the end of the operating season). Easy way to show that this is an irrelevant argument: Dreamworld's operating margin (total revenue minus total running costs to put it simply) is now at about 37%. This is considerably larger than equivalent chains around the world, including major operators like Cedar Fair and Six Flags. At the end of the day, dollar for dollar, Dreamworld is far more profitable than other parks around the world. This isn't a bad thing. They're a business after all, but profitability is clearly not a justification for shortcomings in the park. No one wants them to go 100% towards the thrill market. I don't believe anyone has said anything to this effect, and if they did I agree with you in that it's a ridiculous strategy. Perhaps you misinterpreted what I said - I don't consider myself a "thrill ride fan" so much as I do a "theme park fan". I don't think anyone suggested they spend more on theming. I know I'd like to see them spend less and concentrate on just making a good looking ride with a well designed station and surrounds (Reptar is one of the best examples of this in action). No one would ever suggest that they theme more at the expense of maintenance. While we're on maintenance, if we want to get into it, I am at times concerned by the park's maintenance. The clunks, creaks and rattles you hear and feel on many of Dreamworld's rides are simply things that shouldn't be there on these rides. Apparently even The Claw has deteriorated to the point where it is rattling and making noises it shouldn't. Cyclone was an incredibly smooth coaster when it opened.

Attendance in the second half of the 2006 financial year (more or less the six months after Superman opened) was up 9.5% so it has been pretty successful. The real test should come after this summer, with the lingering novelty of Superman Escape and the addition of Batwing. By contrast Scooby-Doo attracted an additional 5%. Sea World's attendance is down, which seems to be a recurring event (down 10% in 2003, up 10% in 2004, now down again - I'd say by more than 10%). They conceded that this was because of a lack of draw to domestic visitors with nothing new in several years. Clearly a catalyst in the hugely advertised annual pass deal.

Who said anything about Movie World?

Wow, weren't the old days fun. It's been about two or three years since I studied any physics or electrical engineering. Don't think I could pull off that same stuff again. At least not without dusting off the old textbooks. I don't believe that Tower of Terror does utilise load sensing. The ride will simply run faster when lighter. To my knowledge it wasn't introduced on any coasters until relatively recently. Most of the modern sled launch coasters (Intamin Rockets, S&S Thrust Airs) do it, using the strain on the cable as a gauge and select rides like Dueling Dragons use a floating section of track to weigh the train so as to synchronise the two tracks.

The biggest problem for thrill seekers is the success that the park has had with Nickelodeon Central and Wiggles World. For a combined total of around $15 million, Dreamworld has managed to see attendance boosts that $50 million in thrill rides over the same period would not have created, simply because it created huge strength in Dreamworld's traditionally less-strong market segments. Remember that Macquarie Leisure plan to spend $6 million a year on capex. Capex doesn't include maintenance etc. (these are opex) - only new things. Last year we saw the $7 million Nickelodeon Central. This year we've only seen FlowRider ($1 million) and the Tea Cups (more or less negligible). Now granted there will be a chunk of this $6 million going to things we don't see or aren't rides (new F&B equipment, brand new maintenance eqipment etc.), but this year has been a very light year for Dreamworld, and WhiteWater World is irrelevant to this. FlowRider wasn't an attendance booster, it was a revenue booster. My only confusion with it is that it was introduced to Dreamworld instead of holding off and making it one of WhiteWater World's many signature attractions. Because it's not intended to boost attendance at Dreamworld, it would have been much smarter to open it with WWW where it could be a reason to visit the new park. Dreamworld will be adding a thrill ride of sorts in the near future, but not this December. We remember that they had reportedly signed a contract with Vekoma. Some sources suggest this is no longer the case but if it's not going ahead then it's because it was cancelled and replaced by another contract with one with another company. There will be something coming. At this stage my major concern with Dreamworld is the lack of longevity that goes into things. Sure, making everything brightly coloured will make the place seem fun and chirpy... for a year. Unless you're prepared to repaint it every year it's going to just look tacky before too long. Painted concrete pathways are great too and add some atmosphere... until people walk on them. We don't even need to get into Dreamworld's theming (but I will anyway) - great when the ride opens, not so good a few months on.