Richard

There are now three versions of an all new Islands of Adventure poster. All three are the same design, but they vary in size and price. The shop's been changed slightly from what it was before. The design will probably change soon. And how about a special deal, just to get things rolling. Buy any two products or more, and you'll recieve, absolutely free, your choice of a Total Thrills 2004 calendar, or a "Limited Edition" Total Thrills shirt from the March Wonderland Sydney Farewell meet. Of course, stocks are limited (for the giveaway products, order as much as you like from the store). If you order four or more products, you can receive both. No strings, nothing dodgy, just some free stuff. Even if you buy two bumper stickers at USD$3.50, you'll still receive a free shirt or calendar. No additional shipping costs for the free products (CafePress will charge shipping costs as usual). This deal will only last until June 15, so act fast!

Wonderland did indeed run at the best capacity it could. Even with only one or two Space Probe gondolas operating (as was the case with our March meet), the operators did the best they could and the queue was never unbearable. The same goes for Sea World, where the operators are quite efficient, and Movie World also. There are almost never significant discrepancies in staffing, i.e. it's not as if Dreamworld has a single operator on a ride, and Sea World has four for the same sort of ride. The issue is with the fact that Dreamworld, despite staffing and other things on par with parks nearby, there is significant differences in efficiency. I'm not saying it's the operators at fault - it might well be the Operations Department's set ways of doing things, but I couldn't say. The fact is, there is a problem which is entirely unique to Dreamworld. Dreamworld's profit margins are approximately 30% higher than Cedar Fair's (owners of Cedar Point), of course adjusted for currency exchange and yes, based on specific attendance. Meanwhile Cedar Fair is the strongest amusement park operator listed on the US stock exchange. Therefore, I think I can make a very safe assumption that Macquarie Leisure is not spending appropriate amounts on Dreamworld's operations. Maybe we don't need half a dozen or more employees for rides like they do, but come on, that figure above convinces me the money's not going entirely where it should be.

I've known for some time that these wooden wild mouse coasters aren't a Schwarzkopf design. I'll change it some time, though I'm eager to find out actually whose design it is. They were built under license by Luna Park Sydney's Ted Hopkins many years ago (Source: Ride Extravaganza), but I can't say with absolute certainty who the designer was. Schwarzkopf nearly certainly never designed a wooden mouse (Source: North American Wild Mouse). I've always been leaning towards Mack, but I'm awaiting Mack's official response before making any further changes. The carriages are small. They can really only hold a single adult, an adult or a small child or two children. See here: http://www.totalthrills.com/awgallery.php?...age=wildmouse01. If you squeeze two adults into one, the benefit of course is amazing airtime.

Nah, it's just that you've mentioned that $150,000 figure a number of times so I figured why not include it. You're indeed more or less correct (the way currency exchange is currently, it ranges from AUD$2-3,000 per metre depending on the design), and fibreglass would almost certainly be cheaper, especially because there are several Australian manufacturers, whereas Weigand manufacture in-house in Germany. Sorry if it came out wrong.

Yeah, Dreamworld does have good PR, though I wasn't referring to PR, I'm referring to administration. With Rocky Hollow Log Ride, a few years ago, because the tops of the poles were cracked and consequently a good place for rubbish and plant material to build up, so they actually filled them with concrete. I'm not sure if they've been appropriately fixed since. I'll see if anything's been done since the major rehab they've just come out of.

I'll concede that my queue estimates for Wet'n'Wild were a little low. Let's take that 45 minutes which some rides are able to get up to in the peak season. Taking the eight major rides (i.e. everything but those things you don't queue for - Wave Pool, Whirlpool/Springs, Calypso Beach), and I'll be generous and assume they get up to 45 minute queues. Given probably half or more of those rides couldn't get queues above 30 minutes even if they tried, I think it's more than fair. In the 11 hours that the park is open in the peak season (i.e. the only time these 45 minute queues would happen), you'd be able to get in every ride once, and still have five hours for eating, rerides and the night's Dive In Movie. The thing with FastPass is it doesn't really start to work to its best until ride queues start getting up around the 90 minute mark. 45 minutes and under and it's almost a joke, because its only real purpose is to get a FastPass, queue and ride once, then use the FastPass to ride again immediately. For the 80% of the year when Wet'n'Wild has 5-15 minute queues max, you have a lot of expensive equipment and infrastructure that's going completely to waste. For that $150,000 or more they invested, Gazza could have gotten you a new slide, which has a much better marketing effect than "New to Wet'n'Wild, a virtual queuing system that's too confusing to bother with!". Really, outside of Dreamworld, how often do our parks get queues greater than 90 minutes? If they ever do, it's for that four or so week period in the middle of summer. A similar period at Disney parks would be getting queues in excess of 2:30, where FastPass is doing its thing to perfection.

The article was sent to Dreamworld's management when the article was published (May 23). No reply, but then I guess they could be considered to be in a state of flux with the change of CEO, but that doesn't work for me.

There've been a few modifications to the Park Database's main page, making it just a little easier to navigate. Coasters and rides are now split up into "Operating", "Under Construction" and "Defunct". This beats having (Defunct) next to every ride's name if they're not operating. There'll be some more photo updates in coming days and weeks.

The sickness came for me between Vegas and Texas. Still not entirely sure what it was. I'm still tossing up between a packet of greasy dodgy tortillas I bought at a roadhouse in Arizona, or a rotten Subway I got in Arlington, Texas. It got me sick for two days solid, but I managed to creep out of bed and walk across the road to SFOT to ride the coasters and Superman:TOP (it's not like me to let a little violent illness get in the way of coasters). Sounds like you're having a good time, even with the unfortunate illness. Did you do the Anaheim to Las Vegas or Downtown LA to Las Vegas Greyhound route? Downtown LA's where all the suss people tend to go from. At the Anaheim stop, you're boarding a bus that's come from San Diego, so the folk are a little better. Good to hear you abandoned the Greyhounds. They tend to be quite a bit nicer on the east coast, with less questionable people, but flying's still the way to go, and it's not significantly more expensive. Good to hear from you. Be sure to keep us posted on how it all goes.

You'll probably be best going through Luna Park directly. See here for numbers. I'd say give Sales Department a ring (02 9033 7540).

That'd be great. The only problem is it'd be a little hard for me to get ahold of such photos. I mean, I'm bad enough trying to keep the plane steady, let alone focusing a camera out the window.

I'm actually looking at adding a third poster type, much larger than the previous two (more or less twice the size of the current Cyclone poster), which will feature whole parks (say, several photographs of the major thrill rides etc.), and not be Australia-specific. The first one will probably be an Orlando or California park.

Intamin track is painted with the white rails, the idea being that this (different) paint will peel off much more smoothly than the regular paint, so the ride will look a little better a season or two down the track. You'll actually see that particular photograph ar RCDB (here), dated 30/1/2003, well before it opened. The previous photo also shows the rope again, and that it's part of the construction.

Use the button to edit your posts.

scott, instead of asking basic questions such as that, try finding the answer for yourself. You could have clicked one simple button - Park Database, up the top - and found out that it's Wild Mouse, hence everyone referring to the thing as "Wild Mouse". Amazing, huh? Good to hear it's operating, especially before I head down that way again soon. As a true testament to the coasters of Australia, these wooden mice have the best airtime we've got.

Just a few things - this poll won't work. A vote is a vote, so it won't base the results on the order you tick the boxes or anything. Furthermore, how does length, speed (do you mean time?) or velocity (which is the same as speed) equate to a good ride? And if they did, wouldn't that mean a ride is good or bad, regardless of people's opinions?

You've got to love Australian papers. A year after the ride opens they publish an article - made up of tidbits and quotes from the press releases, and accompanying photographs also from the park. The outstanding publication that is Queensland's Courier Mail published the same sort of article a few weeks ago.

Village Roadshow's buy-back's pretty well about creating a higher share-price for themselves. It's a borderline dodgy practice (still well within the law, naturally), but it is Village Roadshow we're talking about here. As for their withholding of dividends, I remember when that announcement was made back in 2002 (amidst a lot of market disgust), the reasons provided was along the lines of to essentially allow them to concentrate profits on the growth of their different businesses, with theme parks explicitly mentioned. Outside of Sea World's Shark Bay, which was planned (and invested in) well before the announcement was made I'm guessing, there's been no capital expenditure in any of our theme parks. There's $16m or so per park - probably around $20 million in total that goes to Village Roadshow (Warner Bros. have their take too don't forget), per year that's being made as profits. Shareholders aren't seeing that money, the parks sure aren't, so I guess despite the reasons given for the dividend changes, that money's funding this little share buy-back. Anyway, that's just a side-point I thought I'd make. Remember that Warner Village Theme Parks is more or less an entirely separate operating that runs the parks. As I know it, Paradise Country, which is being (and always was meant to be) relocated to their Oxenford land, is the same as the Outback show. The original releases for Outback Spectacular made mention of animal attractions. It won't be a part of Movie World and you won't see ads for it on TV or anything. I'm not totally convinced it was a good investment. I think it's funny that at the same time that they announce the rotation of rides because of the tourism industry (yes, I know Dreamworld's far worse when it comes to this sort of thing, but hear me out), while at the same time they're constructing a multi-million dollar facility that relies exclusively on this market share, which is currently in terrible shape. My money's personally on five years before it's gone, or severely cut in size, but I suppose I hope I'm wrong (I'd say that the money made from that will help the parks get big new rides, but y'know, Village Roadshow'll probably be spending all that money on a rocket to the moon or magic beans or something).

Products are made to order - processed and shipped by CafePress. Prices are unfortunately in USD. They're hardly unreasonable when converted to AUD though.

Not to ruin anyone's fun or anything, but let's keep this as on track as possible. Feel free to create a thread/poll in General Thrills to discuss annual passes. No photos from Dreamworld, but nothing's gone vertical yet, as you could imagine.

To reiterate what Daniel said, please work on the standard of your posts, khaotix. And as Daniel alluded to, take a read of the Community Guidelines.

Classic, as Strong Bad always is. It's always utterly stupid, but as usual, they've made some good points about theme parks and the like.

See this thread: http://www.parkz.com.au/forums/sh...hread.php?t=706.

It'll be a big movie. Warner Bros. will absolutely milk it for everything they can. I'm convinced that along with next year's Batman, it'll be a flop. Certainly nothing up to the standards of what other studios are doing with the Marvel franchise. Any movie directed by a guy who doesn't have a real name (McG) is just asking to be bad. Brett Ratner (Rush Hours, Red Dragon) was originally slated to direct, but apparently he wasn't getting far enough with it, so he was sacked in favour of McG (with nothing other than the farces that are Charlies Angels films under his belt), who's not even as far as Ratner was along with the project in terms of pre-production. Anyway (enough sidetracking ), 2006, when the new Superman comes out is also four years since the last major ride. 2002 was Scooby-Doo, 1998 was Wild Wild West (ugh, Wild West Falls), three years before, in 1995 was Lethal Weapon. Not much maths there, if we don't get something decent by 2006, we're being screwed over.

Do what? You really have to elaborate on what you're saying, otherwise you really make no sense whatsoever, especially if you're posting in topics from a while back.