Spotty

Summer 2019* *American Summer, so June - technically still summer so they aren't "wrong" with advertising.

I can confirm it is March's unit that used to be at LPS. It actually went back there in the mid 2000's for a period of time before travelling again. On some of the panels around the ride when it's set up it actually has the history of the ride and how it came from LPS.

The Studio Commissary (or Stars Cafe) will always have a soft spot being where I had my first ever job as a waiter. The food back in the day was really quite good for a theme park, think Cobb Loaves, Club Sandwiches etc. It was a seasonal venue in it's later years along with a small Ice Cream Parlour attached which is where they take character photos now. It was also home to a very large commercial kitchen which if i'm not mistaken is still used to this day as the main kitchen? It was also home to Breakfast with the Stars early on in it's life, along with Lunch with the Legends. This is actually where Sophie Monk from Bardot and other ventures actually started her career as a Marilyn actor. Honestly I think it was the nicest food venue the park had, where you could just sit back and relax with a nice coffee and lunch and soak up the atmosphere of the park.

The seatbelts on Superman have not changed since opening (obviously replaced over time but length the same). I don't think there would be any large variances in the length of them between the front and back rows of each car though.

It was the same Octopus ride that had the accident at Aussie World. The unit was built by Sorani and Moser, I remember someone years ago asking on AAF about it and having a close up photo of the logo on the rides carriages.

With the hypercoaster the harness may lock and the seatbelt can be done up, but it doesn't always mean the train will dispatch. I have ridden before and it's all locked but they have to push down on the harness a bit to get it to detect it's locked. With Scooby I would always recommend if your on the larger side to sit in the back seat as there is more leg room so it's easier to manoeuvre in a way to have the harness lock safely (little tip I learnt when working there). Ever since they changed the seatbelts on The Claw and the Giant Drop I have been unable to ride as they are significantly shorter than what they used to be for whatever reason.

Doomsday and great operations should not be used in the same sentence...Just saying

Yeah... I actually liked the look of the Cyclone's trains too (when they were new) and the old Corkscrew, much better than what we have now.

I think the last time it was used was for a meet and greet for the Janoskian's back in 2012... I had never seen so many teenage girls in my life. They filled up the whole old LW queue, went through the alley and overflowed out in front of scooby just to get an autograph... was all good until around mid-day when all the people were too scared to go on the big rides and ALL flocked to Scooby... Had to set up the outdoor queue very quickly lol.

I can also confirm that ToT II launches anywhere between 135 - 140kph. If the car isn't full it will generally launch faster or make it further up the tower. I have ridden it recently when it was only 6 others on the ride in the back row and well... it made it pretty damn far up. I really wish that when they did the conversion they spent the extra money upgrading the computers like SFMM did. I also haven't heard much about Superman in the US having any major reliability issues like ToT has either...

It's probably been maintained better? Seriously, some of the noises that thing was making on Tuesday... scary haha

As far as the queue goes the way it's been set up would actually make it very easy to do while the ride is operational. Close off one side of the queue (which they currently have) and finish the theming works on it. Once that's done, close the other side and open the finished side and then when that's done reopen the queue up fully. Everyone was freaking out about the outside queue being full all the time during peak period but realistically that queue was only as long as if the whole inside queue was used. I have high hopes for what Village can pull off with Scooby with a bit more tweaking, but expectations are a different kettle of fish sadly. Hope they prove me wrong and actually finish the job instead of leaving it the sub standard it is now.

I rode last Friday, no fog no lasers at all. Took a friend on it for the first time since the refurb... and well, he just laughed at the piss poor attempt in the warehouse and the animation...

Would have much preferred a Zierer unit, not going to lie. They look so much nicer IMO

Can confirm what @Brad2912 has said, for venomous snakes they outsource and for non venomous snakes they just get Corroboree staff to assist. Movie World is much the same, but for all snakes. I still remember evacuating the whole front of the park one day due to a rather large King Brown that decided it would be great to come visit Batwing SpaceShot on my training day haha. I've never seen staff move so quickly in my life!

^ Same, I personally think having different tiers is a great idea and i'd be supportive of it. Base level has NO perks and block out dates (Have it for $99 to keep the whingers happy) then say have a $149 with no block outs and one ticket to Carnivale or WC and throw in 10% off in park spending. $199 with no block outs and both WC and Carnivale and 15% off. For the people that really want to spend more money have say a $299 pass or even higher with all 3 nights, 25% off and maybe a few extra special perks. One that I think would be good, and increase in park spending could be say offer ONE free fast track in the month of your birthday, and for friends and family offer it at a discounted price to encourage them to all buy it. Multiple ways they could make different pass tiers work just sayin

From personally seeing Greg operate DC Rivals and Doomsday, I would be fairly sure he would be. Or at the very least he would have someone supervising him while he operated it (who was trained). At least he had a somewhat hands on approach to operations in the park and it was something I always noticed at Village when working there. Even the park supervisors occasionally did shifts operating the rides to keep their knowledge up on them. Wish I could say the same here...

Rode it today, the ride was running really smooth. I did notice though coming around the corner after the first brake run it did go quite fast compared to normal so maybe the brakes stopping it there were causing it? I did also notice in the heartline loop a lot of what appeared to be rust coloured track. However that's probably from the recent work so maybe that could even be contributing to it. The smell was certainly coming from the back end of the train though (around row 7 onwards)

Not since the Arkham upgrade. It uses eddy brakes (magnets) on the main brake run, and the old clamp style on the transfer brake and the station.

In other random maintenance news, TailSpin has had limiters put on the wings so you can barely even move them now making it next to impossible to actually get the ride flipping. Wipeout will only allow a maximum of 20 riders at a time (which funnily enough is how many they need to even run the ride)

If i'm not mistaken (and this is going back on my old manuals too...) Originally the ride had the following positions *Entry 1 (main entry) *Entry 2 (Backup entry / locker issues) *Sorter *Load 1 (First 5 rows left side) *Load 2 (First 5 rows right side) *Load 3 (Last 5 rows left side) *Load 4 (Last 5 rows right side) *Unload 1 *Unload 2 (Simply to stand on the other side to make sure no one got off on the wrong side) *Control Supervisor *2x break staff. That was back in the glory days, and I remember the queue taking up the first whole half of the building and waiting only 20 mins. However the sorter would stop guests before the ramp up to the load platform. This was changed due to many complaints about even slower load times, and staff complaints too (mostly because guests were getting angry at us) And running 2 trains with no sorter is a fair workout! Kinda miss the days

Physically not possible due to the block systems and controls. It would require a full overhaul of the mechanics to allow this, for minimal gain. When the ride runs 2 trains, the capacity is more than sufficient. If they had a second storage / maintenance bay it would be possible to have a 3rd so they could always have 2 running but it's just not going to happen.

That building has 100% been repainted, it used to be a cream color with a orange / brown color around the posters. I guess it goes with the theme but if they are keeping the outside of the building the same I think the old color scheme looked nicer.

Interesting line up this year...No limit doesn't appear to be going, along with Space Roller. Strange seeing the Hurricane going this year though.

The EKKA had a incredibly poor line up this year too if you ask me. At least the Gold Coast show has some of the classic rides to go with the newer ones too. And trust me, this is a MUCH better line up than it would have been if the Showmens Guild didn't get back in on the show. Give them a few years back there, and I'm sure the ride lineup will get better again like it used to be.