DaptoFunlandGuy

I mean at least then the projectors would have to be working for the 'projection mapping'

You may find these two are connected. Launch speeds take a lot of factors into account including the speed of the previous launch and even wind speed (there's an anemometer at the start of the brake run that wobbles like a bitch when the train hits the brakes). Cold wheels and tracks are slower so the end of the day is more likely to give a faster run. The MCBR is less likely to kick in if your speed is at the lower end, but will kick hard if the train is going too fast. The ride computer constantly adjusts the force applied to the launch based on many factors including prior launch times - so even a large variance in weight from one launch to the next can impact the speed\force applied at launch.

If that's what was meant, fair enough, but in context, the post read like this: Two references to dispatches, two different metrics.

If they improved their operations manual and staffing levels to the point where groups were always prepped and ready to load the minute the gates opened, in theory it would be possible to improve on that though. If they're spending this much money on a harness-free evac platform, maybe they're seriously trying to improve capacity and you'd want to assume they'd do everything they can to do that?

Don't have anything to time it? Have we really come so far in this technology race that nobody wears a watch anymore? 😮 Much as I dislike referencing TPR - this video is 1:43. The train dispatches around 8 seconds after the video starts, and the video stops just as the train clears the final brake run at 1:39. Even without re-entering the unload station, it's more than 90 seconds from dispatch to brake run, so closer to 2 minutes once you account for unload and cycling. Between Launch and Unload there are no block sections (the final brake run is not a block as they are eddy brakes and are not capable of stopping the train completely), So even if a second train is on track, it can't launch until the first train has cleared unload completely. To avoid stopping the train in the dark-ride section pre-launch, I believe MW's ops generally wait until unload has been completely cleared so that when the Load station is dispatched, the second train can be immediately brought forward into load, which ensures the train doesn't sit and wait on the launch for longer than necessary. I also believe the hydraulic launch duty cycle plays a part there too and needs to cool down in between launches. The

Every time it breaks down. Judging by hearsay, thats at least weekly if not more often.

Yeah look - i've often rubbished complaints about this sort of thing because we all know what puffery is and calling something "worlds best" or "world class" is just that. But a tangible claim such as 'biggest' or 'tallest' or 'longest' or 'fastest' is a recognised accomplishment by Guinness and it is entirely and utterly misleading to make that sort of claim. Call it the worlds greatest coaster. call it the biggest wooden coaster built in the last 5 years in the southern hemisphere. call it the longest continuously constructed wooden coaster in Australia. Say its the best. Be proud of what you have but don't paint a horse and call it a cow.

I mean, yes - and no. It does seem counterintuitive to build in Adelaide when Sydney, Melbourne and even Brisbane are more populated centres - but Adelaide does have one thing going for it - space. There are large tracts of agricultural land less than 30 minutes from the Adelaide airport (if you head north of Salisbury for instance), and the city is in the middle of that path - so potentially 15 minutes to your hotel and another 15 minutes travel to the park... Disneyland was an orange grove when it was first built and the population sprang up around it. Neither of the three east coast capitals could offer that proximity. Not sure about a hotel, but there are very loud whispers within the cruise industry at the moment that DCL is bringing the Wonder Down Under (Just thought of that... that's a great marketing slogan right there too!). All of DCL's ships have had their schedule released for next year, except the Wonder which has been blanked from September 2023 onwards. The Magic has also taken over the Wonder's previous schedules out of Galveston and New Orleans, and I believe the Wonder is doing the Summer in Alaska which puts them in the Pacific priming them for a trip to the South Pacific. Disney has also registered a company in Australia "Magical Cruise Company" last October, and in April this year they registered the Disney Cruise Line trading name. Further, there are current port 'berthing' reservations for an "Unknown" cruise ship flagged under "Unknown" Cruise line. While unusual, this isn't proof that Disney is coming, however it's unlikely there are two unknown ships, from an unknown line, berthing at two different terminals in Sydney 30 minutes from each other so it's likely arriving at White Bay after the trans-pacific crossing due to potential customs and quarantine issues, and then transferring to the OPT for overnight turnaround and media previews before welcoming it's first sailing from Oz. *Can't take credit for most of this info as it was gathered together by others. Try googling "Is Disney Cruise Line coming to Australia".

Ironic that you mentioned Tom Scott in your review... Parkz keeps coming up with reminders about Tom Scott videos and here's another one! Great TR Gazza!

I've timed Rival's operations in both peak and off peak periods and they tend to average 5-6 minutes between dispatches, so 4-7 minutes sounds like butter, not 'getting worse' I call bullshit on this. I guarantee Superman is not capable of 1 minute dispatches. It's ok, zero guests in park actually notice this. This isn't anything new. We're getting to the end of Winter and now is the right time to prune them back and have them looking good for Summer. This has the added benefit of keeping the outdoor queue a little warmer in the winter. Are you sure you're not? because that was a pretty good answer! Looking at the way it's been cut, I think you might be onto something. They seem to use this overflow queue a lot more now that they've dedicated one side of the indoor queue to events space, and having an all-weather shelter for an indoor ride makes a lot more sense.

Well, it took them less than 2 months to catch up... Many 'first runs' are done at night. This doesn't show that they're 'going all in' - its pretty normal, This allows day work to continue on the site within the envelope, and also prevents any embarrassing headlines hitting the 6 o'clock news if it stalls or collides with something. (In the US, enthusiasts camp out outside the park when they think it will start testing to capture the first run, and it's usually at night. The video they released isn't raw, has been edited, and comments on socials from park staff indicate it was recorded about a week prior - meaning they kept it under wraps until they were ready to release it - all the usual grapevines that would've mentioned testing in the past week were unusually quiet, so my conclusion is that was deliberate. I know what you meant, but I find it amusing that 'MW' has become the default descriptor for the Village Roadshow Theme Park named Sea World.😆

I got some exclusive backstage access to the testing and managed to snap a picture of the world class camera system used: (For the avoidance of doubt, this is a joke, and I didn't get access to anything, duh.)

5-10? that's a stretch. i'd suggest they'd need another in the next 5 years max, and only that long because they need to fill the family void in the next 2-3.

Yeah, apart from trades needing access during daylight for ongoing works, testing at night means fewer people notice it happening, so they can iron out any early issues without giving too much away (and keeping it secret until the video is ready to release). In the big parks in the US, enthusiasts will camp out outside the park regularly at times when they think it might begin testing so they can be the first to film its first test run. I thought this was known?

If public sentiment is the right thing to do, apparently 'build a koala research facility'. Job done.

You are of course entirely correct - my bad, i'm currently in "Financial Year 2023" and didn't convert to calendar. Pedantic. Technicality - call this whatever you like - but that isn't how grants work. The government said "we want to encourage more Asian tourists. we will give you money if you can bring more tourists - just tell us how!" Dreamworld said "we will.... something something koalas! Yes! Koalas will bring asian tourists in! Umm... we already have koalas... so we'll.... build a better koala facility, and in doing so this will increase asian tourism!" Government "sounds great! Here's some tourism grant money to build your koala thingy!" It was certainly put on hold prior to covid. then covid happened and they said 'hey, uh, not sure asian tourism should be our priority now - can we spend this on local tourism instead?' and the project was cancelled... after covid. You're entirely correct. Dude, you LITERALLY said in your last sentence that the park should wait 2-3 years when the park is revenue positive, and now you want to claim they "have the cash" ? Just because they've discharged existing debt, it doesn't mean they're well positioned to build white elephants. No. DWF, SW Trust and other similar animal conservation endeavours are great for the brand. Anytime a whale is caught in a net, Sea World gets its brand in prime time news. Its image positive and it gives people warm and fuzzy feelings. This goodwill towards your brand is measurable and tangible and most people don't create these sorts of foundations unless it's doing their image or their bottom line good (and if it's image, that usually flows onto the bottom line as well). By all accounts, Dreamworld has not returned to a pre-2016 situation. While they may have divested themselves of numerous assets, and in doing so, have rid themselves of much of their ongoing debt facilities, they still have a ways to go to get back to those historic levels. As Parkz News said when Steel Taipan was announced: A koala research facility isn't going to change their sinking narrative. When they don't need to borrow money from the government to build a ride, when Parkz articles are shouting "Dreamworld has returned to prosperity!"... THAT is the time when a charitable endeavour to save the koalas would be worth doing for brand goodwill. Right now they just need to make sure they don't kill anybody and can keep the rides running long enough to make it to that point.

Easy? This whole discussion is because they couldn't afford to build the coaster due to the pandemic shutdowns \ cashflows \ whatever, and you think them pulling $3M (it would have certainly cost more than that) out of their arse to build something that is unlikely to be in their best interests (there's been much analysis that even things like Sky Voyager in their recovery phase was foolish and ultimately not going to be worth the money spent) just to satiate the unwashed masses who are just as likely going to forget about the koalas the next time they have a holiday on the gold coast and buy tickets to the park to ride taipan anyway? Precisely. Radio silence. Do nothing, commit to nothing, wait for the 24 hour media cycle to move onto Barnaby Joyce's latest escapade. Yes, by all accounts, Dreamworld had put the project on hold before the pandemic hit. Non-starting projects shouldn't be a surprise to anyone... The people are upset because the media have told them to be upset. They've all forgotten how much diverted funding went into paying people via Covid stimulus payments including Cashflow Boost, JobKeeper, increases to JobSeeker, and later JobMaker. The governments across Australia moved money from existing projects into covid related stimulus projects throughout the past 2.5 years. This isn't an isolated instance - its just the one that makes for a juicy story with the right twist to it. This project is not (and was not) a good fit for Dreamworld in their recovery phase. It was a concept borne of a time of Ampitheatres, Lazy \ Adventure Rivers and hard to market flying theatre attractions. Thankfully, those days are over, and those projects buried, like they should be. Set aside the government funding, if Dreamworld announced today that they were building this facility of their own bat, everyone here would lose their minds, and Richard\Parkz would no doubt publish an article calling it folly when there are so many other things they could be spending their money on that would have a bigger impact on their recovery program. And that article would be 100% on the money. It is a financially stupid decision, which is probably why they shelved it in the first second place. And guarantee if there was some way they could have returned the grant (harder than it sounds, trust me) they'd have probably gotten the same value loan that village got. Instead they got a reduced loan and a grant already awarded. ...and wouldn't you know it - we're entering an election year!

Other than the initial statement \ quote in the first article, I think the radio silence is actually the right thing to do here. They did nothing wrong. They had permission to do what they did from the people who gave them that money. If there's any beef here its with the government permitting the repurposing, but as has been noted repeatedly - the grant was to boost tourism, and post-covid, building Taipan would have more impact on boosting tourism to the region than the koala facility.

"We couldn't let that slide" is marketing speak for "we wanted to capitalise on what was already trending and get our brand some free advertising".

I'm not so sure about that... if we get what is pictured, the load stations for the three attractions are quite a ways from the buildings themselves and the long pathways are probably ample queue space for each. Also remember the public access areas of that building were at the extreme superman edge as the rest was maintenance facility for Arkham at 'brake run' height (see roller door under the smiley face below). While i'm sure that can be removed to some degree, it leaves an awfully tall showbuilding for just a queue... Photo Credit - Theme Park Ogre on Twitter (the concrete ramping pictured above has already been removed so ground level is indicated by the car in the bottom right of the photo)

Yeah, the fact that a politician has backflipped on a prior commitment isn't news, and it doesn't change the legalities of what happened. It is lip service. The media were spinning the repurposing of the tourism grant as an environmental catastrophe for Koalas, and making Qgov look bad - So she makes a public statement that has no legal or other obligation that makes her look better (but will no doubt still be dug up by the LNP at the next state election) and in a few days the story is buried by newer news, and everyone forgets about it again (until the election). Just remember - come election time, it was a tourism grant, and it was used to increase tourism. Also remember - a lot of projects have been impacted by covid (like Leviathan, apparently) and some things got cancelled altogether (I just discovered Qantas permanently stopped their valet service at brisbane airport, for example). Projects have been cancelled all over the world as a result of this pandemic, and lots of the funding for those projects has been diverted to other more useful endeavours to keep people in jobs, and to keep essential services running. The point is, the world has changed, and if you're going to sit and insist that someone should do something really expensive because they said they would prior to the pandemic - and you don't realise that practically all bets were off in the first lockdown, you're either a fool, or you have an ulterior motive.

The press release mentioned projection mapping, which does just sound like their latest buzzword for things - but indoors is generally necessary for daytime effects like this, so my guess is a walkthrough or experiential area of sorts with that sort of interior. It'd be interesting if they retail it with some emerald city themed outlets... if I recall there was some sort of beauty salon (hey, it worked in Trolls village!) as well as the straw-stuffing station for scarecrow etc etc. Perhaps some of the more specific elements would be projection, leaving retail spaces for fun themed candy or novelty stores and merch etc.

I didn't say that (although I am very much about to) - I was just noting you said munchkinland was missing when it does appear to be there. The Lethal \ Arkham courtyard has always been spitballed as a prime spot for a flat ride. Looking at the courtyard now however, they've filled what is a basketball court sized space with the Emerald City facade, munchkinland and the start of the yellow brick road, and what appears to be a poppy field. Though not pictured, I think its fair to assume the section of he courtyard we cant see backing against Scooby's ghost train section is probably going to have Scarecrow \ Tinman \ Lion themed scenes, as this would give a 360 degree storyline from the Kansas homestead, all the way to Emerald City and the Witch's castle. With so much packed into this space, i'm not sure that the area will have any room left for expansion without thematically ruining the designs. What I can see is that the walkway to the castle abuts a greenfield site that could squeeze a flat ride in without impacting too much on the studios, while maintaining the existing themed areas.

Isn't that what this part of the courtyard is?