DaptoFunlandGuy

For political and nimby related reasons, yes... It is feasible, but many locals oppose it as they don't wish to have their 'little paradise' disturbed by tourists, whilst remaining blind to the fact that tourists are the very thing that keep them in such a paradise. (see also: gold coast light rail).

It's not really a new concept and already deemed feasible... Wave Break Island Cruise Terminal Feasible - Offshore Energy (offshore-energy.biz) Several million metric tonnes of dredging?

This is the one big disappointment to hear as the staff can really make a mediocre park a great experience. I am assuming your comment is relating to ride operators as they're the one role that most park-goers will definitely interact with - I can say not all ride operators are like this, but its a shame that those that do exhibit this sort of behaviour in front of guests are permitted to continue in the role.

No, you're @Naazon not @Im Hungry

No, but I think less folk would be 'trawling the gram' if there were more official park sanctioned updates.

I mean if that were the strategy they were going with it's a poor one. This is probably one of the most anticipated (and controversially delayed) attractions we've seen in Australia in a hot minute - and they started off very VERY "non village" with a full blown construction blog and semi-regular updates... And then around the time the ride topped out, they stopped updating it. It's a hugely missed opportunity to have built the anticipation. Now sure, they've had delays, and obviously that's lead to very little happening on-site for them to report on, but all that has done is created an even bigger vacuum by having a blog, and then withdrawing further updates. Its been a long time since our parks premiered a new ride in a spectacular way, and I was hopeful that this was the start of a change - only to flop. its no wonder people are crawling the 'Gram (and flying their own drones over the park, etc etc) to get content when the park has left such a void in such a content-driven world. They would have had a better chance of having a 'big surprise reveal' if they continued to control the narrative... instead of.... crickets.

Not all those cobwebs are 'theming' you know.

Given the first comment on the post is them confirming the opening date is 1/4/2023, I think its safe to say its a joke that probably published at the wrong time.

It's even worse when your main ride-maintenance page Dreamworld | Ride Information doesn't even LIST Steel Taipan as a ride. Tail Spin and MDMC are also out... given MDMC, GD and Taipan are out - could this be railway related?

*checks press release from village contains the words "world class"* - TICK! I do love the gold coast mayor and tourism team spruiking this partnership between the parks and a brisbane based cruise, given how vocal the GC locals were in opposition to creating their own cruise terminal. The GC needs to wake up and embrace cruising rather than relying on Brisbane to deliver the goods.

Does this mean VRTPs will start serving an improved bread offering beyond the stale products currently on offer?

Straight up - end of april start of may, i'm not planning on waterparks (and I notice most of the other responses don't tend to include them either). Winter is a big time for big maintenance. If I look at the state of Movie World two days ago (see other thread) there would be no question but to rule it out. Sea World or Dreamworld are the two contenders here. I'm assuming that the answer 'buy all the passes, visit all the parks' isn't what you're looking for, so I figure we're trying to narrow it down... On that basis, and remembering again that it's winter, it's cold, and i've no interest in getting wet, that rules out battle boats and storm, leaving Vortex and Jet Rescue to do the heavy lifting against Taipan, Sky Voyager, Giant Drop, Gold Coaster, and so on. I'm no fan of Dreamworld's but in the current situation - there really is no other option.

if it was real, there'd be a park attached to it. and they'd want their name on it. unless there's a new park, which they'd have already announced. so no.

How... many?? I think from memory there were 8 theatres. Fun fact - one of them still exists beside the scooby queue (the side closest to Superman's show building) and is used as a staff training room.

Laughably, I heard that Justice League also went down that day. What a joke. I'm getting too old for this shit.

Does that speak to how popular the park is, or how small it is compared to 'biggest n best' down the road? You should go to Dreamworld more. They're all about the shaded seating there..

If you’ve done Roxy and HWSD, what reason do you have to go pst the fountain? directions for movie World - enter, turn left. That is all. I think current closure is issues with the new boats. The scheduled date is the usual annual maintenance. why not do it at the same time? Look at the board - they don’t have the maintenance crews to also do that - which is why it’s scheduled to go down later on.

Agree with all your points except this one. Can confirm that Queensland's biggest residential (detatched) dwelling builder frequently utilises river pebble\rock (pretty much Dreamworld's product in question) in place of grass as it is cheaper to acquire, install en-masse, and maintenance costs are practically zero. (The safety hazard is a good counter point however). No, but you can fix budgetary ones. If you put it this way - 'make the fence better quality, skip maintenance on 'x' ride for a week' - people would slaughter you. We don't know what the balance sheet looks like. What we do know is we're seeing their competitors tighten the belts and add plenty of upcharges, while letting maintenance lapse on non-essential items. If that's happening over at Village - we have to presume it is the same (or worse) at Dreamworld. We can only speculate as to why the decision was made as it was. We can agree it could look better. But - (and this isn't a village vs DW argument) - there's a big difference between fencing costs by the metre and a few bottles of zero weedspray. Oh Boy! Worn steel rails will never beat the hand-polished lengths of Kopper-Log rounds. I can still vividly feel every knot and bump in the timber rails surrounding HMS Endeavour at Wonderland many years ago, and I remember thinking about the many years and literal MILLIONS of hands that had slid along those logs, polishing each beam one stroke at a time (Shut up and get out of the gutter Skeet) This. Much the same as Wonderland, Sea World's old queues were made with a lot of Kopper logs and all were well worn and polished by years of queueing riders. Can't agree enough. Modern chains just don't cut it (and are too fricking noisy when kids bash them against the also-metal posts at each end.

Its the sort of thing you can do in times of Austerity though. If you've got a painter on staff, you can add little spruce-ups to various things (like the train station) and that doesn't really up your costs beyond a few tins of paint at bunnings. But in times of Austerity, spending what little money you have on something elaborate, when something simple would do is foolish. I agree with your mantra of 'replacement should be better than what it replaced' and in the scheme of things - and its pretty easily argued that Taipan is better than a murderous death trap that should never have been built in the first place. But does this rule extend to the surrounding environment and everything else that is impacted by it? Remember - the train wasn't realigned and required a new fence because they decided to change the train. The train had to move to accommodate the coaster. Much the same as they had to move vintage cars to install MDMC, and the 'new' set up doesn't quite have the 'charm' of the old setup. Why wasn't Vintage cars rebuilt with the same love and care and attention as when John built it? Because John wasn't there anymore.

Changing gears for a minute - a family member (who is also an engineer) remarked to me about the 'wipeout' at Sea World the other day (eye roll). They pointed out that Vortex should be doing the cycles it used to do at Dreamworld (another eye roll) - but - and here's the question for the big ride design nuts... Why does one of the arms have a hinge, if both arms are always operated parallel? (*Note - the lower section of the right side is hinged onto the central pivot point, the left side is a 'single' piece.) A few theories were floated including: The arm can hinge outwards to permit the removal of the gondola Thermal expansion of the gondola is accommodated by the hinge The design is a remnant from a travelling model design. I'm not advocating or arguing for any specific point here, but for those who are heavily into ride design and engineering I hoped someone could shed some light on the technical reasoning as (and I quote the engineer) - you don't install a joint where you don't need one because it increases cost, complexity and load. So - engineering gurus - have at it.

Legit. A woman on Reddit the other day asked who was to blame for a toddler getting bitten by a dog who was tied up to a pole by a playground - the dog owner or the parent of the toddler. She obscured which role she had in her question. Most folks answered honestly that the parent should have been watching her kid - at which point she revealed she was the parent, and had another child to look after and couldn't possibly have looked after two, and the toddler was very quick and that mean nasty dog owner (its a chihuahua) should have taken the dog to the dog park a block away instead of the children's park where the dog owner's own child was also currently playing. She also doubled down to excuse her behaviour because she was stoned at the time, but its ok because it's not like she was drunk. If I remember correctly, the last iteration of 'keep your kids away from my train line' fence that they had was themed 'rusty' corrugated sheets, bordered with old slabs of timber. This is a perfectly acceptable, themed fence (albeit blocking the view of little johnny), but since then we've re-aligned the rail line, and paved a new path at ground level to offer an alternative to spaghetti junction, and new fencing was needed. I see this as 'we need a fence, and for now it needs to be cheap and functional.' This is exactly what they built. They've come back from a bad place and right now they're achieving minimum safe levels on a shoestring. When the alternative is 'don't open it because it isn't safe', it's better for them to trade out looking below standard but safe, than closed because they can't afford gold plated wrought iron gates. The big test will be if they upgrade the fence to something nicer when they can afford to, or whether it will just be left as 'adequate' until it isn't anymore before they do anything. Their gardens look nice though.

^A long rant but very worthwhile of a read - especially for Village exec. Well said. In particular: You're god-damn right about that. And in my opinion I feel it comes across as contempt for the park-guest. Top-Golf has to deliver a certain standard, and it does (mostly). AOS is dinner and a show for ~$100 and you don't want Mr Dad coming out at the end of the show demanding a refund as that can be very bad for business. But somewhere along the line, it became acceptable to do that in the parks. Ride down? don't blame us, government safety regulations. Check the T&Cs, we're allowed to do this and you can't say shit about it. Come back next time. I've deleted number 3 because I think everyone has coasted about as far as they can on that excuse. If you're still blaming covid because your 2019-era business model hasn't been updated to account for covid, and the different strategies required to operate a business in this time, that's on you for not pivoting, and is no longer something that can be gotten away with with a "but covid". As mentioned, staffing issues are a possibility - but things like weeds, gardens, broken speakers... this isn't high-tech shit that requires much effort. A little weed spray here and there, generous application of rake and a few bags of woodchip et al... Heck, Wonderland ran a 7 zone audio system out of one room and the speakers and speaker housings were built IN HOUSE when they couldn't get the genuine dino's from the US by a total of 4 guys. It takes a level of knowledge, sure, but ultimately its about priority or giving a shit. If they can staff S&E with FOH operators, camera operators, etc - they could divert someone to work on these speakers for a few days - in the off season - mid-week - for a few days and you wouldn't notice. Don't run your camera down main street for a day. A lot of this comes down to caring and attention to detail. 'Reining in the spending' doesn't mean the 'weed killer' budget got cut. It just means nobody is paying enough attention to detail anymore, because they don't care as long as the one-shots, fast tracks, and all the other upcharges keep rolling in. I just had to repost this again - one, to say I agree with it - and two, because it needs to be noticed.

The post and rail was certainly more charming, its a shame they couldn't have put up the same low-profile colourbond fence like on the other side of the pathway to corroboree as at least then it would match... but it did make me think - aside from the red colourbond fence (which I personally don't like), what else would you have them do that would meet the requirement of ride envelope safety for the train?

Come back to us when they've missed their originally scheduled date by 20+ months.

*said in all earnest* that's probably one of the most sensible things ever said about VRTP constructions. I'm not sure where all this talk about other colours costing more came from, I don't believe it's that much difference (except as mentioned where they're particularly fancy finishes) but I am aware that in the construction industry, some manufacturers have reduced the number of colours \ styles they offer in their range, to keep up with demand. Eg: if they only have two production lines, they're only doing their two most popular colours, because it takes too long to shut down the production line to change colours. So you might not pay more for the colour, but you might wait longer \ not be able to get it at all if you need a specific colour, as I understand it. TO be clear, i'm not saying this IS the case here, but it is A case in construction and manufacturing generally right now.