DaptoFunlandGuy

Absolutely - I mean, what a great first post, well done old chap - but with both your steering wheel AND dashcam in the photo, there's no getting out of "you just did something both illegal and incredibly stupid at 110km/h"

+1 to this. I'm sure I recall hearing there was some issue with the roof\building behind the wall, but that it was still used back of house, so they just villaged it and put up a wall and pretended there was nothing to see here. I'd have liked them to have done something else with the roof as its unsightly and completely ruins the theme of the area.

I think it's a little bit more than that... The licence is near-on 10 years. A nice round number that has been suggested as the term of the agreement. The park is cash strapped. They had to borrow money from the gov to build Taipan by all accounts. They probably can't afford to renew it Dronkey has been completely removed and no suggestion of its return yet. Maintenance dates on website say May 31st, but last look at the ride it was completely missing Gingy's gliders is also down, until Jun 22nd according to the website Now the carousel is gone too. Suggested here that it was for repainting, but the park should have its own paint shop, so why? They gave away free showbags full of licenced merch for no apparent reason This is likely all conjecture, and i'm quite happy to be proven wrong - Dreamworks is the best themed area in the park and I doubt they could do 'as good' a job with a generic or alternate IP without a buttload of money they don't have right now, but there is quite a few points stacking up against them and nothing else to refute it right now. If Dronkey returns on Monday, then we're probably missing the mark. But if Dronkey gets extended.... let the speculation begin! Continue!

Admittedly, my solar system is brand new. This is the first outage we've had since it went active, and I can only tell you what happened here. My monitoring system shows it continued to generate and export throughout the afternoon. Maybe I should get it checked out? The only other thought i'm having is that it wasn't a 'blackout' and only a 'brownout' - Callide dropped about 800MW, but the network tripped out about 3000MW, but Queensland's demand at the time was around 8000MW - so clearly some folks didn't lose power. If the network was undercurrent, but not completely off - would that still trip solar cutoff? or would some areas lacking solar just not have enough generation to power everything? Keen to hear what your sparky mate has to say @red dragin

So THAT'S where trident went!

My suburb lost power, but everything in my house stayed on as i've got solar on the roof. My two neighbours also had power despite not having solar, because my grid feed-in was sufficient for them to run also. We've long since left the dark-ages of an 'all or nothing' blackout situation - there are many places that are self-sufficient on solar, battery and so on. As for the 'eastern side of the motorway' - Westfield Coomera installed a 2.334MW solar system as part of the build - 6 roofs on 3 separate building structures, with half the total system built into the top of their carpark shade structures - the largest solar car park in Australia at the time of opening. I'd suggest that many places nearby benefitted from the daytime sunlight hitting westfield around that time. My system was producing close to max output at 2pm, so chances are thats why nearby had no issues. Sadly, probably not enough to run a theme park. What happened at Queensland's Callide Power Station and will we lose power again? - ABC News

Can't give this a like for some reason, but you chase your dreams Matt. Not everyone gets the opportunity to work at their favourite park - and those that do will always cherish that time.

I'm sure the government has a list of folks who live relatively locally and aren't otherwise employed...

Yeah, lots of these *very expensive *very elaborate *very niche items from theme park history are things that - if you have one, you're like "that's cool" but despite the ride's popularity, its just not worth the money that everyone sells these sorts of things for. I honestly don't see any difference between this and a koala. They're large, expensive, don't work (or barely work) and the market for one is limited to gold medal fanboys with too many dollars and not enough sense. The park made a mint flogging these off and laughed all the way to the bank, but a private seller finding someone else with the same desire to own one is going to have a hard time finding someone willing to cough that much up.... especially when the park sold them for less than that to begin with.

That's assuming the agreement commenced when the area opened. Its unlikely they'd have been allowed to commence the themeing work without already having an agreement in place. 9 months or so from signing to have the necessary theming \ changeover sounds about the right amount of time too. ETA: The generic versions of all the rides in the Dreamworks area closed from January 2012 for the changeover, so they would have had everything inked prior to then. The below thread also has the February press release. This wasn't just slapped together in a month. I've no idea if the licence was 10 years or some other period, but if it was 10 - then whether it be June 21 or March 22, that time is nearly upon us.

Is Dronkey back? I just can't shake this feeling like maybe the dreamworks agreement is coming to an end...

They had a much better opportunity to do that when Thunderbolt got tossed. I'm not sure many people are gonna go for pieces of a log flume.

No Swearing!

Callide is a base load power station, and feeds the national grid. I believe they dropped about 3MW of baseload when she blew, and they felt the effects in some form or another from as far south as Tweed all the way to Cairns.

I think you'll find they're not going for the bargain basement pricing structure anymore... and its about damn time.

Yeah, but that's their own trademark. there's no deadline to sell that off, and if they hold them long enough they can release them as vintage...

That sounds like the Dreamworks licence has been end-dated. wonderland did the same thing - giving away HBL merch on the skill games to get rid of it before the licence ran out

I’m not so sure we can label everything as “covid’s fault, nothing to see here”. it’s too convenient an excuse and is used far too much.

It's a real shame. The doomsday \ Villains unleashed is probably one of the best themed areas of the park (except for the fact that the ride bridge is facing the wrong way), just a shame the ride model choice was so poor.

"track parts" ? interesting...

INB4 5000 people suggest Mad Max again.

Obviously you've never worked in a theme park. Guests routinely check their brains at the door. Announcements and hi-vis signage aren't going to save them.

Because they've gone to all the effort of gathering a whole bunch of characters together in one place - something that is extraordinarily rare, but distinctly and unmistakeably movie world. its the kind of image that if they put a little thought into, they could probably produce a 'commemorative poster' and flog it off in showbags for the anniversary celebration. But no matter how integral those few people were to bringing it all together, nobody (outside of the park tragics or cast) know, or care who they are. Heck, they went to the effort of getting elevation for the photographer - they were halfway there. As I said - I would have loved to have seen a version without the suits. that's all. Whoosh. Are we sure that's new? looks pretty much like the old one?