DaptoFunlandGuy

that was me, referencing an overpriced waterslide in ballina, not a theme park on the GC.

Horses for courses I guess - i've never really felt any differently no matter where i'm sitting. You can't see the tower while on board so it's not like a 'floorless' type experience. Only difference is you don't have people on both sides of you but that's 50% of the seats on batwing.. Just recently took my son to SFMM and we rode drop of doom - every time we rode we ended up with an edge seat and it didn't really feel any different. *shrug*

Yes the timing couldn't have been worse - from what i'm hearing MW's current maintenance and downtime is crazy out of control, and not a lot left in the park to do - and thats the moment they choose to come out and ask people to pay double?

Small Lines = Park with low popularity = closed park. You need to take a lesson in economics. Dreamworld doesn't have the diversity in offering that overseas parks who have done this have. Six Flags and Cedar parks get away with mods to drop rides because they offer so many more tiers to the rider levels. Happy Thoosies don't keep a park afloat. Tower of Terror wasn't a perfectly good ride. The manufacturer no longer made the drive systems. The park literally had run out of spares - they were in a situation where the ride would be irrevocably shut down as soon as just one of the motors died. So they announced the closure so people could give it a farewell, and sold all their spares and parts to SFMM, helping them fund their ongoing developments.

Bear in mind when memberships were offered, they were a MORE expensive option than the standard pass, rather than a 'good deal'. When you take into account the buy three get one offers on the VIP pass, the memberships were sometimes more than $65 a year more than the VIP \ OnePass. Despite the T&Cs still referencing it, the in park discounts and offers haven't been around in years, so realistically it's been a pay-by-the-month premium pass with Fright Nights included for years (which, remember, used to be included in the VIP for far less). Those same T&Cs continue to say that the Elite level passes get lifetime access to Wet N Wild Sydney, despite that park not existing now for 6 years. You don't consider it brand loyalty to continue paying and renewing your pass or membership, fine. I do. Annual passes have an expiry date, and you have to choose to renew each year. Many folk let them expire until they're ready to visit again, and others switch parks each year, so only buying village every 2 years. A membership was a guaranteed auto-renewal. In my opinion it was a no-brainer for them to continue a non-expiring option (and I think the only reason they did was the difficulties with DebitSuccess, which is a loss for them). I feel they've let the memberships stagnate out of apathy - not knowing what to do with them. If they'd made small increases over time, most folk probably would have been ok with that, especially seeing the onepass increases, but in this case its the boiled frog scenario - they've dropped members into boiling water, and the retention rate is going to be close to zero. Maybe that's what they want, so they can finally shut down the program, but it seems to me someone willing to sign up to an ongoing commitment with no expiry date is the kind of person i'd want to keep on the books - especially when they were prepared on sign up to pay a lot more than average. Its supply and demand though, isn't it? You can charge that to a bunch of teenagers in ballina who can't drive to the gold coast for the weekend, and parents locally are happy to pay that to drop the kids off at the pool for the weekend and get them out of the house. The GC offering is a lot more competitive.

With changes taking place from 1 July and a discounted one pass, that does seem likely. Thanks @westical for picking that up.

Village are showing once again that they prefer the stick over the carrot.

I haven't received anything, but it was inevitable the price would increase eventually. Doubling the price, and removing Fright Nights is probably intended to push the remaining members into the One Pass. The inclusions are now no different to the OnePass (the memberships will get WC, Spooky Nights and Carnivale instead of the Fright Nights admission), but it will cost $61 more than a locals pass for the privilege of being a loyal, long standing payer - even through covid - albeit pay by the month rather than in 4 afterpay instalments. Honestly, I've almost never used my Fright Night ticket, and sort of kept the village pass active because the set and forget monthly fee was easy to leave in place, despite not visiting that regularly (maybe 2-3 times a year). Given that the pass is no different (just more expensive) than the one pass, this change will be the end of my constant membership. We just picked up a B3GOF pass at Dreamworld, so I guess we're not paying anything to Village for at least the next 12 months.

This is Disneyland level quality! #Peoplemover #RocketRods

Let's be honest, for all the things they 'could' have done, the ride is already a foreboding presence in the park. I know a not insignificant number of self-confessed thoosies who won't ride it, and many GP friends of mine won't go on it either. I can imagine tilting seats or other fancy mods to the gondola would only further alienate the ridership, which would see the barriers to entry raise even higher (the ride already has both a height and an age restriction) and this would result in the popularity of the ride dropping even lower.

What part of the ride experience would you like them to change? Gravity? We haven't seen inside the station, so we've no idea what they've done inside during that time. Probably a little premature to be bemoaning them on this yet.

Precisely right.

I think this is the part where someone says that covid is the cause of delays due to supply chain issues that are still ongoing in the industry, and we all just accept that as a satisfactory excuse and move on with our lives. I think the tower looks great. the lights aren't as bright as I had imagined, but they also redid the queue and station area, so I imagine it's possible we'll see some extra touches inside the building we aren't expecting. I'll wait until it opens before I burn them at the stake.

Yep, construction wont take long, but just because the track stands, doesn't mean it's close to being ready to open.

I didn't argue that point when you said it originally. I only raised it as the suggestion was 'leviathan level station' which to me implied pre-show.

Yes. I did say I wasn't so sure of that. But there is also a chance. You also conveniently left out the first word of your original post, so just to be clear - you weren't sure either: So don't make out like you already proved something.

Hopefully the joker loses some weight...

As best as I can tell, this looks like a Mobile crane LTM 1300-6.2 | Liebherr. The telescopic boom extends to 70 metres, and can have a luffing lattice jib attached at the end. The liebherr website says the jib can be up to 78 metres long, but the technical manual only lists up to a 70 metre jib, which reaches just shy of 120 metres - not quite tall enough to reach TTD's 130 metre top hat. All this is from my own online research and interpretation, but it looks like it's just too short. I wouldn't be surprised though given how close it is if there was some way for them to lift it down from a point lower than the top hat, or for the specs to be a little off in the book and a longer jib was available. Lift capacity at that extension though is small - 2-3t max - would the track sections fall under that?

Right, so looking at those, the first part of the boom (which in the original picture is fixed) is just replaced by a telescoping boom in the current picture. the jib looks to be about the same as the original, so its plausible it's tall enough.

So I think the issue here is that you've assumed my inquisitiveness was implying Village were doing something unnecessary. To be clear, I categorically stated (several times) that I wasn't saying the schedule was wrong. Nor was my asking about it being necessary in any way because I felt it wasn't and was looking to ridicule it. I'm very localised. I keep an awareness of the parks i've visited, or the ones local to me, but I don't keep up with many parks outside that sphere - @Gazza's coaster knowledge is far superior to mine and he is aware of rides in places i've never heard of. So when I ask things in curiosity, i'm hoping that someone who knows more about the topic might have a little insight they can share. "well duh, its the only rollercoaster in the world built at precisely 27°57'28.2"S 153°25'34.5"E, so of course its the only one that needs it" is pretty pointless. Clearly, by the lack of response from everyone else, It's safe to assume there are no other coasters with a quarterly maintenance period like this, so perhaps it does need it's own box - but the original question remains - I wonder what specifically about this particular install means quarterly is needed

I'm not so sure about that. The crane boom looks like it has extension sections. There looks to be about 5 sections it can push out, plus the lattice boom on top. it'd be a stretch for that to reach the top hat, but it's not like its lifting a heap of weight so full extension doesn't need to have high capacity. It's a liebherr truck crane so i'm just trying to identify the specific model...

How was Jet Rescue 'saving a buck' ? It's a pretty good example of a pretty good ride type. Heck - SW San Diego is building one as we speak.. Village Roadshow already know how to save money with storage bins. Oh yeah - we get enough grief about how slow DCR operations are. Imagine if the pre-show had to run in the station before dispatch too?

I think you've got that backwards... The original Batman zipline went from the top of daily planet to stars cafe

Because you're being deliberately obtuse. There is nothing particularly exclusive about the climate on the gold coast. Wooden coasters are built in tropical climates, they're built in winter climates, they're built by the seaside and in the mountains. How many are in a subtropical australian climate with the ocean on both sides? One. Because you've put it in a box to try and make some kind of point, that it doesn't need to be in for the sake of this discussion. i'm keen to hear more about why this is necessary. If you're trying to imply that you have some sort of insider knowledge on why the maintenance cycle is the way that it is, we're just going to have to chalk it up to an incredible case of inconvenience and you're going to have to deal with all these folks who don't know what they're talking about speculating on a discussion forum. The reality is that climate factors should be considered by the designers and manufacturers and shouldn't place any more burden on the maintenance schedule than necessary. This is clearly necessary, which is why i've said (this will be the fourth time now) - i'm keen to hear more about why this is necessary. And just in case anyone thinks i'm having a go, i'll remind you where I said: So for anyone who 'is' allowed to talk about rollercoaster maintenance periods, and 'does' know of any other coasters out there with unusual maintenance periods - feel free to share - because that was what I was asking for. I can't believe i'm saying this, but thanks Dean for your comparison. Clearly though, this comparison rollercoaster gets less rain so your comparison is completely void as only rollercoasters built at in the state of Queensland between two oceans can be compared! /s