DaptoFunlandGuy

You have lost your mind.

Back in November, I replied "I mean, that's like wanting to visit Las Vegas, and substituting the Canberra casino... " We get it. You're a 'warra local and you think its tops. But it's not a 'gold coast holiday in the Illawarra'. It's a holiday in the Illawarra. Now, I don't wish to speak Illawarra, but Gold Coast it isn't, and the comparison is both grating and ludicrous.

Jamberoo Yeti Confirmed!

Yeah - more likely they'll just wait until their local clone refurbs a-la TOTII and retrofits a spinner to it. Isn't Rivals a 'near' clone though - wasn't it just a modified 'flash' ? Granted not as many out there as blue fire, but still not that different, yet different enough.

Worth mentioning - especially on the quiet weekday trade, Wonderland saw more international visitors than locals. Granted, they were mostly asian tourbus groups wanting to hug a Koala, but depending on the timing of their tour, many buses allowed more than enough time to see the wildlife park and jump on over to the theme park for a few hours. (Asian gentlemen wearing dress trousers and business shirts riding waveswingers and looping starships was quite the interesting sight) I can't speak for Dreamworld's international visitation (they do have a similar tourist trap set up, but its waaaaaaay at the back of the park), but I don't see anywhere near the amount of tour coaches cycling through Dreamworld's carpark the way I used to see them go through at Wonderland.

I think Ardent will continue to own the park for the forseeable future primarily because they over-value the park and are asking too much. Right now the park isn't worth much more than the land value. If Ardent cuts its losses and sells for a reasonable price, a reasonable buyer can come in with money to burn. If they don't offload it, it will be death by a thousand cuts. taipan will be the last major investment, and the park will bleed to death. that's my optimistic view on things.

The whole thing looks very 'low to ground' for most of the layout - i just thought having it over water would be a cool little plus. Neither of the GC theme parks have shown any interest so far in furthering explorations into flume rides, and in today's climate, the safety risks associated with such devices and the lack of restraints puts it too high on the risk matrix for anything meaningful to occur. I'd love to see both parks bring back their log flumes, I just don't think its practical right now.

The load station is in a bit of a weird spot to drop it onto the Arkham space though. Need a bit of shuffling i think. Where would you put it at Dreamworld? Over the logride lake\creek?

Having worked in Burwood (albeit over 15 years ago) I would consider it on par with the Chermside of today - the differences you may observe though are because Burwood is located on a major arterial transport corridor - both rail and road. People can travel to Burwood from anywhere on the rail network and simply change at Strathfield (as I did). You can't build high rise office towers without either: 1 - massive amounts of parking and great arterial roads, or 2 - a great transport service. I've worked in both Chermside and Upper Mount Gravatt, and the parking situation in both is abysmal, as are the arterial roads surrounding them in peak times. The lack of a direct rail connection to either further exacerbates that, as those that don't drive are relying on buses that are slower, less direct, and are impacted by the same traffic snarls the car drivers do. The satellites in Sydney you refer to all had a rail line before they became the satellites they are today. You can't put the cart before the horse.

Yeah I think they need to encourage people to come and join the party, rather than warn them away. Sydney is the perfect example of how to host the games - venues spread all over Sydney's greater metropolitan - right to the blue mountains, as far south as campbelltown and everywhere in between. Every 'event host' city council had their own little expos to encourage tourism and visitation. I personally worked on the expo put on by Penrith City, with the rowing and whitewater venues, and the equestrian events just down the highway. Homebush was a non-stop party, and Sydney did an excellent job of managing the transport requirements. Sydney also didn't suffer the 'white elephant' venue problem that many other countries have experienced - a new stadium that became regularly used as a home ground for several sport clubs, coupled with the ancillary venues surrounding it that is regularly used for events, concerts, the royal easter show etc. Many of the other venues continue to see regular use today including the baseball fields, equestrian centre and regatta centre. Even the athletes village was quickly converted into much needed housing for the area. (and the OLYMPIC LOGISTICS CENTRE SALES WERE CRAAAAAZAAAAAY! (Anyone remember those ads?)) The biggest thing that Brisbane (and the greater surrounds including the Sunshine and Gold Coasts) needs is transport infrastructure to manage the load. Our current train network is abysmal. The busways are ok, but the Pac motorway and the Bruce Highway aren't up to coping with any massive amounts of additional traffic the moment someone drops a spanner in the works. Everything for Brisbane is geared around the Brisbane CBD - if i'm in Coopers Plains and I want to travel to Darra - a train needs to go all the way to Roma St for me to interchange with the Ipswich or Springfield line. Everything is a line straight to the city. All of the interchange stations are one of the central areas close to the river, ergo the CBD. Honestly - relocating the Ekka into a greenfields space - perhaps up near boondall near the entertainment centre - doing a 'homebush' and creating a space that is - connected to arterial highways, out of the city gridlock, able to be easily connected to public transport hubs, and you're on a winner. Build a stadium and an arena, as well as supporting facilities to host a multitude of events (oh, and it won't flood like Suncorp) At least in Sydney, you can pretty much get anywhere on the network without going through the city if you need to. On topic - as Brad mentioned i'm fairly certain the parks will continue to add their usual attractions, although timing the opening of something close to the games wouldn't be a horrible idea. Wonderland did see an uptick in visitation during the games - but they were using the Wonderland carpark as park-and-ride parking for other event venues too. I think overall, tourism does see an increase - athletes, and their supporters are usually in town for the duration of the 2-3 weeks of the games (and more in preparation) but their events don't usually last the entire games, so they have a lot of time to explore - especially the fans who don't have to worry about training. TL:DR - Sydney was an absolute party, non stop, for the entire duration of the games. Everyone got on board, and there was no messaging to stay away, because the infrastructure could handle the load. They did everything right (although they started with a pretty good public transport network to begin with) and everything was designed for more than a single event use.

I mean, so long as wikipedia is reliable, why change it, right? The channel does some great videos, well put together - my issue is his sources are almost entirely Wikipedia (and pretty much word for word) - I'd just prefer if he did it in his own words. On the flip side - he's still better than defunctland - who made a whole video about the closure of Wonderland and based it on the story that staff were locked out and the animals in the wildlife park were abandoned. According to him, staff had to break in just to feed the animals. Just plain wrong.

Still, its a world first, larger coaster than the others, and it does interact with the rest of 'luna land' even just a bit. It isn't possible we'd see some dipper works 9 months before it's scheduled to open?

Move it back to Movie World.

You're telling me that a former chief operating officer of VRTP, who was also a board member of AALARA, had nothing to do with Leviathan - an element of a far more elaborate precinct project that was fully fleshed out in May 2019, before his departure from the company? I mean, sure - Kirby obviously had his little 'final approval' stamp to go on, but that doesn't mean he determined the type, sourced the supplier, nutted out the design, right? I mean, we've long bemoaned Ardent's habit of CEOs choosing rides... you don't honestly think Kirby was the instrumental success for this, given his other exploits?

...and you call yourself an enthusiast. The reason you should direct your thumbs up to Dreamworld is because the person who 'signed off and got this going' now works for Dreamworld. As for the structure - I never said 'pretty' nor did I say 'architectural beauty' I just said picturesque. And it is. Heck, the wooden coaster aesthetic was so desirable for the theme Disney even made a Steel Coaster that looks like a woodie to suit. As for the issues on the spit, while I CBF finding it for you, i'm sure if you look hard enough you'll find that the spit height restrictions previously the demise of the Sea World Eye are no longer a problem for the park.

You should direct your thumb towards Dreamworld then... That little corner used to be under water. As an enthusiast, there's nothing more picturesque for me than the angles, shadows and shapes that make up a woody structure.

I'd continue the joke, but I don't want @Gazzato correct me on the appropriate use of footerings.

*Cries in Vikings Revenge

Hopefully, by the end of the year, the many folks over the years who have downtrodden the idea of a park getting a woody will be able to eat their words. This really is kick ass, and i'm looking forward to riding this way more than I ever looked towards Rivals.

I want to hear how to make my colours brighter and my whites whiter.

4 across seating is too much capacity. Lol. Seriously though - do what other parks have done and install a second tower. There's plenty of room for it, and you could diversify your experiences, while also maintaining uptime by staggering maintenance and teardowns.

You potentially create a worse problem with upsells like that though - people deliberately wait until the end of the day for the discounts (like Karen hovering over the roast chooks at Woolies waiting for the markdowns) which can depress your current level of full price sales too. There's still merit in the idea of capitalising off the current App data available (that they aren't using) they just can't make it too predictable, or certain, lest everyone get used to paying $99 for a year of entertainment...

There was a joke?

I guess if there's nothing wrong with it, you don't get rid of it until you know what you're going to do with the space. The facade may be entirely suitable for the new ride \ theme and all they have to do is clad it with the new theme. Or maybe the new theme will be the same, enabling them to recycle all the old material. I doubt we will see any movement on the site until the new ride is decided and they commence works - easier to demolish and build with the same machinery than to pull it down just to create a greenfields site. (Its a horrible look for guests to have such a large ride SBNO in full view, but I don't really expect any better of VRTP). And yes, that sign has been there for ages - its just the alley is so rarely open that few people ever go that way.

^ A grand wouldn't have been enough to ship the damn thing. The owner has them sitting in a shipping container on a property in SA. He's working tourism in the NT. To even return home to photograph the things would have cost him time and money - certainly not something that'd be worth doing for a grand for some stuff that isn't costing you anything to store. He's clearly a collector. He had aspirations of setting up his own private collection, clearly it became too much to restore them all and he shelved the idea. He's finally come to terms with getting rid of them, but like many things people are sentimental about, he wants to recoup the costs he paid for them - and no doubt that's where the pricetag comes from, once you consider the cost to procure, ship, and then have this creative mob try to reanimate them. He doesn't want to make a loss, which is fair enough - its cheaper for him to let them continue to rot.