webslave

Animals were apparently evac'd this morning.

The park is closed today and tomorrow with the emergency warning zone now including the park itself. The highway that passes the park is closed in both directions. I've not heard it mentioned specifically, but I'd be thinking the park is now under direct threat from bushfire.

There's a bushfire burning immediately to the north of Gumbuya World this evening.

It's a classic move out of the Australian Hospo Playbook. The next one is hospo night.

Seems like a pretty weak way to lead your marketing

How exactly do you quantify "most impressive" I wonder? I also quite dislike referring to a four-lane racer as four slides. Cheap. Have they missed an opportunity here? Neither of these elements is new to Victoria AFAIK.

It's always the same - this team of guys vs this team of guys to decide who is better. It's like their own little life narrative writ large.

AV vs motion sync is just not the massive issue @pushbutton makes it out to be. You don't even need physical plant to do it ferchrissakes.

They aren't the only ones who have reported it this way.

There's three that I know of - Monash in Glen Waverley, Melton Waves and MSAC.

First outdoor wave pool I believe.

Maybe re-zone the park like this crude little number?

I think you'll find the reason people are talking about it so much is because Dreamworld is regarded as a park on its knees that needs a lot of things to go right for it if it's going to turn things around. In most parks a new ride is continuity in the park and therefore the date slipping isn't a big deal. In this case you've got a park that is low on working rides and in need of an attendance boost, and that's why this is a big deal.

Thanks for the history on it @Baconjack. I wasn't aware that was the heritage of it. I reckon the screen inside it is not original to the attraction, and if that's the case then I wouldn't think replacing it would be too taxing for the park. Looking at the software that drives it I wouldn't think it would be too hard to tweak the motion timeline if it was needed - but I'd have thought the fix might be a little more mechanical than that. Even so, a basic vision and audio upgrade is unlikely to be costly or difficult and would make a world of difference.

I doubt it. It's been there at least 30 years. There's another motive there that they don't publish. The local area has a reputation for attracting some groups of youth who often cause trouble. This has been seen to keep those elements out of the park. One of the reasons for this is the low minimum height requirement to ride, which seems pretty random across the park. For example, my kid is 106cm. This means he is allowed to ride the Scenic Railway (with me), but is unable to ride Coney Drop (drop ride), the Twin Dragon (pirate ship), the Spider, the Dodgems, or the Sky Rider (Ferris Wheel). Really odd given he is able to ride the counterparts of at least the dodgems and the ferris wheel in other locations with me. I know it's about the restraints and all, but most parents just found it strange their little tackers were allowed on the big dawg roller-coaster but not the dodgem cars. 10m/s is the threshold apparently. I don't recall ever having heard it run. I dunno about that - it's pretty prominent. I'm not sure where you'd put it that's more prominent. The original location (which is where Pharoah's Curse is now) hidden behind the Disco Swing was the real afterthought. I too visited the park a couple of days ago. The Scenic Railway was an easy highlight and worth visiting for on its own. Power Surge was a welcome addition, albeit one of limited re-ride value IMHO. Pharoah's Curse I've never been a real fan of - it's uncomfortable, slow, and short in duration. The Enterprise is still a great, smooth ride (although it never fails to surprise me how many people are frightened off by the thought that it goes upside down). The "Holodeck" (simulator) attraction is a bit embarrassing for the park, and they really ought to either do it properly or replace it. The screen inside it is very low-res (the video it plays can be seen on a monitor at the ops position outside the ride and is good quality) and is full of dead pixels. The ride motion itself is uncomfortable, shows little resemblance to the video and is very noisy. The audio quality also needs work. One thing that struck me though was that with the exception of the Scenic Railway operations were incredibly slow. It seemed like ride operators were constantly coming and being replaced, and in the process of doing that it would mean all loading would stop for up to five minutes while the operators had a casual chat and a laugh about their plans for the remainder of the weekend. In other cases where two operators were allocated one would just hang out at the controls and the other would supervise unloading and loading solo. The park could also do with some drinking fountains around the place.

You, sir, are a drop-kick.

The picture is most certainly of Dreamworld.

Nope.

Jesus, that's pretty rank.

Yeah, it's unusual, however in the case of a problem you never want to rely on the trailer mobs since that's when demand is at peak. You can sometimes eek out a small profit on the spot price by running your own gensets, but the 'profit' is small and unlikely to be worthwhile unless you've got a real sweetheart deal with the local disty (and, depending on location you might if there's not a lot of other industry around you to shed or feed from). It's more common for solar setups (as RossL mentioned).

I can certainly imagine it looks that way at first glance, but there's usually a little bit more to it. Generator power is not as cost-prohibitive as it sometimes sounds and really comes down to the economics of what failure is going to cost you. Having the park go down for the day has a direct and an indirect cost associated with it and I wouldn't be surprised if the combined cost would make having your own generator infrastructure look attractive. Another industry that uses a fair bit of juice is data centers. These have significant generator installations (catering for generator redundancy), and because they are significant users of power they have a close relationship with their electricity supplier (as you'd imagine a theme park likely would). It's not at all uncommon for data centers to be requested by the distributor to disconnect from the grid in advance of periods that are expected to be high-demand. In other circumstances you can find that it can be cheaper to operate for a period of time on generator power rather than grid power. AEMO actually makes their data public on pricing for electricity here; https://www.aemo.com.au/Electricity/National-Electricity-Market-NEM/Data-dashboard.

Haha, I know what you mean man. One time I remember it changed 'Push' to 'Auto-incorrect'.

*your

I think you need to finally get over this. It's you who has decided that the members here love theme parks. It's you that has decided this forum is dedicated to loving theme parks. The reality is this forum is for discussion of theme parks (it even says so). If you've got it wrong you ought to wear it rather than sulkily expecting everyone else to change to suit you. These are commercial businesses, not football teams. They don't need you to cheerlead them.

Can't disagree with much of what you've said there @aaronm. It would be interesting to see what the original brief for the project was to know whether marketing went over the top or the project itself under-delivered.