franky

We were at SeaWorld today. We arrived at about 1pm (we went to Paradise Country early). Park was busy but we managed to get 2 rides on Jet Rescue and 2 on Storm (Storm rides were right before close). Operations on Jet Rescue are frustratingly slow. When the ride finishes, the passengers dismount but they never move the train to reload until every single passenger walks 25m to the photo room and closes the gate. Only then do they move the train up to loading. Now that the train is now in loading, it's time to start assigning people to rows, why can't someone be doing this while the ride is running so they can load straight in? I get it that the unload procedure is a safety thing, but why not rework the unload station so the gate is much closer to the train? Everyone was dawdling to the gate and it just prolonged the cycle time. On what everyone is saying is one of the busiest weekends, why only one train? (does JR even have two?), Why not have another loader/grouper? In saying all of the above, riders were just as to blame for delays but could have been helped by another loader/grouper. People were locked in and had to be unlocked as they still had hats/glasses etc on. Storm was great but only appeared to have 3 boats, not sure if this is normal or not. Two seemed to sit in the station while one was on the course, they'd dispatch one as the previous one was rounding the corner to unload. This is our first trip to the GC in 3 long years and the first trip really since I've been paying attention to how rides operate. I'm not mad, I'm just disappointed fingers crossed the crowds get a little better after tomorrow. Bonus image of our park today, we were in the overflow of the overflow carpark

It does but it also needs to be careful in doing so. It doesn't sound like they have any other fall back options now if it doesn't work out.

Assuming these are three full days where you can enter at park open and leave at park close, Dreamworld, Movieworld, Seaworld in no particular order, I'd just consider ride closures and work around these if there's any ability to do so. If the ticket I happened to purchase for VRTP allowed for park hopping, I'd probably enter Seaworld at park open, do the rides, look at the attractions/shows etc and head over to Movieworld in the afternoon.

I'd argue that this is already a step above cheap. It's painted black. Cheapest I'd expect to see is plain galvanised metal.

There is a lot of white around Sea World, mainly roofs etc, but there is a lot of shade structures that are also white or quite light in colour (beige/cream) It's been a few years since my last visit so I'm working with Street View here, but I don't think it would look as out of place as some of you are making it sound, especially once some planting takes place. Most of the sheds are going to be facing back of house are they not?

I don't know a lot about our parks, but we were in the GC November 2019 and Surfrider was running. It went down a lot during the day we were there, but it was running.

Could be as simple as a limit switch/sensor is malfunctioning and needs replacing, and they don't have the parts/staff to do it.

I think its more about bullying a company into submission through fear of viral negative backlash / boycotting when said bully doesn't get their way.

Just as a contrasting story. I had a pass purchased as a gift last christmas for the VRTP theme parks. It's valid for 12 months. Now there's been time within these last 12 months where we could have attended, but really we were waiting for these new rides to open to make better use of our time. Lockdown's came and its now going to be too close to Christmas when we're allowed back in to QLD. So we asked VRTP what we could do, they gave us a 'refund' in the form of a credit to use within 3 years. Now, did they have to do that? No, but it's good PR that they did. They could have said 'sorry, but these are the terms' but they didn't, and I'm happy that they did. Instead of having something negative to say, I'm saying something positive. Whilst I don't agree that anti-vaxxers are on the right side of the argument, I do feel that the parks need to take their requests seriously. Remember, just because someone is vaxxed, doesn't mean that they won't retaliate against businesses that enforce their own mandate for vaccination (in addition to existing Gov. rules), some have reluctantly been vaxxed due to threats of job loss etc.

Look between Taipan's spike and and loop... took me a while too.. Well done

Its been about 6 months since most of those rides were commissioned, is there like a 6 month mandatory service that rides would need to have happen, regardless of them being used or not?

He says that, but now that he's let the cat out of the bag, he can say hello to the introduction of limits on the offer to prevent others from exploiting this loophole.

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As someone planning to do exactly this when our borders reopen, what's nuts about it?

Could it be equally likely that noone bought it and DW are just going to demolish it instead?

I think what's going to make it difficult for a new comer to the Aus theme park market is that there are now well established parks to compare it to. If you were to open a theme park with only 1 coaster (and nothing else to complement it, like a wildlife park or a garden etc) then you're going to have a hard time staying afloat when everyone will be continuously comparing you to the gold coast parks in terms of value. Seaworld/Movieworld existing with only 1 coaster was fine at the time, because every other park was only small and newly established. My mind is open and hopeful though!

It's funny because every year my wife and I go to HVG for the Christmas Lights I always say they should put a coaster in. It would go gang busters even if they brought in a travelling model like a spinning wild mouse for the Christmas period. That being said, I don't think they're in the right location to be a fully fledged theme park. The area is known for it's winerys and quiet getaways in a tranquil area. Putting a bunch of screaming people in the middle of it all is not what I'd personally see being received well by the local businesses. The place is miles away from major public transport. Newcastle (Williamtown) is the closest major airport and it's limited in where you can fly from here. Locally, Cessnock isn't exactly known for its citizens being awash with money. However, the Christmas Light Spectacular draws in major crowds every year with tour busses from Sydney etc so it stands to reason if they get it right it might work. It's pretty easy to get to from Sydney if you wanted to make the trip up (M1 then Hunter Expressway). We've been to HVG during the day outside of the Christmas period and the place is a ghost town, maybe a few thrill rides will keep attendance chugging along. I've often thought that Old Sydney Town would be a great location for a theme park. It has the reptile park next door, is situated almost halfway between Sydney and Newcastle and is straight off the M1 and close to the train line (Gosford). Disappointingly it appears as though it's going to be housing.

And I can sleep easy now Good stuff Dreamworld!

Does the colouring of the S in Steel look upside down to anyone else? #CantUnseeIt

I mean, my first thought when seeing the video was 'it looks much slower than I imagined it would'. But I just watched a couple of off-ride videos of DCR and it looks just as fast, so I reckon it'll be a great ride!

I'm going to speculate here. The reason we're not seeing 3d signage any more is because of the difficulty and effort in adhering to the guidelines of double-fixing. I remember when I was reading through the coroner report for the RTRR and in it, engineers were pointing out fixings in the ride with single fixing points and that they should be addressed. You can see such an example in the new sign in the image above, there's the chain holding the sign as originally but also there's now an additional wire as backup. The incident DaptoFunlandGuy described at Wonderland is why. Something actually occurred, it was risk-assessed and now probably every insurance company for theme parks in Aus is going to require double-fixings or they'll have to pay additional premiums. When you've got a 3d manufactured sign, how do you guarantee double wired fixings for each element stuck on the front without making it look like trash? Sure, you can glue/screw/bolt but a bean counter in insurance land somewhere will probably say not good enough. There comes a point where a standard printed sign does the job well enough and is not worth the effort in fighting the bureaucrats.

Me too, there doesn't look to be anywhere near the station track-wise that's high enough to walk under, so would they need to construct a foot bridge? Side question, how would people unable to use stairs access the ride? How was it done when BD2 was there?

Because it would be incredibly time consuming, difficult and error-prone to do single point measurements from each and every inch of the track in each and every direction. Sure there's probably something they could do with lasers (pew pew), but I'm going to bet it's cheaper to use a bent up piece of metal or a cut out of some plywood. I'm sure you can count on the track etc being precision engineered/manufactured, but the rock tunnel... there's plenty of opportunity for someone to over apply the concrete, and you wouldn't want an extremity hitting that at 100+kmh.

I'm assuming the spinning train would have a larger envelope overall (it would exceed the standard train envelope being that its more elevated and spins), so realistically they'd really only need to pull that template through as it's kinda redundant doing the other, right? Stop a train on the MCBR or even the launch transfer track, move the other train into station, cycle other train to the maintenance track, place in maintenance shed, profit! I'm assuming there's going to be 5 blocks (station, launch, MCBR, final brakes, maintenance transfer), plenty of opportunities to shuffle two trains around.

I think I remember Magician saying it was removed and not kept, I took that to mean it was smashed up and put in a skip