jhunt2

I certainly believe the intention of the closure was maintenance. I don't believe that whatever caused that twisted metal was "routine", and the real reason I decided to post about it is because I also don't think it's something fixable on a 40-year-old Ferris Wheel made by a defunct company. That whole spoke of the wheel would need complete re-fabrication. If there's been some mishap that has damaged the wheel, like what @DaptoFunlandGuy suggested, I doubt LPS would be going public with it - certainly not to 7 News. That broadcast sounds like a PR response to being asked questions about why the wheel has been pulled apart. Ultimately, the way I see it is that it appears unlikely this particular Ferris Wheel is coming back from this. If the issues that the maintenance was addressing were fixable before, they've now got a bent, cracked and twisted frame to deal with as well. And as some have already mentioned, it's an old ride that has been sitting next to saltwater for 4 decades. This seems like new wheel territory. The question is, with Hair Raiser also still seemingly just sitting there awaiting whatever maintenance it needs, is it within the park's budget or capability to buy a new Ferris Wheel right now? Judging by how some of their most popular rides have been sitting idle for months at a time, I'm going to wager the answer is no.

Probably should have been clearer or annotated the photos, it is a little hard to see what I'm referring to at first. The wheel is being dismantled but if you look at the frame of the wheel closest to the bottom, you can see some pretty severe bending and warping of some of the structure It's hard to miss once you see it, but since there's metal going everywhere it might be hard to see what I'm referring to. I've done a quick annotation job here to point to some of the places that it's most obvious. It looks like one of the spokes of the wheel has been bent inwards, causing some severe bending and warping of the attached framework.

Was sent some really concerning photos that seem to show pretty bad damage to the structure of the LPS Ferris Wheel. Knew it was undergoing some extensive repairs/maintenance but these photos seem to show some severe damage to the wheel frame. Don't know what could have caused this but it's horrible to see obviously.

Oh, where do I start? AI companies have taken advantage of the fact that there is no legal precedent for whether it's acceptable to use artists' intellectual property to train an AI model. What the AI is generating is not original - it's a response to a prompt generated based upon the work of real artists who did not consent to their work being used. Secondly, the environmental and economic impact is huge. AI uses an unbelievable amount of water and emits greenhouse gases quite heavily as well. And economically, the big players in AI are making huge grabs for large percentages of the storage and RAM capacity in the entire world right now to meet the demands of their users. The price of RAM for the everyday user is going up drastically, all so that someone can generate a slop video. But perhaps most frightening is the ramifications for misinformation and the death of truth in the world. When AI gets good enough, what's stopping someone from generating a video of an election candidate committing an awful crime to ruin their campaign? What's stopping someone generating fake news stories to stoke hatred and unrest? It's already happening, and our only hope is the fact that AI still has recognizable traits that make it usually easy to flag. The law needs to catch up fast before AI becomes a threat. But on a personal note, as someone who works in content creation both as a side hustle and in my day job, why would we want this? You can pay someone for a decent-looking result that has real human character and took real work, and support local artists, or you can create some slop for free, put your local artists out of work, and dilute the market with soulless garbage. AI has its applications. But shouldn't the purpose of new technology be to make the mundane tasks easier so that humanity can spend more time on fulfilling pursuits? So why aren't we using AI to streamline things like data entry and admin so that people can spend more time on arts, instead of the other way around? Driving actual human creators out of creative spaces is a very sad pursuit no matter how you look at it, and yes, I do hold it against Dreamworld for doing that. They may not be the richest park in the world, but they're not so broke they can't afford to give a local with a passion for graphic design a job. I mean, they were doing their socials just fine before AI came along. Can you name many people who have a passion for being a supermarket checkout operator? Many who spend their lives dedicated to learning the art? Graphic design is something people do for fun. As with video creation, writing and many other pursuits AI is seeking to replace. This is something many will dedicate hours to without the expectation of a single cent in return. These are the kind of pursuits we should allow people to dream of making a career out of, because culture is an inherently human trait. Everything that made every movie, every story, every piece of art that you've ever seen special was the human aspects. The emotion, the subtext, the culture, the comedic value. What is the value in driving humans out of those pursuits? We mock teenagers and kids for staring at soulless colorful brain rot on their phones, and here we are advocating for that to literally become worse - have a robot create some flashy soulless entertainment to distract us all while we get back to our mind-numbing 9-to-5s.

This is 100% AI-generated slop. There's a few telling signs. The emojis at the start of every paragraph, the sentence structure, lack of basic fact-checking such as Motocoaster being included. Dreamworld seems to be well and truly on the AI bandwagon based on their social media lately as well. Sad to see.

Tickets are booked for Sunday the 14th. Can't wait

Dear God man, experience some whimsy. I can assure you with 100% certainty the cheeky little joke on the sign is not going to affect DW's ride construction timeline in any way, nor will it affect VRTP's bottom line. It's just creative people having a little bit of fun with their jobs instead of printing out a boring old sign with the theming equivalent of Lorem Ipsum text. 99% of people won't even notice or understand, and the other 1% might smirk a little. This isn't a first time thing. Walibi Rhone-Alpes have voodoo dolls of the Asterix characters in Mystic's theming. Universal have several jabs and references to Disney across their resorts. It's just a detail that's there for some people to notice if they have a keen eye and the right understanding of the context. No one's getting hurt. Judging by your response to the Claw tribute in the theming as well, I'm getting the sense that hidden details in theming are not your thing. That's fine, but "potshots" and acting like this is some major indicator of DW's progress on improving the park? Come now.

Sorry, you might have missed that I was being ironic. You validated WnW's Biggest N Best tagline by saying it was true. I simply pointed out that it's also true to say Village's ride uptime is poor. I do not *actually* believe that accuracy is the only benchmark to whether a dig is acceptable. Can I ask why this is so serious to you? It's a cute little theming detail that those in the know can have a little chuckle about. It doesn't stand out or affect the theming in any way. Designers love doing this kind of thing. I dare say there's probably references and inside jokes including in some of our parks' theming that are for even more niche audiences and would never be understood by anyone in these forums - things like staff members' names or references to running jokes among the management staff. If you didn't like it, it probably just wasn't for you. But what did they lose by doing it? Did it affect the theming? Did it cost them any extra than if they had just printed the sign with no references or jokes? Anyway, back on the topics that matter... I actually am a little disappointed to see this. I know the restraints are going to be so much better than the old Claw's for comfort and thrill, but the OG Claw was a very good entry-level thrill ride, so it's sad to see the overall ride lineup become slightly less accessible height-wise. It's only 10cm so not the end of the world, but it would've been nice if they could have kept it at 120. Oh well.

If the benchmark for good-natured digs is that they need to be true, then you should be totally fine with the King Claw joke. Movie World has 5 major rides under maintenance as of today, and that number has been higher recently.

Hair Raiser, which has been closed since March and supposedly in need of a significant maintenance upgrade, has been removed from Luna Park Sydney's website. I usually wouldn't find this particularly notable, as the marketing teams who run webpages aren't likely to be the first informed of ride alterations or removals, but this is sudden and unexpected. Historically LPS' website usually just marks rides as "down for maintenance", even during long closures like Wild Mouse's, so this is setting off some alarm bells for me. I think especially the fact that Wild Mouse's page was used to provide ongoing updates of the lengthy renovation, and that was so recent... if the needed upgrades were going ahead, I would have expected a similar approach. Thoughts? Anyone been to the park lately and heard/seen anything about what's going on with it?

It's a detail that people will either notice or they won't. I don't think anyone is going to look at the old claw and be disgusted by it, nor have they sacrificed any quality in King Claw's presentation just to shoe-horn in the reference. It's literally hurting no one. At the end of the day, in this case it was probably so easy for them to add a little monument to the old Claw that they had no reason not to. The theming was already there, and it fits fairly well tangentially into the new theme. It would have been just a matter of keeping it instead of turning it into landfill. Really, I see no reason to complain. If nods, Easter eggs and references are not your thing, they're not your thing, but they aren't hurting anyone by being there. I'll come back and agree with you when they come up with some convoluted excuse to force in references where they don't fit or ruin immersion, but for now, they're doing it subtly enough, so why not?

Just thought I would suggest a listen to Dane's Theme Park Life's podcast interview with Greg on the Motocoaster topic. He directly asked Greg about the future of Motocoaster, and while obviously Greg confirmed nothing specific, he did clearly state that plans for Motocoaster are front-of-mind for Dreamworld, and that they eventually want to incorporate either the ride itself or the land into Rivertown. Greg discussed wanting to set the park up well for the future, and considering the approach that was taken with King Claw, which he directly refers to when answering the Motocoaster question, I doubt that involves keeping the ride around in its current state. A 20-year-old Intamin prototype with a laundry list of operational issues is not exactly something I'd say is a good asset for the future of the park. So I think judging by his answer to that question, the very least we can expect is a substantial overhaul of the ride when the time comes. And considering that The Claw was considered end-of-life at 20 years old, when it's an Intamin product that isn't a prototype and doesn't have a totally one-of-a-kind restraint system, I think we should keep an eye on that part of the park in the next couple of years or so. Moto conversation occurs at about 31:30 in the episode if you want to skip to that specific section. Dane has actually had Greg on his podcast twice and both episodes are thoroughly worth a listen.

I'm glad to hear Jungle Rush is doing well operationally, it definitely presented itself as a ride that could go either way when I visited twice earlier this year. First visit was fantastic on 2 trains and seemed to be running super efficiently. Second visit was on 1 train and slow operations even considering the reduced capacity. It's a ride with the capability to chew up crowds, and our Aussie parks have a tendency not to take advantage of that, so I'm glad to hear Jungle Rush is doing that, even if that's the bare minimum really. Sky Voyager is always slow, it's decent capacity per cycle but long gaps between cycles, which is honestly worse because you stand in the same spot in queue for so long.

Hi, clickbait YouTuber in question here. I don't normally respond to much on this forum, as I find it gets a little heated a lot of the time - as you correctly pointed out, I prefer to block that sort of thing out and allow commenters to enjoy their own echo chamber, since my channel is a hobby and I do it for happiness and a creative outlet, and I often find people tend to go for the jugular which leaves me feeling defeated and demotivated. I'm a roller coaster channel, not a platform for free speech, and I'm not obligated to give anyone's insults, or even rudely-phrased criticisms, any oxygen. But you've successfully baited me with this statement. I thank everyone for their feedback on my content. I genuinely enjoy taking on board feedback from those who do like my videos and those who don't. I appreciate that there are plenty of people who will disagree very strongly with my opinions on the current state of Movie World, or the way I approach video essays, or the way I run my channel in general. I've enjoyed reading your own takes on Movie World's current situation, and I actually agree with some of you. You've made some interesting points. I see no ill-intent in any of your feedback, and while I stand by my statements and my approach towards criticizing Movie World after my latest visit, I respect you all for voicing your own thoughts on it. I'm not sure when my next Movie World-related video will be, but I have genuine hopes that it will be a more positive one, and I hope some of you may even give the channel a second chance and enjoy it This statement right here, though, is why some commenters in particular are removed from my comments sections. This is not the first time that particular people have crossed the line from criticizing my content into drawing my personal issues into it and insulting me, and failing to see how there's a difference. Yes, I came home from my initial attempt at Coaster Odyssey due to health issues. I have a chronic illness. I spoke candidly on my channel about how it left me in hospital on the other side of the world, which was a terrifying experience, and also led me down a very dark path in terms of my mental health. I openly discussed how I spiraled into a depression badly during that time. I worked my backside off in casual jobs to save to start that journey, and I was still working casual jobs overseas to keep the journey a reality. Even putting YouTube aside, it was a dream of mine for a long time to travel and work long-term, and to pursue theme parks around the world. It hurt to have to come to the decision that I needed to go home so soon. And I've since been working my butt off yet again to make sure I'm recovering, getting the medical help I need, and will be continuing the series in July. I appreciate and respect that you have your objections to my content, and that's fine. But belittling my health issues and mockingly saying that I had my "tail between my legs" during what was objectively one of the most rattling, scary, painful and gut-wrenching experiences of my life is a stretch too far. Again, I was in a hospital, on the other side of the world from everyone I know and love, in a significant amount of pain, unsure what my insurance would cover and if I could even afford the healthcare, let alone the flight home that I eventually painfully realized I needed to book. And once I did get those airfares paid, I spent every night lying awake, still in pain, feeling like everything I'd worked so hard for over the past 2 years had gone up in smoke. I am so, so lucky that I have a wonderful support network because frankly, that trip was my reason to get out of bed a lot of days. So thanks for your input Jobe, but kindly leave my health issues out of your criticisms, please and thank you. We all have our struggles to cope with and I'd appreciate it if you could have the decency to separate your critiques of the content I create as a hobby from direct attacks on my health and suggestions that I'm cowardly for being forced to make decisions for my own health. Cheers mate.

I couldn't see the images for some reason, but I think conflating Sea World's ability to demolish an entire monorail system with the NSW Government's is inherently flawed to begin with. And last I checked, the Sydney monorail still isn't completely removed 11 years later, so my point stands. Removing the whole thing is a stage-by-stage process, and the two outcomes I see happening are either it sits there being an eyesore, or SW finds enough funding to justify renovating it. I'm hoping for the latter.