jhunt2

Sounds like a similar thing then, they basically work so well because each rider is actually boarding one at a time, and therefore attendants can just address issues to their face instead of hoping they listened to a general announcement. Obviously you're still going to have riders who struggle to board due to size, stature, mobility, nervousness, etc etc. It happens a lot. Did you happen to witness what the procedure is in this case? From an operator's perspective, that would be my only worry with a constantly moving load station and loading one by one - that my efficiency for the entire train gets derailed the moment someone needs a little extra help through no fault of their own. At least when you're loading all 7 seats on Dipper, if someone needs a bit of extra attention, you can let the other 6 riders sit themselves down while your attendants assist, and in theory you don't lose as much time.

From an efficiency standpoint, Dipper's pre-recorded spiels are actually not very effective. I say this having worked on BD for almost a year now. The entry spiel in particular is rather long-winded and wastes its time on the world-first claims before getting to any important information. Guests are often seated before the actually important stuff starts. Also, both the entry and exit spiels miss several of the most important aspects such as glasses not being permitted, asking guests not to do their own lapbars, direction of exit, and the whole "crossing your arms" thing. All of those have been causes of frustrating delays in my experiences at Dipper, and the pre-recorded spiels don't even mention them. It's probably the product of the spiels being recorded before the ride was complete or open to the public, meaning those issues weren't foreseen. The saving graces that make Dipper so efficient in my experience are the low capacity, meaning the attendants can basically address those issues face-to-face since they have so few riders to worry about per train, and the microphone. Some operators do their own spiels and don't ever use the pre-recorded ones, and even many of the operators who do use the recorded ones will still have to resort to either using the microphone or asking their attendants to address a particular guest issue. Ultimately, the pre-recorded spiels do very little for Dipper's actual efficiency and are often all but ignored by most riders. Especially with such a short ride time meaning the spiels are on repeat almost every 90 seconds, they basically become background noise to anyone who is within earshot of the station for more than 3 cycles. I'm personally a microphone spiel kind of guy, but I'd give more credit for efficiency to the attendants who proactively tackle the issue head-on. You can say "put your phone in the locker" a million times to someone over a speaker, but guests will be having their own conversations and generally not paying attention. Or just being idiots in some cases. Nothing quite works as effectively as a staff member telling them what to do to their face, which unfortunately is just not realistic on any ride with a capacity higher than the abnormally (and ironically) small Dipper.

^^ Can we stop being inflammatory over nothing now? I'd like to go back to talking pleasantly about well-known enthusiasts touring Australia thanks. Speaking of, they went to see Orphan Rocker yesterday. I didn't know it was that well-known outside of Australia, but it seems they were keen to check out Scenic World and the remains of OR.

Okay. 🤷‍♂️

You missed the point again. He's not saying anyone with a credit count under 500 doesn't know what they like. He's saying because theirs is so high and they're so well-travelled, they've ridden coasters from every major manufacturer, in probably every major model, experiencing pretty much every common element and a variation on pretty much any layout. That means that it is far more likely that a coaster would stand out for them because of the theming, which is probably completely unique to that ride, than the layout, which is more likely to be similar to something they've ridden before. That doesn't mean that Coaster Studios or any other well-travelled enthusiast won't occasionally find a coaster that surprises them with the ride experience, and it also doesn't mean that an enthusiast with only 50 credits won't know what to expect from a coaster. He's just saying that he expects they were more impressed by Levi's lighting package and theming, which is far more unique than the coaster itself. It's not that deep, he's not insulting you for not having 500 credits.

Proud to say that was my credit number 1! And I don't think I'll ever get another one like it 🤣

He never said you did. He said after 500 coasters, they probably have a reasonable idea what to expect from most layouts and elements, and the presentation of the ride through things like theming and storyline probably varies more and surprises them more pleasantly than the actual ride experience. Unless they're riding a model that's super rare or new and they've never been on before, it's likely they'll always have done something comparable with any ride they go on.

They were big fans of Levi's lighting package and theming! They said that it blew them away. Their main praise for Levi itself was that it was a better ride start to finish, while they felt that DCR had dead spots. I thought they were referring to the Stengel dive, but apparently they didn't find the helix to be that great either. But they loved DCR all the same and said it had better moments, they just found Levi to be a better complete package. Also chatted a little about LPS. Apparently they came to the park knowing about the coasters, but not a lot about the other historical attractions and aspects of the park. They were very surprised and impressed by Coney Island and were having the time of their lives in there when we met.

Say what you will about CS's upload schedule and format during the trip, I was lucky enough to meet them both at LPS, and they were both lovely to chat to. I bumped into Sarah first and she went out of her way to bring Taylor over to say hi. They told me some of their thoughts on DCR and Levi, and I definitely will be tuning in once their reactions come out, because they had some interesting opinions - seems they both preferred Levi! I definitely like that TPW uploaded promptly enough for viewers to be able to follow along with the trip in almost real-time, and I'd love to see CS do that in the future. The Patreon is relatively new to their channel, so it's possible they might still be fine-tuning exactly how it's going to work for them, and future trips might be better in response to that feedback. But as people, can confirm they were super nice and friendly!

Yes... and hence, more people walked through the SE/AA entrance plaza to reach that ride than there will be once it becomes the SE/SR entrance plaza. It's not going to create more foot traffic just because its throughput is slower. People still only have to walk to the entrance of the queue regardless of how long they wait in said queue. Pretty much sums up your complaints about the aesthetics so far. We don't know the colour scheme, queue design, theme, station design, general precinct upgrades or anything about this project other than what the ride is and a generally educated guess at which way it will be oriented, and yet you're complaining that it's going to look bad. I'm not the one speculating on whether it will look bad/good. Come opening date I may agree with you. I'm simply saying you're awfully riled up about aesthetics when we don't even have the foggiest idea what changes are about to be made to the area. I disagree with you on the skyline factor purely because I don't think an Intamin Surfrider has the surface area at height to interfere with a larger-scale coaster. That's it. The rest, I'm simply saying, is to be decided and you certainly shouldn't be so upset about it yet.

Since your skyline point is based on complete speculation, I'm not going to engage with it too much further. You're outraged over SR cluttering SE's skyline when you yourself admit that it would only look cluttered if the colour scheme doesn't fit with SE. We haven't even got rumours in terms of theme or colours yet, so let's wait and see? I also really don't think it's going to clutter much at all. I don't know how much you ever visited WnW, but SR isn't really a striking part of the skyline. It only has two spikes that reach its rather minimal apex, meaning it covers very little "surface area" of the overall skyline and would still be dominated by SE's top hat from the Main Street side at least. As for this point about foot traffic, how is this adding more foot traffic to the area? The entrance to AA was through this area for years, and that's now gone. SR will draw nowhere near the ridership of AA, so I'd expect there will still be less foot traffic through this area than pre-2019. Aside from the smokers' area, there's no other reason to walk around there unless you're riding one of those two rides. That's not going to be an issue whatsoever as far as I can see, and I'd expect the area to only open up further once Oz opens.

I don't get everyone's big deal with it being considered a coaster. It's literally a multi-launch shuttle coaster with spinning seats. It's just as much of a coaster as an Intamin Impulse or a Vekoma Big Air. Anyway, without digging that stupid pointless semantic argument up again, I really disagree with your argument about aesthetics. SE's most significant aesthetic impact from the outside is the top hat from Main Street. This isn't going to disrupt that at all. The only thing I can possibly think you must mean is that the view of the train going around the helix will be disrupted from the path outside the entrance, but really, you're only going to get closer vantage points when the queue and ride area for SR opens, as well as added interaction beyond a flat patch of white gravel. I can't see how it would ruin the aesthetics from an on-ride perspective either. It's not like SE had a closed-off precinct and seeing other rides will ruin the immersion of the story. You've always had a clear view of Main Street, Batwing and big white sheds during the ride. If anything, this will only make the helix more interesting with potential interactions with ride structure and buildings. I doubt anything will get close enough to be considered a head-chopper, but surely you can't be arguing that the white gravel patch is better?

I've already explained from an operator's perspective why the RFID tags and other technologies are valuable protections for us. I've already said that we know it doesn't make the ride safer, that's not the purpose of it. Just like it's not the purpose of a CCTV camera or an operator logbook. Those are in place for when something happens, not to prevent that something from happening. And now you're coming up with these theories with absolutely no basis and contributing them to the discussion as probable fact. Honestly, that's peak 7 News Gold Coast behaviour.

It's not. That's exactly what I'm saying. It's the same thing, just a newer technology. Arguably the RFID is a technological upgrade on CCTV because it provides solid data that can't be obscured by things like poor camera quality, bad angles or blind spots. It's just a clearer and less ambiguous form of confirmation from the operator. From the park's perspective, it's a safer and more reliable way to cover their backsides. You keep repeating this point, ignoring what everyone else is saying in response. It's not always about measures that reduce the actual risk, it's about taking redundancy measures to prepare for the eventuality of any sort of incident. Australia's negligence laws are very unforgiving to the amusement industry when it comes to incidents at the moment, so rigorous reporting and measures to ensure that they can verifiably prove that they did everything in their power to prevent an incident is a park's best protection. It's also just about continually reducing risk to an acceptable minimum. Obviously, there's always risk in any activity, particularly amusement rides, but a great way of putting it that I've heard before is that parks and operators have to treat safety checks before every ride cycle like everything that can go wrong is going to go wrong on that cycle. Seatbelts? RFID? Sure, they don't reduce risk really. But they force operators to come into physical contact with the restraint, making sure that they conduct a physical check on every restraint for every cycle, because it only takes one missed restraint for disaster to strike, and there's no coming back from that. You didn't check that one restraint? You're done, and so is the park. You also keep saying that visual checks are adequate, but as an operator, I can tell you that you couldn't be more wrong. When we check restraints, we are not just checking if it's down and locked. We are checking for damage to the restraint or seat, checking for the appropriate amount of tension when we push and pull on it, checking that riders are seated in the correct position and abiding by safety regulations, and ultimately checking for anything out of the ordinary with the restraint system. That restraint is what keeps riders safe. It is literally the most important part of an operator's job to be completely sure that it is secured correctly before starting a ride. We are trained to know how these rides should look, sound, feel and even smell when operating normally. We become very familiar with the rides, so when conducting those checks, we're not only visually inspecting the ride and restraints, but also listening for unusual sounds coming from the restraint when it moves, feeling that it is secure and doesn't have an unsafe amount of movement or "give", and generally conducting an up-close inspection of every rider to ensure that we can confirm they are safe to the best of our ability. I'm really hoping you mean a physical check, as in pulling and pushing on the restraint, because I have never been to a park anywhere in the world that my restraint wasn't physically checked by an operator before dispatch. And I've been to some sketchy parks. If I'm ever dispatched on a roller coaster with only a visual check of my restraint, that's the moment I'll start praying. I get it, you're very efficiency-minded, and the RFID and operators doing seatbelts definitely slows things down, there's no denying that. I think what you're forgetting in DW's case is that they are very recently recovering from an incident that was just about as bad as it can possibly get in terms of negligence in the operation of their rides. If they're erring towards covering their own backsides, it's probably for the very valid reason that they cannot afford another incident where they're to blame at all, so they're taking every possible measure to ensure they can prove absolutely everything was in order if something ever happened on ST. If they're sacrificing a bit of efficiency in order to never repeat those mistakes, I'd say that's a pretty smart idea from their safety team.

It's about negligence charges as well. The RFID tags are a recordable, verifiable way of proving to a court that someone with approved training checked the restraint before any potential incident occurred. That's very important from that employee's point of view especially, because as long as they conducted safety checks correctly and in accordance with their training, they can be protected from criminal proceedings in case of any sort of accident. As an operator, I've been explicitly told this - if you do your job properly and in accordance with procedures, we can protect you if something does happen. The buck always stops with the operator when something happens on a ride, but if it can be proven they did everything in their power and within their training to prevent something from happening, then they can't be held personally liable. From an insurance company's standpoint, that physical evidence is also an important aspect of settling claims for compensation on grounds of negligence or injury. Things like recorded CCTV evidence of operators performing their checks, or in the case of ST, the logs of the RFID tags, would be used in these cases to rule out the possibility that the checks were simply not done, which means the investigation can pretty swiftly be moved on from outright negligence to other factors like guest behaviour, mechanical or technical failure, or any other factor, such as operator training being adequate at a higher level, that could have caused a potential accident.

What I have been told as an operator/attendant is that it's a redundancy measure on some rides to make sure ride attendants are forced to physically check every restraint. A lazy staff member may be tempted to just skip over a lapbar if a guest seems to have done it correctly by themselves, but it's easy for a restraint to visually appear correct while actually being not properly secured. Making it procedure that attendants must do at least one element of the restraint forces them to come into physical contact with every restraint, and makes them more likely to do a proper check while they're there, and less likely to miss something small. In my personal opinion, the same thing is accomplished by making it procedure to check every lapbar regardless of whether the rider did it correctly, but choose your poison really. It's all about making sure attendants aren't just conducting visual checks and are actually physically checking that restraints are secured correctly. Just to add, a secondary reason is actually efficiency. Riders can often cause delays by doing restraints incorrectly. It's often more efficient for the attendants, who do the same restraints thousands of times a day and know how to do them quickly and correctly, to do them all, rather than having to release and redo restraints that were done improperly.

Haven't ridden TNT itself yet but rode a clone overseas, and it's an easy win. KFF is by far the inferior layout, and the awful restraints and roughness are just nails in the coffin. TNT all the way!

RCDB has a tough time with the Wild Mouse because of the fact that it was a travelling coaster and also a permanent fixture of LPS and Fox Studios almost simultaneously. It's a pretty unique situation. From memory there even is a footnote at the bottom of the current listing saying that the situation is unique and that the simplest way to do it was to create multiple listings as it technically was relocated, sort of like BuzzSaw and Project Zero have two separate pages. As for the Wild Mouse, as previously mentioned, I believe the situation is very complex because of the heritage listing of the ride. Obviously on the one hand, it's an amusement ride, and needs to meet modern safety standards to operate. But its heritage listing means the park probably has to jump through a lot of hoops to tear it down if it's beyond repair. So it might be caught in a limbo state of standing there until the park can afford/work out how to maintain it in its current condition, whatever the problem may be.

I rode a newer Intamin Surfrider at VinWonders in Vietnam which had lap bar restraints. Kind of similar in design to the ones on TNT. Can't remember if it made any difference to the height restrictions, and the website is difficult to navigate to try and find out, but it drastically improved the ride experience.

I do hope that the theming gets an overhaul, but I'm most excited about the changes to the ride itself. It definitely got rough and uncomfortable, particularly in those drops. Magnetic brakes would be a great addition as well, the final brakes after the drops were like a car crash. Smoothing out the coaster again so that it's an enjoyable ride is the first priority, and anything they do to improve those awful new theming elements is an added bonus. Much-needed move from WBMW in my opinion, this was definitely the one ride that just wasn't up to scratch at the moment. The amount of time it's closed for is a definite blow, but hopefully that means it will be quite extensive works that will deliver a much better finished product than the last time the ride underwent major works.

It's a roller coaster. It satisfies the definition in every way and Intamin markets the model under the "Roller Coasters" section of their website. What the public "perceives" a ride as has nothing to do with what it actually is. It's literally a shuttle coaster, the only thing that makes it seem different to you is the unusual seating formation. If Mack Power Splashes are coasters, so is this. Semantics out of the way though, I don't really see the difference between sending it to WBMW or to SW. My only argument for the latter is that SW still has less overall attractions, particularly in the thrill department, so this could help them spread the thrill-seeker crowd away from Vortex and Leviathan a little bit on busier days. But honestly, if it goes to WBMW, it can't really be a bad thing. The worst thing that could happen is it doesn't draw and crowd and it's just there. The cost of moving it a few hundred metres is going to be negligible compared to building a new flat which could just as easily end up being unpopular as well. They're not going to build a coaster in Superman's helix, if anything's going there it's a flat or an ultra-compact coaster design like this, so it's not taking up space from any major projects. I say go for it. Maybe it'll reduce the other thrill rides' queues just a tiny bit during peak season. I do wonder why SurfRider's operations were so unusually sporadic though. I got the sense they were having serious maintenance issues with it over the last few years, so that makes me think perhaps they'll scrap it. Unless it was specifically because WNW weren't equipped to maintain a coaster, I'd be curious as to why VRTP would want to keep such an unreliable ride on their roster.

They’re also doing that on the screens at the entrance. We were in line to try our luck again today and the ride closures on the screen were looking promising until a staff member came and changed them about 10 minutes before gates opened. It feels misleading, because there are definitely people who would have reconsidered buying a ticket if they saw a definite closure. Staff in the park were also quite willing to inform us that an opening in the next few days is unlikely, which contradicts the behaviour on the maintenance pages which suggests it’s an issue that they feel could be resolved at a days notice.

Really sorry to hear that. You don't deserve that at all. Just want you to know that the staff have really made our days at the park excellent, even despite the frustration of not getting the ride we came for. You guys are excellent, and it sucks so much that you're in the firing line of people's anger at something you have no control over.

Vortex and Leviathan both down for the day again today. Trident was open on time, but has closed intermittently due to high winds. I’m sure it’s been mentioned, and I hate to add to the general negativity of this thread, but it seems an oversight to have a ride model with such a low operational wind speed threshold in the location that it is. Anyway, in response to the interstate travel thing, I’m from Sydney and it’s definitely frustrating that advertising even at the parks front gate is still suggesting that we “Ride It Now”. However, to add some positivity to the thread, the staff at the entrances to the closed attractions have been wonderful. Cheery, upbeat, helpful, and willing to have a chat while giving an update on as much information as they’re allowed to give. I really hope they’ve been spared the brunt of the backlash. It’s a thankless job to guest relate on a closed attraction, especially under these circumstances.

Different coaster, much older, different manufacturer. Apples and oranges. The point of morning cycles is to test for any warning signs that the ride could fail to operate normally during the day. There's no point running a test cycle with a loaded train when the weather conditions suggest that lighter trains' speed could be one of those points of concern. DCR doesn't have any minimum rider rule as far as we know, so if an empty train can't complete the circuit, then it can't be considered safe to open for the day. If the crowds are small and a cycle only has half a dozen riders, the train could very well behave quite similarly to an empty one. Operators need to know that - no point knowing that a full train is safe to run but not knowing exactly how many riders they need at minimum to prevent a valley.