Levithian

No, it's not PLC based at all. Sally don't do drive systems, they didn't even really do all the interactive stuff back then either. The drive system is completely separate from everything they developed or designed by them. Everything else you see, lighting, video queues, effects queues, it's all dmx controlled/served by solid state motion controllers that tie into the show control program developed by Alterface. Communication for scoring systems are handled wirelessly and converts back to serial data for the video servers/game servers. It's more akin to a video control center, has nothing to do with ride control at all. Alterface is a control suite (program) running on a windows server that is the bridge between the physical (shooting actual mapped targets) and the interactive elements with things like the projected screens. A great example of how queued events work in the ride is what happens when you get a stoppage during the ride and suddenly you can't shoot any of the targets ahead of you. If the stoppage is long enough, sometimes you'll even see the video replayed on the screen while you are sitting there waiting, or your lasers might completely time out and switch off like the game has ended. It's like 3 or 4 different systems working together. So you can't just upgrade or remove one element/system and expect the rest to continue to work. It's not that simple, which is why you wont find changes to the story/gameplay, like with additional/new scenes added.

A lot of the animated characters appear to be moving but the lighting isn't working so you can't even see them. Problem is, I don't think the tech is any newer, its still IR based. You can't just add things to a ride like this, the whole sequence has to be rewritten and everything coded to operate each scene has to be changed as even small variations in triggering messes up the queued events to follow. It's designed around some old control systems with everything being dmx triggered. To make significant changes, it really needs to be gutted and replaced. If you had an unlimited budget it would be a trackless ride now. I think the best we could hope for would be a ride in as delivered condition, that is, all the interactive elements that no longer work, all the lighting and effects that provide theming will be repaired or replaced. Adding joker doesn't make a whole lot of sense as Starro is the villain. If they were going to add anything animatronic to the ride, they should add a captured Starro animatronic to the unload/exit tunnel area, like he is being lead away after justice league saved earth. Problem is, even a basic humanoid character animatronic can cost over $100,000 USD.

I don't think its the evac frequency that is the reason for the stairs so much, more how difficult an evac from certain areas is. So having stairs is less of a safety risk to everybody (staff and guests).

IP movie rights rarely have anything to do with use in theme parks. In a number of cases different companies actually own the production/performance rights vs the distribution rights for a film or cartoon, etc. So just because its a WB or roadshow IP, doesnt mean it crosses over for use in parks. Also have to remember that village bought out warner bros small share of ownership awhile ago and essentially use the name under a rights agreement. The characters you see likewise would have some sort of usage agreement too I would expect. WB don't even use village roadshow for aus film distribution anymore either. They ended their partnership a couple of years ago.

It's a bit deceptive, the track contains a lot of flanged sections that are welded. Means you could cut through them, grind them off and dress the cuts, then weld in new flange plates later with very little damage needing to be rectified to be reinstalled somewhere else. If it's not ending up in skip bins, it's probably being transported somewhere else.

You are assuming the after chiller is working properly / at all though. I could see hydraulic oil temps go through the roof if it wasnt cooling properly on a hot day. Hydraulic systems arent really designed to run at temps much over 70 degrees. So they could experience having to wait for the fluid temps to drop and try to manage the ride vs shutting it down.

Might have something carcinogenic in the paint that means it has to be done by hand like superman last time.

To me having ridden it a few times since the upgrade, the problem was their loading times are shocking. Wouldn't matter if you had 10 boats in the station, the one at the front still holds everything back. Even if you had a second boat waiting between unload and load, nobody can get in it until it moves forward, coupled with only being able to unload one boat at a time, unless the human element improves nothing else is going to make any difference at all. Should have designed the new station to unload/load 2 boats at a time. Then it would have been 100% down to the park staffing it properly to keep the high throughput happening.

Ones removed have already been crushed. They were out the front of adrians scrap metal in molendinar for about a week as they slowly dissappeared.

How many times do you need to say Bikash's name before he appears for comment?

likely to be track inspection/testing

Id say, notice how s&s havent built a single el loco anywhere in the world since the incident? If green lantern is anything to go by, they might not be the most reliable ride either. Could contribute to why they havent built any more (or, more accurately, nobody has purchaed one).

That is the pinch point though i think. The pole doesn't just move up and down, it also moves forwards and backwards inside the hole in the ceiling because thats how the crankshaft works in pretty much all carousels. Its exactly like a piston moving up and down in an engine. Might be ok if you stuck a hand up there, but if someone stuck their head through, it probably got wedged against the ceiling panel as the pole moved forward or backwards. They are big, heavy machines, not a lot of things are going to stop it moving when placed in the path of moving components.

I understand what you are saying, but either they messed up in the feasibility study, or they jumped the gun too quickly and agreed to build one before they actually planned it through. Ultimately, long before it was built S&S could have said no, we can't build a 4 seater variant and not have it derail itself nearly killing people in the process. Instead they designed and built one, installed it and said it's all good.

Don't let that get in the way of a good story. 😄

Happens when people start complaining about their visits in the parks own posts/updates. They have previous form for doing the same, stopping people starting their own posts, then stopping people from commenting at all when the complaints overran everything.

Some of you guys have no idea at all how things work in the real world. You know who complains about noise en masse? residents who hear the noise. You know who doesn't? people at the theme park. Bit lop sided huh? It's not like they are getting applications from people to increase the noise limits to counter act the complaints. Council get flooded with complaints about noise, if they cause enough of a disturbance they act on it by imposing restrictions otherwise they are seen as ignoring the residents. Politicians of all kinds care about their careers and making it into local papers because residents feel they have been ignored doesn't register too high on their wish list. Doesn't matter if its a theme park, a race track, a pub, a concert venue. Doesn't even matter if the venue was there first. as urban sprawl encroaches on these places this is the sort of thing they have to put up with. It's driven more than a few places out of business over the years because they simply couldn't meet the requirements/limits imposed and remain a viable business. For reference, a quiet street is about 40dB. You can easily hear the chain dog disengage from DC rivals from studio village, be surprised how far noise of certain frequencies carry. It's all the other noise that goes with opening at night though. Things like music, lights, people screaming (as mentioned), plus vehicles coming and going. Hell, I bet they have even had complaints about the masses of smoke/fog/bubbles wafting out of the park following some events. I've been to fright nights when it was completely still, no wind at all. The smoke just kind of hung around and drowned out the car park and onto the high way. Didn't really clear away. You can be sure that rustled someone's jimmies.

Other thing is, Luna park has a history of being open at night. It's different when you force a change on nearby residents.

The number of people you can safely allow entrance is VASTLY greater than the number of people you can allow to enter and still stand a chance of keeping the majority happy with wait times for rides. Don't get those two things confused. They aren't even close to being mutually exclusive. I'd guess its likely even double, maybe 15,000 or more safely vs maybe 8000 to reduce the wait times? We keep having discussions about extended opening hours every year (sometimes every holidays!). Parks keep giving this a trial and the end result is it's not really that well supported. Especially when you factor into the logistics of keeping a park open "for a few more hours" and all the costs involved, the impact it has to staff levels/rosters, etc. Anyone that doesn't think (or realise) that accountants have a detailed cost analysis and know exactly how much money this generates for the park once everything is paid for, AND management still have come to the conclusion that all things considered, it's still not a viable long term proposition; really isn't grounded in the reality the rest of us live within. Customers have been unhappy with congestion and ride wait times for much much longer than this year, last year, or even the year before. It's nothing new, remember when village removed the ability to leave reviews for their parks or allow visitors to publish posts on their page (visitors post)? That happened well before covid appeared and messed everything up. Go to theme parks during holidays and it's going to to be packed. If you can't deal with crowds, if you can't handle a lot of waiting, you are going to be miserable. It has been like this for longer than some people probably can remember visiting. Pretty much every issue in this thread can be solved, or at the very least, significantly lessened by one single thing....

Even if you had the fastest loaders in history and as many trains as can be managed, still have something working against you on a lot of rides. Policy/proceedure in australian parks is different. Even the rides are sometimes modified with additional restraints compared to overseas models. Nobody will dispatch a ride without physically checking the harness is locked and giving an all clear signal before launch, even though it has multiple redundancies and multiple monitors which wont allow the ride to dispatch without it being in good position. Additional restraints are fitted and are also checked before dispatch. A good example are crotch belts. When you combine these with poor training/operation already discussed, times blow out even further.

More of the same i think. You came through and made a couple of left turns, so the right side had more space for elements. When you first came into the editing suite, the track kind of continued ahead of you and there was a dummy filled crashed car covered with film ahead of you, like it went off track or into a dangerous part. You then turned left and the editing booths started. The scenes for the German one are quite a bit different and you can't really use it as a guide for theming. Aside from having completely different scenes things like a prop vault vs western set, the elements that were reproduced on both rides were delivered differently. For example, going into the film vaults, the gold coast one had a lot more noise and movement. Both from more gremlins, but the shelving the film cannisters were sitting on used to move around and crash/bang because it had gremlins climbing up and hanging off.

It's entirely the reason why I said before that I think it'll be basically business as usual, not to expect anything too drastic as the village group continues to trade out of covid. Given how cheap they purchased the company for, If they keep chipping away at things while keeping spending low, BGH could see an investment return of a few hundred million dollars in very short period of time. That's all they will be focusing on, how to get the best bang for their buck. Plowing 100-150 million into the company probably isn't a good return on their investment.

Yeah..... No. Don't get it confused with the position Ardent was in. Village roadshow had money in capital but were also able to refinance loans if need be, they just said it would be irresponsible (to investors) to take on more debt at this time and were going to run as thin as possible to see out the covid downturn/closures. Ardent were told they have no options available to them, they had nothing to borrow against as they had sold off pretty much everything of value and nobody would issue them any credit. That's two vastly different positions. Remember theme parks are just a division for village roadshow, they are also one of their businesses that actually makes a profit every year. You aren't going to sacrifice a core of your business when you have the potential to sell off other parts which aren't as/profitable, or borrow more and refinance existing debt. They had to take on more debt following the dreamworld accident and the huge downturn the industry experienced, this included their big spend items at movieworld and seaworld. In effect, what happened in 18-19 financial year is they sold off wet n wild sydney, they sold out of their cinema partnership in singapore and they sold the land movie world and wet n wild are built upon. Not only did they sell off properties costing them money, they received over 250 million from the sale of the above. This meant they reduced their liabilities over 90 million dollars, knocked 120 million out of their loans, earnings within the theme parks division doubled to 76 million (big recovery following the accident), the equity in the company actually went up 50 million, while the debt went down. The plans over 2018-2019 also allowed them to refinance their loans which provided them with over 100 million to draw down on over the immediate future if need be. The end result for VRL was a net loss of 6.6 million, but if you dig further you'll see that cash flows increased by nearly 4 times to over 80 million, cash flows used for investments and to manage debt went up nearly 30 million, while repayment on their loans dropped over 100 million dollars. So you had a company that sold off underperforming assets, reduced not only their debt, but also their repayments, but were still investing money back into the company. They were in an excellent position prior to covid, recovery was in full swing, revenues were well up, the equity in the company alone was valued at over half a billion dollars. Why do you think they attracted multiple buyout offers approaching 1 billion dollars if the company was so close to collapse? At the end of the 2020 financial year it showed covid cost them an additional 70 million dollars. Remember that 100 million they could draw down upon? This is where the covid cost comes from, they drew down 70 million dollars on what is basically a line of credit to cover operational costs with multiple businesses shut and provide them funds to trade through into the next financial year when revenue was basically wiped out. They had more immediately available to them if needed, and that was before looking at refinancing on existing loans they had previous worked to pay down. All this was all before the government reached out with an offer of support too. Since the take over, the continued impact of covid and the fact that their cinema division was still basically shuttered, it cost another 38 million across the 2021 financial year. They weren't even close to being on their last legs, they were still in a better financial position with lower amounts of debt and lower repayments to their loans even after covid came along and wiped out their revenue streams and generated additional debt due to running costs/overheads. Have a look at the covid 19 report Mittleman Brothers released and why they were unhappy with how much the company was actually undervalued during takeover offers. If that's all too much to read; have a look at net debt totals across the last 7 years. 2020-2021 - 228.5 million 2019-2020 - 278.3 million 2018-2019 - 219.6 million 2017-2018 - 338.5 million 2016-2017 - 527.1 million 2015-2016 - 534.7 million 2014-2015 - 402.2 million 2013-2014 - 305.5 million For reference, net debt is essentially gross (all) debt, minus available cash balances.

I think the sams diner kitchen is still there, just the front covered over like you said. Really, you could move maybe carousel and tweety cages up into that area around sams diner / front of road runner, then you would have a ton of room, but honestly, moving carousel probably isn't that great a gain as its kind of tucked back in the corner. Though I think a carousel is a ride that should really be completely visible from the center of the area. Like, if it was about where the big tree is. They always have great visual appeal for kids with all the light and sound, should be able to see it clear as day as soon as you look in the direction on kids wb from the plaza. If you moved tweety cages up to that sams diner area, you would still have room for another flat (replacement drop tower?) where the rest of the seating is. The thing is, it's an area that really should have a food outlet, not just a random food van or mobile trolley like it has been reduced to. Especially if you have more kid friendly options available. The more I think of it the more it seems like it just needs a complete, shut it down for 12 months, knock it all down kind of rebuild. Looking at the sat images, id even say it would be worth re-aligning the back road and changing the first stunt show entry damp/driveway to gain another 10m+ depth to the kids area at the back. Even maybe absorb the first aid area (temp relocate it to stars?) and toilet block and just start with a new layout that is all designed to fit together, rather than create pockets of dead space. Food outlet and seating, 4-5 new rides, id even go so far as to maybe suggest returning a low stage for a kids show to return. Would also give somewhere permanent for toons character photos that is well themed with an actual background instead of just using the tree with random people in the background. Idea of a decent playground is awesome too as they are pretty space efficient given you can build up, not just out. Makes an obvious tie in with the parents area nearby too. If im honest as a parent, I really dont care about gardens that much. Id actually put a covered area well ahead of gardens and see it as a massive plus. It's honestly probably not a consideration cost wise, but if they built a new part of the kids area that was under covered (either main street roof style or even just a regular metal roof kind of like a carport) it would be a great place to hide out the bad weather and still keep the kids amused. May mean they could utilise every square inch of space too instead of losing 1/3rd to greenery. Maybe kind of build it a bit more like an arcade/ boardwalk with a few of your ride options, the food outlet, parents room and a playground under it. Would be a lot less dummy spits and wet bottoms from my kids if we had some sort of option like that.

I wouldnt expect anything much in the way of a complete makeover until after arkham asylum is gone and new rides installed. Could see maybe installing one new ride though since pounce and bounce was removed. Yeah, maybe they were pretty close, in the 90's too I guess. Im trying to remember what the area was like exactly. I remember there being kind of like a stage setup about where the carousel is, river ride was there and so was speedy taxis. But i cant remember what was behind them. I keep having visions of big carrots, but i think they might have been a bit later and around where the table and chairs are now? Id look at what is compact and worth keeping, what could be resold and updated with a newer version, and what just needed to be junked. You could keep tweety cages because it fits that young (not toddler) age demographic, its easily moved and a red barron is still in production today so you arent really getting anything new. Id probably sell yosemite sams train as i can see it being installed in another park or becoming a carnival ride as the train itself isnt themed. Speedy taxis might suit a relocation, you could ultise the cars within the foot print of a few other rides, even if they got a retheme themselves. Would leave pretty much everything from the big tree backwards to be ripped up. I honestly think splash zone is out of place too really, so i think it could be utilised too. Especially if it was used to relocate the entrance to driving school to face carousel and road runner coaster. Basically gives you an entire wall of the building to use for theming out the new area/rides. Everything in the middle to the stunt show stadium gets gutted. Buildings, trees, gardens, pathways. Theres no point trying to keep the desert/western kind of theme as it doesnt really exist in road runner anymore, so youve got a chance to retheme the whole kids area to something new.