djmcbell

A sad day, truly. I hope that the investigations into this tragic incident result in measures that mean this never has the chance to happen again. My thoughts and condolences go out to the family and friends of the victims.

Don't know, never been on it.

It has actually been open since 2014 (it was being built when I was there in March 2014, not far off completion). Apparently it, and the surrounding area, is very very good. Which is good, because I didn't think much of Disney Studios there (the main DLP park though was absolutely brilliant). Make sure to visit the Pleasure Beach in Blackpool, and get your back broken by the Wild Mouse!

I did a road trip back in 2011 where I did Six Flags Great America, Cedar Point, Six Flags Great Adventure, Six Flags America, and Busch Gardens Williamsburg. Have a look at my ancient, rubbish blog here for loads of info and photos, but basically: Cedar Point - we somehow managed to do it all in a day, but make sure you spend two there. Great park, absolutely loads of stuff, but the queues at the bigger coasters (Maverick, Millennium Force, Top Thrill Dragster) can be quite long. Six Flags Great Adventure - El Toro is worth it alone. But there's still a fair amount of stuff. We did everything comfortably in a day (this was at the beginning of July), and got some hefty use out of the cable car to take us from one side of the park to another. Busch Gardens Williamsburg - did not like. Were we theme-park-ed out? Maybe. We felt that it had a poor selection of rides compared to the other parks. Definitely looks very, very pretty, but we arrived late, did what we wanted (a fair few rides on Griffin, then once on everything else as the park was either too busy or things had broken - looking at you, Apollo's Chariot) and left early.

If Disney have been close before, then clearly they will have done their homework and thought that Australia would actually be a viable place. Especially if, as rumour suggests, they had been looking at land at the time and were reasonably close to signing a deal.

Whilst there is quite a lot to do in Disney World, a lot of people do like to go down onto the shores of the lagoon and watch the fireworks. People who aren't going to the Disney parks will often park up at the hotels, grab a drink and watch - my wife and I nearly did that. Definitely a tragedy, and sadly one where pretty much everyone - the parents and Disney - are blameless, in my opinion. From the sounds of it, Disney really do their best to ensure tourists and dangerous wildlife don't meet, and the only thing they could do would be not to build the lagoon in the first place. And the parents can't have expected anything like that could possibly happen.

Yes, I believe it took place either directly outside the Grand Floridian or just a bit further from it (but still within a minute or two walk). The shoreline in the area around the Grand Floridian and Polynesian hotels is made up to look like a beach, and guests at the two hotels will often go out and watch the fireworks from there (in fact, some websites say this is a good way to watch the fireworks if you're not going into the Magic Kingdom - my wife and I nearly did that one evening when we were there a few years back - park up at the hotel, grab a few drinks and head to the beach area). And yes, they do have signs which I believe say "no swimming", but they don't mention anything about paddling/wading. A few decades ago, I believe you could go fishing on the Seven Seas Lagoon (which, as iwerks says, is quite large and has the Magic Kingdom, Grand Floridian, Polynesian, and Contemporary on its shorelines, as well as linking up with nearby Bay Lake, which itself is home to a few marinas). As iwerks and JacobSibbald said, Disney World is quite huge and wildlife would be able to get in undetected quite easily. I can't imagine it's all fenced off (only the parks and important structures) and it's less of a giant, controlled area and more "a big heap of land that Disney owns".

According to the Daily Mail article (God help me), the waterways in Disney are regularly patrolled and alligators found are relocated. However, as they are quite shy creatures, some can slip through. Apparently there's also metal screening to try and stop them getting near tourist-heavy areas. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem all the safeguards were enough in this case. As an aside, the article also points out that this isn't the first alligator attack in Disney World - back in 1986 there was a non-fatal incident at Fort Wilderness.

I did wonder that as well. I'm unsure, but I believe a lot of the waterways around Disney World are man-made (pretty sure the Seven Seas Lagoon is). But in any case, it's a BIG lot of water to police, and the actual area of Disney World itself is big. Alligators could get in there easily enough, and have doubtless been in Disney World for years I imagine. Very sorry for all that Orlando has been through in the past few days.

The video @reanimated35 refers to is the one where a girl, with disabilities, is not allowed to go on some rides at Dreamworld. Not the full amount, but certainly none of the bigger thrill rides. However, apparently she is allowed to go on the same rides (or at least one of the same rides - a Disk-o, I think) at her home park of Rainbows End in Auckland, NZ. Is one of those parks breaking their H&S rules? If a person unfortunately has disabilities, it may well be unsafe for them to ride particular rides (depending on the ride in question, and their disabilities). Yes, they may well have been on the same ride 99 times and everything has gone smoothly, but that doesn't necessarily mean it will on the hundredth time. Any remotely sane company should err on the side of caution, and I find the attitude taken by the girls in the video (and their parents for not correcting them, or doing any semblance of research before the visit - way to go, parents!) annoyingly entitled. As for the person involved in the log ride incident, well we still don't know what happened. If he does have disabilities or handicaps which would have meant he was more inclined to stand up, well: 1 - were Dreamworld made aware of this, and if so why did they let him on the ride? 2 - if Dreamworld weren't made aware of this, why not? 3 - assuming he had a carer (and if not, why not?), why did his carer let him on the ride and not supervise him properly? If he doesn't have any disabilities which impacted his thinking, then he was just being a prat. I do hope he's fine and everything, but Dreamworld owes him nothing when probably hundreds of thousands of visitors go on that ride annually and don't injure themselves by trying to show off.

Sadly, the Pleasure Beach normally closes before it gets dark nowadays. Riding the Big One in the dark (why hello there Mr Innuendo) is great fun (stop it already). If what's being rumoured at the moment for the new roller coaster surfaces, we'll have to make a trip back...

I have to confess, I only thought Harry Potter & The Forbidden Journey was "alright". It was all too much of a muchness, if you know what I mean. The ride itself, the way it's been put together is fantastic and it really does feel like you're in a film, but I couldn't follow the story and found myself being pushed up against a giant video screen all the time just got annoying, as well as the sudden jarring motions. In the end I decided to look to the side (you can *just* see around the side of the bench) and watched the other benches coming up the track to see how it worked. I must say it did make me feel a bit ill - and this is coming from someone who's ridden Hulk 19 times in the same day.

So here we go, for the final time in a while, we're off to Blackpool Pleasure Beach! Yay! A bit of background first. I come from a town that's just a short distance from the Pleasure Beach, then moved to Yorkshire for university and stayed here since. But each year my wife and I will come over to the Pleasure Beach for a day. As a child I firmly believed Blackpool was absolutely God-awful as a town - and still do (edible crotchless underwear available in capsule machines on the sea front). But the Pleasure Beach is one of the few things it has going for it. We're travelling to the Pleasure Beach with our two-year-old son and my brother-in-law, and are joined by two friends at the car park opposite the football ground (or, as we locals used to call it, "the skip"), with my parents-in-law arriving later and joining us in the park itself. It's probably about a 10-minute walk to the park (after they've increased the bloody car park fare to £12, I think it was, and payment by card only) past all the B&Bs, one of which is called "Roachville". I have little doubt it lives up to its name. Arriving at the park and it's customary to go to the loos just outside, which of course lacks baby changing in the men's. Finally into the park itself (after getting our wristbands that we bought online, being given all sorts of promotional bumpf, going through the metal detectors and collecting our belongings from the trays) and I do have to say that, whilst the Pleasure Beach doesn't look great, it most certainly is. If you're ever in the UK then it's probably THE park you want to do, probably even moreso than Alton Towers. It doesn't have the nice, peaceful tranquility or massive modern rides of the big, big parks but it makes up for it in just how unique it is. We head on over to Infusion first of all, an SLC that's set entirely over water. In fact, I think it's still the world's only roller coaster built entirely over water. It's a good little ride (we go on it twice whilst the queues are low) but it does batter me a bit with element after element after element. There's not much space, but it is very tightly compressed. It does really look the part though - the park have done very well with this, fitting it into a small space whilst allowing people to look onto it from a long observation area (where there are plenty of food places). Even better is that the Big One and Big Dipper run alongside this, as well as the train! The queue area is also strangely great, basically consisting of bridges going over the water and between the track struts. Next up was Avalance, during which I decided to stay off-ride with my son (one of our friends looked after him whilst we were on Infusion). Avalance is a bobsled coaster, and it's not too bad but nothing special for me. Over far too quickly. But it does take a while to queue for (for some reason). I think I remember this opening, and my sister getting stuck on it when it broke down. Ho-hum. Kept my son entertained by watching the Revolution with him, which he loved as it went round the loop. Last main ride, at the moment at least, was the Big One. The tallest roller coaster in the world when it opened, the lift hill is 235ft above sea level (but 213ft above ground) and, whilst the height has been overtaken many times over the years since, it's still a great coaster. It would definitely be in my top 10 in the world, especially for the following four reasons: 1 - the first quarter of the ride is BRILLIANT. There is a roll to the right on the lift hill drop but I quite like that. Then so many great straights up until you nearly come out of the park (so by this point you've travelled most of the length of the park), before a corner and then back the same way, whilst running alongside Infusion and Big Dipper. 2 - the sheer size of this coaster, and the unique layout of the Pleasure Beach. Because of the size of the land the park has (hint - not much) and keeping so many old attractions, the Big One winds around - and actually through - quite a lot of the park. If you want to see the Pleasure Beach, this is the way. 3 - it lasts AGES. Compared to a lot of major UK coasters this one really gives you a lot of value for money. 4 - loads of people on it are wimps, screaming and holding on for dear life. I just tend to laugh as I put my arms in the air (as much as I can without thwacking my wife in the face). And yes, as it's sponsored by Pepsi Max, it's painted in appropriate blue and red and, before the lift hill, goes through two giant Pepsi Max cans. It did suffer a bit of a breakdown as we arrived, but the queue wasn't that big. Following this, my in-laws have arrived and so, whilst the rest of the group go on the Steeplechase, I go with the in-laws and my son to Nickelodeon Land so he can go on some stuff. Which is fair enough - he quite enjoyed some of the rides once he got into the swing of things. Steeplechase, though, is a ride I really can't go on any more - my legs seemed too long last time to ride on it (the only steeplechase coaster left in the world, like sitting on carousel horses but they're on a roller coaster track) and I fell over in pain when I managed to get off the ride. Not really a ride I'm bothered about, but it would definitely be a pity if it went. Lunch was eventually called for and the only place on-site which could offer anything half good is a Burger King (or Hungry Jacks as they're called in Australia). Fair enough. Got an "Angry Whopper" which apparently has hot sauce baked into the bun. That, fries and a drink for, I think, £6, which isn't bad for theme park food prices. Alright, what else did we do? After this it becomes a bit hectic. Various other rides with my son in the Nickelodeon Land. Also, the others went on the Nickelodeon Streak (new name for the Roller Coaster / Velvet Coaster, which is now painted bright orange). Again, not really a ride I'm too bothered about, but it's good to see that Nickelodeon chose to keep it rather than dismantle it or change anything. Good old coaster. Wild Mouse with my wife. This thing hurts. A very compact, lethal little coaster. If you think "well, I've been on a Wild Mouse elsewhere and they're nothing special", boy are you wrong about this one. Made of wood (and I have to duck at one or two bits, otherwise my head will collide with parts of the track overhead), this thing consists of 90-degree turns (and even 180-degree turns) that are incredibly sharp and taken at speed. You can choose to sit alone or, if you're sadistic (as we are), sit with someone else, one person between the others' legs. The Big Dipper was ridden a few times, as was the Grand Nash. Both of these coasters are old wooden ones and firmly fit into the category of "ow ow ow my spine". The Grand Nash is of particular note as it's a racing coaster but only has one track - it just loops back on itself. If you choose the train on the right, you'll arrive back on the left. It is a single track with two cars. Both Grand Nash and Big Dipper are pretty old, with the Big Dipper apparently being built in 1923, and are pretty interesting to ride and see how they make use of the space. I especially like how the Grand Nash goes through the "garden" bit of the park (which ordinarily you can't go to) and you can see the greenhouses where plants are grown, as well as weeds coming up through the track as it passes close to the ground. In terms of the roller coasters we went on, Revolution finishes the bill. Previously the Irn Bru Revolution (with orange and blue colours, though now it's not it's simply painted a dull grey), this is Europe's first fully looping roller coaster. A simple premise - you climb up the stairs to the station, get on it and it does a loop and then stops. Then it goes backwards through the loop, back to the station. Still pretty good, and it's one of my wife's favourites. We did do a few other rides, mostly with my son. We took him on Alice In Wonderland, an old dark ride where you sit in the car and go past some mostly static sets, which he didn't seem that fussed about. Then we took him on the Ghost Train, which is mostly the same thing (and probably about as scary as Alice), but it also has a small "roller coaster" element in which you basically go down a ramp really fast, and then back up. He seemed to quite like watching this bit before the ride (as this bit comes outdoors, then goes back indoors) and didn't seem to mind the ride. We also took him on the River Caves - a cool little boat ride that looks like it goes through the sunken remains of the Crystal Maze sets, with a tiny drop at the end, which he was quite interested in. And for ourselves - he didn't want to go on it - we went on the Wallace & Gromit ride, a new dark ride which is basically Alice In Wonderland, but with Wallace & Gromit. We also did the Ice Blast (previously the PlayStation), which is a drop tower and fair enough. That basically makes up the Pleasure Beach, which I think was closing at about 6:30 (or something like that, having opened at 10:30). Following this we went to a nearby pub for dinner, and then started heading home at about 9-ish, my son having been awake since about 7 in the morning. Somehow he hadn't slept all day and zonked out immediately on getting in the car. Should also mention that we did consider doing Valhalla, but it was near the end and none of us really fancied it. Valhalla is basically an indoor water ride par excellence - absolutely thoroughly brilliant, if you like water rides. I haven't come across one that comes near it. Ripsaw Falls at Islands Of Adventure is the nearest, but pales in comparison to Valhalla. It is brilliant. It is fantastic. It will absolutely soak you, no questions asked. You will jump through flames, backwards, whilst travelling through a giant freezer and if somehow you don't end up soaked (you will), someone will be on hand at the end to tie you down and pour sixteen buckets of ice-cold water over you. Again, you will get soaked, and unfortunately you're in Blackpool, one of the places in the world where you're least likely to get dry in the sun (a foreign concept to the locals). So. Pleasure Beach. Absolutely brilliant place, so long as you can get the right time and queues aren't massive (we normally manage okay). Yes, you've got scummy parents smoking pot in the queue for the Wild Mouse and yelling at their effing kids, and the weather's not too brilliant (it rained for the morning, but then turned okay for us). But it has a fantastic collection of rides (the ones we did are most certainly not all of them, but definitely most of the major ones) with a new coaster in the works. And again, it has such a unique layout! Constrained by space and planning restrictions, it is like Alton Towers where rides have to be imaginitively planned, but with hardly any room. And somehow it works! During the Big One, you will travel over part of the Big One track, alongside Infusion, alongside the train, over the Big Dipper track, over the Grand Nash station, over Steeplechase and underneath a part of the Nickelodeon Streak. The Revolution, arguably one of the smallest "big" coasters known to man, still allows people to walk under the loop. So many rides just wind around each other, unlike other parks where each coaster is nicely sectioned off from everything else - even the park itself. The Pleasure Beach has absolutely no qualms about putting a garden directly underneath Avalanche, for instance, so you can have a walk around them whilst the coaster roars overhead. It can be a confusing park at times - occasionally, near the mid-area, you have to deal with some things being on different levels (coming off Big Dipper, for instance), and it's easy to forget that the park actually has a road that runs underneath it too (we used to park on it when we went ice skating). The park has, sadly, gotten rid of three of my favourite attractions in recent years - the old Gold Mine (think halfway between a dark ride and a roller coaster, which has now been replaced with the much more sedate Wallace & Gromit), Noah's Ark (a brilliant "fun house" walk-through attraction, which always made me wonder how they fit it all in), and Bling (a recent flat ride which was fun, now replaced with Red Arrows - a "Gerstlauer Sky Fly thrill ride" which was boring). Soon after I went to Cedar Point back in 2011, I joined the park's unofficial forums. Some people on it thought they couldn't think of another park which had to fit so much into so little space. Pleasure Beach does that, but on a much smaller scale. I guess Movie World kinda does, but it does seem to scale down some of the rides a lot. Pleasure Beach doesn't. Somehow it still has pretty big rides but it still works. If you're ever doing a roller coaster tour of Europe, Blackpool Pleasure Beach is one you need to go to. Probably as much as Alton Towers, if not moreso.

Where's a flower bed to fall off when you need it? EDIT - as themagician says, is the water even deep enough for the logs to pass over him? And if they did pass over him, he would have had to be submerged for a good length of time - during which time, wouldn't he have drowned?

Breakdowns I remember being on include: * Pepsi Max Big One at Blackpool Pleasure Beach - fortunately this was as it was coming into the station, not on the lift hill. Started again after about 5 minutes, and we weren't allowed back on or anything. * Haunted Mansion at Magic Kingdom - just stuck there for about 5-10 minutes, watching a head pop up repeatedly from behind a tombstone. Started up again, we weren't allowed to go round again or anything. * there was something at Lightwater Valley too, I think it was a flat ride. We all got given single-use fast-track tickets because of it, so everyone on the ride headed straight over to the Ultimate. * Spiderman at Islands Of Adventure. We went round and none of the screens were working. They did let us go straight back round again.

If you could edit it to state that the park give free admission that'd be great too. Wikipedia says so so it must be true!

But will each of them have a... ... MONORAIL!!!

Why, after they've opened Disneylands in Paynesville, Tablelands and Border Village of course!

That's just what someone who knows it's right would say...

When did DW get Star Wars stuff? (incidentally, it could have been "they've had it there since 1998" for all I know, as I've only been once and currently live on the other side of the planet - a matter soon to be rectified) As for people darting in front to get the best pictures, I went to MW with my folks last year and was warned that people did that quite often during the parade. Thankfully they didn't with us.

The guy who spammed the forum a while back wants to know if you're interested in batch lots of little blue pills.

Hmm... going through it slowly it does look like the disc does warp a bit at the very last moment. Other than that, it seems difficult to say much due to the quality and the pretty limited footage we have to go from. EDIT - to me, it doesn't seem like the trolley goes off the track, but that the various supports holding the disk to the trolley seem to give way. That would also explain any warping.

Here in the UK, the High Court is now backing a father who refused to pay the fines for taking his child out of school. We've had this rule now for a few years where parents aren't allowed to take their kids out of school for even a day, and are fined if they do so (the current fine is £60 per parent/guardian per child per absence, so if you and your partner take your two kids out of school, then you owe £240 - which rises if not paid quickly). The schools are not at fault with this as the fines are taken out of their control - it is the local authorities and government, not the schools, imposing this (even though private school children are exempt), and various examples have included children not being allowed out to attend a funeral, for instance. I'm totally in agreement that kids should go to school and get an education, but school isn't all there is. It used to be the case that *some* days would be granted by the headteacher if the children in question are doing well enough and have a good attendance record (the law says they should attend school regularly, and this father's children had a 93% attendance record - which I believe the school head said was "really bad and doesn't come anywhere close to the 95% target"). I do like this quote though: “Our evidence shows missing the equivalent of just one week a year from school can mean a child is significantly less likely to achieve good GCSE grades, having a lasting effect on their life chances.” If a single week affects a child's GCSE grades, then perhaps there's something wrong with how something is being taught? Either way, if this rule is overturned then it'll mean families will be able to take cheaper holidays without having to worry about fines (holiday prices can seriously jump during school holidays - many just pay the fines as it's still a lot, lot cheaper).

Crap that's bad. I agree with Santa07 - it seems to be more of a track or wheel problem. What was there to hold the riders in place? I can partially see something there against their backs. I must confess though, the only Disk-O I've been on (the one at Blackpool Pleasure Beach) only has a back thing - a support which really presses against the back and holds you in place, more or less identical to the "motorbike seats" on Mick Doohan's thingy at DW.

That looks good, if a little bit odd. This is the first time I've seen much about this (have heard little bits about it here and there). Obviously the thing that stands out for probably all of us is that roller coaster, signifying a theme park. However, it seems as if the area is split into different sections, with the report saying that there will be: Hotels Water Park Safari Park Day Spa Restaurants I know the image of the resort is basically an artist's impression but it looks and sounds as if it would be a bit of a mish-mash. It does sound like its got everything under the sun (though the report doesn't mention a theme park), and that's not a bad thing, and these plans will likely bear absolutely no resemblance to the finished product (if it comes along, and I hope it does), but it just gives the impression that it would be one big mess of a place with very little to section the theme park area, for instance, off from the day spa. But again, we've no idea how it'll turn out yet. Here's hoping, and it sounds like Australia may have three potential new park developments (this, Wonderland 2.0 and whatever they may be doing on the Gold Coast). I wonder if this has the best chance of materialising?