Cactus_Matt

I've had bigger chunks of corn in my crap!

I don't know if I've already mentioned as much but it's kinda weird how 'big' a part the Big Banana was a part of my childhood (from ages 5-16 or so) we'd visit once or twice a year on our annual or bi-annual trip from Gold Coast to Sydney to visit my grandparents. But for the last 20 years since then (oh boy, I'm 37 years old... yep I'm 37...) I haven't been to Coffs Harbour and the Big Banana once. I know what I'm saying probably means very little but the kind of minimal investments that this park is doing for seemingly a large amount of money makes me no more inspired to visit even if I'm planning my first proper cross-state road trip from my current home in Melbourne back to the Gold Coast for the first time in 20 years. I'm sure I'll stop outside the titular banana and take a photo for 'the lols' buts its gonna take a lot more than what they're planning to actually spend a cent inside their park #sorrynotsorry

Woo, zero!

People get injured or die at Disneyland often, they're just big enough of a park/brand/company that it doesn't matter to the everyday park-goer. Lines of sight, indoor stations, snaking queues, a mountain of staff and the allure of getting the most out of your 'Disney Day' means that tragedies don't get the kind of word-of-mouth negativity compared to what happens at other parks. Also, let's be real Disneyland could pay off every news station and bury (no pun-intended) any death that occurs at their park plus it'd pale in comparison to whatever mass-shooting was actually the top story that day. Our parks and our country are continuously running on that 'slow news day' energy, that even mentioning Dream World for something unrelated like a new ride will give the newsroom a chance to dredge up that "it's been 1567 days since the Thunder River Rapids disaster". Long story short, Austrralia is different to Europe, Australia is different to America, we kinda suck in many ways, and lack-luster (borderline abysmal) theme park ride operations will now always be one of those things that we'll have to live with. In my waking dreams I hear the enigmatic chants of "Eight to a row or the boat won't go" as we used to funnel into the continuously moving station of the Loony Tunes River Ride... maybe one day we'll get back to that, but I doubt it.

Do they still make new 'Enterprise'-type rides? One of those would be nice, I like them *smiley face*.

I think Movie World already did, that'd explain the sub-par theming in the Oz precinct...

As much as I appreciate how prevalent water "bubblers" are in the queues of most major rides in the Japanese Disneyland/Sea parks and even some Universal Studios rides there's two things making me think they aren't necesary in Australian park queues. 1. The queues don't get nearly as long (ok maybe they do but that's an operations issue not a "this park is so damn full of people we need to cater to basic human needs) and 2. I don't trust Gold Coast people to not do something fucking nasty with those bubblers because they're in a dark queue and think it's funny/cool to rub their two brain cells together and piss in a drinking fountain... or worse.

B&M Vertical Drop coaster.

WAT?

Yawn.

Unless it's an RMC or B&M I don't care.

I hate to be a proverbial 'Debbie Downer' but this thread gives me a big ol' case of the "who cares", like apart from 'Rivals' all those years ago when was the last time any Aussie park has done anything worth getting legitimately excited over? Maybe for the local guest who is looking for something more exciting than a McDonalds playground to keep the young-uns entertained this is a plus, but other than that this feels like nothing but a big wet fart. I don't doubt that these will be ~good~ additions to the park, but it seems like we are far from offering anything an enthusiast gives a damn about. When I was a kid it felt like the Aussie parks were a contender to the lads Stateside but it's been a goddamn near two decades since I've felt that way. But what do I know, I don't have kids of my own, and I don't care about IP so this might as well be a slam dunk in sheep's clothing. Whatever the case, it's been over 6 years since I've gone back home to the Gold Coast and neither this, nor what Dreamworld is working on has caused me to jump a plane and see what's on offer. Guess I'll be travelling up North for funerals rather than fun at this point...

It'll be on a soundstage somewhere, with no actual physical house. Modern audiences don't care about the idea of remoteness or being isolated like they did when Big Brother AU first aired. I remember as a kid when the first season of Big Brother aired the idea of it being in the woods behind Dreamworld made it feel kind of mystical, kind of forbidden and other-worldly. Those helicopter shots of the house and the winding road between it and the live stage were cool. Every eviction show felt like an event. And then visiting the live stage and seeing the windows into the 'studio room' where all the live feed monitors of the house was a proper 'through-the-looking-glass' moment. I even got a signed photo with Gordon (RIP) as he was the most recent evictee and for whatever reason my adolescent brain thought it was cool to get a photo with someone from the TV. Nowadays nobody cares about the spectacle or the illusion of such an otherwise mediocre television show and even less care enough to visit a back-area of a theme park to see 'how the sausage is made' so to speak. The best this "new season" of Big Brother can hope for is to remain relevant for its run by delivering outlandish moments, sexual escapades and a bit of controversy. I'll applaud them if they capture at least a smidgen of the zeitgeist that the original did, it'll be at the least a mild diversion but more than likely it's just going to sink into the quagmire of the modern reality television swamp.

Do IAPPA announcements regularly make the Gold Coast news even when they're relevant to a Gold Coast park? And even if they do does a 2-minute air filler puff-piece really stick in the mind of your average Aussie Joe Public for longer than a day before their busy trying to find their next hit of ice to take the edge off the fact that they live on the Gold Coast. Snark aside, this thread feels really "oh my god nothing happens in Australian theme park news so let's grasp at straws to fill the void before we fade into irrelevance". To the topic at hand though; Intamin is a company that meant little to me as a kid and teenager as theme park enthusiast because I was way more excited about B&M and what they were doing (I mean sure Kingda Ka was impressive by the numbers but ultimately looked pretty ordinary), as an adult RMC took the position as most interesting because of their conversions and wild elements. Now, with rides like VelociCoaster and Panthenon not to mention whatever ridiculousness is Falcon's Flight in Qiddiya, I'm pretty interested if we actually get something record breaking again because it's happened before - obviously not height or speed or drop since the aforementioned is under construction. So what am I saying? 'King Claw', yeah that's probably a thing and maybe that'll be it for us, because maybe this 25-minute presentation is EVERYTHING Intamin is doing for the next year not just in Australia, and 'King Claw' will be like a couple minutes of that whole presentation. I'd be happy to be proven wrong because every announcement every Australian park has done since Rivals has left me entirely uninterested from an enthusiast point of view.

If they want some good 'flash' apparel, maybe they could sell a long trenchcoat.

Yawn

When I rode Splash Mountain at Tokyo Disneyland I was like, "yeah, such a great water ride!" But did I care about the theme, or the animatronics, or what the overall overarching story was through the queue and the slow sections of the ride was? No. Not a single bit, I didn't know that this was some old-school apparently racist live-action/cartoon hybrid adaptation, I didn't care about the supposed "stakes" of these rigid animatronics was throughout the so-called 'story', all I cared about was that I could look at something amusing and polished and entertaining while sitting down after having queued up for hours and get a 'rush and splash' at the end. I don't care about the IP, I don't have nostalgia for Disney brands (or Marvel or Star Wars brands for that matter) I just want something that looks good, sounds good and is fun.

I'Il be in Japan on June 7th for 23 days. It'll be our 4th trip to Japan, we've done a lot of parks plenty of times (Disney, Universal, etc) but have yet to visit to Fuji Q or Nagashima Spa Land, any tips for visiting both with regards to public transport? I'm good with trains but when it comes to buses I've never attempted to take one and it's something of a source of anxiety which is why we skipped Fuji Q on our previous 3 trips. This'll be our first time in Nagoya so Nagashima is pretty much locked in, even if we have to taxi to the park, but is Legoland Nagoya worth a visit too? Not from an 'enthusiast' point of view just from something that's fun to do?

I've lived in Melbourne for 14 years now and I've yet to visit any of these places. This trip report didn't change anything.

I lived in Frankston for 12 years; I can assure you it is actually one of the Unhappiest Places On Earth* *excluding active war zones, prisons and sites of terrorism and natural disasters.

In the bin

Do I need to say this again, there will never be a Disney Park in Australia in our life times, there will never be a Universal theme park in Australia in our lifetime, heck there will never be a Six Flags parks in our lifetimes because apparently Australians are somehow allergic to theme parks based on all the evidence that's come before. Australian sucks THE END.

wow *yawn*...

I mean the answer is pretty obvious, how many kids (or teenagers for that matter) that you know are named Rodney? If the number is zero then the Police Academy Stunt Show was successful in eliminating that wretched name from the gene pool. #justsayin

I didn't want to comment here at all because this post is stupid, the Australian theme park industry is stupid, and Australian's are stupid. The fact we've gone, 20 fucking years since the Australian theme park heyday and we have LESS theme parks and less iconic roller coasters on the whole means theme parks will NEVER be an influential thing in this country. I don't know why; I don't know why America and even Europe and some Asian countries (specifically Japan and China) have great theme park offerings from both the big companies and the small ones while Australia just shrugs them off is the norm. For whatever reason theme parks mean less to Australians on the whole and I stand by this because if they DID mean anything we'd have the populous clamoring for parks in the states where thrill parks have no presence despite millions of population like NSW. I'm a Melbourne guy since 2011, but I grew up in Queensland and I've yet to care for any theme park addition since moving to VIC. Wonderland was genuinely great but does anyone in that state care that all they have is a dinky amusement park by the bay? Doesn't seem like it. I don't know what point I'm ultimately trying to make because I'm drunk right now but whatever all I know is we'll never get a Disney, we'll never get a Universal park, we'll never get a Six Flags park, honestly we'll be lucky if we ever get another theme park that ever even cares to push a boundary beyond a roller coaster that's the first, biggest, roller coaster within the footprint of a another roller coaster that's painted a specific colour.