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While I agree that the ride is a terrible layout. I think it's original marketing as a 'thrill' ride was also a mistake. With the re-theme, this is better thought of as an elevated kiddie coaster/family ride. Something that sits between Kenny's Forest Flyer and Jungle Rush, not as something that sits between Jungle Rush and Steel Taipan. When you think of it that way, a mild ride with low forces but good theming is a good step up from KFF. I think DW just needs to make sure that they market it as such - with an emphasis on the story, rather than the thrills. Having a lot of near-misses and things to look at will also help give a sense of speed. One of the problems is that the layout was clearly intended to be low to the ground and DW's old management put it on a hill, so it became flying motorbikes. Having some kinetic elements - water splashes or moving set pieces like you'd get on a dark ride- will also help to improve the ride experience.

There is also the entire Thunderbolt plot at the bottom of that screenshot that could be included without destroying the arcade. There is so much room a that end of the park once they commit to removing GC. That whole area desperately needs redevelopment - including a better internal connection to WWW. I also don't think nature theming is the way to go. There are so many better themes that lend to better stories than 'rainforest' or 'reef'.

Gold Coaster is glass smooth compared to X2. It's an extremely rough ride. It honestly is ready for retirement. I'd love to see S&S rework the concept using RMC's ibox track. Effectively a 4D free-spin version of it. The X-coaster concept was never meant to be this big. It was meant to be much smaller more mild rides. But I'm also going to say that anyone comparing this to Stardust racers is just completely wrong. These incidents are nothing alike. Stardust racers was a guy who was paralysed from the waist down. He needed assistance to even get into the coaster, could not hold his own body upright and knew with 100% certainty that he had a pre-existing condition. X2 riders were otherwise healthy and there is zero indication that any of them had any pre-existing conditions. Blows to the head - especially to the back of the head - can cause concussions and bleeds. Given how rough this ride was when I rode it, it is absolutely reasonable to believe that someone hitting their head hard enough at the right angle could be fatally injured by the ride. Honestly, if you were hit in the eye with that much force, you would expect to have a very black eye and bleeding inside the eyeball itself. If some of these people had their heads forward and were thrown back into the headrest, it would not be that different to falling down and hitting your head on the ground. Just because it doesn't happen with everyone, it doesn't mean that it isn't happening. For me, there have been enough incidents to justify closure. It's sad, but it will pave the way for a new ride.

S&S also do retrofits of old coasters (Powder Keg). So if Village wanted, they could replace the hydraulic launch with a pneumatic launch. Given their history with S&S it's unlikely, and would be expensive, but it's possible.

You can. Intamin sell a 'Vertical launch coaster'. So LSMs would just be added to the existing launch and the top hat. Intamin will literally build anything you want... for a price. Intamin Amusement RidesVertical Launch Coaster - Intamin Amusement RidesStrongest LSM Launch Coaster on the market with single-, multi- or swing-launch sequences and the most comfortable state-of-the-art trains.

Superman has doors between the queue and the load station. They could unload there before opening the doors and it wouldn't change the immersion at all.

I know. But that is not necessary for the track maintenance or painting. The only reason to do that would be because they need access to build things in the space.

I wouldn't assume the largest items will be the trains. If they're bringing in major theming and set pieces to create a story around the track, there is going to be major construction going on. They don't need to dismantle the track to repaint it, so my guess is that the track is coming down so that the theming construction can happen. It will be a lot of cranes, cherry pickers, etc. as well as the actual theming itself. I'll leave the discussion about the future ride to that thread, but I'd be interested to know if the old trains have been sold, salvaged for parts or just entirely scrapped.

Hopefully the redevelopment doesn't close the train for an extended period. There will be a lot of construction access required to the MC track area. I know they can just do a U-cycle around the park like they did during JR construction, but it would be great if they can just drive over the rail tracks instead of ripping them up to keep the full loop during most of the construction.

My hot take (which I've said before) is that Gold Coaster needs to go and the entire end of Ocean Parade needs redeveloping from Wipeout to Kevil Hill. That is an enormous amount of land which includes Trolls Village area and Thunderbolt plot, as well as the exhibition centre. It could accommodate waterpark expansion, but given the WWW is closed for half the year, that seems like a poor use of land. The exhibition centre could be replaced with a much better auditorium space built in the redevelopment at the other end of the park which would be more than just a shed - especially if a hotel is planned. This would free up that building for rides/show spaces within the park footprint. I'm fairly agnostic about ride types. But DW's line up is definitely short of a major high-thrill coaster, a small thrill coaster (eg. mad mouse, axis, 4D free-spin), a dark ride and a water ride (which could be combined into one great ride). Flats wise they have a lot of spinning rides, so I'd like to see some more gentle options, like Zamperla Big Wavez or Nebulaz (or both) which aren't very thrilling but are good rides to fill the gap between K&B dreamland and the big thrill rides. They're also visually impressive. I would fix that end of the park first before expanding into Blue Lagoon. It is an eye-sore and a dead-end currently, and the connection between the wet and dry parks needs to be addressed.

My reading of the +Plus program is that it's not really designed to just increase park spend, but to entice pass holders back into the park for new experiences. Some of those will be discounts, but others will just be perks and benefits. I personally have advocated for DW need to update their sipper cup program to include the themed drink bottles. People will collect the drink bottles on various visits if they can use them with the unlimited soft drink offer, and they're a better investment than a sipper cup because you can actually use it outside of the park.

MW has routinely missed a great opportunities to do things that could pull a crowd after-hours. Village are a film distributor and operate movie theatres, but they don't have a proper movie theatre in the park - including one that could be hosting film festivals or red carpet premieres. They operate a dinner-show with Outback, but don't have a proper theatre restaurant in the park to do dinner shows or cabaret style shows - or even comedy shows. WnW used to have dive-in movies and they seemed popular, but SW and MW never really had an equivalent. The park could have had a number of adult-oriented (or even family oriented) after hours spaces to keep people around or bring in new people on minimal staff, but they've never really done it.

This is a pretty bad protest. They should have a QR code or a link or something so people can find out their specific concerns and what they would like done about it. Is it ride safety in operations? Ride Maintenance? Food safety? Staff/performer safety? Cleanliness/hygiene? Digital safety through the app/photos? If their concerns were serious enough they could report them to the relevant minister(s), or to the local media who are usually more than happy to jump on a fearmongering story. They could even come to this forum and explain their complaints and would likely be taken seriously enough that more than a few members would write to the park asking for explanations.

This idea was never going to happen. Just the description alone was insane. 'It's a business and technology park, with a retail and dining precinct, and a theme park, and a permanent World Expo, it's a hotel and resort, with residential apartments and 10,000 parking spaces - but you'll be encouraged to take the train, but the station is 3km away.' At best, this was going to be an industrial park with some sheds/distribution warehouses and attached offices. In reality, it was never going to be anything. This guy never had the experience or funding to pull even part of this off. If he hadn't even secured $100K for the engineering report for the development application, then there is no chance he was going to secure $2.6Bn for anything else.

AI is a tool for a job. It cannot 'create' anything new, it can only synthesize based on its training data. It also cannot understand anything. When it creates an image or a video and you give it notes to change the position of a hand, it doesn't know what a 'hand' is. It just has a numerical reference for the word hand and how that number relates to other numbers (and therefore how the word relates to other words'. It will never be better than its training data, and every AI model is already trained on the entire internet. As more AI creations are pushed onto the internet, then the models are just recursively training on their own output. So, if creatives are being replaced by AI, then every output is ultimately going to be the same. Companies will never be able to stand out among their competitors because everything is coming from the same source that doesn't understand the differences between companies or products or people. The companies that stand out will be the ones that can do something different in both concept and execution, which requires human input. AI might be a useful tool for that human to use to create what is in their mind, but it's not always necessary, and to execute it properly might require real people. The 'Everyone is a Director' concept that some AI companies are using to push video services sounds great, but 99.9% of people don't have great ideas - and we've seen that with the wave of 'slop' content. This DW marketing post is a good example. It contains out-dated and incorrect info, it isn't really relevant to the current narrative of DW's transformation, it doesn't have any useful information that would help them speed up operations or help guests prepare for a fun day. These are all the results of AI not understanding things. I use AI daily for things like email drafts, summaries, and document formation, and sometimes for images or graphic design concepts to drop into documents. It's a tool for a job, but it's not replacing me. It's just helping me spend less time on stuff that doesn't really matter so I can spend more time on things that actually do.