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They have a custom coaster section - so they will build you whatever you like. That said, they weren't really selling many (if any) boomerangs anyway. There are so many of them at various parks, and some that have been removed and put in storage, that it is cheaper to buy one second-hand from another park or for a chain like Six Flags to move them between parks. But here's some possible reasons for why they wouldn't be making them anymore: Vekoma is now owned by S&S Worldwide - who produce 4D Freespins, El-Locos, and other Small Footprint launch coasters that are more exciting, smoother, and more popular than boomerangs. Most of the images on the website seem to indicate that Vekoma is abandoning the Arrow-style track design (wheels running inside the track like on SLCs and boomerangs) in favour of their new track design that makes better track profiling possible for a smoother ride and more exciting elements. The exception appears to be Mine Train coasters, but they have a different track design anyway. Offering new rides using the new track design means culling old designs that might be cheaper. If you want to sell a more expensive (but better) product, you simply stop offering an cheaper alternative. This also streamlines fabrication by focusing on one style of track and train. Vekoma seem to be targeting a 'mid-thrill' market rather than trying to out-thrill their competitors. Fun, family-style rides with a couple of 'thrill' elements that Parents and Tweens/teens can enjoy together. This is something that a lot of parks in Asia will be wanting. These reasons might be completely correct or completely wrong. It's just speculative reasoning on my part. But personally, I'm excited to see some new designs and better technology from Vekoma. They've been installing the same painful coasters all over the world for decades and trying to 'fix' them with new train designs, while companies like Gerstlauer and Mack eclipsed them on almost every front. I think some of these new rides would be a great fit for parks like Dreamworld and Sea World. Dreamworld could create an 'aviation' themed area with a flying coaster, the iRide and Tailspin. Sea World is not a 'thrill' park, so Thunderbird model would be a great fit (especially if MW removes AA in the coming years).

People aren't booking the experience after the park closes on the day they plan to do the experience. They're booking it online - in advance - probably for the same day they plan to attend the park. Plus, most locals have VIP passes and get park entry included anyway. Moving the time to after closing allows them to up-sell the experience to people already at the park, in which case people who want photos and a backwards ride, will pay $99 for those things AND a coaster climb to secure their place on the climb earlier in the day. I doubt many people are enthusiastic enough about a roller coaster to want to climb the lift hill, but not enthusiastic enough to want to spend a day at the park riding that same roller coaster.

MW could simply add some extra value into the $99. Here's how to make it already have more value: Include a Backward pass that can be used when the park is open. (I'm surprised this isn't already included). Include a video of your backward experience and free digital ride photos for the day at the park. Neither of these things actually cost MW anything. The ride regularly cycles without backward riders, and they are already capturing photos and videos. If they really wanted to give a bit more value, they could also include one or more of the following: Cross-promotion between parks with a free game at Top Golf (which is one of the few things you actually get a view of from the top of the coaster) A DC Rivals Soft Drink sipper-cup. To be honest, a backward pass with video, and free photos for the day would sell me in. A drink cup would in addition would make me think it is excellent value. Giving me a free game at TopGolf would get me over there (I currently have zero interest in it), and I'd probably buy drinks and food there too - possibly even more games if I enjoyed it. This is the kind of thing I would also be likely to buy someone as a gift, especially with a TopGolf game thrown in, and so they would get at least two sales - one for me and one as a gift - so we could share the experience together.

Just for anyone that is interested, this is a short Halloween Horror film from the Director of the MW Fright Night commercials. Happy Halloween!

You don't need a CEO with theme park experience if you don't plan on having a theme park for much longer.

@Brad2912 At the conclusion of the inquest the coroner must deliver findings in which he/she establishes how they died. Coronial inquests also have two other functions. The first is the coroner’s power to make recommendations. Part of the coroner’s duty is to consider from the evidence whether any recommendations or opinions should be publicly expressed with a view to avoiding similar deaths occurring in the future. This would be around regulating ride safety through inspections/staffing/operating hours/retiring or completely refurbishing rides after a certain age, etc. The second function of the coronial inquest is for the coroner to determine whether there is a reasonable suspicion that someone has committed an offence of some sort. A coroner may suspect that someone is responsible for the person’s death, for example due to manslaughter or negligence. If the coroner reasonably suspects such involvement, the coroner has a duty to refer information gathered during an investigation (and inquest) to the relevant agency/agencies, usually the Director of Public Prosecutions. The coroner does not personally express a view about possible guilt, but simply refers the information to the proper government agency for a decision to be made by that other body. Hope this helps.

I booked with Young Pioneer Tours and did a special 10 day tour specifically for National Day. There is no tour where the amusement parks are part of the itinerary, but our Korean tour guide was a little bit awesome and we basically nagged her to take us one night before dinner. We really only had about an hour or so there since it's not an 'official' thing and all activities have to be cleared with the government. So it was something special I thought I would share.

I recently went on a trip to North Korea and visited the Kaeson Youth Park. It is centrally located in Pyongyang - a short drive from Kim Il Sung square, next to the Arch of Triumph (photos taken from the top of the Arch). Here is a google maps link for anyone interested: https://goo.gl/maps/sRmidMu3WRk The park is fairly small and only open in the evenings. It is next to Kim Il Sung University. The park is mostly moderate thrill rides aimed at the university students. You can see from the entrance that Pyongyang is a very safe city - there was no high fencing, just a simple rolling gate with no locks. That bathroom tile aesthetic in the buildings is extremely common in North Korea. They will tile the external walls of 30 Storey buildings on every floor. The park had a really fun suspended flying coaster with an egg-beater lift hill. I'm not sure of the model, but it was a really smooth, really fun ride. It has two inversions. You load onto the ride in a standing position and the operator closes a cage over you. You're tilted into the flying position by a large steel bar just before the lift hill. The two inversions are fairly intense considering you're not actually strapped into the cage, but they whip you around so fast you never really feel like you're gonna fall. They also had 3 Zamperla rides, a Disko, a Power Surge (i didn't photograph it but you can see all three rides in a row in this pic), and a Frisbee (with the most terrifyingly loose restraint I've ever experienced). In addition, there was some dodgem cars (the Korean's are really violent drivers), A small pirate ship, and an S&S Shot 'n' drop. There was a burger place inside the park (which was closed) but there were a bunch of street stalls outside selling snacks and soft-drinks. Unfortunately, while foreigners can visit the park, we aren't allowed to buy stuff from the local stores since they only accept the local Korean currency (North Korean Won) - which foreigners are not allowed to use. Foreigners can pay in Euro or Chinese Yuan. We had to pay 10 Euro Entry to the park, and the individual rides ranged between 3 and 5 Euro each. The park was quite empty - probably about as busy as you would expect Luna Park Melbourne to be on a random Friday night. It was National Day on the Sunday, and a Long Weekend, so people had a bunch of other stuff to do. I didn't have a lot of time there and I wanted to go on most of the rides, so I only managed to get a few photos (and some videos). I only took my iPhone, so I apologise for the quality. I've got a couple of videos, if people are really interested I can upload them but they're really just of the coaster and the general park. If I can get more photos and videos from the people I was traveling with, I'll upload them too if people are interested.

Yes. Did anyone consider having 4 shorter trains and splitting the current Blocks into 2 sections each?

The launch is already utilised as a block. You need at least 4 blocks to run 3 trains, since you need the train ahead to have cleared the next block before the train will release from the current block. If you run 3 trains on 3 blocks, no train can move because the block ahead will always be occupied.

I, for one, think the Westfield iRide looks great. 🙄

S&S purchased Vekoma back in March. Steel Curtain looks like a hybrid of both companies designs and technologies. I don't think that combination promises a 'nice' ride, though it might explain the quality of layout design and element shaping.

I am not an engineer but my best guess is either for rainwater drainage from the land around (and north) of it, or they have an exciting new Mosquito Breeding exhibit planned for 2019.

How long are they going to blame their failures on TRR, instead of the fact that they are a poorly planned and poorly run park with boring and unreliable rides? There are better parks with better rides, better water slides, better animals, and better experiences. Dreamworld's unwavering commitment to relics TOT, Wipeout, RHLR and HWSW seem more like a desperate attempt to cling to the nostalgia of when the park was in its prime and wasn't a confused mess of cheap, mediocre 'thrill' rides dumped into any available piece of land. People don't hold that nostalgia. Dreamworld is not Disney and anyone under the age of 30 is too young to remember any of those rides being new and exciting at an age when they would have been able to ride them. Young people - the people that you want coming to your park - don't care about how 'classic' RHLR is, they only know that WWF is better. They don't care about how 'iconic' Wipeout is, they care if it is open and can actually make it through a complete cycle instead of just rocking them side to side for a few minutes. They don't care that TOT2 launches you backward, if you can get a faster and better launch on SE. And the sure as hell don't care about a rickety and painful old steel coaster made by a company that went bankrupt in 2001 - when they can ride a brand new Hypercoaster, and a rickety old Inverted coaster at a different park for the same price. The TRR incident is not the reason people aren't returning to Dreamworld. In my opinion, when they closed for several months, people (like me) realised that we didn't really miss it when it was closed, and when it reopened there really wasn't anything interesting or exciting worth going back for. There still isn't. And that's the problem.

This probably has more to do with Dreamworld building a completely new back-end for their website - which includes ticketing, marketing, and payment processing. Memberships are more difficult and expensive to process than a single pass with part-payments outsourced to afterpay.

Hopkins sold all of their IP to WhiteWater West in 2012 - who now sells the rides under their own brand. Hopkins Rides is still a separate company though that designs the rides. They recently built a new Superflume with similar elements (but a different layout) to WWF at Everland in Seoul (in 2016 I think). It's called Thunder Falls.

Every Vekoma SLC in the world is a rough ride. The old stock trains built by Vekoma actually had padding around the head specifically because of the rough ride - and most SLCs around the wold still operate with this train design (see pic). Honestly, if a rough ride hasn't been enough of an issue to close the ride over the last 22 years, it's unlikely that it will be the thing that makes VRTP tear it down. They might replace it at the 30 year mark in 2025 (which would be within 10 years from now), but it is unlikely to be replaced before then unless there is some significant problem with the track (or maybe the train) that puts it out of action for an extended period. Also, HWSW is the same age as AA (1995). It's also a second-hand roller coaster that DW purchased from Luna Park Sydney in 2001. Arrow Dynamics went bankrupt in 2002, but Vekoma is still around building painful coasters all over the world. (They even built the current awful trains for HWSW). I would expect both rides to be around for a while longer yet, but there is a good chance that one or both will go before they turn 30.

I didn't mention any website, it was a private conversation between me and one staff member I know that works for VRTP. It was not asked to the company through any of their channels. That image is the entire interaction about the topic. I casually asked the question and they volunteered that response. The good employees that I personally know have the exact same complaints as people in this thread, so there is exactly zero chance of reputation damage from asking them why they think it is occurring. But I do home VTRP management drop into the forums and see some of these comments, because there is some good feedback they could use to make improvements - including what their own staff think about their workplace culture. I think most people could overlook lots of the little maintenance details people are complaining about if the general level of customer service was high enough though. It might sound a bit stupid, but small maintenance issues like the jackhammer or broken tiles would just come across as guests abusing the park (rather than management that don't care enough to maintain them) if the staff created the impression that their primary focus was the enjoyment of guests. I've been to a few parks where the rides were a bit worn/dated or just not that thrilling, and it was the attitude of the staff that made it a magical and fun experience for me (even as an adult).

Casually asked an employee from a Village park about the customer service at MW (specifically the complaints from this thread). Got this reply. Seems like a top-down issue.

... and we will never taco 'bout it again.

My comment was about the government imposing largely unnecessary regulation. Literally tens of millions of riders have cycled through the RHLR in it's 34 years of operation. There has only been one incident of a person 'falling out' and that was entirely because he stood up as the boat entered a lift hill. The government (and Ardent's insurers) made absolutely NO recommendations for ride modification after that incident happened, and it remained open until the TRR incident. It was only after TRR occurred - almost 12 months later - that suddenly, despite being a completely different ride with completely different physics and mechanics, RHLR 'required' modifications to prevent people from standing. Based on the successful operation of RHLR, assuming 20 Million riders across 34 years with only one incident that was specifically caused by their own stupidity, the actual chance of a similar incident happening is 0.000005%. As far as we know, the TRR incident was caused by a failure in the ride. The RHLR incident was caused by rider stupidity. The govt. assessors correctly assessed the risk of another incident on RHLR occurring as minuscule and allowed it to continue operating unmodified. The deaths on TRR did not increase the chances of an incident RHLR anymore than they increased the chances of injury or death from someone standing up in a bumper car or jumping into the cassowary enclosure. There was no increase in risk to riders of RHLR that would necessitate government mandated mechanical changes to the ride.

It doesn't look like it was added for structural reasons. It looks more like it was added to fill the big gap at the back of the boat to prevent small people (kids/teenagers) from sitting up on the rear backrest and leaning out the back of the boat while holding onto the frame. Interestingly, after those original photos were posted here, a few people commented that stupid teenagers would do exactly that... and then the design was changed to add this additional bar. So, maybe @Richard has a point about the track record thing. This whole design just wreaks of trying to appease government regulators.

This old promo photo from the launch of the ride would suggest that you're correct.

The movie the ride is themed to wasn't filmed at the studios. It was filmed in Vancouver. The original 2002 movie was filmed at the studios, but 'Monsters Unleashed' was filmed in Canada. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0331632/locations?ref_=tt_dt_dt

I'm just going to leave this here.