Baconjack

From CEH AGM presentation. It is AI slop (i really hope whatever they build is integrated tastefully with the entrance) but should give you an idea of where this is going. Construction on the hotel/citywalk expansion is expected to start in 2028, aiming to be finished for the Olympics. In unrelated notes Dreamworlds attendance this year is the highest its been since 2016

Nah for any renovation the dark ride section at a minimum needs a restoration to opening day condition. Lots of the sensors for audio are not calibrated properly and so many effects are either running in B mode or are just not working at all. Scooby is the blueprint for this sort of stuff

Private equity park owners do like to pump $$$$ in capex while cutting costs on day-to-day operations though. If their asset has lots of shiny new toys it looks good for a sale down the track (might be better at proving a case for a ground up replacement tbf) Pre-2016 Macquarie/Ardent were still adding new rides to dreamworld on a regular basis despite day-to-day operations being allocated pennies. I see a lot of that in village You could say exactly the same thing about Motocoaster, a ride that is nowhere near as much of a crowd favourite as Superman, but Dreamworld still did their due diligence and thought spending 18 months renovating it was a good idea. Renovating the station, the dark ride section and replacing the launch is still a lot cheaper than a new ride

As I have said ad nauseum on this forum there is a strong case for LSM conversion over removal (and it is possible engineering wise), but I don't know Village's thinking and what they want to do. Fwiw there is quite a bit of land for a replacement if you remove the dark ride section building. Also would necessitate removing Flash, but that ride was added in as an afterthought when they needed capacity

Definitely going to drive up north in december given there's been signs supermans been on its last legs for a while. Movie World could have pulled the plug when it went down for months last year. Whether a retrofit or removal if you're interstate its worth making the trip irrespective of the state movie world is in on that alone as it could go down anyday and never come back up

Going to nitpick like crazy here but you can't market Lost Mine Mayhem as a ride between KFF and jungle rush when every ride with the intamin quad bike trains has a 120cm minimum height restriction (and 130 without an adult) which will mean there's kids that can go on jungle rush but not Lost Mine Mayhem That said, yes, it does increase access to the ride. However i do think it will still sit in that gap between jungle rush and the bigger coasters (again, something clean slate would have been better). As i said before I am remaining open-minded on what theming they add to the layout, as others have said, adding indoor sections, near misses and rockwork would improve the sense of speed greatly

The ride is just not very good though. Comfort is just the worst of the issues. Replace the shit motorbike trains with quad bikes and its a boring coaster that loses all its speed after the first turn and just meanders around. Really there isn't much to work with. I don't have any idea what the layout changes are going to be and I'm sure whatever theming they do will be at a very good standard like the rest of rivertown. But I feel it'll have to take a lot to make the ride decent let alone better than its cousin at sea world (something that was designed well from the outset) Totally agree, motocoaster stuck out like a sore thumb in rivertown and that needed to be addressed (I think we can all agree on that), but i reckon something ground-up would have barely cost more than a reskin of a ride that doesn't have a lot going for it

A person falling out of a roller coaster in this day and age is unthinkable There are lots of variables at play (photo evidence of the man being a bigger fella, the train returning to the station with its lap bar fully open, Six Flags maintenance budgets getting cut, and by all accounts safety culture amongst that park's staff being not great) so really hope the investigators can get to the bottom of it as soon as possible Thoughts go to the victim, their family, workers, bystanders and those on the ride at the time

That Ferris wheel is pretty large and is 40+ years old while being exposed to sea air the whole time. The new owners of Luna Park have NFI how to run an amusement park (i no longer renew my annual pass because of how shit it's got) but its definitely at the age where you think about replacement.

https://archive.is/1TURU Telegraph article from yesterday

It seems to me based on the evidence available X2 is done I've been on eejanaika, and as much as i love it that's already a bit of a challenge to ride on an outside seat. Would hate to know how X2 rides but by all accounts it is quite rough particularly on the last raven turn. When the vast majority of people who go to parks don't watch POV'S and have NFI what a ride like X2 does, good chance bad shit is going to happen (and head knocks are pretty fucking scary as anyone who's played contact sport can attest) X2 is on my coaster most wanted list, no doubt about it, but as much as I'd hate to say it it's probably the end of the road. The industry goes around when there's a promise of safety between the park and the guest. For a prototype 24 years is not a bad innings at all

Not an expert at how much these things cost but if the decision to refurbish (ie through retrofitting the launch to LSM's) over replacement is a more viable prospect the park should 100% take the former option. And there is proof of a ride being converted this way without needing a swing launch. It can be done by at least 2 companies. Very much possible its just a matter of what village would like to do.

Building with precut track resolves the roughness problem

At least the eddys are making the park their own out of the gate and are keen to clear some land up for new stuff

Legitimately this. I don't care about the environment but AI art is incredibly lazy and with a trained eye its not very hard to pick out When Rivals was built Village plucked a random guy who posted his Nl2 pre creation based on the footings onto Parkz to do the animation for them for the ride's marketing. Something like that wouldn't happen now. Plenty of australia based creators who'd do something like this for free

Either a mack rocking boat (like what dollywood's installed this year) or a shoot the chutes (jurassic park like) are at the very top of the wishlist. Would go for a dinosaur theme. You have rainforest/jungle, outback, beach, main street. Dreamworld clearly tried to make the Gold Coast equivalent to Adventureland with Rivertown, why not do something like the Jurassic Park lands at Universal next?

Intamin make these trains new I'd suspect dreamworld would have bought straight from them as opposed to salvaging from another ride. Also pretty sure that Blue Lagoon's area is being used for the citywalk/hotel/housing expansion (as per the plans) and not the park itself

That's a lot of money to spend on renovating a ride which is nothing to write home about. At least it should be more comfortable to go on

Ocean parade has always been a mish mash of random crap. Nothing cohesive about that area at all apart from "it's blue and water". King claw on one end, repainted ancient Chinese facades on the other, and aeroplanes elsewhere. Not far removed from a time where it had zombies, wipeout, and v8 supercars

Obviously the case still has to play out but it seems very similar to the crash that happened on smiler where the block brakes functioned as intended, but operators that thought they knew better overrode the PLC without a visual inspection of the ride. Did village not learn from this accident which affected the industry worldwide? Especially when safety at the parks has been under a microscope in the last 10 years. Do fucking better village, they're very lucky that the lady wasn't killed

Ngl $99 for 5 and a bit hours of park that is best case scenario 75% open is a really bad value proposition compared to other entertainment options around the area. It's obvious PE cost cutting that we should expect from village but I hope that people who arent annual pass holders dont fall for that pricing.

Went there once when village owned it - the facilities did look pretty bland and didnt have a lot of character. But for me the park's biggest flaw is that it is a concrete jungle like WWW. For a park that is designed to be navigated barefoot, that's not very good. Anyone who's visited the park after 2015 please provide some further insight if anything was different. Converting the wave pool seating area to artificial turf (like wet n wild) would be a good start. A bit of landscaping around the slides can go a long way too. At the end of the day it's competing with the ocean The slide selection itself is among the best australia has to offer, however the place was so bland and uncomfortable to move around in its no wonder why it hasnt seen a lot of success. No doubt jamberoo can fix up in both areas when they can

This is great news considering heaps of people here skip raging waters entirely and take the drive down south to Jamberoo. Owners have a blank canvas - there's plenty of land left over to do whatever they like and barely anything has been added since opening. Haven't been there in about 10 years so wouldn't know what it's like now but they really need to start with some shade and adding some grass

What skills could you transfer from the junk food business to theme parks apart from 'cost optimisation' (something which PE firms foam at the mouth over) which is probably why he's been appointed in the first place. If you're hearing that term going around then there's a chance that it won't be very good for the customer

Saw a post on the Dreamworld Golden years FB that it’s been moved to India so did my own digging and that’s definitely where it’s ended up. The paint scheme is unmistakable Indian parks have been buying quite a few rides second hand as of late so glad it was able to be snapped up by someone else as it had a bit of life left in it.