CR4ZE

It's well-deserved. Besides the stumble out of the gate when it opened and the clunky ops, everything else about Leviathan slaps. The ride is fully-realised in just about every way, and the pacing from drop to brake is virtually flawless. I think it's fair to argue that it has better pacing than DCR; although I'm still putting the latter as my #1 in Australia, I totally respect why many rank Levi (or even SE) higher. As for the second-newest thrill coaster on the Gold Coast... They're entitled to their wrong opinion.

Yes, I'm an idiot. Didn't quite click that that was what I was looking at. So, there's more than enough space there for a Raptor but they're using it currently for storage (?)...

Very interesting. Zadra uses the same restraint system, which I found very comfortable except for some bumping against the shin guards. The lap bar gave considerable upper torso freedom and loads of room for air time, despite my being slightly stapled in on each of my three rides. As for ops, Energylandia across the board has some of the most efficient I've ever seen and Zadra was no different. They cycled us quick. The boarding platform uses a turnstile system which allows a predetermined number of riders through each gate, which was easy to understand and kept the lines moving. The ride experience itself lived up to the hype; every element simply slapped and the pacing never let up for a moment. Best coaster I've done. So, in a nutshell, our experiences were markedly different.

Old Earth image. What's there now?

Porque no los dos? I've never had an overtly bad experience with any op. I feel they largely do their best with what they're given. You do often get an air of dissatisfaction and general lack of enthusiasm about being there, particularly over the peak period. It's not a high-paying job and they do cop a lot. At DW last week, a teenage son tried to cut all the way to the front of Motocoaster where his parents were already queuing and was told off by the op, who sent him out. The dad loudly and aggressively berated the op and called him a "fucking idiot" or similar. The op was the bigger man (figuratively) and walked away. Not "judgy" in so much as just making an observation. You're right that nobody knows with certainty what/how it got through.

In short, yes. Disney queue line theming is best-in-class, so at the very least you're thankful to be not standing out in the sun surrounded by topiary and shrubbery and walking up to at a shed. Although, I'd probably have to fork out on line skips if I was on limited time. Sue Bob Iger. Granted though, this is a bit of an oxymoron. I would leave my enthusiast mindset at the front gate and just enjoy the experience for what it is. Honestly and FWIW, Sky Voyager was one of the highlights of my Dreamworld trip last week. An amazing day can be had of experiences like that, especially if they're on that Disney level. Still would be pumped for Tron, Rock'n'Roller etc. Would depend on how good the value is in a package deal. It probably is but I haven't looked into it. I wouldn't see myself losing sleep over missing Animal Kingdom or the water parks tbh. @franky that's a shame about your Busch experience. How was Iron Gwazi? It'd be really interesting to pit it against Zadra, particularly with their respective wave turns and inversions.

Great pics and summary! Gives me major FOMO that I've never been to a Disney park. I suppose there's no "off-season" and it's busy year-round... If I'm in Florida, you bet USF/IOA, SeaWorld and Busch Gardens are top-priority, but I think I'd have to bite the bullet and do the Disney thing too. If I were to set aside, say, two days, would you say Epcot and MK are the must-dos? Also, what are the linear/lateral forces like on Tron? I imagine those LIMs aren't too intense, but in the POV it looks like it packs a bit of a punch.

Purely speculative, but it could well have been a hijab or similar that blew off during the ascent.

I read beautifully. The stoppage occured on the lift hill, not during boarding. They should've picked it up before that happened. "This comes just seven years after..."

Well that's a fountain of piss on the bonfire. I wonder how this was not picked up by ride ops...

Yep, I'd be surprised if this wasn't the case. This would be the way for guests to "follow the Yellow Brick Road" into the Land of Oz, as envisioned in the announcement. So: blue is the main entrance, purple the side entrance, and red (you feel as) superfluous and being closed off. It could still be a side-entry, or a "back-way", if you like, into/out of the repurposed Arkham building, leading to the SFC. Even if it is kept open, the general guest flow leads down Main Street anyway, and with appropriate signage and updated park map, the main entrance would still be the most-utilised as intended. However, I'll agree that it's not necessary to keep open, just that it will create a loop and help distribute some foot traffic. The green circle (if I'm not mistaken) is a BOH storage extension that protrudes into the alley, and I would hope this will be removed to widen the alley. I think this will happen in the future, but I'd rather they develop the area behind Wild West first to remove the dead-end in a meaningful way. It's been said before, but there's enough room to do a new section of the park back there and still utilise it for FN mazes. If/until that happens, I don't think there's much need to connect the pathway back that way.

Add to that a lot of them would be on a casual basis, so there'd be little to nothing in compensatory measures due to long-term closures. I like the idea of the old Chinatown being used as the main entrance, and I'm sure it's at least occured to VR. @Baconjack I wouldn't consider it wishful thinking. Concept art is exactly as its name suggests, all subject to change and refinement. It'd be bizarre to have the main entrance tucked away behind Superman; it "worked" for Arkham because there was still some thematic cohesion. Where I'll disagree with you @themagician is that I think there still needs to be a side entrance to create a loop-around. If Chinatown is dressed up as the main entrance, it'll be more popularly used, as foot traffic for families usually heads straight down Main Street to the WB Zone anyway. A side-entrance behind Superman would be fine. It's not like room is a luxury, so in a footprint that tight, inevitably different themes will be a hodgepodge smashed together. Not that it was avoidable, but just look at the Leviathan entrance next to Nickelodeon Land.

Others above have already explained that there are solvable operational issues at MW that are compounding the weather-related problems, but there’s a running theme of you simply not reading or understanding what peoples’ criticisms are. You initially said (likely ostensibly) that you didn’t even read my post and proceeded to completely mischaracterise what I’d said. That’s been par for the course so far, so all you’ve done is make an ass out of yourself (again). The mental gymnastics needed to elaborate to a means comprehensible for you would be fruitless. I could very meticulously deconstruct for you why your take is garbage, but by your own admission, you won’t even read the post. So, you’re right Skeet, as you always are. Everyone at Movie World deserved a bad experience this week and the potential for ameliorated operations would have changed nothing. Enjoy your prize (no givebacks).

I'm sure that your attitude of "well, if the sooks didn't enjoy their experience today, they shouldn't have come" would pay the parks in dividends.

The most appropriate response to vapid shitposting is to ignore it until it skeets away.

Well, besides sending our best wishes to the staff member in question, you and I clearly have nothing to discuss.

I redirect you to my post above to read through, just in case you have anything more than a vacuous one-liner to share.

"Scooby-Doo Spooky Coaster - Coming Just in Time for the Olympics!" I just hope they drop the cringe rebrand and go back to the original name.

People have a right to be upset. A day out at a park for a family of five runs you up several hundreds of dollars, and if your whole day amounted to ~8 hours of sitting in queues, you'd feel duped. Park-wide closures due to the weather, slow loads/unloads, 3-4 empty seats on ride cycles, single-train ops and so on all compounded together are giving paying guests a less-than-satisfactory experience, so of course they're going to speak up. Neither Dreamworld nor Movie World have enough attractions operating to keep up with demand. They're taking proactive steps to address these issues for the future, but in the interim it's reasonable to say these school holidays are not the right time to be visiting. I'm not going to rant about it in a Google review, but it's all stuff I've observed this past week, and you can feel the frustration amid the wearied atmosphere. Lots of families are giving up and leaving by lunch time. That's not a good thing for the parks or their staff, because though they've got the gate fare, they've got unhappy staff copping abuse, families not spending as much on food/merchandise, and a generally negative perception which diminishes return visitation. Was at DW today and because I somewhat know the daily crowd cycles, I was able to get my party a pretty good day out of it. We were there for ~5 hrs (yes, we got there very late) and got six different rides in, with a re-ride on ST at the end. I count us lucky.

Flew up here on Thursday and am feeling relieved I got to SW/MW while I could. Now got to get to DW for Taipan by Sunday, which should (touch wood) be plenty of time for this to clear. Based on current conditions, I think tomorrow will be a similar story. Feel terrible for all the interstate/overseas travellers whose plans have been disrupted but there's nothing that can be done, unfortunately. On a side note, ride ops were pretty poor on DCR yesterday. Slow dispatches and often 1-3 vacant seats each cycle despite two trains and long queues in the afternoon. Left seat row 9 on one of the trains was out of action; this is the second time I've seen that exact issue. The seatbelt policy is a shame because it slows things down further. Leviathan ops not great on Saturday either. One train during peak period. Was my first time riding; man that holding area/load-unload cycle sucks. Really wish SW thought that through better and hope they can make changes in the future.

If it's not Shannon Noll turning up and covering "What About Me" on repeat for two hours flat, I'll be disappointed.

Absolutely makes sense; that's why I said "bulk of" not "all" maintenance. Playing devil's advocate here; they would have a skeleton crew of full-timers to run basic ops in the off-season and have the younger crew on casual shifts as needed. Inevitably, they'd be cutting labour costs down but staff retention could indeed be an issue. It was just an idea I thought I'd float, as there would be some benefits, but I was curious to hear whether the experts thought the negatives outweighed them. I said a few months ago that I really didn't like the whole idea on paper, but I can't deny the potential for ride interactions as an asset. No progress on ground works?

I'm not opposed to the idea in theory, but that subscription cost is ludicrous for what you get. A smarter strategy would be to bundle this in as a "premium" tier of the Village Key, and price it at 20 bucks or so for 12 months' access. At most, that's its real worth. With what they're going with, they might as well chuck a couple of NFTs in just to send it to the grave faster.

Never thought I'd live to see the day when people defend a theme park charging full price on admission with less than a third of its attraction lineup in operation, let alone having not a single thrill coaster available to ride. Seeing as you like rounding numbers up, the simple maths is that the likelihood of having all but one coaster down decreases as your sample size increases. That's not a solution but it certainly puts the park in a better position to drive gate in the off-season, and manage capacity issues as attendance burgeons during the peak. As for the "cascading issues", is there some new managerial strategy I'm not aware of where you spend north of $50 million in new investments but don't hire staff to run them? They must already be stretched thin, human resources-wise, hiring contractors to clear the shit out of Chinatown alley. 😏 Serious question: what's the benefit to these parks in operating year-round? Why not run your season from September to May and get the bulk of your maintenance done over the winter? So many larger, more popular parks around the world adopt this model and it works. Are the operational and staffing costs over the quiet months really worth it when the few guests (locals) who do visit are given such a subpar experience?

Timing it well with the Part Two release. There'll be a delay. It's Village. When there's a will, there's a way. I agree but don't think it matters all that much in the long-term. It's smart on their behalf to tie attractions to IPs that can endure over time. Was Green Lantern a colossal failure? Yes. Is the coaster still popular? When it's open and not actively trying to kill its riders, yes. Scooby is still one of the most popular and beloved attractions at the park, yet the people to whom the target audience was aged at in 2002 are now having their own kids who want to ride it 20 years later.