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No a shirt and thongs are completely different. In most cases yes footware should be worn but I just dont see the justification on these unsupported leg rides. Thongs is no more hygenic than no footwear at all and it is just contradicting the no loose articles policies that are in place. Either make it 'fully enclosed footware' or allow leaving thongs behind, it just follows no logic. Make it noted that I never wear thongs to a park.

This is actualy pretty funny to read because Alex is statying how the ride 'should' have been operated and Bus is arguing against him with how the ride WAS operated. This is the point I think Bus, you keep saying he is wrong because it was done in "x" or "y" particular way. Do you think that maybe WLs way of operating the ride was maybe not the best? Just look at most other parks, 'attendants' are charged with enabling ride vehicles, leaving the console operator (or tower member) to concentrate on that job. Same goes for heights, the operator shouldn't have a need to be concerned about heights because he/she should know the rest of the ride crew are doing their job properly in checking heights. And the shoes thing is one of the stupidest things I've thought about park operations in a long time. Why have all these loose article policies when you then demand that thongs be worn? Just exactly what is not having shoed on going to do on a ride like probe or lethal weapon??? But being as you mentioned it, if the pre-show members were spotting thongs and the like they would be telling guests to ensure they leave them on. Once again most of your arguments Bus are supported purely by the fact that WL didn't run its ride all that properly. And capacity doesnt exactly mean how many are actualy on the ride, its how many it can carry, so one seat being empty doesnt change its capacity. If you half fill a 5L bucket then its capacity is still 5L. This problem is mostly created though by only running 1 or 2 person Op. If you have a member in pre-show they can get single riders which fill that 4th seat. Every wondered why Single Rider Lines are so popular?

Okay now I'll admit I only did General maths at school (cause I was a bludger, not dumb) but even we learnt that 50k is a lot less than a million

Yeah Bussy I totaly understand how you had to have ride rotation at Wonderland. The point I was trying to make was that rides SHOULD have been staffed with the adequate number of crew to make rotation within the ride possible. Well its true what you say about more than 1 staff not being as safe. This is only true if the staff aren't focussed on their work. If you have two staff that are focussed on what they are doing and not distracted then it is a much safer system.

Clint finishes reading the last message and has to stop and take a breath

Sorry Bus I meant to say that you wouldn't rotate positions on small rides because you'd only have 1 or 2 Ops max... hence the need to rotate staff around the smaller attractions. What I was talking about with sufficient staffing levels was having enough staff on a ride to enable rotating. For example with 5 person Op. on Space Probe you could keep staff rotating and thus fullfill OH&S obligations. With 1 or 2 person Op. you couldnt. IMO it's more dangerous to have 1 person operating a ride regardless of rotation than to have 3 or 4 that work on that ride all day. And no I would be just as enthusiastic 4 years later, it's all about doing your job well. If you don't enjoy it then you have no right to be working in tourism or hospitality...or any service industry for that matter!

That's weird because that doesn't happen for me. The text is still there when I come FORWARD again...

Well they are not doing the same thing for 6 hours because that is why you rotate positions (as Joz said). Of course on the small rides you would rotate rides but these rides wouldnt usually have 'themed costumes.' I will admit I have never operated a ride at a theme park but I also happen to work 22 hour shifts some days so I thing I have some perspective on concentration... (anyone else here operated lights for 10 hours straight at a dance party???) This is where it all comes back to having sufficient staff on rides so there are the positions to actualy rotate. And yes, parks do have staff on single rides for an entire day or even more. In fact this time last week I was at one And I can honestly say that if I did work at a theme park I would be a hell of a lot more enthusiastic and efficient about my job than many of the operators you see at a lot of parks. The way I see things is if I take pride in and am good at my job then so should other people.

Well they are not doing the same thing for 6 hours because that is why you rotate positions (

So no one knows of the FORWARD button??

Well I don't think Slick was talking about the brakes getting hot on the way up (please correct me if I'm wrong man)... I thought he was refering to the brakes needing adequate time to cool so therefore the cycle would have to be this long to allow that. This including the load/unload and the wait at the top.

1. Wild West Falls 2. Tower of Terror 3. GD 4. Scooby Doo 5. Corkscrew 6. Wipeout 7. Lethal Weapon 8. BT 9. Eureka 10. Rocky Hollow I haven't included slides because I think they are a category of their own. Wonderland is not included because its closed. I also haven't ridden the claw yet and I'm sure they will appear. The last 5 are pretty rough and I'm sure many other rides could come in those places.

KK like TTD and Xcelerator is not a LIM/LSM launch coaster. It is a Intamin Rocket (hydralic launch) coaster...that is it is launched by being attached to a steel cable which is pulled by a high speed winch to launch the train. The car you saw is the means by which the train is attached to the cable. This catch car couples to the underside of the train around the middle and then when the train gains enough speed it over takes the sled and continues around the track. I know this doesn't answer your LIM question but this is how KK will work.

My favourite park in the poll is MW because for me it's all about Quality and not Quantity, there is where MW excels IMO. My favourite park of anywhere is Disneyland for the same reasons with Knott's being my favourite of any park that is non-disney

Hey Joz... I believe the OH&S thing is to do with some stupid workcover suit that got brought about with Wonderland. For some reason that only seems to affect WL it was seen against OH&S to have a person operate/work at a single ride all day. This then meant that they had to rotate staff between rides and thus couldn't do attraction or even area specific uniforms/costumes. I have no idea why this was an issue, every other park in the world seems to have staff work a single ride on at least a particular shift. Many of the US parks so even further and the staff (or crews) only work on a single ride all of the time. You can still rotate around jobs and all I've seen is it produces staff that are much better and pay much more attention to detail on their respective attractions. Who knows why NSW and WL had to be different ...this being the first bitchin message brought to you from my brank spankin new smokin G5

Final TR - Knott's ...certainly saving the best till last. Being as I was staying at Universal the night before getting to Knott's on Tuesday was a bit of an effort. I decided it would be worth the effort and ended up hiring a car to make the long drive down to Knott's. Funny thing is in the end, the day at Knott's probably ended up costing me a good 200 bucks, sooo worth it though... By the time I made it down to the park and got in it was midday and with the park closing at 5:30pm for Haunt that left 5.5 hours to hit the park. First thing you notice at the park is Silver Bullet. It's one HUGE addition, you more or less walk straight into the first support as soon as you enter the park and you can see it wherever you go. The ride looks amazing and no photos do it justice at all, funny to think that this thing and Lethal Weapon belong to the same category of coaster LOL Park was EMPTY EMPTY EMPTY, there was less than a wait for everything. First thing was exactly what I went for, the big XCEL! First ride was in the front seat and this baby was everything I remembered it being, one amazing ride. I was glad to see crazy Richard was on board riding as usual, his current count is over 7200 rides in just 2 1/2 years! I bagged 10 rides and then decided to head off into the park. Went over to Ghostie, rode the back seat. WOAH! I'd never ridden in the back and this was too much for me to handle I recon, it packs a serious punch. Throughout the day I also got the front and the middle. I also wrode Timber Mountain, a great log ride which was much longer than I remembered. I also got Monte, Jaguar and La Revolution. Although old, Monte is still a great shuttle. I skipped the bloody Bommer because I've got that credit so why go through the torture! I did the other hits the park inclduing the awesome Supreme Scream throughout the day. I kept coming back to my baby though, the amazing Xcel. Pity after another 3 rides she broke down and failed to launch, that took it out of action for about 45mins and left time for more Ghostie and other stuff. The afternoon was spent getting as many rides as I could on Xcel, end ride count for the day was a whopping 42!! The ride crew on Xcel are still my favourite, they do a great job and have fun doing it. Funny thing is we actualy spent time in the day WAITING for enough people to launch as opossed to waiting in line. I actualy only had to get off ONCE in all 42 rides, other than that it was constant ridding all day. Left the park at 5:30 and headed for the airport, fitting great end to a great holiday. Current Xcel total count in 2 visits 92.

Okay watch out guys because I'm back and I'll be lurking around all the time again ready to jump out and release my opinions on these threads I think it's pretty pointless us discussing how to change the ride system or major que structure because realisticaly there isn't any chance of that happening... What has been said though is really what is needed, if they want to get capacity up they have to staff the ride and run both cars. If it's one thing I learnt from my latest trip is that its staff that mean the difference between capacity or not. Same goes for cars or trains, you have to run as many as possible, not doing so is just short changing your customers. That being said a great crew with 1 car can pull it off but a crap crew with 2 still won't cut it. Perfect example of this is Knotts. On tuesday the park was EMPTY (see my TR) however Xcelerator is still staffed with a crew of SIX! If this was DW it would be 2 at the most, just doesn't compare. Problem with GD is it has a long cycle time so you really can't ever run a single car unless something is really wrong.

Hey Rich Yeah you know for sure I'll have a calender... Will have to look hot though given I scored a nice FHM calender this month In seeing what you put up, I really like the look of the design. I'm not that bothered either way with the text but I do like the multi image layout. I however, will not try and stick my two cents in and say what you should do, I know whatever you come up with will be great.

TR - Vegas and Universal Howdy all...just got back to my hotel room at Universal, between dodgy internet and being drunk or tired most of the time I didn't really have much to say in Vegas. I can give you a brief rundown on things of interesting in Vegas for anyone who's interested... Between the 4 days I was there I picked up, ME, Speed and Big Shot. ME has really gotten bad since I was there 18 months ago. Rough, rough, rough...the only saving grace is the diving inversion but after riding such a brilliant coaster in Screamin' for 3 days this thing was just crap. Good to see they have changed the final brakes to no be so loud anymore though. Big Shot still has the best tower launch ever and was a great ride, bummer X-scream was down for maint. Speed is/was a great coaster, still smooth and still a good ride. Best thing of course in Vegas is the fountains at Bellagio, spent a lot of time watching them. The upgrade to the screens down at Freemont street is spectacular too and the new Wynn tower building looks amazing and will certainly be a new major landmark on the strip. Today I arrived back in LA and we spent the day at Universal Studios. Staying at Universal Sheraton, at just over $200 US for one night BEFORE tax I can't say I reccomend it, the location is good but its just not worth the cash. As for the park it was pretty empty which was great, not really any waits on anything. First up we hit Mummy. WOW, what an amazing let down this was. All I kept hearing was how good this was and how bad Tower at DCA was. Couldn't be further, these two rides shouldn't even been in the same sentence together. The coaster segment is good as far as coaster is concerned bit the rest of the ride is just plain underdone, and cheap. If you want to know more just ask me. Jurassic park was great as always and good to see its had a bit of refurb work done. We did everything else in the park but highlights include: Shrek 4d = GREAT! Was extremely well donw, funny and one of the better 4d films, this park now has 2 of my 3 favourite 4D films, the other being; T2 - Simple most well done and fantastic 4D ride out there, no words really. Rest of the park was good, Waterworld being the great show it is in particular along with the SPX stages. I won't however make this a 'must visit' again until they get something new. If The Mummy is as good as it gets its a bit sad for Universal. I'm currently deciding whether to try to hit Knotts tomorrow before I fly back or not, just a very long trip down and back if I do go... Cheers guys.

TR - Day 4 (well Disney again...and sleep) Hey Guys Well woke up this morning to see it was still raining so thought "screw that" and went back to sleep. We got up about midday and decided to go back to Disney, why not, we're already there. Fortunately you can upgrade your park hopper ticket to the next day so it was only 30 bucks to get in to both parks again. Today we took more on ride videos and stuff and thought we'd get in some of the rides we hadn't ridden before (the lower grade attractions). Also made sure to get heaps of rides on Splash Mountain because it has really grown on me. First thing we thought we'd give a spin was Pooh...funny thing is we got into the second room and the ride broke down. Like we stopped, all the work lights came on and we had to be walked out LOL We then headed over to DCA to get some rides. It turned out to be wet DCA as we hit Grizzley and got soaked. I have a pretty amusing on ride of it however we left Night Shot on from the previous night so its a bit screwed LOL. Hit Tower many many times and then it started to rain. We wanted to get another ride on Screamin which turned out to be damn funny. I wanted to film it so we went for the front but as the heavens open it was clear that was out. As the train pulled it it began to poor so we donned the jackets, hoods and glasses. The girls from the previous ride copped it pretty bad and were in pain. Turned out to be the funniest ride on a coaster I've ever had. We got soacked and I could barely see from covering my face from the razor like rain. The on ride photo says it all, we were drenched. With that and the rapids combined, my shoes still aren't dry still and that is 24 hours later. After DCA we went back to Disneyland and rode the train and the small dark rides in Fantasy land. Mr Toad was the big surprise as it had a section of Hell at the end which provided much needed warmth. We finished off the night with another ride on Splash Mountain (LOVE IT) and Pooh which had some cool effects in it, however I wouldn't put it in the E-ticket class. Last ride of the night was Big Thunder, another great ride that gets better in the dark. We rode in the death seat and survived. This ends Disney, had a fantastic time, bumme about Knotts but I just heard it was closed anyway so glad we didn't go. I have an extra day after Universal when I leave Vegas so I'll probably try and get down there, pity about Haunt though. I'm now in Vegas and turned out a beautiful day in LA today, have hi-speed net here so I'll around if I'm not too drunk BTW We also managed to sneak On Ride of tower however Richard had it zoomed in so the result was less than spectacular, he was a bit pissed Talk to you soon guys, hope its all good over there.

um... my opinion will be censored but the ride ****ING ROCKS! It is in my opinion both visualy and on the ride one of the best coaster designs out there. The trains look amazing and its a pretty impressive sight seeing it travel around teh track. I've ridden it twice, once with a 3 hour wait and once with a 2, both absolutely worth it. The first time it was very disorientating and last Sunday riding it a second time I got to experience it much more knowing what is going on.

TR - Day 3 (Disney again) Well the again makes it sound like a bad thing but certainly not...yesterday was another great dat at a great place. I started this day with a fantastic omlet breakfast over at Grand Californian, gorgeous hotel. Richard did well with customs and arrived here (my mate Richard (nev) not our lord and master here) about 9am. We headed over to the park and were at the rope about 9:45. We started the day with a walkon to Splace Mountain which only gets better everytime I ride it. It just amazes me how good these attractions are despite their age. I had my camera with me so I went on a photo binge today, it started with Splash mountain. We then hit Haunted Mansion Holiday and Pirates (i have another wait time update below) before heading over to Big Thunder. BTM is really growing on me with every ride, one thing I'm really enjoying about this trip is getting really into the rides. We had lunch a the Blue Bayou resturant (the one in Pirates) which was great. I had the Monte Cristo sandwhich which is what they are famous for, although it was so bad for you I couldn't finish it, it was fantastic. We wrode Star Tours and headed over to DCA. I'm not going to go into all the rides again as we did that yesterday but we got plenty of rides on Screamin' and Tower. Unfortunately the Cast Members on Tower weren't quite as funny today but was still a great ride. The rain was with us again today which sucked but we survived. After spending the afternoon over at DCA we went back into Disneyland to get photos, video and more rides. The crowds were a bit more today but we're still only talking about 20min waits max. Indy did hit 40mins at one point but that was because of a jeep breakdown. It was the one in front of us and it had issues with its restraint locking. That meant we got to have a sneak peak backstage where the walls open and the jeep heads off into the garage, swinging its back end out as it goes That's about it for Disney from today, if the rain goes away its Knotts tomorros, if not then it'll just have to wait. Cheers Guys

Hey Rob Look forward to reading the update when I get the chance, too damn tired over here now. From what I saw on WC the parks looked great. Just staggered back into the room at Paradise Pier, can't believe how dead the parks are! Hope the weather clears up and Knotts is as quiet tomorrow. Would be great if you guys make it down here in the not to distant future

Well looks like the sun is out this morning so that is a good thing. Just waiting for Nev to get here so I can walk over to the park (I love being able to say that!). See I'm not condeming Six Flags, just SFMM. The coasters are great, and I can see the park would have once been great too. Its just the staff and the maintanance that ****s me. They really don't deserve the coasters at that park, the really don't. Good on them for building in the first place but in recent years looks like it has all gone pear shapped. It's just criminal what they have done to Colossus, it looks and rides like crap. A shaddow of the ride I have on tape being built. Anyway all that is behind me now, this place is the complete opposite as we know

Well yeah my theory on SFMM is I would brave it to hit a few Coasters I really love and that's about it. I just couldnt believe the people there, that's what pissed me off the most. Seriously if anyone knows a make US teenager that didnt get a piercing and a chain for their pants on their 13th birthday send me a photo! They are just feral man! Well no there is a GIANT hole in the entire right hand side of the park with Mattahorn, Space Mountain and Small world all shuttered, Subs being worked on, Buzz being build and the main roadway around the Lagoon torn up. I just stayed out of that part of the park for the most part because it looks like **** and its hard to get around. The rest of the park looks amazing and I am one who thinks all this work is definately worth the mess for now. I'm sure Florida may be better from what I hear but I don't think that should diminish this version in any way, it is first rate. The exit hallway is actualy themed quite well, looks very realistic and much better than the photos show. Also on your first ride you don't even thing to look down it when you walk into the elevator. Two things I didn't like... The doors aren't soundproofed enough so you can hear the previous group exiting the lift and when you sit in the lift, if you look to the left or right you can see 'ride bits' in the loading shaft. Other than that it's great, again though you'd have to be looking to notice. Shakey is exactly how I'd put it. On the big sweeping turns and the loop I could feel the train shaking along the track, my guess is this is more a Train/Wheel refurb issue than anything else. Anyway I'm sure this Dial-up call is going to end up costing me heaps so I'll get off, more to come...