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To say those rides were "low excitement" so removing them was OK is a load of crap. The park isn't just for the thrill seekers who want to go fast and get thrown upside down 16 times in 2 minutes. The whole idea to having a great park is that balance to cater to everyone. By closing HBB land WL really drove home that they really don't give a sh1t about families anymore! Thinks like the boats, Scooby’s, the silly balls, Judy's and all that were what a lot of the smaller age bracket went for. IMO Beastie was the worse of all of these to go, you would pretty much have any member of the family on that, even your 'merry go round mums.' The only justifiable removals I can see are Ned Kelly's and Flintstone’s. It only made sense to get rid of NK with the opening of the Beach and it was a stupid ride with rules anyway. They should have however ported a toboggan type ride over to the Beach. As to Flintstone’s that should never been built in the first place. It was a cheap, run down, crappy 2nd hand ride that had no place in a 'proper' park. These days it is completely obvious that WL don't want young kids at the park. To say it was too big was crap because a good majority of people who came for HBB land weren't interested in the attractions down in Gold Rush. And after all, why did they buy Skyrider as a transport system, to save people from walking all the way from one end of the park to the other... so their whole argument as we know if total rubbish. Any of the other removals were not crap, and simply replacing them with existing rides is just not good enough. WL has by no means even come close to running out of space so removing rides to build new attractions isn't justified. From day one the park was always very spaced out with not much substance in between the sparsely dotted out rides. There is a hell of a lot of room to fill in before you need to start pulling things out. They always went on about being bigger than Disneyland, doesn't really say much if there is nothing in that space. Its about as thrilling as a giant car park.

What I really love most about the park is its POTENTIAL...Wonderland really does have the potential to be a world class park. At this stage too will put my vote in for the landscaping and layout of the park. In its hey day it was wonderful with the whole Botany Bay area entrance and then with the addition of Transelvania it just got better. Do we all remember how it was when they first opened with all the stuff up in HBBL like the boats, the slides and the silly ball place! And how can we forget beastie. Goldrush never really did it for me that much but the upper part of the park I realy like. I also like the new fresh look Wonderland got when they started the 'Get out of Everydayland' promotion. The new funky colours and stuff were great. Up until they started work on the business park I also loved the enrance and drive to WL. It was nice and landscaped and all those coloured 'flags' up the long road were a nice touch... See I don't totaly hate the park :-) It just sadens me to think what it once was and what it could be!

Okay well your trip is a lot like mine was too earlier this year just not quite as long in LA... As for USH yes you should visit. It does have rides and new stuff opening too. Jurassic park is awesome for the final drop, I'd say better than WWF. Backdraft is great and the Terminator 4D attraction is the best you'll ever see. Also be sure to catch the Waterworld show, and get down early, the pre-show entertainment is as good as the show! I spent two days at SFMM and that was always the plan...first day X was closed (I didn't know about the Wed thing) and second DJV was closed so at least I managed to get on both. 1 day is probably enough but 2 is better :-) We spent 3 hours lining for X where as the rest of the park was walk ons. Knotts has got to be the most underestimated park ever! And for me it was the cheapest too as a lovely lady have me a voucher just as I was going in for only $25 entry. You coudl easily spend two days here too (see if you can beat my 50 rides on Xcel for one day) but 1 is adequate. Be sure to visit DL AND DCA, no matter what anyone says DCA IS A GOOD PARK with some great attractions, and don't miss Jungle Cruise at DL. We stayed at NYNY in vegas and let me assure you the coaser (Manhattan Express) is worth riding. Its not a slow coaster and in the front at night is great on the first drop...The dive loop is to die for and the restraints are a very cool and comfortable design. Yes get up to the Sahara to ride Speed, another great ride but after 12 back to backs you can start to feel a little ill :-p Also if you can stand the smell of the casino the Arrow in Circus is worth one ride just because its there :-p As for the rest of Vegas be sure to check out all the free entertainment, You can easily spend hours outside Belagio watching those fountains, easily the most impressive thing I've ever seen. Finaly I can't stress this enough...shell out the money and go and get tickets to BLUE MAN GROUP at the Luxor, the most amazing show you'll ver see and I GUARANTEEE you'll love it. Well thats all from me...can anyone tell I can't wait to get back over there??

I think thats a pretty imature and childish remark to make Richard really... Its pretty obvious to all of us that most of those incidents have been caused by reduction in maintenance so your really just reinforcing that point. Other than that the DL accidents have been human error in nature...

No Flee it wasn't you I was refering to as being harsh. I was talking about the original post refering to the Security guard making stuff up to impress bimbos, which is what was implied.

I know I say a lot of negative stuff about the park these days... I do really like the park which is why it makes me so sad to see what has become of it. This being said though I have always thought management handled early closes and incliment weather very well. In this situation I don't see any change from that, just because 1 person who visits the park every week was slightly inconvenienced I don't see such a fuss needs to be made. Even the fact that the security man went out of his way to check that you weren't going to be stuck there says a lot. And he was probably doing the same for the 'bimbos' as you said it (pretty harshly i think). If I had been heading out to the park in bad weather I would have taken the time to call and check they were open. In the past I have done so and they have been honest and said yes we are opening but closing at 2 or something like that given the weather. Very well handled Wonderland! I'm also delighted to see they are working on cleaning up the probe! Even if they didn't bother to paint where the beacon used to be :-)

I would say for sure that the numbers that are being quoted by the IAAPA about WS are true. Its not just a matter of picking a number and giving it to them, those sorts of things would be checked. Its just like any incorporated company, you have to report to the Government every year and things like attendance need to be provided. This also works the same with Insurance, banks and everything like that so they would be the numbers. I would also be pretty certain that yes this does include the Wildlife park figures. Its pretty easy to pick up numbers there because you might have a whole heap of coaches come through for only a few hours each in one day. On thing to be said about attendance though... Yes it may still be quite easy for WS to generate resonable attendance numbers and YES they may be quite high at the moment compared to times in the past. However, I would be more interested to look at the REPEAT ATTENDANCE figures. It is easy in any business to get a customer once, but you have to provide them with a decent product to get them to keep coming back to you... Its this I think we should all be looking at as oposed to straight up single day attendance numbers...

Order placed :-) ...okay order not placed! It really makes me cranky we people choose to set up a service that does not accept AMEX cards. There are thousands and thousands of amex users in the world and excluding them only takes away from your business. Guess I'm going to have to sort out some other payment method, a pain in the arse to say the least.

Well I will go on DJV is 8 years time because its one of the best coasters I've had the pleasure of riding. I don't see anything like it from the other manufacturers. I also don't think its fair to judge the state of the ride in the future till we get there do you? As previous posters have said, you have to judge such things on a case by case basis. Lets face it, although Beamers are typicaly nice and smooth they are not doing anything really radical for the most part are they? Most of their models are improvements on something another company has initialy developed. Where as companies like Arrow, Vekoma and Intamin are pushing the boundries and bringing out new rides.

Before we all go jumping on the 'praise B&M dump on Vekoma' bandwagon again I'll just say that despite being a great ride I got a severe earbashing off Scream earlier this year. So its not just as cut and dry as One = all good, one = all bad. I'll just say this, at least Vekoma have done well and got some coasters into this country, without them lets see how many we can quicly get rid of! MW = no coasters DW = 1 coaster WL = no looping coasters WOW sounds exciting to me!

Ugly yes but still an awsome ride. A lot could be done to dress up the ride and make it much less of an eyesore. The thing is Dreamworld (well at least as its come across to me) has always been the main ride park with theming as oposed to the other which are theme parks with rides and that's where its priorities are. I think this is a good thing as you have variety up there. And lets face it, TOT is a bloody ugly ride too, it really spoilt the arials of the park and ruined the atmosphere of the Model Ts. But I certainly wouldn't not have it :-)

My vote goes for Cyclone. I will however say that I much prefered Big Dipper ove Cyclone as its layout worked much better with the tight surroundings of Luna Park and the speed as well. It didn't do anywhere near as much for me in its present form. For starters (although maybe not now but certainly initialy) Cyclone is a much smoother ride it glides around the track a lot better than the Deamon train which is more thrown through the elements. Second, it contains a lot more variety than Demon does simply from its larger layout and longer ride time. As for the ride itself I'd say Cyclone is the more attractive of the two with its nice painted track and clean look. Demon has a lot more hardware involved with the lifting mechanics, valley platform and staircase in the boomerang and all that which I don't think looks all that attractive. However the surroundings for Deamon do it a lot more justice when compared to dirt and road as Richard said. When it comes to themeing I'm not even considering it because IMO you can't just theme a coaster by theming the que and the station. Either the entire ride is themed or it gets no points at all. At the end of the day no matter what you do to the station if you then just have a heap of track there it doesn't really achieve a lot. Finaly, the Vekoma Boomer is the single most cloned coaster in existance so theres nothing really even remotely special about it so that comes into it for me too.

Well I think it could be themed as easily as a coaster can, thing is would Dreamworld bother with either? Most likely we would see a coaster with some nice grounds and a themed station and then just the coaster running around it... In that case all of the ground level part of the ride could be themed just as well. It wouldn't be too hard to theme the lift and hill I wouldnt think though, just look at Seaworld and all that fibreglass around BT...

Congratulations! I think you may have just thought of the perfect ride to replace 'da bolt.' I for one would LOVE to see this ride built at Dreamworld, it would fit in with the whole new theming of the area and it is a pretty wicked ride. I will agree that I would have been no wetter jumping in a pool with my clothes on but that is just fantastic in itself. You think you are soaked and then POW the wall of water lands in your lap and your a whole new level of drenched. I don't know about how the restraints would be handled here...new country, new set of rules. The system at Knotts doesn't make any sense to me at all. You have 2 rides which feature the same degree of drop (Xcel and PP) with the same seating/restrain system. However PP has an accident so they are made to add the harnesses but Xcel is not...I can't work that one out. I'm really interested in the idea of PP at DW, and as they already have a good buying relationship with Intamin it could be very possible. What does everyone else think?

NO WAY! The 2 best attractions at Luna Park are easily the Rotor and Coney Island...WHY?? Because they are something different. You can ride your carnival crap rides anywhere but Coney Island is a park of history and IMO in its current state far exceeds anything a coaster would do for the park.

I figured that would probably have made use of the space however as you say I think there is more than enough room to work in a decent river caves attraction. Having never been to the original (pre95) park what are the tunnels you speak of? Is that where the origian RC used to run? Where exactly did they route the original ride?

Yeah I remember that show back from the 90s when I was little Richard. It was actualy really good and pretty funny in the typical family orientated slapstick way. Captain Sturt used to be a really great attraction...even if it does run on tracks HEHEHE

It all sounds very well structed and interesting Richard, can't wait for it to come online. Look forward to hopefully being able to contribute to the site in any way I can. Just slightly off topic and I won't mention anymore about it but does anyone (particularly Shaun) know of a similar forum discussing the portable segment of the industry?

I thought the Wizards Fury was a great ride, it offer something a bit different. I really wish they hadn't gotten rid of it. Aparently it was for maintanace reasons which I guess it fair enough, it was pretty old. However there are an awful lot of Schwarzkopf rides still out there operating. I'd probably guess it was more a matter of WL not wanting to pay to keep it maintained as oposed to it not being possible to keep running any more.

As I was saying before I'd really like to see them put in a really kick arse re-make of the River Caves. NSW is really lacking a decent water ride, well if you don't count Snowy (its rapids not a boat ride) we don't actualy have 1 at all. There is a fair bit of space they could use, after all there is the area vacated by the Big Dipper down the side and out the back where the big turnaround used to be... Don't know what that area is doing in the park now but that coupled with the space already in the mountain could work well.

I've been visiting Dreamworld ever since I was a little lad (not that I'm that much bigger now ) back when they first opened (both TRR and EM opened at the same time) and the cars have always had 4 riders per car in two compartments... I do remember how they changed Thunder River though, much prefered the rotating station, same goes for Snowy at WL. I'm glad Sea World kept this system when they did BT.

Im not forgetting about the mouse at all, its a great ride, mostly because of its age. The thing is its just that, it is getting on a bit and it wouldn't hurt the park to have more than 1 major ride like that. I think the only reason Rail Chase has been brought up is that is was so rediculously cheap and thus it would be a fairly good return on investment. I would have actualy thought RC was one of the more popular rides at SW. Simple fact is the park couldn't get away with another large outdoor coaster and they don't have the space to build a big looper indoors. If they did want to build another coaster they would have to go for something of the Wild Mouse type variety, that doesn't mean it has to be dodgy though. As I said before though, I would sooner see other things at the park over another coaster.

I would be inclined to agree that yes an indoor type coaster could be quite viable within the park and could probably be quite easily mixed in with the circus theming. Something like rail chase could have been perfect and could even have been combined both in and outdoors as the initial sections of the ride would have generated little noise with the later sections contained inside. Something to also be noted is a coaster with this style of vehicle (single cars as opposed to a large train) would generate a lot less human noise as you don't have that mass of people at once that you get with something like cyclone. I am also very eager to see the River Caves re-introduced, probably more so than another coaster. Ever since they opened the pervious Luna Park incarnation there were plans to build it but it never eventuated. I think something with a bit more thrill than the original would go great. My thoughts would be something in the style of Pirates at Disney as this is an indoor ride with still some great drops etc. Obviously the theming wouldn't be quite as outlandish but it could still be done well. All of this is great however IMO the best thing about Luna Park is the original stuff like the Rotar and Coney Island, was never much interested in the 'carnival' type rides.

Actualy with a proper AV maintenance team as Wonderland should have things like getting monitors and lights working is a pretty simple job. There isn't much that can go wrong with those sorts of systems. There is just no excuse for bad or non existant ride upkeep. If you don't have the ability to properly maintain the rides they should never be built in the first place.