Slick

I think sometimes you make stuff up. Almost every ride manufacturer will use similar parts (like ride restraints and vehicle parts) across dozens of installations where it's safe and cost-effective to do so. For example, Doomsday has the same OTSR and seat design as Lex Luthor at SFMM. Superman Escape has the same OTSR's as Furios Baco, SurfRider etc. etc. Just because what you see as an enthusiast (the outer fibreglass, colour, theme etc.) is different between rides doesn't mean that manufacturers won't re-use parts and designs where they can to reduce cost-base during the build and over time. I think you'll find no OEM is doing unnecessary specialised parts for specialised sake, either. Where's the competitive advantage of doing that? The flipside of that is that it was kind of a golden era for ride innovation, where firms allowed manufacturers to take technology risks in order to push boundaries that maximise attraction marketability. These days, cost of capital (and the cost for civil construction) is as high as it's ever been, parks are risk-averse both from a return of investment front and a safety front and the tech being used is pretty mature. I think Doomsday was right at the tail end of that golden era, stuck somewhere between trying to innovate a mature ride design and developing something that adheres to modern safety culture.

You'd need to join IAAPA.

Both answers are right. At the most fundamental level, IAAPA has a lot of research to show that major roller-coasters are the single biggest revenue and attendance drivers. But as we all know, folks don't buy a day ticket to ride the new roller-coaster once and immediately leave. New capital expenditure only succeeds by getting the attraction mix right and ensuring a solid day experience for multiple audiences (which is why Sea World course corrected its mix with Atlantis).

Big difference in SLA's between commercial hardware and a $50 dongle.

Nearly two decades is a long time for A/V equipment to run for eight hours every single day. Wouldn't be surprised if whatever media server they were using finally died, and they opted to do a full re-do to maximise the ROI on a new fit out. Newer media servers with newer, better TV's means they can do things like dynamic advertising placements, better integrate into existing A/V and also means they can finally update the ride safety video to better suit the times. If it were up to me I'd go full hog and really try and do something with the new screens that tries to entertain folks for as long as possible since they don't have their phones on them. I'm not sure if that means episodes of Superman or a bunch of easter eggs in a few mini-games - but the potential is there.

Exactly this. The underlying assumption for some seems to be that the space inside the helixes is still dangerous. Now that there's a ride going in there, the physical environment will be adjusted to mitigate that risk. Therefore, beyond the major installation of ride components, there's now no longer a need to close Superman for most reasonable activities to occur in that space. To be frank, you'd be amazed at what after-hours work goes on at theme parks, and I think this will be no different (depending on labour availability, naturally). If they're taking Surfrider down in the middle of the night, they can probably put it back up in the middle of the night, too.

The Marvin ride went up really quickly and I'd dare say this ride move is in response to the backlash for having two coasters closed for various reasons.

That's because the discussion isn't new - if you do a search you'll find laboriously-long essays from myself and other members discussing the aesthetics of park maps.

Lol, did it? /s Happy to have a pointless discussion about negative space on maps if you want? Seems fruitless though.

Sometimes I read Parkz threads and they give me Always Sunny vibes. I covered the reason in another post which you can find here. TLDR; I think you may be trying to find a black-and-white rule to try and understand a sea of grey.

I'm kinda psyched for this. It gives me those Japanese spaghetti jet coaster vibes - just a mess of track.

Cheers for this - gives a good idea of how it'll fit into the space. I'm warming up to this project now. Nah referring to the queue. Really happy to see an access ramp being put in for the stage, that's long overdue, especially given that it's the year of accessibility tourism for Queensland. Taking the letters off the globe seems dumb though.

In isolation, this looks great - love the consideration for the cladding and Victorian-era architecture design features. My worry is how crammed this will be in reality. I've had a sift through the tender and the greenwashing to play up the aesthetics and the lack of consideration for neighbouring structures or sight lines (or flow for that matter) are of particular concern. There'll be two sets of switchbacks basically hit you the second you walk in. 😕

In a theoretical vacuum, yes, an item in freefall would not impact a neighbouring object. In reality, a load would be placed on the tower by the carriage wanting to sheer away from the track when the carriage changes from positive acceleration to deceleration. Probably not a lot of load in reality, but worth accounting for at such a height. The other consideration would be the sheer load for the incline/direction change - you've got roughly 35-45t of energy needing to go somewhere, and the base of the tower would have obviously been engineered for that. Have you ever been on The Giant Drop whilst the pod was racing up the tower? You could feel that mass of energy try to escape through your pores. It was wild. Having some sort of extension added to the tower would bring new directions of force and resistance all of which would need some solid engineering spec done to it. And the reality is, by putting it to one side you're reducing highway visibility. Occam's razor is probably the way to go.

Yeah nice, kinda bang on expectations wise for Movie World. Some nice key pieces to elevate a pretty standard ride installation. My hope is that after World of Oz this area continues to get more filler like this and they finally fill that sub 90cm height gap that Dreamworld & Sea World do well to cover.

Are these letters punched-hole steel on the front? Will be interesting to see how these light up at night and how they weather over time with all the Giant Drop grease.

Agreed, the sign looks great - my only complaint is that the structure that it’s situated on doesn’t have the same grandeur of previous designs - both Nick and Dreamworks designed it to feel massive despite it being a small amphitheatre. This doesn’t do that.

Blue Lagoon, Thunderbolt, Chairlift, Wipeout, Rivertown Restaurant, Billabong Buffet, the five-odd things that were in Gold Rush County, Buzzsaw, Tower of Terror - I could go on, but let’s not kid ourselves here, irrespective of what mental gymnastics folks do, the park has contracted considerably, which was a literal strategic intention the current and former CEO (as well as current board) have openly talked about in investor calls.

Change is the great fear that fuels NIMBYs.

Really appreciate you taking the time to filter through some of the submissions. I almost get "Clarkson's Farm Season 2" vibes, except instead of an insane council, the locals seem clearly opposed to a tent-pole business that literally makes their entire local community grow.

Fair bit to un-pack here. I think you're assuming that because most firms with kid brands have very safe and consistent design aesthetics, then that must be the result of an ill-conceived notion that all artists go through some sort of George Orwellian brainwashing process when they get an arts degree. Just to be clear, I'm a creative who didn't do an arts degree but have plenty of friends who have, and firms will hire them because the formal training basically says "this person knows the basics, so there's minimal risk to them cocking up the job". Take that sign for example, do you know the difference between RGB and CMYK colour spaces? Maybe you do, maybe you don't, but if you went to uni and did graphic design, you definitely will, and that formal understanding means that when the sign goes from the digital space to actually being printed, the final result won't be dramatically different to what was on-screen. Sometimes, if you don't have that formal training, and you don't know the fundamentals, then something like a misunderstanding in the aforementioned colour spaces might mean that a whole sign might need to be redone, costing tens of thousands of dollars. This brings me to my next bit - risk. When parks were built in the 80's, you could pull the rusted tin off old farm sheds to make a themed land (a thing that actually happened when Dreamworld built Gold Rush County) and no one would bat an eye. You had private businesses with very few stakeholders and plenty of low-cost, high skilled labour combined with an abundance of raw materials in an economic environment where everything that was being built was new to the market and was amazing purely just because it existed at all in the first place. As a result, this meant that experimentation was easy because the risk was low - if Dreamworld built something that was junk (like the first Mine Ride) they could just gut it and replace it with something else. Today the landscape is different. Customers are way more aware of global standards in quality and folks expect more. Put another way, you can't expect an OG Nintendo console to entertain a family who's used to a Playstation 5. And in order to do that, you need to build bigger and more complicated things to meet demand. And they require more skilled labour, which cost more because of our macroeconomic conditions. And because the cost of materials is substantially higher, building anything is incredibly more expensive. And these firms have wayyy more stakeholders that expect a standard rate of return on their investments to bankroll these bigger attractions. And all of a sudden, the amount of risk and cost is massive, right? And so now you've got a multi-million dollar project with a thousand things that could go wrong and I'm sorry to say, but I wouldn't risk the whole thing on a dodgy bit of tin falling out of a roof and hitting a guest or having the look and feel of signage go tits up because I cheaped out on labour. By extension, businesses become so risk-averse that it culturally hampers the business and the culture becomes disconnected from business outcomes or the wants of the consumer. But that doesn't mean universities aren't teaching kids to not think outside the box, it usually just means those at a high level are just trying to keep their jobs.

It’s the aforementioned Swiss Cheese. The stations for Gold Coaster, Steel Taipan, Rivals, Scooby Doo and Green Lantern are specifically designed to allow guests to see the loading procedure. Monkey see - monkey do. This.

You're all good mate, @Tricoart was clutching at straws - I don't think Dreamworld are mismanaging Giant Drop refurb, rather, was just pointing out that it's not uncommon.

No you're all good mate. It looks to be a reason, but it hasn't been the sole reason either. The re-opening date has, was and still is in a bold blue box on the Giant Drop page which is where the announcement has, was and still is. The irony here is that I pointed out how folks essentially nit-pick to ignore the bigger themes at play, and you doubled down on specifics. 😄 Nor did I say that either. But you kinda played into my hand in showing the bias you have by inferring my assumed position.

You're pretty much on the money. But Sea World can, right? And I get we can debate for days about the specifics of both (and I'm sure @Tricoart will in due course), there's just a degree of denialism that seems to prevail in spite of some fundamental truths (e.g. that Giant Drop never had an opening date or never did a quiet date shift, or that Dreamworld hasn't had a long, storied history of doing exactly these kinds of things). Point is, folks really want to force this Ardent good, Village bad thing and it's getting a little long in the tooth. Neither is evil and expressing a constructive opinion that is often fuelled by a want for either business to do better does not automatically correlate to a hate for the other business.