Gazza

Alex, I think I have come to the conclusion that jjuttp is only a member here to take the piss. Look at anything he writes, its either unbelievably bad in terms of spelling and grammar, or is just nonsensical for whatever reason, and to be honest I think it is partly intentional: Clearly he is only here to be stupid, and has no intention of ever being serious member, nor does he seem willing to listen to others or lift his game....

Depends on when you gauge it, my last trip to Dreamworld (towards the end of last month) it was what I would consider pretty quiet (Thunder Rive a a walk on, motocoaster only having a queue within the station bit etc), MW has been quiet too, though when I popped in for half an hour at the end of the day (a bit over a week ago) SDSC had 50 minutes on the sign, and Superman was running two trains (so they must have had decent numbers to warrant that). I think a bit of fatigue with MWs attendance would be setting in, with Batwing being the last large addition, though hopefully the new show will be a big draw.

Really, record attendance? What was so special about Wednesday? Its sort of a double edged sword with those sorts of numbers, no doubt it means a lot of money, but I can imagine a large number of guests would had a pretty crappy day given the long lines amplified by already low capacity rides. Was the park anticipating this? Did they have full staffing on? Out of interest, what were the other lines like. I can just picture Motocoaster being an absolute train wreck with the queue out into the old captain Sturt wating area. By Spottys description GD sounded like an epic fail. Also out of interest, how did WWW fare? I probably would have just defected to there. I wonder how they arrived at 10090 as the park capacity, and not 10100 or 10000 flat. Hey, something else I noticed, isn't it really curious how the 'factors beyond their control' that cause GD to run at reduced capacity always seem to affect the eastern side, and they always seem to happen on quiet days To put this all into perspective though, DW just achived one quarter of Disneylands average daily attendance. Yay.

Yeah, just upgrade to a 2 day world pass at the world pass gate next to Flowrider.

Its a bit of a shame they went all the way up, those 4 blocks of trees were really nice actually.

What sections of main street have been affected, is it just the straight bit from the end of the department store and up to the photo center, or have they cut down all the trees in the plaza around the big screen?

Yeah, it really struck me on my last visit how much of a tip the tot queue is, it seems if a repair needed to be made, they just found any old offcut of material to cover it with, so you see stuff ranging from painted particle board to checker plate steel stuck on the walls, none of it lining up or any degree of craftsmanship displayed. All of the theming seems bruised and battered (I only just noticed there is a lunar lander in the queue) As much of a bum rap that Cyclone gets, would most people agree that they were happy DW were picking up this second hand ride, since most of us would have never gotten to ride it otherwise? Edit; Am I the only one that sees the cyclone cow with a halo and wings? Its just the light, but still kinda funny.

I'm almost 3 years late on this one, but I was reminded when I saw 021002 printed on my Superman onride photo, but can anyone go into a bit more detail about what this campaign involved? I remember back on the Superman website they had set up a number of people got to be first riders for correctly guessing that 021002 meant zero to 100 in 2 secs (I dpn't even remember there being a competition). I also remember people mentioning that it was printed on bus adverts (By itself?) But Im a bit confused, was this just a tagline, or was it a wider teaser campaign in the build up to the ride. Any info about what the did is good, since there weren't any ads like this down in Victoria.

I'm surprised its not like motocoaster where they have banners in the queue advertising the world pass, surely that would complete the image? When I was there last, the flashing lights just before you board are now solid, and they are playing the normal in park music in there...Naturally all the TVs are off in the exit queue, but the fan thing in the middle was blowing (What is the point of that other than wasting power and making a streamer fly up?) Such a stupid queue theme if you ask me. It seems as if the designers got too 'close' to the idea, they understood it, but anyone else not familiar with the ride would have a hard time piecing together the whole experience and what it means. That and the lame touches that make you wonder why they bothered, like the back panel of a van attached to a black wall near the entrance, what, are we supposed to think we are looking at a van poking out of a dark garage?

Yes, you are..... No park in the world would run a coaster so inefficiently, and it would be difficult mechanically to have a ride running like that (Eg having restraints open on a moving train) The movement of cyclone isn't one car at a time, it just gets slowed whenever it creeps above the ridiculously low speed tolerance.

Well, it does intersect with that category, because of its slowish section at the start...but Scooby is predominantly a roller coaster, and that is where the bulk of the experience comes from. There is a distinction between themed indoor coasters, and a dark ride. A dark ride however is a specific type of ride, where the main focus is moving through various scenes at a steady pace, often tied together with a story. So Looney Tunes fits into this category. It differs from other boat rides in that the ride system isn't the main focus of the ride. The purest dark rides are dry ones where vehicles follow a track steadily through a building, so in Australia the only ones that fit this strict definition are Big Red Car at DW, and the Ghost Train at LPM.

You're missing the point though, if an axle is broken then the ride wouldn't function properly and guests would be in immediate danger. Think about it, for half the ride guests would have their heads pointing towards the ground if the seats were stuck in position, subjecting them to harmful G forces. A cable is a cable, and any of the correct grade will do the job. Intamin don't make cables. Im assuming you are referring to the SFKK incident, but in that case it was up to the park to check the cable, but unfortunately it failed. The incident had nothing to do with the 'brand' of cable that they used. There is a big difference between a highly visible problem like a row of seats not flipping on a coaster where seats are supposed to flip, and a fatigued cable that was working fine with no apparent problems up until the incident. Sorry, but I just don't believe that people have been on X, and have had it that the seats didn't flip on their ride. I've searched around to see if there are any other reports of this happening, and surprise surprise, there aren't.

^Pretty sure he is talking about the ones where you ride without a tube, and instead of going through that tight spiral in the middle, you just drop straight out of a hole in the middle and plunge into a deep pool.

The Big Red Car at Dreamworld, and the Ghost train at Luna Park ? I think the reason for the lack of dark rides here is because they are expensive (Easily as much as roller coaster), and very hit and miss (It can be hard to make a good one) I would love a modern dark ride (Multi Motion yada yada yada) since they can be just as enjoyable as a big coaster, but it would be a bit of a leap of faith for a park here to do one (Though if they did I would be the first lining up for it)

But would you even attempt to run the coaster if a major mechanical component was broken. That just sounds highly irresponsible.

How could it be that a row of seats wasn't rotating on X?

Hmm, but the tone of it made it sound as if other places were much better placed to be doing business anyway ("That's where the growth prospects are")

Well, some minor stuff is happening, a fence has gone up around the Extreme Volleyball Zone and there are a bunch of pegs in the ground. In other news, the water jets on Surfrider are off permanently now for some reason.

Yeah, its officially dead now http://www.theage.com.au/national/zoo-park...0e.html?page=-1 "It's a shame" is a bit of an understatement, though a Village spokesperson did deliver a parting shot:

That was a statement, not a question. Anyway, re the second point, I was thinking more along the lines of a pinch brake that might be mounted on the car, and would grip the rail, I'm no expert, hence me asking. The braking force of magnetic brakes is directly proportional to velocity...the faster it comes in, the more force applied. If it was falling from a lower height it wouldn't be going as fast, hence the braking force would be lower....but of course it is going slower so it would have plenty more time to decelerate in the braking section. The real concern is the added weight of the catchcar falling into the brakes attached to the passenger car, the added weight is more force against what the brakes can oppose with (They wont apply more force for a heavier car)

So this is like the random thread, but theme park related, cool. 1)Yeah, there is an I beam down the middle of the river 2)Well, an expensive business suit can cost that much so its possible...Disney somehow manage to spend huge sums on everything, so it actually wouldn't surprise me.

^I never realised you were operating SP when a cable snapped. Now just on that, do the cars have a secondary braking system that can lock them up on the tower? I'm sort of interested because the Kentucky Kingdom incident, and more recently a cable snap on Hurakan Condor at PortAventura, reportedly at Kentucky Kingdom the operator had to manually hit the e-stop, whereas on Hurakan Condor a cable tension monitor picked up on it straight away and did it automatically....pictures of Hurakan show it stopped halfway up the tower, but if a cable has snapped then surely some other means would be holding it in place? Was Space Probe ever refitted with tension monitors? Its sort of odd how so many people have sworn off freefall towers, even though it seems as if several cable snaps have happened at a few parks....I guess one girl just got really unlucky.

You'd sort of hope in all this that Village would be willing to fund it 100% themselves if the need arose. Requesting a large sum of money IMO was a big mistake...fair enough, I think it is acceptable to work with the Government to do things like improvements to infrastructure around the park, but I think its taking it a bit too far to expect them to chip in such a large sum, especially at a time when the Victorian public has been quite fed up at the large sums being spent on major events supposedly to attract tourists that haven't really delivered, and fed up with money being spent on side projects rather than what people really want (Hospitals, Transport etc) If they weren't willing to fund this completley themselves then you'd have to wonder about the confidence they have in their own project.

To be honest, a little while after that post I wondered if a simple switching arrangement could be what is being implemented. But, just on that, what sort of reset time do the hydraulic launches have? Once the first one is done I doubt there would be more than 30 secs till it needs to be firing again Is there much of a limit to how far away the plant room can be away from the ride....say not underneath the station causing the floors, handrails, well everything really to buzz. Its only now that I'm considering what possibilities this launching arrangement can bring, previously I had assumed the second launch would be entered at full speed and would have just been a booster, but since it is hydraulic I don't think that;s feasible. Perhaps everyone will get launched out for the start of the ride, but then slowed down for a mid course superman style show section (perhaps this could be where the 'rescue' takes place) before shooting off from the scene to get the animal back to base. They could get a bit creative even...have the second launch hidden further up the site behind corkscrew, with some rocky walls keeping it screened from the off ride guest areas.

Hmm, interesting...so there would actually have to be two sets of accumulators, motor rooms etc. I'm really quite keen to find out what the layout is like, maybe in a couple of weeks more of the footers will be done so it may be easier to work out. Any other 'common knowledge' info out there?