Gazza

TOT has been doing that since 1995.

I honestly reckon with the progress AW is making, they would be lowering their standards to build a Boomerang. The park is really finding its feet, and I reckon it would be detrimental for them to put in a worn out ride that isn't actually fun at this stage.

On Superman, I'll tend to just go where I'm given, or wherever a Single rider seat becomes available.

For the info of all, you can edit your first post in full editor to change the thread title.

But where did you find it, specifically?

Was it a once off for you? Or have you never made it?

^ $10000 Only? If the company is charging out at say $200/h, that implies the whole study being done in 50 man hours....Doubt it could be done that quickly! Where did you get the $10000 figure from?

The ride in question is a clone of Bermuda...It lives on!

If we're talking individual parks, it's better than the 2 studio parks in the USA, but sits behind IOA.

Madagascar: A crate Adventure Pretty cutsey queue line, with a maze of bamboo switchbacks, irregular shade sail roofs, decorated with colourful island lights (some of them pufferfish) I havent seen Madagascar, but basically your boat goes through the hull of a ship, and on the other side you discover the animals have been marooned on the island. Through here you go through a very nice jungle environment with the various characters in a few gag situations. One of my favourites was a couple of monkeys..."If you see anyone, throw poo at them!", cue the water droplet effects, and the hippo (Gloria!) that moves her head from side to side like African American women do. At one point, to escape (some crocs I think?) the boat runs on a fast conveyer belt, like what happened at the vortex on Bermuda at SW. You eventually encounter King Julien, the Lemur, who complains that the Foosa are always ruining their parties by ripping their heads off etc. At this point, you get the feeling they were short on money because the whole section is CGI on screens rather than animatronics. So after that you go into Foosa territory along with all the other shipwrecked animals to try and stop them. This last section goes back to being all 'animaltroinics' though, and you pass through a volcano, where you see the animals taking on the foosas, who are defeated by a stick of TNT provided by the penguins and carelessly thrown by King Julien In terms of entertainment value, it was on par with LTRR, though this one was perhaps a bit more colourful and energetic, which i guess the kiddies love. Was alright, but I only rode it once, and I'm struggling to remember all of it, so I guess it perhaps didn't leave a lasting impression. Shrek 4D Is it really better than MWs version? I guess the Far Far Away castle exterior (Which then becomes Farquads castle in the preshow..oops!) and the queue look good. I can see what is meant about the roof being plain ducts etc, but I think its not realistic to say guests wont look up. In a queue area that big, and even just waiting say 10 mins for the next show in there, everyone is going to look up at some point. Ours had the better looking preshow room IMO. Smaller, but with the same amount of theming, so in SG it looks too spread out, but ours looked just right. Some of the jokes have been dropped. None of the routine about 'floggings' nor the seatbelt joke (But that lives on in some form next door, will get to it in a sec) I used to think we were cheap by painting the metalwork on the doors in 2D on our version, but theirs is exactly the same. As for the movie itself, theirs had more lighting effects to match the onscreen action and some wind (which smelled like dettol), but ours had better seat movements, for example the galloping on ours was perfect, but in SG it was noticeably slower. Donkey Live Not just for kids, and better than Shrek 4D IMO, so don't miss this (Along with Lights, Camera, Action). Set in a "Knightclub", It's run live by an Eddie Murphy soundalike and a human accomplacie out in the theatre (casual bench seating), and an animated Donkey on screen matches mouth movements with the presenter, all the usual crowd interaction, and it flows pretty well. In my Show Donkey was picking on a Malaysian Couple, culiminating in 'marrying' them in the show. Donkey performs a song at the end too, Magic Potion Spin Didn't ride, but it didn't seem to get a long queue either. Treasure Hunters Probably the most elaborate car ride out there, with woven mesh doors at the side, cos this is Universal. The Accelerator does squat and the ride just moves along itself You do get to steer a bit, Autopia style. The ride winds around some nice scenes like a section with a Nile Crocodile & Cobras, an area of ruins overrun by swarming scarabs (done by having a fallen column, wiht the mid section of the coulumn spinning to simulate the scarabs running around it, and an old bridge where the wooden supports fall away from the sides. If you go early in the day and see it has a 5 min queue, its worth killing time for that. Monsters of Rock The Show is MCed by a yank in a School Uniform, who brings 7 classic Universal monsters (Dracula, Frankenstien, Phantom of the Opera, Warewolf, the Bride, a female Mummy, They perform a few songs, with dialogue and banter between each song. The coreography, lighing, music and pyro were great, but some of them had screechy singing voices (The Bride in particular) I know I only named 6, but I have NFI who the pink girl is in this pic: http://www.rwsentosa...ollywoodTheater Worth a look. Transformers: Ultimate 3D Battle. Neck and neck with Harry Potter as the worlds best theme park attraction. Just really well polished and put together, and immersive from start to finish. If you are tossing up wether to visit USS, go for this one! Because its new, I'll put it in Spoiler tags. Basically the story of the ride is that you are volunteers of NEST, a partnership between Human and Autobots to protect the allspark from the Decepticons (Autobots: Good, Deceptions: Bad, Allspark: A shard of material able to bring machines to life with its touch. So, the queue takes you through a typical military base themed area, with concrete walls, computers, flashing control panels, red warning lights, buzzing alarms etc. The decepticons are breaking in, and you have to roll out with Evac (A new Autobot) to transport the allspark to safety. The safety vid is quite humours, with some banter between Evac, and a computerised voice...sample dialouge : Computer: "Goodbye Humans" Evac: "I think you mean good luck" Computer: "Goodbye Humans" You load in and leave the station, a large screen shows a security breach. Evac tells you to be on the look out for trouble, but he is interrupted mid sentence by some (very convincing sounding) machine gun fire. You go around the corner to the first screen. A truck with a robotic arm attempts to load you with the allspark, but ravage jumps in, grabs it, jumps on the bonnet of the vehicle and snaps at you, before leaping away onto an overhead catwalk. You turn and head to the next screen. Bumblebee comes itn to assist, grabbing ravage, taking back the allspark, and tossing it to you (all to the tune of "Give it to me baby") Evac extends his arm to catch it (Funny to imagine your ride vehicle as a setient being), but another decepticon grabs you by the arm trying to take it. Optimus Prime jumps in to assist, tackling the decepticon, giving you a chance to esape. With a screch of the tyres you move out of the base and into the city streets (screen 3). Optimus gives the order to roll out, and you speed away, avoiding traffic. Its not smooth for long, as you pin backwards to outrun that deception with saws on his hands (name?) You dodge and weave, eventuall reversing into a subway tunnel. Just as you cross the tracks a train barrels through, decaptiating the head of the decepticon that was just chasing you. You bust through and find yourself in a sewer. Megatron appears again and tries to attack (screen 4), but he bumps into a water main, breaking it, and spraying his arm (and you) with a bit of water. That gives you a chance to escape. You head around a couple of turns through some tunnels, tyres screching and engine roaring, and the vehicle turning this way and that..."Wrong way...we're trapped". Eventually you exit the tunnel and find yourself in the pit of a construction site (screen 5). A deception jumps down and brutally knocks away a scaffold, sending poles flying at you. It then launches a missile, which gets right in your face, but files overhead, exploding behind. You feel the hot air of the explosion and see the glow. You spin 180 and see a huge hole blasted in the wall, and you pass through it. What is cool is that the exposed reinforcing mesh glows red hot and then fades at the tips. You reach the 6th screen (the hole in the wall leads to a subway station), but all of sudden a powerful rush of air sucks you up and out to street level....Devistator is using his giant vacuum mouth to suck up everything. EVAC takes evasive action and takes cover, speeding away along the streets. You transition to screen 7, where Sideswipe appears and tries to attack, but time slows down (bullet time type effect), evac takes his gun, leaps over, shoots at his head, then lands back on the ground. You try to speed away, but Devistaor is back, and you, along with several cars get sucked back, towards his mouth. Right as you go through EVAC engages his shields, and you pass straight through devistators mouth and out the otherside. You aren't free for long though, as a flying decepticon comes in, hooks you with a cable and takes you on a terrfying flight above the streets, including a moment where you fishtail around into the side of an office building, smashing through the window, through tables and chairs, and back out the other side, taking out a concrete column for good measure. This causes the cable to come loose, and you are hurled onto the top floor of a skyscraper under construction. EVAC speeds around the floor, trying to find a way out (with some realisic theming like temporary construction lights on cables, and bits of equipment), you come to another screen (#8), where Optimus and Megatron are battling it out, knocking over the tower crane in the process. Megatron urges you to protect the allspark. you turn away, to another scree, where that fighter jet decepticon comes in, shoots down a hovering NEST helicpoter, before transforming and flying away. You turn away to another screen (#9).. Evac asks "What do we do?". At that moment Megatron comes down and says "Beg for mercy". Optimus reappears and the two wrestle each other away. Evac gets some balls, and says "No more running, he takes off and jumps onto Megatron from behind and says "If he wants the allspark, he can have it!", and proceeds to jam it into his back, causing him to overload. As this happens everyone falls of the skycscraper...Evac: "Oh no!". This is just like Spiderman, where it feels like you are really falling. Right as you are about to hit the ground bumblebee catches you. The force of it causes you to fall through the pavement and land in an underground car park. You turn away from the scene and see crumbled columns and bits of street furniture/cars have fallen down with you. You reach the final scene, where Optimus bends down and says "Your bravery has saved the planet, well done!". You head back to the unload station, and above you you can see a full sized Megatron replica has fallen through the roof. As you pass under his red eyes fade into lifelessness. The unload station is back in NEST headquarters, and you can see ninja stars stuck in the walls and roof and other signs that a battle has been going on whilst you were gone. Woah, as I said, really well done. Better than Spiderman, and it never really lets up at all. The ride takes place across two floors due to limited space in Singapore (And Hollywood) The lifting happens on the 3rd screen, and the trip down via a quick decent on the 'Freefall Scene' screen...a bonus because it enhances the falling sensaton a bit. Would be awesome if they could make it do a Th13teen style true freefall, but that would be pushing in on this type of ride. You do have to really look to notice the two lifts,...The GP wont in general, and even I didn't realise till my 3rd ride. But basically there are two of them in mirror image (for capacity reasons), when one goes up, the other goes down. The room is a big half cylinder. The projector is mounted on a pole at the back of the lifting platform, so when you go up, everything moves together. The curve of the walls of the room that the image is projected on means your whole field of vision is taken up. I'd give this a 10/10 for sure.

I'd say more similar to something halfway between Illustrator and InDesign. I'm running Corel X3 at the moment..How did you do the trees out of interest? Joz has pretty much hit the nail on the head for MikeMacs entry, and that's my favorite too. I don't think its a bad thing to have a Star Wars themed ride (Or any other for that matter). if it was all wild west themed it would be too much (And to be honest, I reckon one wild west themed flat max is plently) I don't think the Grand Canyon skywalk is realistic though, because it would barely be that high above the ground, even with a really deep excavation. ThemeparksGC is close behind...I like the idea of a woodie, and the ride choices are all good. In particular the Windseeker is a good choice. Not just a boring spin and spew, but something I'd make the effort for, After that mba...The mine train laucher sounds good, but the splash battle is unneccesary, because there is already one at SW, you can ride it with a super pass/vip pass. And to be honest, I'd rather if new attractions on the gold coast were stuff we hadn't seen before, since we get so few rides in Aus to begin with, so every single one has really gotta count. Getting back to the coaster...its either inverting, or it's not. Coasters with only one inversion to me seem kinda pointless (Eg Cheetah Hunt), since if its going to be a looper it should be a few to really impress the thill seekers. Having only one inversion is less impressive, and the fact it goes upside down once immediatley excludes a section of the market that don't like to go upside down.

Guess what guys...You get another USS review to read. Spoliers, and I'll put Transformers at the end for that reason. Overall a very good park...Great rides. As for the theming, the ambition is there an it is detailed, and it looks alright, but a combination of the local climate and some sloppy contruction methods in parts means it looks quite worn already. Would be interesting to see how the park looks in even 5 years time if the current state is anything to go by....Onto the rides and attractions. -Waterworld Skipped today, may or may not see it tommorow since I've seen the Hollywood version. -Enchanted Airways Just like Roadrunner, but sounds a bit smoother and quieter when it runs. Lap bars are individual and quite narrow so your legs get pressed together. The queue has plenty of funny Shrek universe details, and the ride layout has various animatronics of well known characters helping out with the aviation operation, like Grandmother wolf waving landing lights and Pinnochio manning the control tower. -Canopy Flyers Today was dead quiet today, so I rode 3 times, front and back n stuff. Fun little ride, with nice views, and it goes over the top of tree canopies as the name suggests, but it is over pretty quickly, but at least the best part, a tight helix is right at the end. -JP River Adventure My first experience with the Hafema version of this ride type. The boats do let a lot of water in and spin a lot, which is good if thats your thing. There were perhaps not quite enough waves....A couple, but i do like rocking and rolling the whole time...Again, the construction of the park shows here....The whole enclosed section looked as if it was older than WWF! The loading area is a bit of a clusterf***...you enter and exit on the same side, and the boats move along an aluminium conveyer belt that you walk on, so everyone is kinda trying to get on whilst others get off. Found it funny too that the boats are made of "rubbish bin plastic" rather than fibreglass like most rapids boats. Anyways, you go off the end of the conveyer belt down some rollers and splash into a gentle river and go through a couple of dino habitats. Up ahead the river becomes more treacherous, and you see washed away fences, an upturned raft and a flooded out guards post. Things keep getting worse and you get washed down a canyon past some raptors, eventually reaching a water intake for the JP hydroelectric plant. The tunnel is pretty plain actually....literally black walls with the odd warning sign about dangerous water currents. It is in here that you get unavoidably wet in the first instance, passing under a fast flowing leaking pipe. Eventually you wash into a vertical hydrovator. You hear a voice..."Help me, I'm up here!"....you soon discover the T-Rex is up there too, snapping at you as you come up the vertical lift. At the top, the doors open and you go down a drop about as big as the one on the Flume at SW, hit the water, and get SATURATED by the wave. Do as AlexB says and leave all valuables elsewhere. But don't use the lockers at the ride and pay $4 an hour. If you can, and the queue for the rapids is short enough, use the 30 min ones at ROTM for free...Umad company? Dino Soarin -One of those spinning up and down aeroplane rides, like the ones at DW and SW, except its Pteradactyls. Didn't ride. Treasure Hunters -Car ride...might ride tommorow. Revenge of the Mummy -Pretty awesome like the Orlando version. The story is a bit different...You are aparently looking for 'the book' to destroy Imhotep, rather than the Orlando one, where its a movie set and "The curse is real". The downside of this is that the scene where you had the false unload station is replaced with Imhothep appearing with 'the book' and still damning you to death. Still fire on the ceiling etc. Otherwhise, its largely identical to Orlando, except the animatroincs are cheaper and more jerky. Cant argue with 5 min queue times. The ride is set in an actual temple, and they have done a good job at theming the side of the building, such that the side facing Jurrasic Park matches that area, and the side facing Sci Fi city matches that area. The bottom floor spends ages ziggzaging around tombs and wooden fences..ahem buttressign, with the odd crate, giant vase, block, mummy coffin etc forming an obstacle for the queue to get around...The waiting areas are massive at this park...Bigger than many Disney attractions even, would hate to see it on a busy day. The ride starts off with a dark ride in a tomb, with cool stuff like writing appearing magically across a wall. You reach a treasure room guarded by Imhotep, which erutps in flames and mummy zombies pop up either side of the track. You rush to escape under a large dropping stone door, going down a little drop to get under....Eventually you reach a dead end, bump into a wall, cracking it, and causing thousands of scarab beetles to being swarming over the wall (All done with projectors)You reverse away to escape down a small drop, spin around on a turntable to face fowards again, where Imhotep tells you to "prepare to surrender your souls". At this moment, you launch uphill, through a cloud of green smoke and into a dark coaster section, which feels a lot like a mini superman escape, with sweeping banked turns and small airtime hills. Eventually you reach another room...Imhotep appears again, threatens you, the roof erupts in flames, and you then get launched down a drop into a pit full of red fog, and through one final coaster section. After that you hit the final brake run before the station. Somehow Imhotep has been put back in a Mummy coffin, so we're all good! Accelerator Teacups type ride themed to a space power generator. Didn't ride. Battlestar Galactica Cylon Despite the best efforts of this ride to imitate a B&M, it ain't one, and I doubt any prospective park would pick this model over the B&M inverted coaster. The new rubber harness design is comfortable and eliminates headbanging, but the ride still doesn't track smoothly enough, and has some definite shaking, including some pretty strong shocks as you drop into the vertical loop. Some things never change.Still, its very reridable, so this isn't a dealbreaker, but rather a lost opportunity for Vekoma to "be good". The dueling moments aren't as close as th old Dueling Dragons...more just a nice visual (And you get to experience the dueling effect better on the Human side....anyways...) The queue is themed to be like a Cylon base, with a cool double mirrored/one way glass type thing, where it was basically a section of wall with glass on it, and it looked like there were long rows of cylon robots behind it, dissapearing to infinity. The interior section of the queue was typical alien spacecraft stuff, but the walls as you approached the station were a bit like nemesis at alton, where it had flesh type stuff growing over metal and hoses. You head out of the station, launch upwards quite quickly (similar strength to Jet Rescue), get slowed a little bit, go over the top, down a drop and into the cobra roll, the track then races alongside the Human track, around a very high up helix (great views), down and into a cobra roll. This leads into another helix, and a large drop into a trench, where you hit top speed and go around a loop. You come up again, around a turn, and into a zero g roll, which doesn't actually deserve to be called one. Its more like a barrel roll the train ambles through, with no real weightlessness. One last helix leads to the brakes. Battlestar Galactica Human This is like a Human base where they are stationed to fight the Cylons. On the bottom floor the main feature you'll see is a repica Human battle spacecraft. The rest of the queue has futuristic airforce type theming...Think cages with flight suits, pinboards with photos of pilots giving the thumbs up, TV screens with video transmissions from your commander stressting the importance of the mission etc, and wartime posters encouraging humans to enlist and fight the Cylons. The ride safey vid is done like a 1940s wartime education video, with shaky images and pastel colours, and graphical styles of the time, telling you how to board the 'spacecraft'. Again, you launch upwards, over the hill, down a large drop under the cobra roll and then 'orbit' up around the cobra roll. You run paralel to Cylon for a bit, before doing a helix in the other direction, flying by. The rest of the ride is more helixes and so forth, encountering the Cylon track from time to time. Right near the end the Cylon track swoops right above your head quite closely. It feels like an adult roller skater basically, and sounds like one too (Literally!) Lights, Camera, Action Special effects show, but its all automated, so works more like the effects seen in a dark ride. In particular, this is one ride queue where it looks like the place was built 20 years ago...Rusted, bubbling paint, crumbing concrete edges etc. The queue for the ride is just under a big roof behind the NY facades, with various large movie posters suspended from the ceiling. The queue is split in 3, and enters the first room in paralel, at 3 tiered levels. The first room has Speilberg going on about the wonders of movie effects and the history of sound stages. You then watch a short clip of various well known movie effects (Eg the takeoff in Apollo 13, Frankentein coming to life in the original film, the flying bikes in ET and so on. The next room is configured the same way, inside a New York boat shed, and you are about to film the scene of a Category 5 cyclone. Very well put together..You'll see the water catch fire, boats fall off their celing hooks and splash into the water, window panels get blown away, wind, rain, waves on the water, debris crashing through the celing, and heaprs more. The Grand finale is a ship crashing through the boathouse doors, and coming a fair way in! And for Joz's benefit, the floor drops at the end like on Twister at USF. Madagascar: A crate Adventure Just run out of energy, so I'll do the rest tommorow n stuff.

That said, their spinning coasters are superb from a ride experience perspective, and aren't rough.

My opinion of Buzzsaw has dropped off a bit since re-riding recently. It was previously only a little bit rough on the twist, and now it is rough on the straight bits.

^ Its a one car, 2 person train. Just like the wild mouse at Fuji-Q: http://www.rcdb.com/1192.htm?p=5623

They are no worse off than Aussie World being in competition with the 5 parks on the Gold Coast, and they are doing beautifully at the moment.

The issue is, if you go too small the capacity suffers (less space for seats), and you loose the impact of flying in front of this big massive immersive screen suspended high in the air...The very thing that makes Soarin' awesome. Never gonna fit it in the SW cinema. Even the small versions are too big to fit, and there is the vertical head height needed too.

Heretic.

The Zampera sandwich toaster flying coasters load below the track too: http://www.rcdb.com/1711.htm?p=4040

No flying coasters have an Imelmann loop. Immelmanns appear on a few of B&Ms looping coasters. Basically the track first does a half loop, twists over, and heads out the other way on a slight curve: http://www.parkz.com.au/photo/US/Tampa/Busch_Gardens_Africa/372-Montu/1,1,2036-Immelmann.html By outside loop, what i mean is that on inverted coasters they look like this, the train is on the outside: And on Sit down coasters, loops look like this, the train is on the inside: The human body can take forces well when lying on the back, but cant do it well when lying on the chest, so flying coasters tend to draw out elements which might put pressure on the chest...Have a look at how drawn out the bottom of the drop is on Manta for instance: At present, there is only one flying coaster with an outside loop, and that is one in China, built by Vekoma. They were able to do it because the trains are only 2 cars long and it takes the element without too much speed, so they have been able to get away with it since the G forces arent too strong. Lethal Weapon wouldn't have this luxury, because it barrels throug the inversions at 70km/h and pulls some fair G's, so the concept of flying trains is completley unfeasible. http://www.rcdb.com/4124.htm?p=28289 In other news, Superman will be open again on the 3rd of Feb!

Though, I think that's more a sign of limited capacity versus demand. It only takes 12 people per go, the floor needs to be raised and lowered, and harnesses checked, resulting in long lines. Mammoth falls can take 12 people in a single paired dispach, which happens at quick intervals (one raft down each slide) Or 12 people can be done in a race and a half on Super 8, again which happens very quicky. Or 3 groups through Tornado, which they can pump through fast if the lifeguards are on the ball.

So, the audio worked on 2 out of 3 rides yesterday....And now I cant get the damn ride music out of my head.

Indeed. The ones that use actual water jets to blast you uphill are much better.

But, unless you are Epcot, having at least one good coaster is somewhat of a necessity for me to even give a park the time of day. And being fair and excluding Sky Rocket because it's for kids, it's only really TOT2 which is decent of a collection of 4.

The other issue is the direction of the forces change on flying coasters. Basically, you cant put too many G's onto your chest, which is why Flying coasters tend to be drawn out at the botttom of drops, and not have 'outside' loops.