Here's a few pics I took on Sunday. The difference stands out more in person and looks pretty good!

Plus a new addition to the Arkham courtyard:

Edited May 23, 20223 yr by OgreMagic

It’s great to see rivals already getting a repaint after only 5 years. It definitely needed one, especially when it’s the parks statement attraction and first impression 

Not sure if this has been mentioned previously but I was at the park today and Wild West Falls was testing with water dummies in the boats, and the front row restraints were down on all three boats they were cycling! Hopefully a good sign. 

29 minutes ago, hannahalice said:

the front row restraints were down on all three boats they were cycling! Hopefully a good sign.

the front row seats became available again i think a month or two prior to the ride going down for its current maintenance period. 

they’ve said this current period is so they can “upgrade sensors within the station to increase boats per hour and reduce the queue wait times” which hopefully is true as the new loading procedures made the line move at a snails pace.

To me having ridden it a few times since the upgrade, the problem was their loading times are shocking. Wouldn't matter if you had 10 boats in the station, the one at the front still holds everything back. Even if you had a second boat waiting between unload and load, nobody can get in it until it moves forward, coupled with only being able to unload one boat at a time, unless the human element improves nothing else is going to make any difference at all. 

Should have designed the new station to unload/load 2 boats at a time. Then it would have been 100% down to the park staffing it properly to keep the high throughput happening. 

Edited June 15, 20223 yr by Levithian

does anyone know if any work has actually been started on its removal or is this just false information?

I was thinking the same, and haven’t seen or heard anything. I was probably going to go check it out this week.

Step 1 to working out if something is false:

If it’s posted on TTPSN then its almost surely garbage. 

From what I can see, nothing has happened. There is some construction fencing alongside the lift hill, but not sure how long that’s been there 

The DC Rivals track repaint has also finished for this round of maintenance. They’ve only painted the track beyond the non-inverted loop that’s along the main road

7 minutes ago, themagician said:

From what I can see, nothing has happened. There is some construction fencing alongside the lift hill, but not sure how long that’s been there 

The DC Rivals track repaint has also finished for this round of maintenance. They’ve only painted the track beyond the non-inverted loop that’s along the main road

i don’t remember seeing construction fencing on my last visit so maybe that’s a good sign? 

i don’t get what the point of only painting that section is, why not just do it all at once or plan / wait for another maintenance period where they can do it all at once?

Neearmap's latest update is dated 7 Jun - so less than two weeks ago. There is a construction fence around the entire ride envelope, not just the lift. There is a vehicle access way set up in the fencing which exits to the bottom right side of the picture. 

Some of this fencing has been up for a while but can't confirm how long as the most recent update prior to June was November.

 

TPSN is certainly unreliable garbage but even a broken clock is right twice a day, and given the advanced set up (ie - its not just a fence to keep people out, the vehicle access path isn't something you do if you don't need it), i'd say if it doesn't start this week, it isn't far off....

 

7 hours ago, Rivals said:

i don’t get what the point of only painting that section is, why not just do it all at once or plan / wait for another maintenance period where they can do it all at once?

2 Weeks ago I was at the park and was at Guest Services and the guy working mentioned the ride will take 6 years to paint and they will repaint a part of rivals every maintenance period over 6 years. 

In my opinion the track is so faded now I am not looking forward to seeing how bad the lift hill will be in 5 more years time.

19 minutes ago, Tim Dasco said:

 

2 Weeks ago I was at the park and was at Guest Services and the guy working mentioned the ride will take 6 years to paint and they will repaint a part of rivals every maintenance period over 6 years. 

In my opinion the track is so faded now I am not looking forward to seeing how bad the lift hill will be in 5 more years time.

if this is true by the time 6 years is up, the parts painted this year will already be faded and they’ll have to restart to process again. 

 

why not just close it for a couple months in the off peak winter months, paint the entire ride and reopen then repeat when it needs to be done again? sounds more logical, i mean look at superman it still looks fresh and vibrant from its full track repaint a couple years back

I questioned this and he responded saying if they closed it to repaint it would take 12 months to paint so it will be done section by section, which means when the final part is painted the start will be faded. 

 

If they got a professional roller coaster painting team in it could be done in a few months. Top thrill dragster got painted in 2 months same with Millenium Force. 

there’s no way it would take them 12months i mean it took them what, 2 weeks to do that part out the front? if they were that worried, open it peak periods, close it off peak periods until it’s done. Repaint doesn't mean the rides not operational, parks around the world do that all the time

Not disputing either as I have no idea, but I wonder if the additional heights of the NI Loop, Camel Back and lift hill would cause unwanted additional time? This is the first coaster to reach these heights in Aus and likely MW would try and save money by using local painters than import specialists.

On 18/06/2022 at 9:09 PM, Tim Dasco said:

I questioned this and he responded saying if they closed it to repaint it would take 12 months to paint so it will be done section by section, which means when the final part is painted the start will be faded. 

 

If they got a professional roller coaster painting team in it could be done in a few months. Top thrill dragster got painted in 2 months same with Millenium Force. 

Was this guy selling cups of small spherical ice cream? Because it sounds like he was the dippin' dots guy. 

12 months to paint Rivals if it were completely shut down to do the job? BULLSHIT.

Unless they're completely stripping it, a new coat or two as part of maintenance shouldn't take too long, provided the weather is kind. I won't put a number on it, but 12 months it isn't. Definitely less than 6. I think he might have been pulling your leg matey.

1 hour ago, Naazon said:

Not disputing either as I have no idea, but I wonder if the additional heights of the NI Loop, Camel Back and lift hill would cause unwanted additional time? This is the first coaster to reach these heights in Aus and likely MW would try and save money by using local painters than import specialists.

Local painters with these skills already exist. They paint buildings and bridges and all sorts of things. Roller Coaster Painters aren't a specialist industry (although its quite reasonable in a country with as many coasters as the USA that they might have a specialist company that only does coasters). There used to be a company that had website images from their work repainting Lethal Weapon back in the day, and to be honest I reckon Lethal would have been the harder one to work on - A skyreach EWP platform can reach 150ft, meaning most of the coaster can be reached by a suitably qualified painter without additional equipment. The drop is 200ft, so everything else is lower than that, and the drop can be accessed by qualified abseiling crews (my multistorey building was painted by crews like this), so there is very little that can't be reached with a single EWP and some ropes. (suitably qualified personnel obviously, and you'd be surprised how many of those exist locally). Anything you can't reach is gonna need a crane and a man-basket but they used that to build the damn thing so not difficult to get them in again.

32 minutes ago, DaptoFunlandGuy said:

Unless they're completely stripping it, a new coat or two as part of maintenance shouldn't take too long, provided the weather is kind. I won't put a number on it, but 12 months it isn't. Definitely less than 6. I think he might have been pulling your leg matey.

 

Well it reopens in 4 days and they have painted one six of the coaster? With no more maintenance periods scheduled this year? So I would say it might be true. Not saying its not stupid. 

if they really wanted to split it between two periods, they could’ve just done one period for below 30m, and the second period above 30m. The first period would’ve been done now, and if heights the problem they could’ve done above 30m in one period as there’s only really 3 points that go above that height (NIL, Camel Back and The Drop / Lift)

Sounds like they are using the Story/Harbour Bridge method of continually painting over a certain amount of years. 

Probably a cost cutting/budgeting idea, spread it out over several years rather than one lump (isn't the place owned by some investment group now?). 

Thanks @DaptoFunlandGuy. Appreciate the insight.

 

As for paint over time, I honestly can't see it taking 6 years, but if they do maintain doing sections every period, ideally it would never 'fade'.

27 minutes ago, Naazon said:

if they do maintain doing sections every period, ideally it would never 'fade'.

If they did that from year 1, yes. 

The trouble is - we can see how bad it has gone since it opened in September 2017. The ride has stood for 5 years and looks this bad. If it takes them 6 years to do the entire thing, the stuff they did this year will be one year worse than what it all looks like now...

And given what else we've seen - superman, lethal, green lantern, etc over the years.... they can't paint them all that regularly.... so not sure what the long game is...

Might have something carcinogenic in the paint that means it has to be done by hand like superman last time. 

by hand as opposed to what? flying robot drones?