Old Theme Park Pics

[REGIE]

Yeah wow I wish I had the chance to meet John longhurst he seems like he would have been a cool guy. He put a lot of love into dreamworld it seemed like he didn’t treat it as just a financial investment but a dream that he put life in! It would have been such a different DW if they had a corkscrew. Would have really changed everything. I think it would have actually been pretty cool. That’s crazy to think how different the vibes would have been. I do wish they set up the corkscrew as a feature unless seaworld took it.

[Aw hype]

12 hours ago, Slick said:

I tried to get John Longhurst to recall some information about it on a few occasions - what I've been able to cobble together is that he got exclusive rights to build a Corkscrew Coaster with Arrow Dynamics to do a midway style install similar to Cedar Point or Nagashima Spa Land where the corkscrew would head over the top of the pathway. During the construction of Dreamworld, he had a corkscrew fabricated to see how it would look in person, hated it, and when Keith Williams called about building one, he gave the rights away.

Interesting to think how that would've shaped the identity of Dreamworld, or if he had the funds he wanted, had built a castle instead of leasing the land to Kenny Lord to build Thunderbolt.

Having a corkscrew fly over the midway would have been iconic. Did the Arrow looper go on to become corkscrew at sea world?

[jjuttp]

I always liked the idea of a corkscrew wrapping around a path, going both over and under.

[Baconjack]

A loop screw like what sea world eventually got would have sucked at DW imo. Too small and it wouldn’t have been big enough to look noteworthy on the midway.

Edited February 13, 2023 by Baconjack

[DaptoFunlandGuy]

Remember the era, though. A dreamworld pre-thunderbolt would have been needing a coaster, and heck - corkscrew was iconic for sea world. the imagery of a corkscrew spiralling over the midway prior to the double loop chiropractor's best friend, it would have worked, THEN. just not now.

[REGIE]

6 hours ago, jjuttp said:

I always liked the idea of a corkscrew wrapping around a path, going both over and under.

I always liked the idea of 2 loops built somewhat underground with the top of the loops sticking out and paths going through them. Imagine that as a entrance 

25 minutes ago, DaptoFunlandGuy said:

Remember the era, though. A dreamworld pre-thunderbolt would have been needing a coaster, and heck - corkscrew was iconic for sea world. the imagery of a corkscrew spiralling over the midway prior to the double loop chiropractor's best friend, it would have worked, THEN. just not now.

It would have worked if we never saw thunderbolt I think. Corkscrew is arguably almost as iconic at TOT

[Slick]

On 13/2/2023 at 12:10 AM, Aw hype said:

Having a corkscrew fly over the midway would have been iconic. Did the Arrow looper go on to become corkscrew at sea world?

The two parts that were fabricated were stored roughly where the koala sanctuary is now behind Tiger Island for roughly a decade before they disappeared (likely for scrap).

[Gobbledok]

Maybe they were sold to help pay for the new Koala centre?

[Naazon]

Can anyone with Near Map get a historical aerial shot of this? I don't think google or bing maps lets you do historical aerial views.

[Slick]

5 minutes ago, Naazon said:

Can anyone with Near Map get a historical aerial shot of this? I don't think google or bing maps lets you do historical aerial views.

You can have a scan through Qimagery, you can juuuust make it out in some of those aerials.

[DaptoFunlandGuy]

35 minutes ago, Naazon said:

Can anyone with Near Map get a historical aerial shot of this? I don't think google or bing maps lets you do historical aerial views.

Just to close this particular query - Judging by @Slick's timeline of 10 years after Longhurst, I would presume that would date well prior to 2009 - which is the first available image of Dreamworld that Nearmap has. Can confirm nothing that looks like a corkscrew element is BOH in that image.

 

Staying on old theme park pics though - I noticed that this enclosure (I presume by the double fenceline that it is for Tigers) has recently been cleared and re-landscaped.

Was this like a 'rehearsal set' for them to train the tigers prior to going 'on stage' ? Any idea why they're suddenly redoing it? (there appears to be a new rock retaining wall on the lower left side that wasn't there in any of the previous shots)

November 2009

April 2022

 

November 2022

 

[Slick]

It's always been a back-of-house tiger pen. Nothing more, nothing less. Keep in mind the cats were on a constant rotation program between pens, the island, dens and daily activities like walks to keep them enriched, all things that are vastly more complicated without tiger-handler interaction. My guess is that the redevelopment of Tiger island (which is at best a huuuuuge waste of money in the endeavour to have overzealous risk management for risk management's sake, going so far as ignoring the best professional opinions in the industry to do so) is going to require millions of dollars of new chutes and pens to move tigers from A to B, and this is the start of those works.

Edited February 14, 2023 by Slick

[jjuttp]

21 hours ago, Naazon said:

I don't think google or bing maps lets you do historical aerial views.

Google earth does, but iirc, only to around 2004.

[Naazon]

1 minute ago, jjuttp said:

Google earth does, but iirc, only to around 2004.

I thought that was only if you had Pro?

[Gazza]

Pro is free now anyway.

[New display name]

Queensland Globe it better than Google Earth for QLD mapping and it's free.

Queensland Globe (information.qld.gov.au)

 

And if you click bottom right as shown.

 

You can get some good old images.

 

[Aw hype]

Over here in WA, we have Landgate Map viewer Plus -> Buy aerial imagery;

https://map-viewer-plus.app.landgate.wa.gov.au/index.html

Surely there is an equivalent in Queensland?

[REGIE]

After a lot of looking here’s what I have found so far

 

.

  
 

 

here we have the earliest above photo of dreamworld I could find. 1st January 1978. It shows the ground work of a pre open dreamworld. You can make out the overall shape of DW there looks to be train track in place in some spots but it’s really hard to tell.  

next we have a black & white photo of dreamworld from 1982. That’s the next year they took a above picture of the park. The photo is bad quality but you can make out thunderbolt and the steamer ship in the lake.  
 

 

Then theres a bunch of photos of a thriving DW from 1990-1998 you can see a very vibrant blue lagoon. I like how on some of the photos you can see the shadow of thunderbolts loops on the group. You can see little puff track. Gold rush country looks cool too. Somehow I never put together that eureka was right behind the IMAX. If anyone notices some other cool things let us know 

 

 
what’s this building? It’s still there

 

  

In this photo you can see cyclone getting built next to thunder bolt. And in the next one you can see them both operating side by side.  

Edited February 15, 2023 by REGIE

[DaptoFunlandGuy]

The building against the motorway would appear to be the coomera motor inn.

[REGIE]

Oh ok cool. It looked really good in the 90s ha. It’s actually probably the closest accommodation to DW or any of the parks except seaworld ofc.

Can anyone see the corkscrew element? I am absolutely sure it’s there, I just can’t find it. It’s probably deconstructed and I don’t even know where it was sitting. It would be probably be super hard to spot from a grainy above view.

 

 

Edited February 15, 2023 by REGIE

[DaptoFunlandGuy]

3 hours ago, REGIE said:

probably the closest accommodation to DW or any of the parks except seaworld ofc.

Paradise Country Farmstay counts, and I'd wager its about as close as CMI is. 

Wonder what the latest is on the VIllage hotel?

[REGIE]

Forgot about farm stay. Your right that’s just as close. Yeah idk I think it will be a long time till we see the hotel village. I don’t think it’s been through town planning yet has it?

[Brad2912]

20 hours ago, REGIE said:

I think it will be a long time till we see the hotel village

 

22 hours ago, DaptoFunlandGuy said:

Wonder what the latest is on the VIllage hotel?

It is progressing through council approvals - a large amount of referral agency reports were requested (Energex, Public transport impacts etc) and these were all submitted last week. You can read them all on the GC PD Online platform. 

Council getting the sign off from the referral agencies that they are happy with the plans and amendments is the key next step. 

[New display name]

23 hours ago, DaptoFunlandGuy said:

Wonder what the latest is on the VIllage hotel?

Council not too keen on outside entertainment continuing to 2am, so there is a bit of back and forth happening to address councils' concerns.  Council has asked for more information and updated reports on parking, flooding, noise & visual impacts. (Nothing out of the norm)

[biasesumo]

Does anyone happen to have old photos of Wet N Wild? I have a distinct memory of one of the children’s areas having a mountain you could crawl through but I could be mistaken. It was around the era that there was the big kangaroo out the front.