Scooby Doo Spooky Coaster vs. Wild Mouse vs. Dingo Racer

[TBoy]

Time to pick the fourth coaster in the list. This time there will be 3 options due to their being over 2 wild mouse coasters in Australia. Please note: this does not count the Crazy Spinning Coaster in carnivals, only permanent versions. Remember to put votes in by Wednesday.

[Tricoart]

The original SDSC is a clear winner here IMO. If you're talking the 'new generation' version, though, then it's a toss up between that and LPS's wooden wild mouse for me.

[REGIE]

Gotta give it to LPWM it’s a very rare and iconic ride and looks great on Sydney harbour.  Plus scooby doo as we know it is gone. I have not idea what they are going to do to it.

[djmcbell]

Scooby. I mean, it's crap in terms of actually getting people on it, and the most recent effects were rubbish. But a few years ago, it was still rubbish in terms of getting people on, but the effects were good and it was a fun ride.

Dingo Racer - done that loads of times at parks all over the world.

Wild Mouse - barely remember it, but Wild Mouse at Blackpool Pleasure Beach was thoroughly, back-breakingly excellent (God rest its soul).

So I would go with Scooby, or at least the Scooby from five or so years ago.

[Dean Barnett]

I kinda don't think you can put Scooby and Wild Mouse in the same category. Scooby is an indoor, themed ride - and Wild Mouse is an outdoor, former travelling carnival coaster with the best views of any roller coaster on the planet, and one of the only few remaining with a manual brake. 

 

Dingo Racer is an off the shelf meh. 

[REGIE]

Dingo racer is a hefty investment for a little family owned park. It puts Aussie world on the coaster map of Australia and is a fun ride that’s perfect for that park. Yes it’s not overly exciting in terms of roller coasters but the fact a little park like Aussie world put in the effort to get a proper coaster at all is awesome. good on them. 
 

scooby doo is super fun I love the swinging axes and tilting elevator and backwards drop. The turns are fun and the drops after the hairpin turns are good when your at the front otherwise they just hurt.

But I can see enthusiasts from other countries having the wooden wild mouse as more of a reason to come as it’s super rare and it’s hairpins are better then scooby. Like @Dean Barnettsaid I feel like scooby and wild mouse are 2 different categories but scooby is the only indoor coaster in operation in Australia. We had that one at expo 88 and scooby definitely beats that one in terms of layout (never got to do the one at expo so maybe it was better??)

I feel like wild mouse vs scenic railway is more fair? But idk. it does makes sense to do all the wild mice vs each other.

 

 

 

Edited February 18, 2023 by REGIE

[Baconjack]

Scooby with the original theming working wins this by a mile. But I don't consider it better than Wild Mouse in its current form. Wild Mouse is surprisingly quite fast and intense for a wild mouse and offers a fantastic view which is better than the distracting and poorly timed effects on Scooby Next Generation.

Dingo Racer, with all due respect to Aussie World, is a vastly inferior replacement to what sat in its plot before. Probably the worst replacement attraction in a local park in decades, it's truly sad a rare wooden wild mouse had to be ripped out for something straight out of the royal show.

Edited February 18, 2023 by Baconjack

[REGIE]

That is true I don’t know who thought it was a good idea to remove a wooden wild mouse but maybe AW just couldn’t keep up with the maintenance of the ride?  

[Baconjack]

9 minutes ago, REGIE said:

That is true I don’t know who thought it was a good idea to remove a wooden wild mouse but maybe AW just couldn’t keep up with the maintenance of the ride?  

Expensive to maintain yes (Luna Park spend a lot of money maintaining theirs) but you'd ideally want to replace it with something better rather than something some punter's probably already ridden at the easter show. I heard a small regional park in Victoria installed a really good family coaster at a similar price point.

Edited February 18, 2023 by Baconjack

[REGIE]

There must have been better options but for what ever reason if maybe it was discounted or they could get it in quicker they went with this. A pretty good modern vekoma even the thrill coasters wouldn’t have cost to much more but maybe they thought a classic wild mouse was a safer option and a tribute ? Usually though tributes are supposed to be better then the original. Oh well it’s better then another flat ride 🤷🏼‍♂️ 

[pin142]

6 hours ago, REGIE said:

Dingo racer is a hefty investment for a little family owned park. It puts Aussie world on the coaster map of Australia

I'd argue what was there before it was more noteworthy than the off the shelf replacement.

[aaronm]

Wild Mouse outdoes Leviathan in the iconic stakes given its location and history.

Scooby Doo is a clear winner though and pre “next generation” arguably the best themed ride in the country. 

[REGIE]

Yeah but it’s not pre nextgen anymore it’s nextgen so that has to be put into consideration.

[Slick]

41 minutes ago, REGIE said:

Yeah but it’s not pre nextgen anymore it’s nextgen so that has to be put into consideration.

What's wrong with next-gen Scooby Doo?

[joz]

42 minutes ago, Slick said:

What's wrong with next-gen Scooby Doo?

Yeah I was about to post exactly this. 90% of next gen is putting shit back exactly as it was pre 2016. One of the things they did was put in a protection that doesn't look very good before the elevator, which from memory replaced a mirror. Like sometimes less is more, but I don't think less is THAT much more. The other bits of projection are *fine* and even without haze, the high zone looks better than it has for years, including before next gen (it would look sensational if they can get it in).

 

The way people are talking about it in this thread would be totally justified in 2017. These days it's more or less what it always was, but with one or two bits of shit projection. Without those projectors and there's not much difference to me, and I don't think the projection drags it down to the point where it's anything other than awesome. Some of that stuff does need work though, hopefully some of that is allowed to happen this time round.

[aaronm]

2 hours ago, Slick said:

What's wrong with next-gen Scooby Doo?

When it was all new and working I didn’t feel the screens added much but it wasn’t objectively worse. But for the last couple of years the ride has been running with most of the the next-gen elements in a broken state, the most egregious being the never-synched screens on the lift. Arguably it would have been better to just turn these off.

[Dean Barnett]

I hope they put one of those mist screens into 3rd generation scooby like pirates has. Perfect fit. 
 

[DaptoFunlandGuy]

I thought they'd taken that screen out of Pirates? 

[Guest 239]

19 hours ago, Slick said:

What's wrong with next-gen Scooby Doo?

When next-gen worked it was neat, but I found that many of the new effects were incredibly unreliable and made the attraction feel far more than dated than it deserves. You can employ a lot of tricks to make practical sets and effects look good even when things might not be working as intended, but there is a much lower tolerance for error when it comes to screens and projectors because you can't easily compensate for them being off. 

Also this sign replacement was a crime:

[REGIE]

The old sign is soo soo much better! I hate when places “modernise” and remove the good stuff like OG 3D signs

Edited February 20, 2023 by REGIE

[DaptoFunlandGuy]

They've got to get the value out of their digital sign printer. 

See also: Wild West Falls.

[REGIE]

And the overhead DC rivals sign

[Gobbledok]

When Scooby first opened it looked amazing and then steadily over time until it closed before nextgen it got progressively worse. 
By the time it closed the wild mouse part was awful and the ghost train part barely even lit up. 
When it opened for nextgen the inside was arguably as good as it opened minus the last room before the drop if you forgot about the ugly projections. The lift has always stayed crap but at least the wild mouse part looks better now than it did at least the last 10 years or more. 
We tend to combine all the best bits into one amazing ride but in reality after the first 5 years it hardly ever looked that good again. 

[Slick]

Let's also keep in mind that after Scooby Doo Next Gen opened to a roaring thud that the park spent a fair bit of coin on lighting and effects to make high-zone (aka the wild mouse section) enjoyable again.

[REGIE]

Yeah might as well call it “acid trip. The ride”  with the mouse bit. I only realised last time I rode it that in the wild mouse bit there’s a huge spider hanging up somehow I always missed it before