The Off Topic Topic

[themagician]

@Adventures With JWorld They must of done a reasonably good job at convincing people considering the event sold out.

I much prefer this name to the previous, Thrillathon just didn't sound right to me, while Extremeworld has a much better effect.

[Theme Park Girl]

I just wish they would consider hosting it on another night. Not everyone (especially on the tourist/hospitality thriving Gold Coast) has Saturday nights free, in fact it's the one night that I'm the least available to attend, hence why I couldn't go to the last one - I was working

I'd love to see a Friday or a Sunday night thrown in to allow for more attendances as a whole. Then I may be able to go as well ☺️

[rappa]

I doubt Friday or Sunday would create more attendance than doing another Saturday I'm afraid. 

[Flynn_Smith]

7 hours ago, Theme Park Girl said:

I just wish they would consider hosting it on another night. Not everyone (especially on the tourist/hospitality thriving Gold Coast) has Saturday nights free, in fact it's the one night that I'm the least available to attend, hence why I couldn't go to the last one - I was working

I'd love to see a Friday or a Sunday night thrown in to allow for more attendances as a whole. Then I may be able to go as well ☺️

Saturday works out for the majority of people, because there isn't school on the next day for kids, plus some people dont have work the next day. Same with friday, kids have sport, and its a hassle to go straight from school to a themepark. 

Guess you can't please everyone 

[Theme Park Girl]

@Flynn_Smith in previous years, they have held the event on other nights. It's definitely possible. 

[Flynn_Smith]

4 minutes ago, Theme Park Girl said:

@Flynn_Smith in previous years, they have held the event on other nights. It's definitely possible. 

i guess you've got a point. Maybe theres restrictions though?

[Rollercoaster_Lover]

1 hour ago, Flynn_Smith said:

i guess you've got a point. Maybe theres restrictions though?

Especially the noise of tower of terror II, remember Dreamworld is pretty close to residential homes so Saturday night might be the only night were they can make noise and all of that since there's no school the next day.

[rappa]

2 hours ago, Flynn_Smith said:

i guess you've got a point. Maybe theres restrictions though?

Yeah the restriction is they want to do it when they make the most money. 

[WalleyWorld]

The new Lech Coaster @ Legendia in Poland looks stunning. Would you believe it's a Vekoma?!

Vekoma have really stepped up their game in the past few years. Their new family coasters look fantastic (suspended and sit down). And now they have shown their ability to design modern, smooth, custom, high thrill coasters that give Intamin, Mack and B&M a run for their money. I would love to see Dreamworld invest in a coaster like this - even an exact clone of Lech Coaster would be amazing!

[Tim Dasco]

I would love to see a park build the Vekoma Hyper coaster that they designed for Energylandia. Vekoma have been making some cool coasters. BSG is a really awesome coaster.

[XxMrYoshixX]

1 minute ago, Tim Dasco said:

I would love to see a park build the Vekoma Hyper coaster that they designed for Energylandia. Vekoma have been making some cool coasters. BSG is a really awesome coaster.

The hyper coaster that's going into Energylandia is an Intamin Hyper, not a vekoma.

20 minutes ago, Luke said:

Vekoma have really stepped up their game in the past few years. Their new family coasters look fantastic (suspended and sit down). And now they have shown their ability to design modern, smooth, custom, high thrill coasters that give Intamin, Mack and B&M a run for their money. I would love to see Dreamworld invest in a coaster like this - even an exact clone of Lech Coaster would be amazing!

If LPS had the space, I think they should look to Vekoma custom designing them a coaster. This ride looks great and I wonder what they could do in a small space.

[Tim Dasco]

11 minutes ago, XxMrYoshixX said:

The hyper coaster that's going into Energylandia is an Intamin Hyper, not a Vekoma

Yes but they ran a competition to let the GP decide against the Intamin hyper or Vekoma hyper. Intamin won however the Vekoma hyper was still a good pitch. I said I hope a park builds the Hyper that Vekoma designed for Energilandia's pitch. 

[DaptoFunlandGuy]

On 01/07/2017 at 11:27 AM, Tim Dasco said:

I would love to see a park build the Vekoma Hyper coaster that they designed for Energylandia. Vekoma have been making some cool coasters. BSG is a really awesome coaster.

I think many people have been shied away from Vekoma's offerings given the debacle at USS with BSG.

"seats fly off" isn't exactly a strong selling point", and having it shut down for years while they redesigned it to fix the problems it had also doesn't bode well. I know BSG was custom, but it hasn't done them much in the way of favours.

[Santa07]

On 7/1/2017 at 11:14 AM, Luke said:

The new Lech Coaster @ Legendia in Poland looks stunning. Would you believe it's a Vekoma?!

Vekoma have really stepped up their game in the past few years. Their new family coasters look fantastic (suspended and sit down). And now they have shown their ability to design modern, smooth, custom, high thrill coasters that give Intamin, Mack and B&M a run for their money. I would love to see Dreamworld invest in a coaster like this - even an exact clone of Lech Coaster would be amazing!

I don't know if it's just the camera mounting, but it looks like it has a little bit of a rattle. I see where you're coming from, but I don't think Vekoma are really that close yet to giving Intamin/Mack/B&M a run for their money, I'd personally prefer a Mack or Intamin over something like this, sure Vekoma are improving and this looks like a good coaster, but it's not something that I would go out of my way for to ride, while Intamin/Mack/B&M/RMC have shown us time and time again they can build something that certainly could. Just my opinion.

Edited July 3, 2017 by Santa07

[rappa]

What's funny is Vekoma have build nearly every Disney coaster and they are all fine. 

[DaptoFunlandGuy]

Although many of the recent big installs have been vekoma, i think part of that reason is because of the benefits of cloning on rides such as Seven Dwarfs Mine Train - however:

Based on RCDB, Disney has 14 Vekoma coasters across Florida, Tokyo, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Paris and California, and 19 "other" brands (which includes rides on RCDB currently 'under construction'. (Tokyo DisneySea is the only Disney park that doesn't have a Vekoma coaster - instead it has a TOGO )

For simplicity sake, i've attributed the Dynamic Technologies re-tracking of rides like Space and Big Thunder to WED as the original manufacturer - which gives us:

• Vekoma - 14
• WED - 7
• Mack - 2
• Reverchon - 1
• Togo - 1
• Intamin - 6
• Maurer - 1
• Arrow - 1

I'll talk out of my ass for a minute and say I would assume Disney's own in house design teams would work closely and heavily with the vekoma teams on delivering what they do - whereas externals would be heavily reliant on the vekoma team to take care of most. It truly is hard to believe that rides like HKDL's Big Grizzly were put out of the same organisation that created BSG.

Certainly Vekoma have built a lot of Disney coasters, but I wouldn't say "nearly every" coaster.

 

You are right, however - in saying that Disney don't appear to have any problems with their Vekoma coasters. I won't begin to try and explain that though.

[WalleyWorld]

4 hours ago, Santa07 said:

I'd personally prefer a Mack or Intamin over something like this, sure Vekoma are improving and this looks like a good coaster, but it's not something that I would go out of my way for to ride, while Intamin/Mack/B&M/RMC have shown us time and time again they can build something that certainly could. Just my opinion.

If Intamin built a copy of Lech Coaster (exact same layout), would that become 'something you would go out of your way to ride'?

[Santa07]

1 hour ago, Luke said:

If Intamin built a copy of Lech Coaster (exact same layout), would that become 'something you would go out of your way to ride'?

No, probably not - don't get me wrong, it looks like a great coaster and something that I would definitely try to ride if I was in Poland, it's just not something that makes me go "I want to go to Poland now" (that said, Energylandia's hyper does, and probably would if it was made by Vekoma too). Intamin, B&M, RMC, and Mack are pretty widely accepted as the "big four" manufacturers, if Vekoma continue the way they keep on going I think they could easily make it to number 6 or 5 on a lot of people's top manufacturer lists (a few years ago they wouldn't have even been top 10 though).

[WalleyWorld]

3 minutes ago, Santa07 said:

No, probably not - don't get me wrong, it looks like a great coaster and something that I would definitely try to ride if I was in Poland, it's just not something that makes me go "I want to go to Poland now" (that said, Energylandia's hyper does, and probably would if it was made by Vekoma too).

Fair enough

Edited July 3, 2017 by Luke

[Slick]

5 hours ago, AlexB said:

(Tokyo DisneySea is the only Disney park that doesn't have a Vekoma coaster - instead it has a TOGO )

.....

You are right, however - in saying that Disney don't appear to have any problems with their Vekoma coasters. I won't begin to try and explain that though.

Tokyo DisneySea has two roller-coasters, a Togo kid's coaster (in place of a Vekoma roller-skater) and an odd Intamin looping coaster that's a sort of clone of another in Disneyland Paris.

I think it's worth keeping in mind that you can generalise brands like car-makers to a certain point (one's rough, one's smooth, one's reliable) but the reality is far more complex. With any project this large, this complicated and subject to differing local regulations (both government and company) means that every single install is unique. Let's just say that again:

Every. Single. Install. Is. Unique.

There may be common threads in design, parts and components or track layout, but even in Australia, off the shelf models of some notable rides differ greatly to their overseas counterparts for various reasons. Added to this, these days many of the same ride companies rely on the same third parties like Stengel or Ride Centreline to do a range of engineering, G-force calculations and even ride design. In which case, it really comes down to the client, the brief, budget and who's behind the project, and if that all comes together in harmony. And that human variable alone is enough to suggest that simply looking at stats and going "they suck but these guys rule" is at best causation through correlation.

[XxMrYoshixX]

9 hours ago, AlexB said:

For simplicity sake, i've attributed the Dynamic Technologies re-tracking of rides like Space and Big Thunder to WED as the original manufacturer.

Certainly Vekoma have built a lot of Disney coasters, but I wouldn't say "nearly every" coaster.

 

Most of the WED designed coasters that sit in Disney Parks can be credited to Arrow. Arrow built the track for the first two Space Mountains, the first two Big Thunder Mountains, along with Matterhorn and a majority of the original Disneyland and WDW attractions. 

When I used to read TPR a long time ago, I recall Robb Alvey saying this on a topic that discussed why Disney generally goes with Vekoma for coasters:

Quote

Disney needs to work with someone that will allow them to modify control systems, blocking system, and build a ride around their needs. Vekoma seems to be very accommodating when it comes to this.

I've been told that B&M will not work with Disney because Disney has more lawyers than B&M has employees. 

However, they haven't built nearly every coaster at a Disney park. The Slinky Dog coaster that is being built at the moment is a Mack family coaster, for example. Intamin built a coaster for Disney as recent as five years ago, when they did RC Racer for Disneyland Hong Kong.

Disney has even got Togo to build a coaster for Tokyo DisneySea, which is hard to believe why they did that as Cedar Fair was suing them for what happened with Windjammer long before DisneySea opened.

Edited July 3, 2017 by XxMrYoshixX

[DaptoFunlandGuy]

11 hours ago, Slick said:

Tokyo DisneySea has two roller-coasters, a Togo kid's coaster (in place of a Vekoma roller-skater) and an odd Intamin looping coaster that's a sort of clone of another in Disneyland Paris.

Yep - did know this - i wasn't saying TDS only had a togo - just that it was the only Disney park that didn't have a Vekoma. I actually loaded every RCDB page for Disney parks and verified each manufacturer - so the stats I posted above are all based off RCDB pages as of yesterday.

(And the TDS intamin was included in the Intamin stats)

[Jay Jay The Jet Plane]

Just going to give people the heads up if anyone is planning to visit Dreamworld today

The park is currently experiencing a power outage with Buzzsaw, Giant Drop and Motorcoaster, these rides are apparently not going to reopen for the rest of the day  

Dreamworks, ABC Kids and Hot Wheels are not affected by this outage as I'm fully aware 

UPDATE:

Patk has lost all power and guests are not being let into the park until a generator arrives on site 

Edited July 4, 2017 by Adventures With JWorld

[rappa]

OMG you two re:Disney

I should know better than to post something general and not target the overly pedantic points that will be made by people who feel the need to correct EVERYTHING even if it doesn't relate to the topic at hand. 

 

What I SHOULD have posted is that "Vekoma has built more Disney coasters than anyone and there are a lot of them"

Honestky I think you can say Vekoma and Arrow have built most of them. The two retracting jobs don't count because it's clear Disney is just using them as a fabrication company. 

Im not even going to entertain the Intamin half pipes. Same goes for the ONE Mack coaster or the Spinning mouses because they are just off the shelf bought rides. 

So then you have what? Two Intamin clones, which clearly the second is only because they had the first, and then California Scremin which is likely Intamin because they wanted to launch technology at the time. 

 

My point WAS that Vekoma can make a good coaster if given the tools to do so. That's all, should have known better. 

 

Please dont feel the need to get into a "I know more about Disney" pissing match with me. 

[Slick]

2 hours ago, AlexB said:

Yep - did know this - i wasn't saying TDS only had a togo - just that it was the only Disney park that didn't have a Vekoma. I actually loaded every RCDB page for Disney parks and verified each manufacturer - so the stats I posted above are all based off RCDB pages as of yesterday.

(And the TDS intamin was included in the Intamin stats)

If we're being picky on semantics (& I get picked apart for a lot less) than instead of writing "instead it has a TOGO" write "instead it has a TOGO & Intamin."

Will back @djrappa - him and @joz reign supreme on Disney knowledge. #1minute17seconds

Getting back on topic - everything else what I said is on point.