Thunder River Rapids Incident Coronial Inquest

[themeparkaddict]

Seems funny that we have conflicting stories. Its as if those maintenance dudes and ride ops who currently work there had a meeting the day before discussing “so what are we going to say to make our stories match and dreamworld look good”

[rappa]

That ride was a ticking time bomb. It doesn't even take someone educated in control systems, human machine interfaces or ergonomics to see how fatally flawed that cluster f&ck of a control system was!

[webslave]

41 minutes ago, djrappa said:

That ride was a ticking time bomb. It doesn't even take someone educated in control systems, human machine interfaces or ergonomics to see how fatally flawed that cluster f&ck of a control system was!

In which case, actions of the park not withstanding, how did it keep getting inspected and re-certified?

[red dragin]

Internal certification until just before (from what was said yesterday I think?). 

If it passed the year before, and nothing had changed, you wouldn't want to be the person that said "hey boss, need a couple mil to upgrade that ride that's run and been passed OK for years" 

[dbo121]

1 hour ago, webslave said:

In which case, actions of the park not withstanding, how did it keep getting inspected and re-certified?

Externally as well as internally 

[Brad2912]

I’m sure I’m not the only one that has noticed that there has been a “turn” in the narrative & story since the witnesses who continue to work for DW take the stand. 

It reeks to me of DW’s lawyers trying to shift the entire blame to the 2 operators. 

Well I’m sorry but that doesn’t fly with me at all. 

The senior ride Manager believes the e-stop wasn’t pressed at all ?  Did the police investigator not give timings for when it was pushed in terms of reaction time to the incident just last week?

 

[dbo121]

2 hours ago, themeparkaddict said:

Seems funny that we have conflicting stories. Its as if those maintenance dudes and ride ops who currently work there had a meeting the day before discussing “so what are we going to say to make our stories match and dreamworld look good”

Does it!  Individuals involved all have received external legal advice. Trying to all protect themselves. One would expect the operator and trainer to contradict. 

I’m interested to hear if the operator was told about that unload estop.

the overarching factor remains the outdated system and the fact it internally and externally got signed off especially without recommendations being implemented 

 

 

5 minutes ago, Brad2912 said:

 

The senior ride Manager believes the e-stop wasn’t pressed at all ?  Did the police investigator not give timings for when it was pushed in terms of reaction time to the incident just last week?

 

Logic suggests at least after collision .otherwise would not have happened. When exactly after the damage would have been done already sadly .

[DaptoFunlandGuy]

12 hours ago, Jdude95 said:

I believe the lanyard e-stop is more used for when the ride begins to move again on the off chance that the impatient guests in the raft decided to stand up or something stupid

Yeah I figured that - it was a bit tongue in cheek. That said, one would hope that before they re-started the conveyor, they'd be communicating with the operator on the lift, advising of startup, so that they could advise the guests onboard to remain seated as it was about to restart... i mean who is gonna be stupid enough to stand up when they've just been told the restart is gonna get them off the ride in seconds?

12 hours ago, dbo121 said:

At least longer training.

But most people should understand 2 buttons in 90 minutes?

I doubt making the training longer would have had any benefit. Yesterday the trainer stated that the training went longer than scheduled, and that the trainer stays with the new operator until they are confident they have it right. Everyone learns differently. And yes - it's two buttons but it's also knowing what to do when things aren't right, and what things to look out for...

10 hours ago, red dragin said:

If it passed the year before, and nothing had changed, you wouldn't want to be the person that said "hey boss, need a couple mil to upgrade that ride that's run and been passed OK for years" 

You mean like Scooby?

[joz]

It reads a lot like they thought they didn't need to fix anything because if there was a problem ops would just shut it down, but ops staff weren't properly informed of the danger of the ride and the training regime was inadequate.

 

One thing you have to be wary of with training is overloading too much information on someone; people can only learn so much in a short space of time. In this case either too much info was crammed in too quickly, or some stuff was left out to be revisited later once the new staff member was more at ease with the ride. Either way the training was sub par.

[New display name]

2 hours ago, AlexB said:

You mean like Scooby?

You can't expect a CEO to sign off on major upgrades if he doesn’t understand what a theme park is and how a theme park works.   All you need is look at Craig Davidson history of employment to understand that he was not employed for his theme park knowledge.

     Various roles. (Southern Pacific Hotel Corporation) worked his way up.

     Resident Manager (Ayes Rock Resort)

     Assistant General Manager (Hamilton Island)

     Resort General Manager (Hamilton Island)

     Executive General Manager (Voyages Hotels)

     Executive General Manager (Hamilton Island)

     Chief Operating Officer (Anthogy)

     Chief Executive Officer(Anthlogy) (yes this is correct

     General Manager Destination Development (Tourism Australia)

     Chief Executive Officer (Ardent Themeparks)

 

This is the hole that Ardent has dug.   Ardent don’t believe it require years of knowledge and experience to run a theme park.  Ardent running of DW reminds me of a scene out of the original Jurassic Park movie. 

Dr. Ian Malcolm: “If I may... Um, I'll tell you the problem with the scientific power that you're using here, it didn't require any discipline to attain it. You read what others had done and you took the next step. You didn't earn the knowledge for yourselves, so you don't take any responsibility for it. You stood on the shoulders of geniuses to accomplish something as fast as you could, and before you even knew what you had, you patented it, and packaged it, and slapped it on a plastic lunchbox, and now”.

Ardent purchased a product they have no knowledge on.

Ardent doesn’t employ a CEO who has theme park knowledge.

Ardent employ a CEO who only knows how to sell the product.

Ardent don’t know what keeps the product going.

 

This is like going to my doctor and asking him if my car needs an oil change.

Crazy, crazy, crazy.

 

Proof what skeet says is true.  

Brock's Garage is out of place within DW.

Fun Patrol, telling you to have fun is not fun.

Remove steam trains for shitty diesel trains.

Put a roof on a flume ride.

MDMC,  MDMC, MDMC

Fill the park with cheap ass spin and spews.

Does Skeet need to go on?

All very bad non-theme park "knowledge" decisions. 

All these decision has destroyed the DW product but hey Ardent don't even know what product they are selling.

 

 

 

Edited June 27, 2018 by Skeeta

[rappa]

Thing is something can pass (unless of course it's a Dreamworld safety audio 😛 ) and be bare minimum. Should we running things at bare minimum safety levels to save some dollars when standard industry practices are available at a much higher level? No way!

 

It's very very clear here there were major KNOWN shortcomings in the design, modifications and control systems of that ride, and that even the high level staff seem to have confusion over what did what. That's not ok.

The current employees are 100% on the Kool-Aid and have been coached that is clear. You simply CANNOT blame the 2 ride operators in any way for the simple fact that ride operators (no matter how senior as they are still low level front line employees) should never be put into a situation to make literal life or death decisions. The systems should be in place to take those decisions off them.

They weren't.

 

They modified the ride to remove the turntable - first thing that allowed the accident to happen

They failed to put adequate steps in place to upgrade to a block type system - 2nd thing that allowed the accident to happen

They added rails to stabilise the rafts if water dropped - 3rd thing

They removed slats to grip the rafts better - 4th thing

They removed an 'annoying' alarm - 5th thing

They ignored recommendations to upgrade the controls - 6th thing

etc

etc

etc

 

Many of these things were band aid fixes to solve one problem whilst creating another. ANYONE who wants to defend the actions of Dreamworld management in light of all of these things simply is not bing objective I'm sorry.

[MacPark]

12 hours ago, Brad2912 said:

I’m sure I’m not the only one that has noticed that there has been a “turn” in the narrative & story since the witnesses who continue to work for DW take the stand. 

It reeks to me of DW’s lawyers trying to shift the entire blame to the 2 operators. 

 

 

They are just getting facts from all angles. I dont think anyone's trying to shift any blame they will do this with everyone at all levels in this same way. Its just how courts work. I was once a witness to an armed hold up and had to go to court a few times and was grilled on the most ridiculous aspects of the robbery to the point I felt like I was on trial for the crime and  liar and yet I was a victim and innocent bystander just giving facts. Its just how courts work.

[Brad2912]

You don’t think anyone is shifting blame? Haha

The ride manager stressed yesterday that all operators were fully trained on all emergency/estop procedures, including stressing she spend extra time with the junior ride off in training and in her opinion they didn’t even press the emergency stop button “at any time”. 

If that’s not saying “it’s their fault. They could have stopped this”  I don’t know what is. She made no acknowlgement of an unsafe or lacking safety system whatsoever, whereas all the non-DW employees last week mentioned this as an overriding theme. 

DW Spin. That’s all it is. 

[MacPark]

well if they believe its true they are going to say that arent they?  Its an inquiry. Do you think the ride managers going to lie in court about staff being trained or do you believe the ride manager thought the staff were trained? The point is to find out all the facts. Its not a blame game at this point. Real courts not like on TV.

Edited June 27, 2018 by MacPark

[dbo121]

Logic also suggests that the persons effected by this will chase ardent or the governing body. They won’t bother chasing the operators anyhow no matter the inquest outcomes. Not likely to receive any material compensation from them . Best you could do is bankrupt them but what’s the point. 

 

Edited June 27, 2018 by dbo121

[joz]

1 hour ago, Skeeta said:

You can't expect a CEO to sign off on major upgrades if he doesn’t understand what a theme park is and how a theme park works.  

Said CEO insisted Eureka Mountain would be good to reopen mere weeks before it was demolished.

[New display name]

28 minutes ago, MacPark said:

well if they believe its true they are going to say that arent they?  Its an inquiry. Do you think the ride managers going to lie in court about staff being trained or do you believe the ride manager thought the staff were trained? The point is to find out all the facts. Its not a blame game at this point. Real courts not like on TV.

@Brad2912and I were only discussing last night this is the longest episode of Judge Judy we’ve ever seen.  Silly us.😛

6 minutes ago, joz said:

Said CEO insisted Eureka Mountain would be good to reopen mere weeks before it was demolished.

Said CEO who replaced IMAX theatre with a run of the mill cinema.

(To be fair I don't know which CEO it was but it was an Ardent CEO)

Edited June 27, 2018 by Skeeta

[Coasters R Us]

I wish @Jdude95 was reporting from the inquest today. The Twitter feeds are nowhere near as informative as his/her notes and half the journos don't even make sense. 

[red dragin]

4 hours ago, AlexB said:

You mean like Scooby?

Wasn't Scooby picked up in the post incident audit?

And given the time to design the new Scooby experience, Movie World was clearly going to stick with the status quo.

[razza1987]

3 minutes ago, red dragin said:

Wasn't Scooby picked up in the post incident audit?

And given the time to design the new Scooby experience, Movie World was clearly going to stick with the status quo.

What happened with Scooby? I must have missed that 

[themeparkaddict]

1 minute ago, razza1987 said:

What happened with Scooby? I must have missed that 

That was when the themeing was removed

[Brad2912]

My understanding is the set builds were found to be a fire hazard or in breach of an updated fire code, hence their hastily removal 

[RossL]

It is pretty clear that each witness has their own best interest in some ways as well.  Operators blame management and management blames operators.  It is a natural conflict.

How Craig Davidson is still CEO is a very good question though.

[pushbutton]

1 hour ago, Skeeta said:

@Brad2912and I were only discussing last night this is the longest episode of Judge Judy we’ve ever seen.  Silly us.😛

Said CEO who replaced IMAX theatre with a run of the mill cinema.

(To be fair I don't know which CEO it was but it was an Ardent CEO)

To be fair he said he thought it was a possibility worth investigating. It was investigated, and very quickly found not to be a possibility after all.

Having seen it after the mountain was removed, it was immediately very obvious to me without any technical knowledge whatsoever, that it was way beyond repair!

[dbo121]

1 hour ago, Coasters R Us said:

I wish @Jdude95 was reporting from the inquest today. The Twitter feeds are nowhere near as informative as his/her notes and half the journos don't even make sense. 

Agreed. Take a sick day And get back to it!