No capacity issues at Dreamworld?

[Richard]

I'll refer you to a TR recently posted at CoasterBuzz. The person who posted it is a German coaster enthusiast providing an honest opinion of their day at Dreamworld. You'll see that on the whole they enjoyed the park experience, but left as I suspect many guests do, annoyed at the capacity and needlessly long queue lengths. http://www.coasterbuzz.com/forum.aspx?mode...d&TopicID=38964 Quotes to note:

• So we went to Whipe Out, a Top Spin type ride. We only had one load ahead of us, still we waited about 15 minutes.
• [Cyclone] had a dispatch rate of about one ride every 10-15 minutes.
• We calculated that we had about three trains ahead of us. Our wait amounted to 45 minutes. (Cyclone)
• One dispatch every 5 minutes. (On Giant Drop's capacity.)
• Dreamworld badly needs to work on those dispatch times. It might not have been such a busy day (July 19th), but the unnecessary wait definitely spoils part of the fun.

Also note that below, another foreign member posted much the same comments regarding their own experiences with Dreamworld earlier this year. To those "defending" Dreamworld on this one. I don't hate Dreamworld or have any sort of grudges. As I've said countless times before it's the park that sparked my interest in theme parks and I really have nothing but respect for the park. This is an issue that is seemingly oblivious to Dreamworld, or one that they think about much differently from myself. I want nothing more than for it to somehow be resolved. There is a problem, and I honestly believe it can be fixed.

[Schwarz_freak]

I think Dreamworld uses it's slow timeing to get people to come back the next day and finish going on the rides.

[GoGoBoy]

Apparantley the operator on Cyclone did not check the lap bars. That is unacceptable! It is one thing to have bad capacity but it is another to let safety standards drop. That staff member needs to be fired. I also can't believe they only have 1 staff member on their major roller coaster... even if it is only in off peak

[Flea]

^ Restraints were not checked on Corkscrew on my last trip up to QLD (June) either. This was done by various ride ops on various days. On some occassions riders were told to push the restraint forward as the operator walked past and locked them into place. Cyclone however was a different story. There were 3 ride ops, 2 of which checked restraints while the other sat in the control panel booth. They also managed to get trains out every 5 minutes.

[dr_teeth]

Hi there recently went to dreamworld for the first time. I have to say that dw is an excellent park in the way it is presented and maintained. There is also plenty more to do then compared to a park like wonderland. However both my friend who i went with and myself were annoyed with the long waits on almost every attraction that we went on. We spent 2 days up there (a thurs & fri) and the only time we got on anything without a wait was when we were in the park early on the first day before anythign was in operation. Both my friend and i also suspected that perhaps during weekdays when the park is not a full of people as on the weekend that perhaps rides are deliberately run at a slower rate. The other thing that annoyed us was that on rides such as the giant drop there was only one operator there all day and they would let thru around 3 - 4 groups of people into the tunnel. The days we were there only one side of this ride was working and this meant that for the line outside the tunnel it was like 20 mins or so before the line moved again. I dunno about the rest of you guys but i think i would perfer to be in a line that moved a little every few minutes rather then a line that moved up a bit further but only once every half hour or so. My thoughts when i was there was that i liked the way wonderland lines progressed on rides such as the demon, where you just got in line then got behind a gate when you eventually got to the station. this of course works well with only one operator (a second maybe on busy days to check the lap bars) With dreamworld for rides like the cyclone you have to wait in line in a place that isnt even near the station. The operation has to walk out from where they are after everyone has left the train let a few people thru to walk the last 50 mtrs or so to the station. The operatior then walks back to the control booth lets you thru the last set of doors and then you get in and your bars a checked. Just for me this seems like a complete waste of time...people shoudl be allowed to line up at the last set of doors and this would remove the need for the operator to have to walk around letting people thru. Im guessing this system does work well on days where rides like the cyclone have more then one person operating them but like on the days we were there it really sucks

[Slick]

Sorry, but I read about a couple of lines. The part where he quotes "Astonishingly, our restraints were not checked manually". This is just simply not true. Dreamworld management enforces that ride-ops must check restraints before any despatches are made and any level 3 ride-op (all of which I know) would never risk their career like that. Please, guys, can you please tell me some more experiences about poor capacity times as I will be talking to administration this weekend.

[Richard]

That's right, park policy is to check restraints, so this guy must be lying. It'd be a great world if everyone did everything by the book. I agree it sounds odd, but why doubt the guy? I know I've had the same thing happen on rides at Dreamworld in the past.

[GoGoBoy]

I guess the simple truth is that some employees are just idiots. Even in a safety critical position like theme park operations they let their total and utter laziness get the better of them. Hey, I'm also a lazy person but when it comes down to being responsible for peoples lives I know I'd do the right thing. I'm talking about a small minority of staff here

[willsy]

I remember in Januray this year on the GD. The guy didnt check the restaints. He just looked at them from the control area and sent us up, Bloody stupdi of him.

[BigMal]

u want to talk bad safety. last time i went to movieworld the lap bar would not secure on the wild wild west the words out of the ride op were "dont worry bout it" i almost fell out of the ride coming down the drop. never again will i be going to movieworld. o and there is ALWAYS two ops on cyclone. u just dont see one of them.

[Daniel]

Your argument is so unconvincing when it looks like that mate. If you felt unsafe why did you stay on it and why didn't you report it? Community Guidelines. Risk their career Slick? Come on old son... How can you call it a career? How can you not check the harnesses? How could you ever live with yourself if something happened? It will be criminal negligence if something happened and it was ever proven. I just don't understand idiots like that.

[joz]

Wild West's restraints serve the purpose of stopping people getting out of the boats mid ride, so keep your mouth shut BigMal. Its a redundent saftey feature, exactly like the one on Looney Tunes River Ride. Don't give me this "It didn't engage and I felt in danger!!!" crap Oh yeah, where is the second op on Cyclone?

[Ian]

Big Mal you comments seem false, I know for a fact if the seatbealts arent locked the op gets a verbal warnring from the supervisor of the ride. And the only time Dreamworld has 2 ops is durning hoildays, you were probably there as they were swapping lunch breaks. Also myself , Rich and Joz are not just pro SW, MW we like DW but any park in the world has good load times compared to DW and the reason is DW wont employee the right amount of workers for the bigger rides. It's all about saving money, so sad.

[Nebuchanezzar]

WHOA, talk about picking on a certain person if I may say so myself... It seems to me, that Dreamworld must be below standards of parks about this site located elsewhere around the world, either that, or this person is comparing this theme park to much bigger places and places with a lot more money (such as SFMM). They also didnt really point out too many of the good points in the park. And another thing, this person was from Germany, that explains everything really, they got heaps cool staff working over there. Oh, and another thing, why did they point out that the two people working on TOT were teens, whats the problem with that?

[joz]

I dunno about that, Dreamworld is quite above SFMM operationally isn't it? I don't see what difference this person being from Germany makes. The guy didn't really say anything bad about the park, just its capacity. He also didn't seem to negative about the place: "..yah - sorry about that I don't mean to damage anyones business. There's also good things to say, it's in general a rather cleanly park and I guess the kids can have a lot of fun with the nickelodeon character themed portions. The animal stuff is fun, too - at least it makes getting to the animals a lot easier, and I would probably never have seen a real Koala let alone a Tasmanian Devil otherwise." Not sure what the highschool age thing has to do with anything either, and suspect he might've been seeing things since the 19th was a Monday and Highschool age kids would've been at school.

[Nebuchanezzar]

Yeah, I beleive it is what with all the "SFMM is crap" remarks you see at theme park websites, regardless, it just seemed like a negative more than positive review to me, and I didnt check out all the comments underneath it, I did after you posted that quote that I had no idea where it came from. Anyway...yeah

[Richard]

In terms of a park, Dreamworld is a much nicer place to be. SFMM was like a ghost town when I was there, where literally the only rides operating were 13 coasters, two log flumes, a river rapids and some upcharge things. No flat rides, transport rides, and certainly no non-ride entertainment. However, in terms of capacity, SFMM surely do have Dreamworld beaten. Aside from X and Goliath, all coasters were running multiple trains (and given our visit was in the off-season and both these rides now have more trains, I'd put it down to "annual maintenance") and operators were certainly more keen on getting people moving through than Dreamworld's are.

[Nebuchanezzar]

Whoa, Riddlers was running more than one train, now thats the first time I've heard that poor Six Flags...

[Bussy]

I know for a fact if the seatbealts arent locked the op gets a verbal warnring from the supervisor of the ride.

Unfortunately the truth here is that disciplinary action only takes place in a small number of safety breaches. Why? Due to the fact that probably 80 or 90% of safety breaches go un-reported. I know that at Wonderland there were many breaches that went un-disciplined because the supervisor was never told. You wouldn't believe some of the 'old school' operating procedure that happened at Wonderland. Fortunately in the last couple of years it was open there was a big crack down on operating procedures, but again things happened and went unreported and there for no punishment was handed out. "The Bus is now leaving for Punishment Point, NSW"

[BigMal]

Your argument is so unconvincing when it looks like that mate.  If you felt unsafe why did you stay on it and why didn't you report it? Community Guidelines. Risk their career Slick?  Come on old son...  How can you call it a career? How can you not check the harnesses?  How could you ever live with yourself if something happened?  It will be criminal negligence if something happened and it was ever proven.  I just don't understand idiots like that.

i did report it actually, but because i was there with work it had to go through different channels because ie my boss > to her boss > sales and marketing > movieworld sales and marketing and then on up the ride.

[DaptoFunlandGuy]

*deposits 2 cents* Ok. ive only been to SW once (another planned in september) but i will back Richard up that the capacities are shocking. On to this Review from the overseas visitor - his statements are ringing true to my ears, but i think some things he may have overlooked, or considered differently when compared to parks in germany. On to the topic of ride restraints, while i was there - there were at the time, 3 ops on TOT including the queue loader, 3 ops on GD, 1 on cyclone and one on thunderbolt. my restraints were not checked on thunderbolt. cyclone, the op walked past and tapped each restraint, but did not grip it or attempt to lift it up. TOT - no checking at all, and GD had sufficient checks. I also noted that Reptar had 2 ops, and neither checked the restraints. the funniest thing in regards to restraints that i noted was that on the mine train ride (whatever its called) you practically needed a shoehorn to get us all into the carriages, however they would not despatch until the seatbelts were done up... i mean you could not have gotten out of the car unless you physically made an effort to do so, and yet... the only coaster where there were sufficient safety checks. While they didnt check our bars, i made sure ours were locked in well enough so i had no problems with it... but anyway... Slick i hear what you're saying about the mandatory checks but i think laziness, particularly on a quiet day is becoming more and more apparent in all theme parks.