Gav

But the thing I'm questioning is, out of everything CW could have spent $28 mil on, a 2nd mega coaster in a row was deemed the thing that would deliver the best return on investment?

Thingssrrm to have moved on a little bit in terms of the hot discussion topics at SFMM, but I got to ride GL;FF about a week ago. I had only 2 hours in the park.... I did most of my theme parking in Orlando and this SFMM visit was squeezed in. The queue was 1 hour, so only one ride. I also finally got to ride Ninja, 3rd attempt and It was open this time, but back to the coaster... Basically, it's mental. When I rode it was me on one side, and 2 full grown blokes on the other... I'm about 63 kg so the car was very unbalanced... On the lift it spun so I was facing the sky. The ride itself consisted of flinging between very strong positive and negative gs, except it was at odd angles and you'd feel the blood rush to your cheeks etc... I got about 4 flips in since It did extra ones on the mcbr. At the end of the ride the correcting device struggled a bit to turn us upright... Whenever it pushed down it was causing us to invert a bit. It would then stop, try again, and then do the same thing... Eventually it did it correctly, but I guess it's the operational tradeoff. If they balanced each car this process would be quicker, but the ride would be less flippy for riders. I would also agree with a post made a while ago by Shark Tums... It looks short, but really, I doubt most could cope with a ride of this nature being any longer. Overall, it was flipping awesome and more parks need these. PS I thought the theming inside looked crap, but the rest of DC universe looked decent.

The ride looks awesome, but I reckon the Universal Creative guys have taken a fair bit of inspiration from themselves...The whole sequence of being towed through the air is very reminiscent of Spidermans final scene with the Green Goblin.

Quick question, but I'm coming to SFMM on the 10th of August, but will be coming direct from LAX via a train to Santa Clarita and a taxi...Does SFMM have storage for large items...I'm talking a soft travellers backpack 27x12x12 inches. I'm flying out Saturday, so I doubt I'd get a response from guest relations in time. Would there be any issues taking such a thing into the park anyway?

Yes. Theme Park Review. Click "park index" at the top of the page. Failing that, the manufacturers site tends to be a good place to see all the designs in one spot: http://data.sphosting.ch/Intamin/Media/ZacSpin%20Coaster/ZacSpin%20Coaster.pdf Since I last looked it appears they have come out with a 50m high version, which basically looks like a GL/Insane clone, but with some sort of malignant lump at the top....Actually, that whole new design resembles Mr Blobby actually. Out of interest, where else does it tend to happen on the layout? I mean, for most riders the flip on that final sharp hump is a given, but are there any other 'sweet spots'?

Must've missed this. Got a link, or a scan? In other news, there was a story about Maurer Sohneon German TV, and towards the end is a shot of an X-Car with the Dreamworld logo: http://www.parkz.com.au/forums/index.php?app=core&module=attach&section=attach&attach_rel_module=post&attach_id=3256

Anyone find it kind of oddly comforting that Six Flags seem to have gone back to their early 2000s way of theming....Generic structures with Super Hero logos stuck on.

On another board I heard the term "Shoehorn" suggested as a name...I reckon its a good one, a single word that hits the nail on the head, and it doesn't have the pointless "Roll" word at the end.

To be fair though, the water park isn't included in the admission (2nd gate)...It's as much a part of Dreamworld as Hurricane Harbour is a part of SFMM. Absolute bummer that both Tornado and Aqualoop were shut, since they are the parks #1 & #2 rides respectively. Motocoaster doesn't rate a mention

So did you guys add the beetroot to the burger? Wouldn't be an Australian Burger without beetroot (or egg). The Redback at Aussie World sort of snuck up on us...I only discovered it was coming when I was driving past the park and saw the components in the car park...A flume is reportedly coming later in the year too. I'll have to head up and give it a go over the Easter break. And while I'm here (Since nobody has asked)...How did you rate Motocoaster, and how was it compared to Jet Rescue? Aside from the pair in the UK, Australia originally had 4 of these mouses, at the capital city royal shows (Sydney, Melbourne, Perth and Adelaide) Sydneys got moved to Luna Park, Perths is at Aussie World, Adelaide's got moved to the Newcastle showgrounds and only operates a few days per year, and Melbourne's is believed to be in Indonesia. Sydney's is the only one I've yet to pick up....

TOT has been launching backwards since September...We were first! The also built a tunnel around the launch track, added some lighting effects, and did some bits of extra theming in the queue too.

^Awesome work with respect to getting POVs up as you go. Very high quality...Our parks are quite restrictive when it comes to filming, nor do we really have enthusiast events where this can take place, so the only POVs out there tend to be sneaky ones on YT done with mobile phone camera. Good to have some now...Thanks. How did you find Scooby with the lights off?

As an Australian, I find it hillarious that you are here for one day, and manage to spot a crapload of 'non politically correct' theming that has often been largley unnoticed by local enthusiasts I just realised, TPR would've arrived on the day of the New South Wales state election, hence all the placards. But haha, yeah, The Sex Party surfaced just before the last federal election, and in fact scored a higher percentage of the vote than the "Family First party" (Ultra conservative) They came very close to winning a seat in the senate, despite doing little advertising.

Agree with this. I always take buses/trains to theme parks in preference to driving, so why should a portion of my admission fees go into paying for "free" parking. It's not just maintenance costs to be considered, parking is space intensive....the need to supply parking basically doubles the amount of land the park needs to use to operate, and worse still, the full amount of land needs to be set aside even though it probably only gets fully utilised on the handful of capacity crowd days per year. This land has taxes associated with it, and there's a big opportunity cost associated with it. If they didn't have to provide hectares of ashphalt, they could be building more productive stuff on the land like hotels, 'citywalks', second gates etc. Unfortunatley, accomodating cars takes a lot of space and money, and that cost has to be borne by someone.

It took about 9 seconds to load fully for me, with no rendering errors at all. Im running FF 3.6.13 on Windows 7.

I see what you did there Robb.

^Ouch indeed. So to all you people saying "Oh, but I like my cheese hot", are you honestly saying that you'd eat cheese at that temperature?

Perhaps someone who has operated one of these rides can answer, but what is it that inherently makes flyers "slow loading"? I've never understood it. I've been on both Air and Tatsu, and in terms of boarding, they were no more complex than an Inverted coaster. Sure, it does take an extra few seconds per cycle to lift (and lower) the seats, but on the other hand there are no seatbelts to check....

Personally, out of all the approaches to dealing with loose items my favourite has been the method used at Alton & Thorpe on newer rides...Providing a cloakroom. The way I see it is if you're going to pay the wages to have a lоcker goon out the front of the ride, you're better off just moving them to a cloakroom and have them perform a positive function with respect to guest services. I'm also a big fan of the Disney method, just let people take everything with them, even on looping coasters. Granted, I haven't been to a Universal park for a while, but 1 hour is the standard time they allow right? (Only used them on RoTM at USH, and I was able to use them for free just fine within the hour) A quick search on google says the Potter ride has 75 minute lоckers. Do they vary it on busier days to allow for longer queues and breakdowns? (On that last point, surely yes right?...I doubt the lоcker attendants would be able to keep up with hundreds of people exiting the ride every few minutes on a busy day, needing to be manually unlocked because they weren't able to get back in time) If the time frames Universal allow for usage are reasonable to allow them to be truly free then I see their approach as fine, and common sense. They do indeed sting you if you overstay the time limit (And that is a necessary evil to stop people using them as a personal all day lоcker), but can anybody point me to widespread stories of people being caught out in this manner? Drinking fountains/bottles, and buses/trains/staying at a hotel within walking distance. Never paid to park at a park in my life. I think the average enthusiast (And as an extension of that, passholders who would get to know their parks polices) has no excuse for not having some sort of strategy for visiting a park with minimal crap, so they can hardly complain. Problem is, the vast majority of visitors aren't in this category. As far as they are concerned, they are going on a day out, so it's kind of natural they will fill a bag with sunscreen, drink bottles, ponchos for water rides, cameras/camcorders etc without really thinking about it, as you would naturally expect people to do in preparation for a long day outdoors. It's easy to make fun of people who carry excessive amounts of stuff , but I think it's hardly unreasonable for people to be taking even a small daypack worth of stuff. "Think like a guest" basically. The notion that visitors in general would be "trained" over time not to bring stuff doesn't really hold because every theme park is different. One day they might visit a Disney or Universal park and have their loose items well catered for, then some time later they might be at a SF park and face an entirely different set of rules. I think it's really a perceptual thing, since it "feels" like you are paying to ride each ride when you've already paid admission to be able to do this in an unlimited manner (And the reason they came in the first place) and as they progressively ride throughout the day it would feel as if they are being chipped away at. The point about buying a drink bottle, and then having to store it every time would be another perceptual thing. Again, for enthusiasts can sort of take a step back and see $1 is not a lot of money in the scheme of things. But the bulk of guests, who are the main ones potentially whining/arguing, it's just another added expense that they'd rather not pay. That's the thing management need to be aware of with polices like this....The perception rather than the way they want to spin it. I'm all for methods which ensure guests are free of items when they board the ride....capacity FTW! But it does need to be as guest friendly as possible, and I don't think the approach of charging to store items is in fact the best way.

Thanks for this mate...So presumably the ride has plenty of good places to view from inside the park?....That close up shot you got of it coming over the airtime hill is a good one. Echoing everyone else here, but I'm looking forward to seeing the other stuff too (But hey, who can blame Rossa for getting the limelight). I was pretty surprised to find out that the place has a Spiderman style 4D dark ride, so it'd be interesting to hear some 'spoilers' for that one!

I'm going to say the reason this type of coaster hasn't really taken off is because these days they're more likely to just go and build a short full circuit launcher rather than a shuttle coaster, and subsequently be able to run two trains easily without the need for a sliding station. If you look at some of the shorter accelerators (Eg Stealth) the amount of trackage is comparable to rides Mr Freeze anyway.

But they're nothing alike...Even looking at both for a few seconds shows a ton of differences. -Insanes support structure looks like a a giant "W", the 50/120 model is more of an "A" shape. -Insane has a curved lift, the 50/210 is straight. -Insane has a big long straight bit on the top level, 50/120 doesn't. -Insane has a little airtime hill on the next level down, 50/120 doesn't. -Insane has an MCBR on the next level down, 50/120 doesn't. -The curves on insane are more stretched out horizontally and are irregularly shaped, 50/120 the curves are all pretty proportional/ the same shape. This bit has me interested. Notice how in the vid it shows the car doing a full somersault right on the first drop. Anyone reckon it's possible this version will somehow regulate the spin so it can do this reliably? Normally the cars don't really flip properly until they are forced over the sharp hump at the end (And even then, on a number of the POVs of insane i've seen it doesn't even make the full flip)

I had a go at TOT2 today so I guess I can clear up some questions. -No, the backwards launch does not have any impact on your neck or any comfort issues. -In fact the backwards launch was probably the best improvement, though I think that was mostly due to the tunnel and lights. It felt like it went on forever. Hopefully SFMM will do this. -The face first drop was pretty cool, but not a massive improvement on the experience overall IMO. -In terms of how high it goes up the tower, well pretty much as high as before actually. Definitley not 3.3m (10ft) from the top. On my visit it was reaching the O in "TOWER OF TERROR" See these pics for what I mean: http://www.rcdb.com/m/1127.htm?p=3025 http://www.rcdb.com/m/1127.htm?p=3023 In plain English, about halfway between the top of the curve to vertical and the top of the tower. (Hehe, you guys measure launch heights by structural levels, we do it by the letters on the side) -The ride runs a bit quieter now. -The harnesses have a thing I've never seen before. The seatbelt buckle has a little electronic thing on it that physically prevents it being unbuckled until the main harness is released at the end of the ride. Guess its comforting to have that extra level of safety.

I thought Dreamland was at Margate in England. Wonderland Sydney you mean Unless the park proposal had a massive surge of local unpopularity the Liberals were willing to exploit then I'm not sure that would be the case. Besides, this is a private sector project....The NSW government is just 'endorsing' it. I think this is the key. The Wet n Wild name is fairly iconic in Australia, and VRTP do know how to run water parks well, and the product they are planning looks pretty engaging (PS, everyone should check out http://www.wetnwildsydney.com.au/pdf/WNW_Sydney_Proposal.pdf since that has plans and concept art). I think some of the failures like Wonderland can be put down to lack of capital reinvestment (Eg the last big ride WL built was Space Probe, and then basically nothing till the place shut down) and silly management (Eg trying to run it as a year round park)

I guess the photo angle makes the orange and green ones look flatter, but all 4 are the same when viewed in person.