slick

could it have a ride called the Chain Dragger? How about a $1 Kiss booth? But instead of kissing a hot girl, you kiss America's Ass?

Or hey, let's base a waterpark on Australia and call it, hmm, perhaps, Boomerang Bay. Seriously, especially when it's in a different country, no-one's gonna care. Take a leaf out of the Ozzie codebook and have a beer.

99% of all cherry-pickers don't go above the forty metre mark, not only because of safety, but because cherry-pickers (or knuckle-booms or scissor lifts for that matter) just don't have the structural integrity to make it up that high (I'm sure there's some backyard knock-off booms out there which argue otherwise). As for your Ride Trade freefall towers, while they all run off automatic ride cycle programs, many other people have already pretty much summed the entire process up. If the engine clonks out, they just release the gondola from the cable winch car from wherever it stops. If it's the release at fault, they just manually lower both the gondola and the winch back down to the station. If both systems are screwed, you can either prey, or better yet, start the back-up generators. Both good methods.

Cheers for the huge response. Ok, I think a slightly more complicated question for someone who would work at the park - how is the ride's control platforms and such assembled? Dreamworld's Tower of Terror has a large sectioned off area on the exit side of the station which is where the main control panel is positioned with a staircase that leads down to the lower maintenance/main PLC level with another two levels beneath for the souvenir shop etc. I guess more specifically, is there a main and sub-style control panel system or is there a system that works for both? Cheers again folks, this is getting really interesing.

Cheers for the response so far guys. Yeah, it definitely sounds like Six Flags and Dreamworld have alot in common in terms of themeing! For one, we've had "alot" of stuff that's either disappeared or fallen apart over the years. Before our Nick Central land, the eleven metre tall skull was on an elevated platform which could be seen from a hundreds or so metres away (that's like 300-something feet in yanksville) which was already impressive to start off with. You'd walk in, and it would be like 30 metres or so worth of industrial waste over an elevated platform with strobes and whatnot going off (don't forget the world's coming to an end and we're going on this thing to get to the moon... or something.) From there, you'd head over a simulated city (like ET) where you'd then hop into an elevator, walk through some more stuff into the line-up and then, finally, two big doors (spanning the five rows of the pod) would open up revealling this shiny, spikey, and illuminated steel car. From there it's pretty much just an elevator back down into the gift shop, however, these days it's much more "walk through the delapodated skull through the amazing freezer room themed pathway of doom, up the construction site-budget style stairs into the hole and drink cup covered walls of terror before you cross the amazing "black room with small siren which used to be a city" until finally you go up the "amazing second construction staircase instead of an elevator" and then finally into the room to the pod. Sound like SFMM version?

G'day folks, I was just wondering, while I'd regard the Tower of Terror down at Dreamworld as a fairly decent roller-coaster, I'm still incredibly curious as to what the Six Flags version is like. So my question is I was hoping someone would have some queue line photos and the likes I could have a gander at to sort of judge what Superman The Escape is like. Any information or photography is greatly appreciated. Cheers guys, Slick.

Having looked into this for years now, I think I can safely say that the only "theme park" based attractions that use Linear Synchronous Magnet technology today would be the Tower of Terror/Superman: The Escape. To place things into an absolute and utter nuthsell, both designs of technologies are effective in their own applications, however while they essentially lie on the same principles, there's still some big factors that differentiate the two. Let's first take a look at the TOT/STE LSM technology. Here we have incredibly fast accelerating technology that relies on "synchronising" singular sets of copper blocks to draw in the earth magnets attached to the pod. When the pod runs over the first set, an electrical flux is formed, and the pod is pushed onto the next set, whereby the next copper blocks draw in the pod, repeatting the process in a fashion that is "synchronised" to efficiently acheive faster speeds in a smaller incline setting. Roller-coasters like California Screamin' use a slightly different approach. Instead we have a much less technologically advanced outlook on how the train launches. In short, rather than "synchronising" singular blocks in a simultaenous "push and pull" motion seen in LSM technologies, we have a "set" of electromagnets pushing in one linear motion (forward obviously) much like Maglev trains do, acheiving an ableit, more cost effective but more efficient approach to launching a coaster. To back up this claim also, the Discovery Channel did an in-depth look at Superman: The Escape back in 2003 or so, and compared the technologies used (such as LSM and LIM) to air powered launches and hydraulic launches (back in a day where only Xcelerator was around.) Hope this helps.

Which, of course, pales in comparison to the luxurious coaches TPR used in the UK Trip. Like Elissa said, it's "cute" and all, but I think you're over-pitching the mark, so to speak.

Which is co-incedently the same average weight of one ACEr. You don't want to see one of these struggle with fifteen of them.

In the wrong hands that'd make a perfect toy. Spose you could make/buy straight elements and stuff for one of those?

Haha yeah, sorry, knew that didn't sound quite right, but alas 2.2mw, or as the ads say... "enough to power a small town for 10 seconds." By the way, the actual cost of 2.2 megawatts in Brisbane currently is actually around $80 Australian according to today's reports, but yeah, considering Dreamworld is on par and does exceed Disneyland in terms of its unbelievable public relations department (even though some other departments such as ride maintenance lack) it's not hard to call such a nice place a second home in alot of aspects.

Pfft, if anyone in Australia I'd be the only one who will happilly answer your questions about Tower of Terror. Momentum plays a small part, but again its a result of the decrease in the ride's launch models keeping the ride with a full load safe. Of course it's going to be faster with a static cycle, but then again we don't have the extra 1050kg average of passengers loaded.

Nah, running costs are actually really cheap. In terms of per run, you're looking at about $50-90 AUS for about 2 megawatts of power needed during the launch, which isn't something parks need to worry about, especially ones which are rolling in as much dough as SFMM and Dreamworld are. I will say for the record though, with an empty load you can still tap the magnetic brakes at the top of the tower. I had the opportunity to ride a few times by myself early 2005 and it was definitely a more forceful and amazing experience; the additional 30 or so metres makes it go from "a pleasent view" to "WTF am I doing up this high with just a lapbar?"

Whoa, all my years of training are now coming in handy. For starters, yeah, it's definitely happening, and while guests may see the big red sign down here on the TOT that says "158km/hr", don't forget that a difference of three k's an hour is a huge difference in metres when you're propelling something vertically. Essentially we're looking at anywhere between five and twenty metres difference, but its interesting to note that guests don't actually perceive the large difference of height as you would from afar due to the pod's seating structure. While there's about a million different factors involving the gradual decline in speed on both roller-coasters, the major contributor is ageing. I'm sure plenty people here know about the backup magnetic braking systems behind the station incase something happens to the main brakes, well anyway, with more of a gradual decrease over time with the ride's sensory stability, more and more e-brakes become mainplace with the ride due to the way the PLC systems work. With that in mind, it's far easier for the parks to decrease the speeds of the pods (in a nutshell) and make it easier for the computers to calculate the magnetic fluxes and the likes needed at certain points in the ride. Hope that helps.

It definitely gets 10/10 for originality (of course, who do you think made it?) but it could've done with a more varied "backwards and forward" inverting program.

I'd like to see the Yanks top our ads nowadays. Seriously, if there's one thing Aussies do right that'd be beer... And chicks.

That's really cool. Thanks for the heads up into beer,.. 'n stuff. Just out of curiosity, do you have any photos of these "3600 beers a minute" machines of mass desdrunktion?

Ok. Having worked with just about most readily available programs on the market (and this includes everything from, Sony, to Adobe and all right through to Microsoft's, Pinnacle's and Ulead's video editing flavours) it's really upto how advanced you want to take your editing, what your time frame is for editing clips is, and how much cash you have in your wallet. For around a hundred bucks, you can't go wrong with Ulead's Video Studio 10. It takes just about all formats (in good faith of course), offers simplistic ways of making and producing videos and has the ability to use more complex timeline features. It's also incredibly versatile. I use this alot at work mainly because not only does it offer faculty with a fairly nice, polished end result but also because it's incredibly efficient. If you're looking into expanding into a fairly decked out application, but you're short on cash, Sony's Vegas IS the way to go. If i'm on a PC, I'd rather use it over Adobe's video suite anyday due to its far superior on-the-fly rendering efficiency and advanced features. Also, in terms of accepting files, you'd be hard pressed not to be able to stick an incompatible file into Vegas 6. Everything from photoshop files to .ogg sound files work with absolute zero effort. So if you're looking for an advanced piece of software that is well built for the Windows platform, you can't go past Vegas in my opinion. In terms of rendering, and timeline editing and production, it craps all over Premiere hands down. In all the time I was using Premiere (about a year non-stop) I found it frustrating to say the least that half of the playback and rendering features were over-complicated and downright not worth the time, unless you enjoy producing movies that make you look like a complete and utter n00b. I think though that most will agree that if you're looking for the most readily available, and most advanced consumer software on the market currently is the Final Cut Studio Package. It's incredibly efficient, it works with Quicktime's latest H.264 codecs, it takes HD like the CPU wants to die, and then pretends it wasn't a hassle in the first place. It's got so many awesome sound-editing and graphic processing tools that it really is a pleasure to work with, provided you've got the 1.6K Australian to buy you the whole suite. And that's my two cents, hope it helps.

I think this takes the cake.

That actually looked very enjoyable!? One thing I noted was that even though this guy was using a fairly out of the box DV camera with no added lenses, you could still tell that the ride was very smooth, and i'm sure the large padded restraints which you could see going up that lift hill definitely helped. Now, I only counted six or seven invesions, so help me out here when they get an un-godley fourteen or so. Seems just like over-exagerations more to the point then anything. But all in all, that'd be one of the big reasons why I'd want to visit Japan currently. It looks cool, the trains look slick (haha, get it?) and generally it looks like a class addition to the park, even though the rest of the attractions might be lacking somewhat.

While Robb might indeed have the "shy nerd" appeal, I think that there is some circumstances where it's actually a good idea to be open with "certain" people in queue lines (good give-aways to the people you shouldn't talk to are typically biker tattoos and people with more metal-percentages in their face then actual muscle.) My case in point? Recently I came across this group of people waiting to ride the Cyclone down at Dreamworld, and anyway, after a minute or two it turned out most of them were gold, olympic swimmers and marathon runners. Cool stuff I reckon, and I saw them again later that afternoon and hung out with them for a few hours. Definitely made my day a bucketload more interesting, especially to be hanging out with people off TV.

Yeah, I'll remember that for when I'm riding Superman Escape.

Fantastic. Anyone else changing their underwear?

Because we have kangaroos.

You gotta be kidding me? We're like the annoying, young cousin that America can't get rid of (not my quote of course.) Seriously though, we pose no real threat to anyone but ourselves. We have a hard enough time building nuclear reactors over here to worry about war, let alone the dreaded cooties virus that's going round in the Big Brother house over here at the moment or the forest that is John Howard's eyebrows. I'm surprised that little hobbit can still walk actually. But you gotta love some of the journalistic prostitution that you hear today on the news. It's all about the "MISSILE ATTACK FROM NORTH KOREA!... which then wofted into a nearby ocean-bed about thirty seconds after launch."