ozziboy

Abyss at Adventure World a few weeks ago, just after its official opening! But prior to that it was a long, long time since I rode Goliath at SFoG way back in August 2012. At last there's actually a coaster within 2,500 miles of my City!

^ While I certainly wouldn't call it long, Abyss takes 2 minutes to ride which is more than 90 seconds! Storm looks like a great addition to Sea World, which after years of nothing much, really needed something major like this to draw people back there, especially with the distance involved for those living way over on Australia's west coast. Personally, I love these water-based splashy coasters, and if its as much fun as the Divertical splashdown I rode in Italy, crowds will love it. I also think its style pays nice homage to Sea World's heritage, which has always had a water/fire based attraction in that spot; Both Lassiter's Lost Mine and Bermuda Triangle had dark ride, flame and splashdown elements.

Perhaps in China they use these quality of rides as a tactic to keep their queue lines shorter? Or just as a punishment for crimes?

Thanks for the address of Molly's Cupcakes, Robb. Even though you took us all there in 2012, I could never figure out where it actually was. So I just took a 'virtual tour' back there again using Google Streetview, and a freaky thing happens if you walk around the 3 streets on each side of Father Demo Square (and how is a triangle a Square anyway?). The weird thing is that the season in NYC completely switches between summer and winter - check out the trees! Molly's in summer Now its Molly's in winter!

Reading your report makes me want to put on my 'Lombardi's Original' tee-shirt, to remind me of the last time I ate there. Someday I hope to get to see NYC in snow, because every time I've been there it's mid-summer, to coincide with TPR tours of course! Experiencing Halloween and the Holiday season in the US is definitely there on my 'bucket list'!

^^I'd agree with the previous posters as well. While the focus of the article seems to be how much higher, faster, etc. can coasters go to attract attention, it seems to miss the point that its not just the "extreme-ness" of a ride that makes it a draw-card, its the 'fun' factor as well as the thrill. In my experience, I don't consider any of the record holders as being 'the best' in the world at all. IMO a couple of unique or unusual coasters such as EuroMir at Europa Park and Winjas at Phantasialand rank as the World's best, because they're not just another version made bigger or faster. A park that's able to boast a ride design is the 'only one' is just as impressive as being the biggest or fastest. But having said that, one-off rides would come at a premium price tag. So the money the owner saves by it not being so big or high, might get equally spent instead on their design and unique mechanisms.

I hate to use the word 'Ironic', but sadly Adventure World's celebrations turned a bit sour last night. They had a fire that badly damaged one of the oldest and most dominant icons in the park, the fairy castle. news here and here picture source - 'Perth Now'.

I understand how much you stressed that these are NOT replacing the normal reports in any way, but given the choice I wouldn't ever watch these myself. That's not a comment on your presentation in particular, more just a personal opinion I have about videos of slideshows in general. If I'm surfing YouTube and see a title that interests me, if it then turns out to be a slideshow I usually jump off straight away. I always feel that if I wanted to just peruse pictures I'd look at a normal blog, webpage or gallery of some kind; where I can pace or choose what to stop or flick over. I just can't see the point of using videos to capture static scenes. I don't want to seem negative, but that's just my personal opinion. But having said that, I only discovered TPR thanks to YouTube POV's in the first place. So if these increase your reach to new readers and members, I'd fully support them for that reason!

Our local radio DJs got to ride Abyss during its media day or earlier this week, and have included a video of the entire ride from the back seat (from about 2m50s onward). The video is hosted on Nova radio's own site, so hopefully that's also accessible from outside Australia, and hasn't been geo-blocked! Link is here

^^ Thanks TPDave - now that I feel the need to experience these things, I might go and check back to a local shop I discovered in Perth on the weekend. It was like somebody had gone to the US and bought up every conceivable brand of US snackfood and crap that they could find, and shipped it all out here and set up a shop themed solely around that stuff not normally being available here. Its like we don't have enough crap food of our own, so by importing the stuff it becomes 'exotic' crap, so it must be good! I bet they have some Triscuits there.

Well we only have one actual theme park, which is Adventureworld at Bibra Lake - info adventureworld.net.au but its new and only coaster opens next weekend. There are other interesting places to visit here, but not so much if you're specifically looking for coasters and rides. * You could try visiting Hillary's Boat Harbour which has a summer seasonal fun zone with water tubes and some carnival rides, plus the AQWA walk through aquarium is also there. * There's a permanent 'big wheel' attraction at Fremantle Esplanade, like a very small version of the London Eye. * Another popular tourist spot is Whiteman Park in the Swan Valley, which has an operating vintage tramline and steam train, and native animals. www.whitemanpark.com.au * If you don't have transport, closer to the Perth CBD is Perth Zoo in South Perth, which only has a vintage carousel but its animal collection is very good, inluding kangaroo petting etc. Or in West Perth is Scitech, an educational indoor attraction with a lot of interactive displays. www.scitech.org.au Hope that gives you some ideas!

That shot of the street at DHS with the painted backdrop reminds me of that scene out of 'Inception' with the folding city! And what on earth are 'Triscuits'? Are they just crackers? (or actually crack-- ?)

Having been to both places only once, and back-to-back after my 2011 TPR trip, I'd say WDW wins even though I loved CP's coasters a lot. We had 3 glorious days of CP plus all the extra ERT and backstage, yet found we had 'done the park' after a day or so and were doing repeat rides or just chilling out. After that, I went to Orlando for 2 weeks and with a 5 day WDW pass saw enough Disney to make myself feel sick. I don't know when or if I'll ever see either park again, but if somebody said they'd pay my round the world airfares to repeat only one choice of either CP or WDW, I'd have to choose WDW because it is truly unique in the world for its attention to detail, continual renewal, and its legacy. I could re-visit WDW and still discover a lot I missed the first time, whereas IMO quite a few places in the world could match or surpass CP's offerings (great as they are!).

I buy about 15 to 20 DVD's a year, but no Blu-rays and I don't have a Blu-ray player. I don't buy any downloads. We do get free "catch-up TV" streaming online which I'll sometimes watch, but never directly on a device or laptop screen. I always connect it up so that it streams via the laptop onto a big TV screen. I'll sometime also use that setup if I wanted to watch long YouTube videos.

^^ I know there are plenty of coasters that can be brutal with OTSR's, but in my experience the Eurofighters don't seem to be one of them. I quickly looked back at a handful that I could recall, and all but one did have OTSR's; yet in my experience they all rode without the slightest knock. Dare Devil Dive at SFOG was the last one I rode without OTSR's, but I wouldn't have even remembered without checking. Saw at Thorpe; Untamed at Canobie Lake; 'Eurofighter' at Fasanolandia; Mystery Mine at Dollywood; all had OSTR's of various designs but were completely bash-free rides IMO. ^^^^ Thanks for the video deano, and I agree Abyss seems to run extremely quiet!! I've heard of steel tracks being filled with sand to avoid reverb noise upsetting local residents, and wonder if that technique was done for Abyss - considering Perth people tend to quickly complain to the local council about loud noise from anything!

We've been having some pretty fierce weather in Perth over the last week... Is it sharknado repellent? Thanks Robb!

^I'm interested to see what the game involves; They've gone to great effort with all their PR work for this so far! Adventure World has now also posted tonight's local media report: [youtu_be] [/youtu_be]

The name and theme of the new attraction was finally revealed in a report on the local TV network here. It is named "Abyss" and its theme involves those cloaked druid "Guardians" keeping watch over the 'gateway' to the Abyss. The report showed a factory fabricating a lot of sculpted 'stone' Guardian figures, skulls, ravens, medieval and stone-type props. Tonight, 13 minutes past midnight, they launch their online competition to be selected as 'the chosen ones' and first to ride when it opens, which the report said should be early November. Adventure World has just posted a new video to launch the name: [youtu_be] [/youtu_be] sorry - just pipped by deano's post!

Our local Perth TV station just ran a short story/promo revealing some details of the new coaster. Most of the story was shot at the Gerstlauer workshop in Germany showing them building the track sections and car assemblies. They confirmed that it will be a similar design to Saw, but a different theme. The stats they reported (if reliable) said it will be 30 metres high, have 8 seat cars, and they showed footage of seats with over-shoulder restraints. Adventure World has been updating its Facebook page and its official comment is "It's pretty much the same as Saw at Thorpe Park with a different theme and a couple of surprises!"

This really is a Big Deal for Perth, where the nearest permanent coaster before this happened was 3500km away in Melbourne or the Gold Coast (except a kiddie coaster at this same park). They've kept the nature of this "Mi1" attraction very secret, apparently they make an official announcement of something next week. All I can say is "...Finally we get one!"

Would it be that little Magic Forest coaster that we rolled-back/almost-trashed in Lake George?

Without Robb's commentary, that would have been just another old wooden coaster... But hearing his screams of pain as he suffered for his art made it both hilarious and cruel at the same time!

Definitely seems like the one of the most airtime-intense coasters I've seen, and like several others I hope to ride this on the anticipated Scandi trip next year! Its style reminds me of Expedition GeForce in some ways, but sadly I only got to ride one lap of that so its hard to gauge. Also Robb, thanks for sending out the trip photo/DVD packages, just got my Italy/Europe one in today's mail!

What I loved about this coaster was that the splash effects actually did hit you! (I mean, not like Roller Soaker or Divertical drenched... just splashed! )

Watching that brought back the thumping headache that this evil torture device caused at the time. If I recall, the ops would deliberately brake it on the upside down sections for a little while, because they seemed to enjoy our pain! Were we actually trying to kill Nolan on that trip?