KarlaKoaster

Update from the inquest: 1. The families of the victims "don’t hold [the ride operator] in the least bit responsible for what happened on that day". The operator also said that he has not been criticised by Dreamworld for his actions. 2. The operator had to undertake 36 procedures every minute as passengers were loaded/unloaded from the ride. The victims' lawyer suggested this was an 'impossible' amount of responsibilities 3. More CCTV cameras were added to the park's log flume after a rider fell out and was hit by another log. Operators didn't realise this had happened until the boat had returned to the station 4. The operator wasn't trained in first aid or how to attend to incidents such as this It's nice to hear the family don't hold the operator to account. Most of these operators are barely on more than minimum wage yet they make life-or-death decisions and are responsible for thousands of riders a day. It's a lot of weight on their shoulders and they probably don't even realise it.

More from the inquest: 1. The operator says an almost identical fault happened the week before where the water pump failed, and water levels dropped to expose railings underneath the water. There was also a situation in 2001 where a 'pile up' of rafts occured 2. On the day of the accident he pressed the 'slow-stop' button 'two or three' times - this button takes 8 seconds to stop the ride (count to 8 in your head... it would seem like a lifetime in a situation like this) 3. The emergency button in the offload area (as I suspected it was) would have taken two seconds to stop the ride but was not pushed. Pushing this "wouldn’t have avoided (the tragedy), it may have limited some injuries" 4. The park had a policy where "if a ride breaks down more than twice, on the third time it gets shut for the day" (it was the third breakdown that the accident happened) https://www.news.com.au/national/queensland/stop-button-pushed-after-crash-dreamworld-inquest-hears/news-story/2a91daf1119d33ef6da284a34a6413c5 Honestly I'm not sure, none of the reports make it clear whether it was a simple reset while the ride was running (it was one pump of several), or whether they did a full shutdown. It was obviously a recurring fault though.

Oof. That's the biggest one in my opinion, I feel like there has to be at least someone watching a set of cameras with their finger on the button at all times. Mechanical failures happen all the time, that's a given, but if the park didn't train the staff to deal with those failures, that's a huge problem. Yes, same. I edited my original post as I've found more information and it turns out there isn't a specific emergency stop button and that offload was not covered by CCTV despite several recommendations.

So the inquest into this horrible incident has started. A few observations from the first day: 1. Ride operators were unaware of an emergency stop button, which could have shut it down in two seconds (presumably one in the offload area). One member of staff was told 'not to worry' about it and that staff were confused by the ride's controls. The ride also did not have an emergency switch which would shut down the ride, with a second switch needing to be used to halt the ride’s conveyor belt 2. Dreamworld staff had raised concerns about the ride in 2001, after a similar incident involving a flipped raft (not sure if by similar they mean it was in the station area or not) 3. The pumps failed several times in the hours before the accident. Engineers reset the pump twice but its third failure prompted two rafts to collide, causing the accident 4. Two children were also ejected from the raft but survived (I didn't realise this) 5. The actual cause was that the water dropped below the guide rails so that the boats were no longer floating. There was no waterlevel sensor that would have stopped the ride automatically 6. There were multiple safety recommendations that an emergency stop button should be added to the control panel and CCTV cameras off the offload area installed, but neither of these were done 7. There had been a window of 57 seconds between the empty raft getting stuck on the conveyor and the collision which led to the tragedy I suspect like other accidents this will be the usual story of cause and effect where one circumstance causes another, causes another etc (a bit like the Smiler accident). There are two more weeks of the inquest remaining. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-44516243 https://www.news.com.au/national/queensland/news/dreamworld-inquest-first-day-of-investigation-into-thunder-river-rapids-deaths/news-story/3b350a8e379d7e39212590c6447458fe https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/jun/18/deadly-dreamworld-rapids-ride-had-malfunction-history-inquest-told Edited to add extra information from additional sources

Wow, that's quite incredible really, I can't think of any other off-the-shelf theme park rides that have scales? The rapids is the particular surprise to me. I wonder if Parques Reunidos are testing this at Bobbejaanland in anticipation of rolling it out to their other parks?

Crazy Coaster is testing, and it sounds crazy loud. Looks quite fun as a support ride though! https://www.instagram.com/p/Bj3xoNYF4oa/?taken-by=coasterupdater

Oh wow, in that case I hope Lucas the Drummer ignores my advice! School trips don't normally start this early do they Was everything running to full capacity?

It should be fine, all the schools are back so it shouldn't be bad at all. If for some reason it is busy (even if it's because they insist on running everything on a single train operation), you can just buy Fastpass on the day. Whether you go for Adrenaline or Island Unlimited is up to you, but remember with Adrenaline you get five coaster rides; not necessarily on the same coaster as you can mix and match.

I loved everybody's reactions It looks like a really fun ride, and a really good fit for Toverland. I'm so happy to have seen Toverland grow so quickly, it has an exciting future ahead of it for sure.

It will be fine, they know what they are doing The Teacups will open later this week according to Facebook.

Good post, I agree. It looks like the park are wasting no time to reopen rides - Windjammer reopened yesterday despite them having to reconfigure the entrance/exit, so I think once they make the Fjord Restaurant safe/presentable (even if it's just putting construction walls up), I think it will be their aim to reopen it as soon as possible. This is a really nice idea. It would fill the gap left by Pirates by being a slow-moving family-friendly dark ride, but it would also bring something new to the table. I hope whatever it is, they are bold and ambitious with the idea rather than it just being a ride where you sit in a submarine and passively go past scenery. I think through time Pirates had become a filler ride, but I hope that whatever replaces it is world class. Regarding the drop tower, I'm sure I read years ago Mack were working on a drop tower and that it would be a unique interpretation of the ride. If this isn't what is planned for the new area behind Greece, then that's definitely another idea too.

Poffertjes are a Dutch delicacy - they're like little doughy balls and are normally served with sugar, Nutella or syrup. Hope I've got that right Dutch TPR members

I think even a Spidersman/Darkastle ride system would be nice addition to Europa Park actually. I would really like it to be a world-class dark ride, I can't really think of a suitable ride system that Mack produce unless there's anything under development (not sure who manufactured Shanghai Pirates?). I guess Mack would rather produce something in house although I guess we can't rule them out using another manufacturer. Edit to add photo Image: Europastreet

I don't think it will be long before the area around Fjord Rafting is redeveloped and reopened, and maybe a bit longer before they replace Piraten. I loved Piraten, but mainly for sentimental reasons. It would be a waste to rebuild it like-for-like but I like the idea of a new ride that pays homage to the original while combining it with new technology. Europa really care about their history and I know from the work they're doing on Can-Can coaster how obsessive they are about respecting the history of Eurosat V1.

250 members of the emergency service are still on site. Looks like there is still a lot of dampening down to be done judging by the orange glow in the first picture. Image: Europa Park Image: Europa Park

Oh no, how sad. I hope everybody got out safely, it can't be an easy ride to evacuate. Edit: Europa Park have tweeted to say that as far as they are aware there are no injuries

Oh my mistake, I misread the article. I will edit my post in case someone doesn't see your correction. I'm really happy Mark Twain is getting refurbished after so many years of neglect. Yes, it's incredible really. Hopefully now Disney own the park outright they will put more value in making sure things are up to standard.

I think Knotts used the Hue-Manatee as inspiration for some of the lighting sequences on Hangtime

In other 'rides falling apart that really shouldn't be' news, Tower of Terror will also be having its facade replaced as it is covered in cracks and safety netting as chunks keep falling off. Image: Disney and More Image: Disney and More

I love this report. I never read tooooooo much into the statistics, but I love reading the analysis - it's like a theme park yearbook or something and it's nice to recap what's happened over the last year and what the general trends have been globally.

Wooden catwalk appearing on the turn off the drop. Image from insidecga on Instagram. Image: www.instagram.com/insidecga

What a fun looking slide. It's nice that you spend quite a bit of time in the half-pipe section as on a lot of slides you just go up and down each side then just drop out into the splash pool. It's a nice length slide and looks like a great addition to what I thought was a really nice waterpark.

I doubt anybody here knows. We can only piece together the pieces of information that we have which isn't much. Flying from Germany especially for a brand new ride was always going to be a gamble. I hope it is working OK by the time you visit though.

Maybe I'm weird, but if I were to buy something from a queueline shop or use a queueline khazi, I don't think I'd expect the people behind me to wait. I would just let people continue queuing and pass me, and then I would just merge back into the new place in the queue (ie, further back) once I've finished. I'm not really that precious about 'my place' in the queue, and would be too self conscious to expect everyone to wait.

I've seen this at Europa Park, and I thought it was a nice idea then - I'm surprised I've not seen it at some of the more popular rides at some of the more popular parks. I suppose building them and cleaning them is more money than it's worth for the small number of people who will use them. https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/LocationPhotoDirectLink-g488293-d482615-i111504639-Europa_Park-Rust_Baden_Wurttemberg.html