Big Dipper

Wild Mouse Galore

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Luna Park Milsons Point is probably the theme park with the most breathtaking view of all. Located right next to the world-famous Harbour Bridge and within sight of the Sydney Opera House, the classic Tivoli amusement park offers some of the best entertainment in Australia.

History of the Luna Park Sydney

Interestingly, the history of the theme park begins in Adelaide. From 1930 to 1934, there was the Luna Park Glenelg. Due to political decisions in South Australia that made the operation of the park no longer profitable, the Philipps Brothers looked for a new location in Sydney. At the same time, the use of the former Dorman Long site for people’s amusements was put out to tender. The Phillips Brothers won the tender and moved the rides to the new site at Milsons Point shortly afterwards. One year later, Luna Park was opened.

In the 1950s, David Atkins and Ted Hopkins, among others, took over the park from the Philipps Brothers. In 1969, when Hopkins retired, the lease was taken over by the World Trade Centre Pty Ltd. As a first measure, the consortium closed many of the old rides and replaced them with new American thrill rides. A new operations schedule, a new slogan and even a mascot were introduced to make the park more popular – even though the lease expired in 1975. Although Luna Park was allowed to continue operating, its continued existence was not assured. After two incidents in 1979, the New South Wales government put the park out to tender again.

Australian Amusements Associates won the tender in September 1980 and took over management of the site in early June 1981. Luna Park continued to operate as Harbourside Amusement Park between 1982 and 1988. After two independent engineers determined that several rides in the park needed to be shut down for renovations and repairs, the park was closed on 10 April. In November, the lease was transferred to Luna Park Investments Pty Ltd – and the chaos took its course. After several applications to replace most or all of Luna Park with appartment blocks and hotels, and with no apparent interest in the amusement park, the New South Wales government gave the company an ultimatum to open Luna Park by 1 June 1990. Shortly after, rides were moved, repainted and renamed to give the appearance of preparing the site for operation. The directors kept making excuses to get a postponement, but shortly after the ultimatum, the lease was terminated and the Luna Park Reserve Trust was formed. Shortly afterwards, the National Heritage Trust added several buildings on the site to its list of protected structures.

From 1991 to 1995, the park received a major refurbishment, which led to the installation of the Big Dipper roller coaster by Arrow Dynamics. Due to noise complaints from the new ride, the park had to reduce the operating hours of the ride, which led to a decline in visitor numbers and eventually to the closure of the park in 1996. In June 1997, the New South Wales Government presented four development proposals to the public. In February 1998, the NSW Department of Public Works and Services called for proposals for the redevelopment of Luna Park. Metro Edgley Group won the tender. Their proposal called for most of the rides to remain, but requested that the Big Dipper be replaced with a multi-purpose concert hall and asked that the Crystal Palace be redeveloped as an events centre. During the long decision-making and approval process, Luna Park was allowed to operate in late 2000, early 2001 during the Olympic Games and the summer season.

The redevelopment and restoration of Luna Park was carried out over 14 months. Since 2004, the amusement park has been continuously operating again.

Tour of the Luna Park Sydney

Rotor

If you enter the amusement park through the iconic entrance portal with its smiling face, you will immediately find one of the amusement park’s smash attractions to your right: a Rotor. The ride, patented by W. Ernst Hoffmeister, makes its passengers stick to the wooden wall just by the centrifugal force of the rotating cylinder and the friction between the passenger and the wall. A delightful fun ride, but one that can easily lead to dizziness.

Volare, Tango Train, Ferris Wheel and the Hair Raiser

The Volare wave swinger and the Tango Train musik express are less wild. The beautiful and quite new musik express offers two ride programmes: Mild and Wild. The wilder ride is especially recommended, as it takes place both forwards and backwards.

Directly opposite, you can enjoy the view on the Ferris Wheel or take a ride on the Hair Raiser. The small free-fall tower from Larson & ARM Rides is a real challenge due to its design, because thanks to the panels mounted above the passenger, you never know when you will reach the top of the tower and when you will fall straight down. The very short braking distance also makes for a very intense drop experience.

Dodgem City and Tumble Bug

Above the Dodgem City bumper car was once the station of the Big Dipper roller coaster and in the future the entrance to the New Big Dipper roller coaster – a single rail coaster by Intamin. At the time of my visit, nothing was known about this and so I only enjoyed a ride on the HUSS Troika Tumble Bug, which has since left the park.

Wild Mouse

On the other side of Main Street is the entrance to the Wild Mouse wooden roller coaster. Unfortunately, the wooden Wild Mouse belongs to a dying species and since the removal of the Wild Mouse from Blackpool Pleasure Beach in England, you can only experience this type of roller coaster here or in Indonesia. Yet wooden Wild Mice are one thing above all: bloody good roller coasters!

The ride on the Wild Mouse begins after a right turn with the ascent of the lift hill. Once at the top, we race through a series of tight hairpin bends before whizzing down a level in a wide curve. After two long straights, we then approach the first big shot and are immediately lifted off the seat. After coming back into contact with the seat in the valley, we immediately go over another hill accompanied by finest airtime. After a climb, we now cross the entrance area of the roller coaster, slightly pressed into the side wall of the car. After a crisp S-curve, we plunge to the ground once more. Here, too, we experience airtime par excellence. After a final hill and two fast straights, we approach the exit area of the ride.

The Wild Mouse is a blast of a roller coaster and I hope it stays at Luna Park for a long time. It is certainly one of the best wooden roller coasters in the world, making it one of the top sights in Sydney for any roller coaster fan.

Coney Island

Another sight for every theme park fan is the large Fun House Coney Island, which offers a variety of attractions. In addition to classic cake-walk elements, you will also find a devil’s wheel, a mirror maze, a variety of very steep slides and an extremely remarkable collection of old pinball machines.

Spider and the Moon Ranger

Directly behind the Fun House is a larger outdoor area, which, however, is less charming and offers a few rides. The Break Dance Spider and the Moon Ranger were located here. The latter was one of the reasons why I really wanted to visit Luna Park Sydney, because a HUSS Ranger is a fun machine that has unfortunately become very rare. Now the area has been redesigned and will soon have two new roller coasters: Little Nipper and Boomerang. There will also be a collection of new family rides from Zamperla, as well as the large Sledgehammer flat ride.

Pictures Luna Park Sydney

Conclusion Luna Park Sydney

I really enjoyed Luna Park Sydney. Unfortunately, I only had about 2 ½ hours in the park, but I loved every minute of it. The charm of the old amusement park, the breathtaking location and the extremely good selection of attractions characterise Luna Park like hardly any other park in Australia..

 

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Click here for the next report of the Hell Yeah, Schabelteah! Tour

Hell Yeah, Schnabelteah Day 9 and 10 / Luna Park Sydney

Blackpool Pleasure Beach (2016)

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Preface

As my cousin is afraid of flights, I took the chance to accompany her to England, where she would spend her holidays in a guest family. I rented a car in Birmingham and instantly regretted to have booked via Europcar and not another car rental service. My friend Daniel came to Birmingham earlier that day and has spent his time at the wonderful Drayton Manor Theme Park. After park closure, I picked him up from the hotel parking lot and together we drove to the seaside resort of Blackpool in Lancashire in order to have a great weekend in the city, as well as a visit to one of my all-time favourite theme parks Blackpool Pleasure Beach.

Blackpool Pleasure Beach

During my last review, it might not have sound that I enjoyed the park so much, but over time it really grew onto me. It is a very well-aged theme park with lots of effort being put into it to keep it going as best as possible while other parks in the United Kingdom currently take a large step back.

It was my first visit to the park on a busy day during the illuminations. Although there were queues basically everywhere, we never had to wait long. I even could finally get to ride the remaining lane of the Steeplechase roller coaster – it just took three attempts at the park to do so.

Sky Force

I also had a try on the Sky Force ride by Gerstlauer. Although it is one of the newer Sky Fly attractions it certainly offered a ride like on one of the old installations, which resulted in a total of 96 rollovers and I loved it! It was a brilliant start of a wonderful day at the Pleasure Beach.

Pictures Blackpool Pleasure Beach

 

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Blackpool Pleasure Beach

# Hard Gaan

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Hard Gaan in Walibi Holland

Slowly but surely one can say that Walibi has recovered from the Six Flags era. The re-branding of the brand in 2012 and the changes in the park that went along with it were long enough, but there were no novelties except for the reactivation of the roller coaster Speed of Sound and the truly ingenious design of the launch coaster Xpress: Platform 13. As successful as the restructuring of the park around the fictitious bands W.A.B. and The Skunx is, it seems that people in Holland prefer to go their own way and simply throw a lot of things overboard; because “Hard Gaan” and so on. There’s not much sense in that anymore, especially since they now serve a rather antisocial clientele. But what can you do when the biggest competitor serves all other target groups? As a first step to go fast, according to the literal translation, was to rob Speed of Sound of its soundtrack. Sure, the new track is good, but it takes away its history. The second step was taken this year with the opening of the roller coaster Lost Gravity.

Lost Gravity

The design of the queue is wacky, but partly very conservative and inevitably reminds of the roller coaster Dizz of the Belgian amusement park Bobbejaanland. A lot more would have been possible here, especially since the custom-made comic universe of Morvan, L’Hermenier and Wuye provided a lot more possibilities. The cars of Lost Gravity, on the other hand, are truly unusual. Similar to the Intamin Wing Coasters, they offer two seats with a corridor and two without, but also have a high front. The seating comfort is great and the design of the cars has very little, or more precisely, a negligible effect on ride comfort.

The ride begins with a right turn out of the station before it quickly climbs up via a chain lift. Without any rest the car immediately throws itself down the 32 height meters in an insane way; at least this is the case if one has taken a seat on the left side of the car. The extremely steep and widely twisted gradient is breathtaking without question, but at the right side it is almost boring compared to the left side, the radius is simply too narrow. With a lightning speed you pass over a ground level double-up, over whose hill you literally fly, before you find yourself on a top-hat element that is slightly tilted to the side; which you could also describe as a non-inverted banana roll, if you like. Somewhat contradictory to the previous layout is a huge camelback hill, which takes the passengers out of their seats again. At a breathtaking height, one now races through a wide turning curve, which in addition is also tilted outwards. So far, so good, and if Lost Gravity would end now, it would be a very short roller coaster, but also an extremely ingenious one. But instead of the final braking section there is a block brake followed by the second part of the ride.

After having reduced your speed, you now lean to the side and dive towards the ground again in a dive loop. A tight turn and a Zero-G roll are now carried out in a very tame way. The next turn will also be a turn where at least one of the acceleration vectors is zero. As a result, it is no longer possible to speak of a dynamic ride. You constantly brake and accelerate from new, which is equivalent to the accordion effect known from traffic jams. Over a hill you change direction again, cross another hilltop, pass a last pressure-laden valley, make a last turn and then find yourself in the final brake of the ride.

Lost Gravity is an excellent roller coaster for a little stop along the way, but nothing more. The first rumors were still about a revolving gondola roller coaster, this would have been hardly feasible with the first part of the ride, but ideal for the second. Either way, the first part is absolutely amazing, but the second one is wasted. The last curves are still a lot of fun and let you leave the ride with a little grin on your face, but the premiere of Mack Rides Big Dipper was not as convincing as it should be; at least there is enough potential for further installations.

Pictures Walibi Holland

Closing Words

Finally, I would like to appeal to human reason, which Dutch students probably no longer call their own. I assume that the student in question is striving for an equivalent to the German Abitur (as nowadays everyone does) and therefore should not be stupid – but how could one come up with the idea to sit on the seat and hold on loosely in a rafting ride with movable boats, like Rio Grande is? This is dangerous and should normally be rewarded immediately with exclusion from the park for a lifetime. If this boy would have fallen into the water and drowned, I would have neither been shocked nor worried about him; in fact, it was predictable. His buddies were similar, but in the postfactual age, you can’t let something arbitrary like rational rules distract you from your own horniness. Let’s all have a selfie! Yeah!

Walibi, you’d better think about Hard Gaan again, you might not be doing yourself any favours in the end.

 

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Walibi Holland