Snowy River Rampage | Wonderland History (original) (raw)

Manufactuer: Intamin

Number of boats: 18
Number of passengers per boat: 6
Ride cycle time: 230 seconds
Hourly capacity: Approx 780 people
Opened: 1985
Closed: 2004

Riders would sit in a 6-person raft resembling a large tire and float down a wide winding river with occasional water canons (geysers) which fired straight up in the air when the raft approached.

The frequency of water canon fire could be adjusted at the rider's request before they embarked down the river.

Invented by INTAMIN in 1979, the Rapids Ride has proved to be the world’s favorite family ride.
No Rapids Rides have ever been the same, Layout, capacity and ride effect are all carefully planned with the customer to ensure that each Rapids meets or exceeds the expectation of the guests.

The station and plant room were demolished in December 2004 and the remainder of the ride demolished in 2005. Finally the 'holding pond' was filled in and leveled in 2006.

Ride spiel:

Welcome to Snowy River Rampage. Please move into groups of 6 or less, if you have a group of 2, 3 or 4 please try to join another small group so we can get you on the ride quickly. Shoes must be worn at all times whilst on the ride. Once on the ride please remain seated with your seatbelts done up at all times and remember this is a water ride and you will get wet.

Bussy

We use to inspect the ride first up,. IE walk the channel to ensure all the weir boards were still in place. Check the vertical conveyors and then start the pumps. Then we would inspect all the boats and check air pressures, then hand it over to the operators. The main controls were to stop and start the turn table. the boat spacing was controlled by the PLC and the VSD running the conveyors, the operators could speed the turn table up if they had large gaps between boats or slow it down if boats were space too closely. And of course they had Estops.

I'm not sure if the water geysers were still operational but when we set them up I programmed two modes into the PLC, wet mode for summer and dry mode for winter. Wet mode was just that, YOU WILL GET WET. I still remeber when we commissioned the geysers, we had some of the office people to be the first round, and they got wet.

Bjs