You’re not dreaming if you recently visited Warner Bros. Movie World on the Gold Coast and saw that employees were checking more thoroughly before boarding the major coasters. For many years, the park’s restrictions about loose items—phones, cameras, action cams, and anything that isn’t physically fastened to your body—have been a standard feature of its visitor guidelines. The larger environment surrounding them has changed, including a more stringent regulatory framework after ten years of incident reviews, a worldwide trend of phone-related issues at theme parks, and a growing number of visitors who come intending to record every experience rather than merely having it.
Like many major theme parks in Australia, Movie World has strict rules about this. During fast-paced thrill rides, phones and portable recording devices are prohibited. They must be placed in a locker prior to boarding, a zippered pocket, or the hands of a non-riding person. The physics of what happens to an unsecured object swiftly come into play on rides like Superman Escape or Rivals, Movie World’s inverted coaster with the highest drop in the Southern Hemisphere at 78 degrees. A typical smartphone producing the forces required for a high-G inversion essentially turns into a projectile at high speed. A 200-gram phone traveling at 100 km/h contains about the kinetic energy equal of a considerably larger object dropped from a considerable height, so the figures aren’t wild speculation. It’s not a minor occurrence when it is aimed at someone’s face or skull.
In Queensland, the regulatory environment surrounding all of this is more significant than it was in the past. A protracted coronial investigation and years of regulatory reconsideration followed the October 2016 Dreamworld Thunder River Rapids catastrophe, which claimed four lives and revealed serious shortcomings in the park’s operator’s management of safety concerns. In the end, Ardent Leisure, the operator, was fined $3.6 million. More importantly, the inquiry resulted in a set of recommendations that forced the Queensland government to create a formal code of practice for amusement device safety, something it had never done before. Australia’s first Amusement Devices Code of Practice 2023 went into effect on February 1st, 2024. It includes everything from operator training and maintenance records to ride installation and inspection. Policies pertaining to loose items are part of a larger framework that now has a much clearer regulatory floor.
Parks are strengthening enforcement rather than loosening it, which is reinforced by the worldwide situation. In the US, Six Flags Great Adventure has installed surveillance cameras on rides particularly to identify filming infractions, which are grounds for swift removal without reimbursement. In addition to a verbal warning, the penalties include ride stoppage and gadget confiscation. In response to occurrences in 2022, Disney placed specific no-recording notice at Space Mountain and has expanded similar guidelines to other rides. A loose scarf became twisted in the wheels of a roller coaster at a Gold Coast park in January 2024; it wasn’t Movie World, but it was close enough to be instructive. The ride was stopped in the middle of the ride. No one was harmed. However, the event served as a little example of how objects that appear innocuous on the ground behave differently while moving quickly.
Parks are currently dealing with a genuine tension. A large percentage of its guests, especially younger ones, come with the intention of documenting the experience, and content creation has evolved into a natural way for parks to reach new audiences. Parks would be unwise to completely ignore a teen’s GoPro video of a Superman Escape ride that was shared on social media as free advertising. In response, the majority of big operators have offered park-operated on-ride picture and video systems as an alternative. These systems consist of regulated, secured cameras installed on the ride itself, with footage sold to visitors after they leave. In addition to satisfying the documenting instinct without posing a projectile risk, this compromise brings in money for the park.
It’s still unclear if enforcement gaps allow violations to continue or if tighter policies actually consistently influence behavior. The degree to which parks actively check compliance once a ride is in motion varies. While some rely solely on pre-boarding inspections, others have cameras mounted to detect riders who use gadgets while riding. Like the majority of Village Roadshow venues, Movie World takes a more traditional approach. At boarding, employees are checked. Depending on how many people are in line and how busy the day is, the check may or may not be comprehensive enough to find a phone tucked inside a waistline.
