Vintage Camera’s Museum Launches in Singapore
A building shaped as a massive camera, with the entryway set inside the lens, is the stage for one of Singapore’s newest attractions, the Vintage Camera’s Museum. Inside, visitors can view more than 1,000 cameras, including oddities like walking-stick cameras, pigeon-mounted cameras, and pistol cameras. “I want to bring the evolution of the camera to the younger generation. Everyone uses mobile phones, but they don’t know how difficult it was to take photography in those days,” says the museum’s founder, Solaiyappan Ramanathan, who also runs a commodities trading company. The Singapore attraction is the world’s second Vintage Camera’s Museum, following on the heels of a sister venture in Chennai, India, which opened in August 2016.
Australia Opens Southern Hemisphere’s Largest Hypercoaster
Village Roadshow is opening Australia’s largest roller coaster this month at Warner Bros. Movie World in the Gold Coast. The “DC Rivals HyperCoaster” climbs more than 200 feet, and reaches speeds in excess of 70 mph along a 4,600-foot track that is nearly twice the length of any other ride in the region. The coaster is “the longest, fastest, and highest in the Southern Hemisphere,” says Village Roadshow Theme Parks CEO Clark Kirby. The Mack Rides attraction is one of only a dozen coasters in the world to have a non-inverted loop, according to Roller Coaster DataBase (www.rcdb.com), though its most unusual feature for a coaster of its size is a backward-facing last row that seats two riders.
Major Water Park Planned for Queensland Sunshine Coast
Sanad Capital, an Australian investment firm with roots in the region and financial backing from Dubai, is building an A$450 million adventure water park called Actventure in Queensland’s Sunshine Coast. The integrated resort will feature water rides never before seen in Australia, the world’s first “wave reservoir,” an outdoor adventure park, a lawn for hosting major events, and 6,000 square meters of retail and dining space. The water park, designed by WhiteWater, is expected to open in summer 2019 and attract 1 million visitors each year.