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I was stupid enough to drop in to Movie World today to check out Scooby and after two hours of waiting understood the necessity of opening this attraction. It's ugly and disappointing and feels like some temporary fairground ride set up in an empty show stage but I guess they had no choice. The park is packed and anything to suck in a crowd is a good move. A-frame signs are now full size and in multiple locations using very similar wording to as what has been suggested on the forum. Some of the fake wood paneling that was rife with graffiti and general wear has been nicely repainted during the down time (correct me if this happened earlier) suggesting that the station is not an issue.. It was darker inside than the photos but the temporary construction fences were very fairgroundy. A few sounds still played like the laughing guy that spins around and I believe the "scooby doo where are you" in the elevator. The ride camera was still snapping photos leaving the flash to illuminate the building . I saw one "animatronic" in the darkness eerily just sitting there giving a five nights at Freddy vibe which could be said of the whole attraction. It reminded me of when I went on a near abandoned flume ride at night at jerudong park brunei in 2005 but that is another story for another time. The disco room remains as is which leads to the rude shock of tribal music playing as you enter a square black room that over looks the rest of the track. After the final drop the ride halts leaving plenty of time to look over the rest of the ghost train section track until it's time to unload and in my case listen to the lady behind me try to convince her friend that this ride used to have things in it. I'm glad I got to see it in this strange state (it's like ridding it while it was being tested for the first time) and it was truly a spooky coaster making me feel uneasy seeing something so familiar gone without replacement. The sad part was hearing exited children talking about seeing monsters and scooby doo in there and as a kid I would have been greatly disappointed having two hours of a themed queue (and that awful video sans the AOL logo) hyping me up to see nothing.It's all temporary and will be back but I feel it may have been a better used opportunity to remove or cover the scooby branding for this holiday season and have some form of temporary generic name for the attraction and add more lasers/atmospherics projections? something and sell it as a new limited time experience. Again I don't know how much time there was after the decision was made but I feel it would have been cool!

Just a few thoughts on my visit the other day. Apparently Kraken has new rafts that require at least three people to be onboard. The queue was very small to start with, but was about half an hour for most of the day. Inferno was great fun. They used the count down to start with and then shot or dropped whenever they felt like. I think they did two shots, a drop and then a quick shot. The young guy running it was really good. The countdown is done by the man who does the voice over for Abyss. The Tunnel of Terror now has a camera for the final splashdown. The screens are located outside of the water mountain area (which looks great with its Wild West theming). The Bucanneer Battle boats have new buttons which sometimes get stuck. Sometimes the engines get stuck on or off, as do the water shooters. Had a long run early on, when no one else turned up, so they let us keep going. The Grand Prix had a fairly long queue all day, sometimes with a long fast pass queue too. Got in line at one stage, but it didn't move, so we got out. The cabana was great to relax in. Had a healthy Mark Shaw Caesar Salad for lunch and churros in the afternoon. The Kahuna Falls Cafe closed around 5.35, so I didn't get to have dinner in the park. There's a great little coffee hut next to the main pool now. It was about 32 degrees max, compared to about 38 last year. The main lawn was quite busy, but the new lawn, where the lake was, was pretty quiet. Also used the new members' car park, which was quite convenient, and the new gate was open by 9.45am with no queue at all to get in. Although the new car park is grassed, there were good sized parking bays marked clearly there.

Yes, but here's the logic behind my speculation: The park map was updated to reflect The Fire Machine & Kevil Hill Zombie Evolution - both temporary attractions. Since they also have revealed the external entrance to the Lego Store on the park map, I'd assume DW has an expectation that the Lego Store would open before the 15th of January as after that date, the park map would need updating again to remove all the Fire Machine & Kevil Hill Zombie Evoultion references. If they didn't have this expectation, they would've kept the 'Opening This Summer' graphic that hid the Lego Store's external entrance on the previous park map. I wouldn't think they would reveal the external entrance on the park map if they weren't expecting guests to soon walk into or out of it. They probably left 'Opening This Summer' on other parts of the park map to warn guests it may still be under construction & to save producing a new park map so shortly after an update. You also posted today that things are now appearing inside the Lego Store so construction & shop fitout must nearly be complete. In the end, it's just speculation of mine.

The only poor decision they have made is opening a ride that's under their standards and well below the expectations of paying visitors to the park, and moreso, it was the lack of communication or notice regarding it.

Welcome to the extremely small club of 2 or 3 of us who don't mind this temporary interruption to the normal ride experience. What does have the potential to disappoint me though is the proposed new time frame that it's going to be going under maintenance. I guess at least that way I'll have more time to get back to the park and check it out than what I originally thought.

I've been looking through this chat and all I can see is people saying, "They are making terrible decisions" and things similar to that. Not to sound rude or anything but they probably know what they are doing, and they know better than you do. Im actually excited to see what comes out of this. Anyone else with me?

It says that the LEGO Store is opening this Summer?

Thing is if the road has to be sacrificed then so be it. Sooner or later Gold Coasters are going to have to accept they need to give up their car culture and start using public transport.

Despite the lack of theming, today the ride still managed to get of 2hrs long

Been past MW and the summer crowds have officially arrived, carpark is overflowing. Queues to get off the highway.

They're changing it to Scooby Poo, because it looks like shit. Really surprised by what's happened, but I guess no one is taking any chances with safety or the perception of safety now (and being in between a rock and a hard place in peak season). It's a real shame, the Ghost train part adds so much to the ride.

Today's update. I could see a number of things through the windows inside the store, and there are three big yellow blocks hanging from the ceiling

GD currently in testing

I was at Dreamworld twice yesterday. In the morning it was busy enough that they had parking attendants in the carpark, and the carpark was reasonably full. I went back around 7pm for the Fire Machine show. Not as busy. Very easy to park and low queues for rides. Still enough people around to create a decent buzz. Probably about the same attendance as there was last year for BeatBox. Amazing show!

The Park was quiet yesterday but far from deserted. Rides were between walk-on up to about 10 minutes. WWW seemed quite busy, noticing a lot of wet people trapsing half naked and bare foot through the Park.. On that note, are there not a sufficient number of lockers over at WWW? As the walking area of DW is larger than the other Parks and coupled with various rides not open it was too difficult to tell the number of people there. At the Fire Machine I would say around 2000 watched and lots of people were coming and going through the day. Between WWW and DW park spread over the day, maybe around 4-5000 all up Standout winner for me. I enjoyed this more than any one of MW Fright Nights mazes- it goes to show a permanent scare maze definately can work in an Aussie Park

I went to Kevil yesterday. Seriously impressed. It was what I hoped it would be the first time I ever went in, but instead it had been a laser skirmish with no zombies. Now it has a pre-show, and a very impressive scare maze. Plenty of zombies. Plenty of scares. The maze is HUGE!

Not me, hahaha I wanted to write the same thing but I was being to nice. I'm just happy the parks are open more during the peak season.

Just got home from a great visit to DW.. Highlights for me: - Staff friendliness. DW are winning with smiles and running rings around the competition as of now. Sure, this is essential in the Parks healing, still I was really pleased at the attitude of Staff 'wanting' to be there. I really wanted to be there too and so did everyone else! - Park appearance/aesthetics. Overall the Place is looking great with gardens in fine shape, Main Street area has never looked better, DreamWorks, wildlife and naturally, Tiger Island. I love the new shop and unique dining as well as the vast seating - great to stop and get off your feet for a while! - the obvious areas needing visual attention are the old Murrissippi river and surrounding shore (once again looking more like a stagnant pond!) and the vast area of land occupied by SBNO Log Ride, TRRR, Mine, Blue Lagoon, BB house and former Amphitheatre area... This is a LOT of land and certainly enough to bring some amazing things to DW in the coming years. Whilst it's a big blemish on the Park at the moment it also gives hope to making for plenty of room for the future! - Other entertainment today. I was really pleased to see live performances, characters, singing and dancing around the Park. The kids also love getting their faces painted in the Coroboree area. And for no charge!!! - Zombie Evilution was a fantastic surprise! Having never been through it before I was really impressed. I loved the layout inside and setting as well as the energy of the Actors (about 5 working in there plus tell 2 greeting staff). - Fire Machine show was a great finale to a great day. Just a bunch of Lasers, pyros, smoke, light, fire and music.. Very entertaining. Pictures don't really do the show justice, you have to be there in person. Sorry @POP I guess that means you miss out. - Amenities throughout the Park are in great condition and maintained well, along with the rest of the grounds. - I am loving the food variety and with recent Tiger Island additions it's just getting better. I love how pass holders get a good discount off all purchases in Park. I think around 10%? Again staff all very friendly. - can't comment on www as we didn't go in however from the outside it's definately looking in need of some tlc. Such a great day overall and despite only a handful of the big rides operating we didn't get bored with all the other entertainment available. I am just so pleased to see DW doing everything they can in positively restoring their image. Moving forward I really hope they keep this up with consistency and future success is guaranteed?

The point @Bush Beast Forever was making is that the R&D costs associated with launching a new ride style would likely not be realised until a certain number of installations were made. The break-even point for Arrow Dynamics' Mad Mouse coaster was apparently ten installations; they only made four. In all likelihood Vekoma never broke even on the Waikiki Wave ride. Not sure this says anything about the quality of the ride so much as Vekoma's failings in trying to enter the flat ride market, and Huss's strengths particularly in the European travelling ride market. Certainly the reputation Huss has doesn't exactly speak much for them being a victor in any sense.

You can look forward to the theming update but also be disappointed with their decision to reopen the ride in its current state.

As much as I feel that VRTP have been a little short-sighted and caught themselves out here, I for one anticipate major improvements when the theming is reconstructed (at least I hope so), and I look forward to it. In the meantime, I will ride the gutted SDSC when I visit in early January, and I'll take it for what it is - a lessened and slightly different experience. As disappointing as it is, 2016 has generally been a pretty difficult year for theme parks and enthusiasts in this country, and this is a blow I'm prepared to take on the chin in anticipation of better things coming from it. Honestly, I'm more concerned about the number of rides that will be open at DW by the time I visit. So yes, I agree that WBMW have probably made quite a big mistake here, perhaps due to short-sightedness and failure to respond to issues, but it's certainly not the end of the Spooky Coaster, let alone the world. And hey, one day when my kids are all theme park enthusiasts, I'll brag about the fantastic theming we had, and the fact that I rode while it looked like a construction sight. Different experience for sure.

VRTP deserve some strong criticism for not having completed this work prior to peak season. Seems like this isnt the only project that has slipped either (e.g. Super8 Racers took longer than should have also.) One thing in my strong opinion they dont deserve criticism for is re-opening the ride over the summer peak however. Some of the comments here are naiive and frankly a little selfish. Naiive because VRTP are hardly going to keep a ride that is perfectly safe to operate closed over the peak when they have had two unscheduled ride outages take out capacity already (VR at SW and DD at MW). They need all the capacity they can get over the summer! Selfish because at the end of the day if you feel upset by seeing the ride in that condition you have an alternative. Don't ride it! There are plenty of people (e.g. the interstate tourists that drop the big bucks over summer) that might feel disappointed that the ride looks in that condition but will still appreciate the ride's sensations if they do go on it and the capacity it offers to the park if they don't...

you'd think they would have put this in mw or even the outback advt but not a damned water park!

my god what have they done?! the whole ride is practically gutted..is it even going to be scooby doo anymore?

Not even close to the same thing. The precinct does not enhance the ride experience.

omgosh that's terrible poor DW. Hope it doesn't go broke but if it doesn't pick it up it's heading to brokesville fast.