Leaderboard

Yeah... But who wants to sit in a travel agents office for a week? Doesn't sound like fun to me... certainly not worth $99!!!

Whoa there, hold on - for almost ten years we've decried them giving away the gate. Everyone has said they needed to increase prices - and at the first sign of bad news, youre going to point the finger at the pass changes as if they shouldn't have occurred? The games were a shit time. Weather hasnt helped, and sure, Ma and Pa Bogan couldn't get the kids their $99 annual babysitter this year... so decided a good ol aussie boycott *(with associated badmouthing all over social media) was just the ticket. Unfortunately, with both major properties increasing their prices (well - sort of) there isn't much of an option, and those regular visitors will probably take a year off, before they start drifting back for their fix. Young teen thrill seekers of today have never known a world without the $99 annual pass. Give it a little while and ma and pa will realise its worth the extra cash to get junior out of their hair again. The price will normalise, the people will return. Dont panic and give away the gate like you so often have before - hold firm to your pricing model and they will come.

Looks the same as it did 4 weeks ago. They should seriously just axe the idea. They are closer to having nothing than a finished product. the whole point of it opening at Christmas was to build off the success & marketing of the film & the direct-to-dvd Trolls Holiday which had a December release. The whole marketing tie in has been missed and the brand itself is irrelevant now until the sequel comes out which is due to 2020 I believe. Shelve the plans and do something different

But see Tim... THAT is relevant to the discussion, so its the perfect time to mention it!

Pretty much this. They've spent the last 3 years blaming the weather, then Dreamworld, then the weather and Dreamworld, now the Games for ongoing lacklustre results. Share price has taken a massive dive ($4 in January, now $2.40) because investors have lost confidence in the current management to deliver a decent profit (let alone start paying dividends again). IMO the 9 months of downtime for WWF and current state of SDSC speak volumes about VRTP's ability to properly manage their assets. Too early to tell what the demand for Topgolf is going to look like but if that flops the company will be in an extremely sorry state.

From the trading update, you linked in your post: They did impact. It might have been both. It should be pointed out firstly that VRTP are in a unique position - the VRTP Oxenford property was a Commonwealth Games venue and given the lack of car parking at the Studios (because it rarely needs it), it's fair enough that people may have been put off going to the theme parks at the Oxenford property out of a fear of not finding a car parking spot due to Commonwealth Games visitors possibly parking at the theme parks instead. Hence why VRTP took precautions. However, in the end, finding a car parking spot at the Oxenford theme parks during the Games was likely possible due to locals leaving the region for the Games duration. VRTP (including SW) average attendance is 7000/day while Commonwealth Games is about 100,000/day. 22% (or 22,000 visitors/day) of Commonwealth Games average daily visitation & I believe 60% (or 4000/day) of average daily VRTP visitation is likely from the immediate Gold Coast-Tweed Heads region. No doubt if it was the latter 'choice of words', 65% of VRTP visitation by locals would have disappeared (so reducing it to 1400 locals/day & 4400 visitors/day). Adding the earlier 'choice of words', it should have resulted in nearly no one going to the theme parks but if the 65% of the population who left the region for the past few weeks stayed instead, visitation should have declined to about 4250 visitors/day. Basing it on the above 3 possibilities, the 1st possibility is the most likeliest - that is, because 65% of the Gold Coast-Tweed Heads region's population left for the Games duration (the latter 'choice of words'). The other 2 can be ruled out because locals did leave the region in the last few weeks and it's highly unlikely all VRTP parks would have been near-empty. Being tourist attractions, they would have been a reasonable amount of visitation (mostly from non-locals) to remain open even if it was less visitation. Otherwise, it would have been better to close for 2 weeks to save on operational costs. I haven't been following their pricing strategy closely but is the recently launched discounts you're referring to that 1 Groupon deal? 1 discount doesn't sound like much to say they got their strategy wrong. Currently, the future of Gold Coast theme parks are in Gold Coast residents' hands - do they want cheaper tickets resulting in likely lower quality parks or more expensive tickets resulting in higher quality parks? Just don't take the parks for granted. The best outcome from this new pricing strategy is if it brings in more customers, resulting in lower in-park costs (such as upcharges & food and beverage). However, this is unlikely. The chances of success would improve if they did solid marketing towards non-local audiences however in the current economic environment, it would be difficult to achieve a success in this. Hopefully, they could at least try to do some proper non-local marketing to test the waters (It's been a while since they've done any significant non-local marketing). DC Rivals HyperCoaster would've been the perfect opportunity to return to targeting these markets but based on how much marketing I've seen (none), that opportunity has well and truly past (at least for interstate visitation). What better way to encourage non-local visitation than promoting the Southern Hemisphere's only hypercoaster? And I doubt the Commonwealth Games will help significantly particularly since they didn't do non-local marketing in the past couple of weeks. It's not a guarantee that they will lose heaps of revenue. The next best outcome is if Gold Coast residents don't take the parks for granted and accept the new pricing strategy. If they in general can't afford it, fair enough but if they take the parks for granted, the parks quality will lower to their detriment. Accepting the new pricing strategy will allow the parks to gain more overall revenue to spend on improving the parks including adding more frequently higher quality attractions & possibly lowering in-park costs. All other possible outcomes would mean in-park costs would increase due to less attendance. Less attendance would mean, instead of expansion, more older attractions being replaced to ensure capacity adequately meets attendance. However, expansion could be an option if they can successfully increase attendance from an increase in non-local visitation & new higher quality attractions could be added more frequently if they gain higher overall revenue. The worst case scenario is if they get both less renewals & less revenue as that would mean they would lose more overall revenue, which would pretty much mean a return to discounting resulting in new attractions being built less frequently or if frequently, lower in quality. Otherwise, in the far future, the parks might as well have a 'free entry, pay per ride etc' pricing strategy instead and that would mark an interesting milestone in the history of Gold Coast theme parks. The outcome of this change in pricing strategy & the parks' reaction to that outcome could be the turning point in Gold Coast theme park operations.

You're absolutely right. One that really grates me is Mick Doohan in the bush setting and not up the end in the Ocean Parade area. Breaks my heart too that the whole Australian bush theme was destroyed with the vintage cars moving, the paddle wheeler closing and the unique bushranger show gone. Hate that ABC / Wiggles is squished into where it is too. All that should be in the larger kids area in Madagascar. On that, Pandamonium is out of place there. It should be up in Ocean Parade too. The massive waterfall off the Wipeout Wave was awesome but didn't last long after opening. And the list goes on! Dreamworld used to have tightly themed areas, and space between those themed areas, adding a sense of leaving one / arriving at a distinctive place. Now's it just one big shopping mall where every spare space had a kiosk added. If Dreamworld were a Westfield, we've got a butcher next to a clothes shop and dentist next to a fruit shop. The really sad part is that there is just no practical way to ever fix these poor decisions and lack of planning and vision #fml Ps I also hate that ToT runs through the park, killing the vibe and tranquility of Every. Other. Area. Pss Hated Buzzsaw being added to Goldrush... never felt right. I guess they wanted something to advertise to the carpark and highway but by doing so they disrespected the park further. Buzzsaw should have had a different theme and been up in Ocean Parade too. The old Thunderbolt area could have been nicely filled and themed.

I rode about a week ago. - The archway as you round the corner to the station platform needs re-painting. It's been like this forever and I don't understand why it wasn't fixed last refurb. - The ride itself looked as shit as ever. Blades swing overhead but are in the dark. - looks like some walls have been fitted here and there but they are just black painted flat board and look temporary, possibly just to further darken the dark ride area. - Main Laser was out. Only laser was to the left of the first brake in the main room. I never noticed 1 there before. - you could see a pile of boxes on the floor in the main room. Possibly storing original figures waiting to be reinstalled. It's so disappointing to see the ride like this and I hope it gets some love soon.