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I won't go into massive amounts of detail, but Sea World does need a big new full sized coaster. It also could do with a smaller broad appeal coaster (a spinner would be ideal), a new family ride and a dark ride. All 3 of it's main shows are woeful and need to be rewritten from scratch, and for the love of god just reopen the Flume already. The only thing the park doesn't need is new animal attractions; there are enough of them and animal attractions are increasingly a problem for public perception. I think long term (20+ years) SW needs to transition to not being an animal park with a couple rides, but an Ocean theme park with a few animals. At the moment if they wanted to shift focus away from animals for public relation issues they can't because they have too little else to highlight.

In 2007 it had an amazing immersive family ride (Bermuda Triangle), chairlifts, miniature railway, and better and more frequent monorails (plenty of transport rides), better dolphin show (animal show), a good pirate show (family show), Vikings Revenge (good family water ride), a water park (suitable for all ages but now replaced by a water splash play area suitable only for little kids), and Sea Viper (thrill ride). So it had various attractions and the whole family could easily find multiple fun things to do, regardless of their ages and preferences. Sadly the same cannot be said now.

I have a few questions regarding the shows. Who is creating the shows? Who is approving shows? Which managers at Village like the shows? Which managers would pay out of their pocket to see the shows? Now for my thoughts - The people creating the shows are crap at their jobs. The people signing of the shows don’t know what a good show is. The management don’t care about the shows. I know hell would have to freeze over before I paid to watch any of the shows and SW are only using the shows as a filler which leaves you feeling empty. When a theme park put in a show they must treat it no different to putting in a new ride. SW gave us Jet Rescue with the extra kicker (launch) because SW knew the MDMC version wasn’t going to cut it, but Village refuse to add a kicker to the shows. Instead Village have installed “MDMC THE SHOW” in all the parks. A couple of Jet skis having a stupid competition is crap, dull, dumb, foolish, futile, ill-advised, irrelevant, laughable, ludicrous, naïve, short-sighted, simple, half-baked, half-witted, idiotic, meaningless, moronic, pointless, stupefied and did I mention stupid because it’s stupid too. Don’t get me started on how boring it is. There aren’t enough words in the world to describe how boring it is. Push my wife is a lot like you when I take her out to dinner. She always goes the chicken. I'm say to her "Try the fish, Try the lamb" but it's always the chicken.

The problem is the park doesn't have a headline act. There's no ride where you say 'You MUST go to SW to go on that ride'. Nothing there captures the public imagination in the way a Tower of Terror or Rivals does. Jet Rescue and Storm are both decent but not enough to visit the park for; ultimately they are filler. Surfrider if it moved would just be more of the same, filler. But worse than that its an old ride so not even something new. Worse than that its closed 6 months of the year. Worse than that it has a 140cm height requirement in a park aimed at small kids. I don't know if they're still thinking of moving it, but by the time you move it and set it up properly it'll end up costing a few million anyway. May as well spend that on filler which is new and more appropriate for the park. Least something actually new might drive attendance.

Update from today

Here is a superman escape parkitect replica i made

ASX RELEASE ARDENT LEISURE COMPLETES SALE OF THEBOWLING & ENTERTAINMENT DIVISION Ardent Leisure Group (ASX: AAD) is pleased to announce that it has today (30.04.2018) completed the sale of the Bowling& Entertainment Division to The Entertainment and Education Group, who also own and operate the Timezone family entertainment centres, as announced to the market on 20 December 2017. Dr Gary Weiss, Chairman of Ardent, said “The sale of the Bowling & Entertainment Division will strengthen Ardent’s balance sheet and enhance the Group’s capacity to continue the roll out of Main Event entertainment centers in the United States and fund new attractions at Dreamworld. “On behalf of the Board, I would like to thank all those involved in the transaction and wish the staff and management of the Bowling & Entertainment business all the best under their new ownership.” Ardent expects to book a profit before tax in the range of $22 million to $26 million on the sale, with the net proceeds of circa $150 million (after sale related items) to be used to repay existing bank debt.

Maybe. I don't think $139 is unreasonable for locals, especially for what one pass includes and that it is 12 months rather than locking until June 30...but this is how they could end up with less revenue. Pretty sure most locals could happily take a 6 month break, no need to directly continue your pass. So they're getting $139/18 months rather than $99/12 months. The kicker here though is about holiday makers. Pretty easy to buy the VIP pass for $99 and then let the kids go to the parks 5 out of the 7 days on the Gold Coast. Now, you buy a two day pass for $119-stuff paying the extra $80 to make it $199. What have the parks lost? 3 days of revenue, probably $40 a day for $120. They gained $20 at the gate, to lose a heap through F&B...less food sold, makes the food operation way more marginal. Where they used to spend $300, they spend $200 and then spend $100 elsewhere. No shortage of other activities that will happily take your $$$ on the Gold Coast. Or you buy the 12 month pass and visit a week earlier next year, so they get $199x1 as opposed to $99x2 at the gate. Less visitors, means less need to spend a lot of time in the park-low ride wait times, also meaning no need for anyone to buy fastpasses. There's plenty of potential pitfalls in their new pricing strategy and I'm guessing they've fallen into a few-it doesn't appear to be a slam dunk move to be profit accretive. Most of the 'consumer surplus' is captured in the first visit to a park. I'll pay insanely more to visit a park for the first time, than to repeat visit.

Well time for Merlin to buy Dreamworld then.