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Such a festive Christmasy entrance sign...

Entry signage up (TPSN) And the Polar Express float is on Main Street outside Ricks. So either they have some new floats and want to make photo opportunities with the existing ones OR budget cuts

Tot is working but when it comes back into the station it violently shakes for 5 seconds before rolling up and down the station numerous times. Defiently has some problems but Dreamworld are still operating it... *Its now been shut

@Jamberoo Fan I think you need to attend the show before making these sort of comments/judgements on it. “outback” is still the best world to use for the overall feel of the evening. Changing it to just “Australian Spectacular” is way too broad, and “Australian Cattle Station Spectacular” doesn’t have the same ring to it.

Yep population of the greater Newcastle/Lake Macquarie area is about 560,000- making it Australia's 7th largest city. However , if you couple the fact that the Newcastle catchment area also encompasses the populations of the Mid North Coast up to Coffs ( population of 310,000) and the Hunter/ New England area ( Tamworth (61,000 population) and Armidale ( population 25,000) all who are will to travel to see international acts , then staging a concert in Newcastle/Hunter Valley becomes a very lucrative and viable proposition in its own right, distance from Sydney not withstanding. Not sure what you are referring to here @iwerks. Bohemian Rhapsody was released in 1975 and Queen then toured Australia in 1976 in what was only their 2nd visit to Australia ( their first was an ill fated appearance in 1974 at the Melbourne Sunbury Music festival). Perth was definitely on the stopover for the '76 tour. I do agree with you however. Most international acts certainly include Perth on their itinerary for any tour- Perth is usually the first stop of any Australian leg. This has been proven time and time again and distance from the east coast isn't really a huge deciding factor in deciding these things- the population is large enough to warrant it almost always being included on any tour. The only thing that would prevent Perth from being included on the tour is where exactly that particular tour is headed- normally East coast tours encompass dates in New Zealand or continuation onto Asian countries like Indonesia or the lucrative tour market of Japan. Of course , it also depends on the popularity of the touring artist in Australia-I know several bands that have a niche fanbase who have only done Melbourne and Sydney shows as their Australian leg. The city that tends to miss out the most of any tour stopover is Adelaide. This city is frequently missed out by numerous touring artists and with a population of only 1.2 million it is comparable to Newcastle without the added advantage of being 2 hours from the largest city in the country. That's good to hear. Perth deserves a bigger theme park industry and hopefully there are good signs of this expanding. Having never been there, its certainly on my list and I an keen to visit Adventure World. Having another good sized park or attraction will only hasten that decision to go.

I disagree with needing to change the name, most of the previous shows had very little to do with the “outback”, the title of the individual shows demonstrate that. The whole “High Country Legends” is set in the high country mountains and had nothing to do with the actual outback.

Due to the nature of AOS, it will last as long as it is profitable. Since it is a dinner show, a lively atmosphere is needed as part of the experience. They need to ensure it remains at near-full capacity for every show otherwise prices would go up and there would be less in attendance and therefore, less atmosphere, a critical part of the experience, which would reduce value for money. AOS seems to update the show every time attendance drops enough to be close to break-even and/or near it becoming noticeable that some seats aren't being filled (I have never seen AOS sadly - though I want to - so I'm not sure about the latter & the former is just a guess). If projection mapping wasn't introduced, I'd say Heartland would have been it's last show before a major re-think. To 'replace' it, they should just remove the word 'Outback' from the title of the attraction. So it is just the 'Australian Spectacular', which would allow them to also tell other Australian stories not related or linked to the outback. Retrospectively, they could rename the original show as just 'Outback'. However, I'd say projection mapping has allowed Heartland to have a 3 year stay rather than a 1 year stay. As I will detail below though, projection mapping may only add a short-term boost to AOS though. It should be noted AOS are heavily influenced by Olympic ceremonies. Ignatius Jones, who designed this segment in the Sydney 2000 Olympics Opening Ceremony, yes, you guessed it, helped design the original AOS. In 2002, he even directed and wrote a travelling musical theatre called The Man From Snowy River: Arena Spectacular (You can see the influence it had on AOS in the below video, which I think was filmed in Brisbane Entertainment Centre): So no doubt, he was the man to help design AOS particularly since that film above was distributed by Village Roadshow. Back to the Sydney 2000 Olympics ceremonies though, those ceremonies heralded in the 'technology' era of Olympic ceremonies. These types of ceremonies reached their peak a decade later with Beijing's massive effort in 2008. 2 years later, Vancouver did the 1st ever near-fully projection mapped ceremony, heralding in the 'projection mapping' era of Olympic ceremonies. Projection mapping was used prominently throughout that ceremony but this segment (from 01:35:55 to 01:41:44 - the impressive projection mapping really starts at 01:37:41) was what really heralded in that era as people then realised the possibilities projection mapping can provide. David Atkins creatively directed the Sydney & Vancouver Olympic ceremonies and helped Ignatius Jones with The Man From Snowy River: Arena Spectacular. Projection mapping has been used prominently in all Olympic ceremonies since then except London 2012, who used it only in 1 segment. However, projection mapping has been critizied in Olympic ceremonies in the past 4 years as being 'lazy', 'cheap' and 'overused' as it has replaced many of the special effects once utilized in the Sydney 2000 to Beijing 2008 era. VRTP shouldn't fall into that trap as it will turn the show into a glorified cinema screen otherwise and regular visitors would easily see a lack of creativity in technology & special effects. Olympic ceremony directors have, since that criticism, in the past couple of years, began to try and blend projection mapping with technology more where budgets permit, which has reduced that criticism, though not fully. So it should be noted that how Olympic ceremonies evolve will likely be how AOS evolves.

It's more a theme park than DW is. You got further then me. I'm still stuck on this question.

Well, that sucked. I've been to Adventure World and a bunch of other places that aren't on the list. Someone needs to realise that Australia is more than just the eastern seaboard. I can't actually complete the form.. 😡🤢🤮

I wouldn't call that the graveyard... Isn't this the graveyard? Or is this the graveyard? Or is it here? This? Wait.... I found the Sea World Graveyard!!!

Yeah. They should bring out guys wearing blackface too. Just because it'd be a nostalgic nod to the past.