Leaderboard

It's certainly not you taking pictures 💅

What if they just did a launch focusing on ST, but also paint it as "The New DW" and re advertise SV, Maybe fully 6 and maybe some sort of other new animal...All stuff that a lot of visitors haven't seen or even be aware of (Particularly SV IMO)

Threading the gap between @DaptoFunlandGuy and @joz here - in poker terms, I don't think you want to show your hand, nor do I think you fold and show nothing. I think you just need to have a plan and continue to have a conversation about it. No "ooohhh masterplan coming soon" and no "here's Atlantis... loljks." Disney as per usual does well in leading the pack in having a plan, drip-feeding a project, letting the project open and succeed, and then moving on to the next project. In the case of Dreamworld, i'd have the next five years mapped out with five key milestone projects (coaster, ride, family, slide etc.) and literally just say "we have a ride coming every year for the next five years!" and then drip feed the milestones out. 11 months out, here's the concept art for ride #1. 8 months out, here are the facts and a first look. 6-2 months out, here's construction, get excited. 2 months out, here's the ride in action. <1 Month out, get your tickets, we're doing a launch party, woo. Then let the ride do it's thing all summer, then come February after the holidays, rinse and repeat for ride #2. Interlace with a bunch of seasonal events that you're constantly building upon year over year, and you've got yourself a money-making machine and a way out of the post-2016 hole. It's why Disney parks will do up a scaff with a fake castle print overlay when they're working on the castle. My biggest gripe with our parks, and it's a line i've beaten to death now, is that whatever succeeds something should be better, no exceptions. Our parks (all of them) fall short of that mark quite regularly. You only need to look at Village's new signs to know that we take steps backwards everyday. Disney is Disney because they're forever adding and plussing things, and, eventually, that becomes an experience that's greater than the sum of the parts. Disneyland's opening facades were fractionally better than Dreamworld's opening day facades, and over the 7 decades since, they've continually refurbished, touched up and added to them, and now they're epic. Dreamworld has constantly been a case of slowly removing, whether it's been smaller touches like colourscape, flower boxes or big touches like replacing custom-carved old doors with glass sliding doors or entire facades for Abu Dhabi Airport. Keep cutting some more, no barbershop quartet, no sound of a steam train in the distance, add a modern roof down one end, add a LEGO store in the corner with a bunch of white walls.... I feel like i've been waiting for over a decade for that to feel true with Dreamworld. Same for Sea World currently too. The removal of the chairlifts and the SBNO'ness of the Log Flume really makes it obvious.

^yeah I don't think we can specifically hold covid goings-on against them, but I agree with pretty much everything else. Prior to covid, the park was seeing a return of patronage numbers, so I would suggest the 'spectre' of TRRR is perhaps a smaller factor for most people - there are still people (clearly, judging by social media comments) that take every opportunity to remind people of the incident (sometimes unreasonably so) but those who returned to the park have for the most part moved on. Many parks around the world have had incidents and deaths that scar the park, but many of them most people don't even remember save for television specials on ABC. Right now the park's biggest suffering is it's lineup due to years of neglect and a lack of planning and doing the 'bare minimum'. To answer the original question - i'm already on record that ST is probably not enough to bring me back to the park with everything else that is closed or otherwise hobbled. I will likely not buy tickets to Dreamworld until some of my Sydney friends are allowed back in the state, and i'll probably buy only then because they'll want to go. Without that incentive, (which is more about good company than a good offering) I don't think ST is the saviour they need it to be - and realistically they need a whole new world plan to get people excited - perhaps something to fully redevelop the rocky hollow, blue lagoon and BB studios area into a complete land - be it a 'new atlantis' style land of three majors, or a Luna Land style mass-expansion, they need a plan showing how they intend to rebuild whats missing, and they need it done quickly - even if it takes 2-3 years to build, they need to start showing people now what their plan is, because as it stands, it doesn't appear like they've thought much beyond Boxing Day.

I still feel if you got a wide range of guests to ride both of these on the exact same cycle and pick their favourite attraction of the two, the results wouldn't be close to 50/50. Just because someone doesn't scream to the rooftops about the quality of theming doesn't mean they don't at least subconciously appreciate it and leads to them having a better day/spending more money. Let's also not forget these two are in a park that sees similar attendance figures a year to Movie World, it's not just the big boys doing incredible immersive experiences like this

Yeah I don't think being a smaller park is problem, so long as it feels complete. They will have: -Large launch coaster (That is definitely world class) -Secondary gravity thrill coaster -2x Family Coasters -Drop Ride -Flying Theatre -2x Thrilling Flats -Other intermediate flats -Kids Zone -Train -Animals In itself that's not an unbalanced line up, the main things I think are lacking are: -A water ride -A family dark ride I don't think a flat ride is actually that crucial. Old DW had too many IMO, and plenty of parks make do with just one major flat ride (And the claw is solid) The coaster is more keeping up with the joneses, and could be ANYTHING, not even a thrill coaster necessarily. Movie World will probably be back up to 6 soon with the Arkham replacement. As for a water ride, I like @jozidea of a simple shoot the chutes, but make sure it throws up a big wave and there is a footbridge where non riders can get soaked by the tidal wave. It's a great marketing image, and potential source of funny family photos. I know everyone is gonna say "get a power splash" but I don't think it needs to be that hardcore. As for coasters -If we are talking family, a spinner, potentially with a drop track would be solid and unique -If we are talking cheaper thrills, a freespin -If we are talking big thrills, Hmmmm, gotta be a good RMC right, maybe a smaller Zadra or if they want to invest, a wing rider or Dive machine (Check out the 7 seat one going in at SFFT) Im not sure about the Raptors, I still want to see how the newer ones, and the one at SFMM behave themselves for a couple more years.

It seems testing had progressed today with the reverse launch being testing.

They know who to call.

I agree whole heatedly, and I don't think either of these things make the park feel complete. I heard something once that always stuck with me, when you talk to a guest, assume that this is the only visit they'll ever make to a theme park in their life. Today is it. That's why a park feeling 'complete' is such a fundamental idea to me. A guest should not have to take the broader context of the park into account, aside where needed like annual maintenance. Parks should feel like they were specifically built for the day. No temporary barriers, no A Frame signage, no SBNO attractions. Today is a stand alone day in a park's history to a guest and that's how it should feel. When I say 'complete', I don't mean 'finished', I mean 'whole'. When you go into the park it should feel like this is the park as it was intended.

And thats cool, and to be honest if its well landscaped and looks nice, Im happy too. Like the WnW new slide zone, we know its just gonna be slides, so no incorrect expectations. Though if it had some of the large scale rockwork depicted, it probably could have made it feel more enclosed and immersive, since by and large its a low to the ground coaster apart from the first drop. But I mean its on a huge slab so all the planting shown within the ride itself probably wont happen either... All Im saying is, why produce elaborate images and talk about this zone being about the myths and legends of Atlantis if it's not?

I wonder if construction costs aside, was it running at a profit? If so you'd have to think someone might get a deal on it and continue to operate it? And yeah Southbank in Brissy would make a great home for it. Hard to see a world where that would happen. On the GC Broadwater Parkland would also be awesome. Seems like far too legit of a wheel to be a Theme park ride, but if SW got it putting it right on the Broadwater between the Main monorail station and the Seal theatre would be all kinds of amazing.

If Brisbane could get it for a steal it would be a great addition. I also think the Wheel at SW was very popular and SW would be a good home, for the right price.

Troubled history you say? In saying that, I've been to Melbourne basically every year since 2014 and have never once done this. I always felt it was in a silly location and whilst you can see it from the highways, it's impossible to orient yourself as to where it is from the city so you basically forgot about it once you got into the CBD. If it was closer to the MCEC it would have done a lot better in my opinion.

I appreciate your respectful response, and I do agree Taipan needs to breathe.. ...but I still think they need to crystallise their plans and show what is to come. Just to explain my thought process a bit further - You say the park needs to feel complete - but what they have currently isn't enough. You said it yourself. Although I realise you meant tidying up the park rather than any major install, I don't think boarding up half the pathways with red corrugated steel, and placing ride vehicles from defunct attractions outside for photo ops is the solution. I mean we don't even have the typical "excuse our mess while we prepare for our next exciting attraction!" signage on the hoarding. IMHO - I don't think they should patronise their guests by pretending the park in it's "soon to launch ST" state is in any way complete. The only way it can be complete in that state is if you've reached the RCT2 milestone required to complete the task and so you abandon any thought about the rest of the park you intended on building so you can move on and unlock the next mission. Pretending it is complete in it's current state is just insulting, again - in my opinion. That is why I feel they'd be better to reveal their next plans. Management have already discussed their next plans in vagaries back in April, and the likely lead time for any such investment. They must by now have something inked out that they could present in a footnote somewhere to show people they aren't resting on their laurels - like they did after Sky Voyager.

Again, respectfully disagree. The push needs to be 'Why you should visit NOW', not 'In a few years it'll be good'. The trend of announcing things years in advance needs to die in a fire. If you can't buy a pass to ride it now, why are you telling me about it? Again, the park needs to feel complete now, and endlessly banging on about stuff that hasn't opened doesn't make it feel complete. If you want to have a moment where you relaunch the park and you want to build optimism, say 'We just spent $30million, this is only the start and we're here to say, we'll be opening a new family ride in 2022 and a new thrill ride in 2023' (or whatever). That's all it needs to be for now. At the moment though, ST needs a chance to breathe and be the story of the reborn park. There are times when announcing a long way out makes sense, in my mind this is not one of those times.

Yep exactly what Dapto is saying, Steel Taipan needs to be the beggining of a new chapter for Dreamworld and they should be advertising and thinking about it as such. Issue is they seem to be thinking this will be the magical fix all for the park and be an acceptable replacement to the countless lost attractions over the past few years. They need to do a Hong Kong Disneyland and as they prepare the opening for their brand new ride they also announce the next big park expansion plans for the next few years to show they actually have plans past this one ride that while impressive can't hold up an entire park.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/CTeJSW6hLtf/?utm_medium=copy_link

Theres a real difference in quality between a travelling ronald busink wheel and a legit permanent install observation wheel

Some custom Vekoma sit down thing maybe?

Maybe a free spin? Or that compact "Bucking Bronco" launch coaster seen at Nick Universe in New Jersey. Or yeah possibly the compact model Eurofighter

It's because it just doesn't offer a pleasant view. Main things you can see is the roof of costco and a multi level car park. Half of the broader view is rail yards and the port. You cant see landmarks like the MCG Waaaay back in the day the proposal was to build it diagonally across the Yarra River on the Sandridge bridge, so right next to Crown Casino, closer to the CBD for walk up visitors, and a better view. It would have slapped, but it got pushed to the shitty docklands site.

It's transportable in the sense it can be pulled down and moved, but it had foundations built and piers sunk for it to be positioned where it is close to the river.

Interesting side point - I went onto Nearmap to see what the latest was for the station - and it seems (as usual) we're about a month behind. On August 4th - you can see the station structure is there, but not the roof, and the maintenance bay didn't even have track structure. But what I found most interesting is this: I guess I never really considered just how tight these corners were - and i've viewed these two curves from afar for a while, and just concluded they hadn't built track there yet, but now i'm looking at it closer, I can see just how high the bank angle is on these turns and they seem (near) vertical which looks pretty cool. I'm not too worried about opening dates yet. They've got around 3 months left, and all the bones are here (and this image is a month out of date). Let's see what the next updates look like. (Also there's definitely a nice square slab inside those turns with the makings of something going in there - maybe this will be some of the theming elements? *shrug* who knows.

My opinions on this are rather complex, so I'll do my best to put it into some kind of order. For start off, for the sake of this post, I think there are 3 types of Theme Park guests. You've got people who post on here or who lurk here. The Hyper nerds. The people who are into theme parks probably a bit more than is sensible. For reference I reckon collectively we make up about 0.05% of theme park attendance on a given day, (and 0.01% of revenue). Next you've got your casual fan. This is a group that has grown massively since cheap passes and facebook has been a thing. I think they always existed, but it's exploded recently. These are the people that are engaged on facebook about new additions to the park and ticketing options. These are the people who look at the concept art. Next is everyone else, the standard guest, the people who give zero fucks about theme parks, but take their kids there because it's a fun day out. They don't read the press releases, they don't know the names of the rides that have been added since they visited, nor do they care about marketing words. What they expect, is a good fun, quality full day out with their kids. Some of them may have passes too these days, but many still don't. My hunch is that your standard guest just won't care about words like 'Immersive' or 'Precinct'. They don't compare what they're experiencing at the park to concept art. Are they having fun? Are the kids having fun? Is it a cool place to be? That's all. They may compare to other parks and go 'This is a bit shit' but mostly they take it for what it is. Related to that, if you're on here, you should be able to look at a concept art, read a press release, (and in the case of New Atlantis, look at a model) and say 'Clearly this is not a fully immersive themed land despite what marketing are saying. Also there's huge differences between the model and the concept art, probably nothing is set in stone yet'. I don't expect a casual to do this however, and I fully agree that over promising and under delivering is a real problem. Having said that though, not everything needs to be an immersive themed land. It just needs to be good. I've said it before that I honestly think the weakest parts of New Atlantis, is the 'New Atlantis' concept. 'Modern theme less Sea World done in a quality way' would have been absolutely been enough. There's a reason why when I did a video years ago about what I think SW should do with the New Atlantis land, there was no immersive themed land. It was generic with a unifying idea. I don't think that's shifting the goal posts, and I don't think saying not everything has to be an immersive themed land is why the parks are lowering the quality. Hell I don't think anyone has made a genuine attempt at an immersive themed land in years. To sum up, I think the marketing messaging is wrong, I think it uses words that don't resonate with normal people, and are incorrect to people who are casual fans. I think for a hyper fan, you should have been able to work this out and set your expectations accordingly.

Hasn't been installed yet, if you looked at the pictures .

Trident and Leviathan are still meant to open "This Summer" according to their website. I was honestly expecting VRTP to find out the date of Taipan's opening and go "OH by the way everyone, Leviathan and the rest of New Atlantis opens up the day before!" but a completion of the land (I'm not calling it a precinct!) before next year is looking more and more unlikely by the day.

I thought Trident was meant to open in 2021. Presuming they want it to at least soft open for the Christmas school holidays, that's really only just over 3 months. I was thinking we'd be seeing a slab and parts on site by now. As for Leviathan, I was expecting construction to roughly be keeping pace with Steel Taipan, with similar milestones, so I am surprised it's not testing at this point, or having theming being built. Now, i know the concept art had the coaster rotated, but I was hoping there would be those rock mountains and water falls taking shape, and more of the large statues. A fair bit to do for a summer school holidays opening.....

Leviathan has that unmistakable 'Extended delay in opening' whiff about it. When's Trident meant to open?

I made myself sad typing that too

What's that?