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I'm late to this, but I wanted to add a thing that I think got missed to the 'how many rides closed chat; Arkham still there affects how many rides they can have closed before it impacts guests. In the minds of guests if you close one ride at MW, they see two. That's probably not a huge problem with 1 closed ride, but when 3 are out at once that 4th closed ride is huge! Same thing at SW with Flume (SW is worse with the Monorail and Leviathan). The point is that even if everything on paper is open, that isn't what the guests experience.

Honestly, I think that's fair. I know that I've got the reputation on here as a Dreamworld shill, so I need to expect that my posts will probably rile up some feathers before certain people even enter. I'm not above the discourse, but I'm constantly trying to improve and take on others opinions. I'm happy to acknowledge my biases and what guides me. As somebody who works in marketing, I absolutely despise being told how to feel. Present me with a product and tell me the features, sure! I don't have a problem with that at all. But if you tell me what to think about something then I'll immediately become extremely skeptical of it. This is why I have problems with VRTPs marketing practices. From DC Rivals inception they called it 'the greatest coaster ever built.', Leviathan is touted as 'the world's greatest family rollercoaster', Movie World's homepage has 'Australia's #1 Theme Park' and Sea World has 'Australia's #1 Marine Park.' Couple that with their constant need to call everything world class, they consistently overpromise and underdeliver. This is fine and is widely known as 'puffery', but it drives me up the wall because it implies that I'm an idiot who can't think for their themself. That is my own bias. So you are right, I'm happy to admit that I did go in with biases on my mind thanks to their marketing, but when I'm constantly being told that something is the greatest and it turns out to just be okay then I get upset. I have similar problems to Disney at the moment where they're running around tooting their own horn that barely honks whilst saying its the best thing since sliced bread. I think that's why I enjoy Dreamworld. The park isn't telling me how to think and therefore I'm free to make up my own mind. Equally, it's why I get so frustrated when people tell me how to think on here. The classic 'I know that this thing is good because I have information you don't' equally is as frustrating to me because it's telling me to form an opinion without the necessary information to do so. Similarly to yourself, I don't love any of our parks, but I do like visiting them with friends. I used to love Sea World and it's where I got engaged, but that ship has sailed. I can argue and fight until the cows come home to try and improve the state of Australia's parks but I know nothing I say will or do will change anything. The best I can try to do is tell things I see them and relay with as little bias as I can. There's probably also the suspicion that I get kickbacks or some sort of privileges from Dreamworld because of how I talk about them, but rest assured that I get nothing from any parks. I've been ghosted by a majority of them from the largest to smallest. I pay the same ticket as everybody else and I get no special privileges. Anyway, Scenic World is the only place that has ever wanted to work with us so they're officially Australia's #1 Theme Park. Long live Orphan Rocker.

I mean you like what you like and that's up to you. The issue you probably ran into is people knew what your opinion was going to be before they opened the thread, so it's hard not to take it to task. That doesn't mean that everything was automatically invalid BTW, but there were multiple things in what you said where it read like you made your mind up on what your opinion was going to be before you'd set foot in the park. In to response to what I've said above, you'll say you didn't and I'll believe you, but just between us talking respectfully as grown ups, I think acting, totally above it and 'isn't it a shame that people are so fragmented' is a touch disingenuous. Full disclosure, I'm not a member of the DW fanclub on here, nor a member of the village fanclub. I think both have good things and both have bad things. I don't think the good and bad is distributed evenly so I'll call out as I see fit. I think there are people (on both 'sides', more so on one than the other) who justify liking something by bagging something else. I probably come across harsher on DW that my real life opinion because I think the pro DW camp have been talking absolute rubbish for a little while. That's my bias and I could objectively defend it, but honestly who cares? How people respond to all that is up to them. My gut tells me that people will try and use it as some sort of 'gotcha' moment or say 'Yeah you're right joz but parkz, drove me to it'. It'll be very interesting to me if people acknowledge even for a moment their own bias and how that guides them on here. Anyway, shoot the chutes!

In regards to AA, it doesn’t help they haven’t removed all the signage either. There is still the sign on the wall next to Scooby to say access to the ride is left (despite the gate being closed)

I appreciate the honesty, but that genuinely sounds exhausting. People are going to have personal opinions and there is no right or wrong when things are subjective. If people enjoy something then that's fine, and if they don't that is also fine. It's something I've been thinking about a lot recently in regards to the Gold Coast theme parks metanarrative that takes place on here, especially after I posted my trip report the other week. That narrative seems to be that Movie World is good, Sea World is okay and Dreamworld is bad. I felt like I did something wrong for enjoying the parks I did and disliking the ones that I didn't. I was even told by somebody that the only reason I liked Dreamworld was because of the company I surrounded myself with which was abhorrently invalidating. The reality of that conversation was that everybody was right in their own since, including myself, and that's great! Opinions are good and should be shared! The more diverse this community, the better. But when people try to undermine opinions within a niche where it is impossible to objectively quantify the 'best', then there is just going to be hurt feelings, and nobody everybody has the thick skin to put up with it. Above is the Leviathan of Parsonstown, one of the largest telescopes ever created during its time. Before this was created, the astronomy community could identify three objects in their telescopes which were basically stars, planets and 'smudges'. Now they had no idea what these smudges were, but there were theories, and the community fought constantly over this. One side argued that the 'smudges' were vast collections of stars which tightly compacted together, and the others argued that they were collections of space dust that floated freely as remnants of the universe's creation. The infighting was incredible, and they fought all through the telescope's construction until they were able to peer through it and see who was right... but they discovered that they were both right. The smudges were both collections of stars (galaxies) and free floating space dust (nebulas). It was a lesson to the community that often within a discussion there is more then one right answer, and just because you believe yourself to be right doesn't immediately invalidate every other person offering differing ideas or opinions. Movie World can be great, but it can also be bad. Equally Dreamworld can be bad, but it can also be great. All are right, and nobody is wrong.

I've been at pains to say that I give them a pass on things disagree with right now because I understand the broader context. You just don't get to do all the things and have them be amazing. There's always compromises to be made, and right now they have to make more than normal because; of course they do. I can also confirm that some of my thoughts on what they should do would have been almost totally wrong. Hindsight, it turns out, is quite a good thing to have on your side when making and evaluating decisions, and I'm blessed to have had that on my side when talking about what DW have been doing. I also tend to not have too much issue with what the park does, and I tend to spend more time taking issue with people who say how amazing mediocre stuff is rather than just going off on my own and talking about the park. For example, I wouldn't feel the need to comment on their busstop in Brisbane if people weren't carrying on about how great it was. ST shows little imagination, but I'm totally fine until there's pages dedicated to how amazing the area is. And again here, I didn't have anything to say about the nostalgia campaign until the comment was made about how smart it was. As for 'aren't they great for not selling', from the analysis I read that has more to do with not getting the price they wanted than it does about their resilience and dedication to the park.

We have very different definitions of cute…

I don’t think cute is the right word, maybe terrifying?

Wow. Seriously. Wow. You ask a legitimate question with nothing but civility and respect but because you had the temerity to even raise a query that may have been slightly negative your posts get deleted without any explanation. Not even a courtesy private message to explain the situation further or to reach out and try and smooth over the situation. This is redaction of the worst kind. And because it’s been done without even trying to reach out and explain it makes you feel like your opinion and your contributions are not even valued. Sorry to me this is a type of arrogance that shouldn’t be on display for a community like this. The whole thing has left a seriously bad taste in my mouth.

I don't think i've ever agreed with you more.

I'm not calling you out @joz, I just think that it's possible that more then one person can be right in this conversation. Regarding summer attendance, what are you basing that off? Again, not calling you out, just curious. I don't know how any park did apart from what you mentioned about how attendance across the board was generally low but has Ardent or Dreamworld released any indicators that said that their season was a failure? I agree that just because everybody is doing it doesn't mean you have to, that's what got the industry into this mess in the first place with it's race to the bottom, but it is compelling for them if the market demands such a thing. Retro seems to sell at the moment so I think it's worthwhile to try then to not try at all. Dreamworld continues to be stuck between a rock and a hard place. If they do nothing then they get called out, and if they try they get called out. There is no yellow brick road for them to follow guided by a fairy, they just need to throw things at a wall and see what sticks. As it's been reiterated many times by others, they can't look over their shoulder to see what the rest of the world is doing because we are a different market with different expectations, and unfortunately there is no 'Recovering from the TRRR Disaster: For Dummies' handbook. Honestly, I feel they're in a similar spot to the Disney fandom at the moment. There is a subgroup of fans that sit on the sideline lurking for problems and salivate when the company does anything that isn't immediately spectacular. These individuals usually appear to be long-term fans of the parks that in some way or another feel 'left behind' from the experience, and I think this exists within the Aussie community as well. Do I know what's best for the park? Nope. Genuinely, I don't think anybody does, and I don't envy those who have to wade through muddy waters to hopefully emerge at the other side of the rapids (pun intended). I think we can all agree that there are decisions that we have hated and we can fight about them until the cows come home, but the fact that the park even exists today is commendable in my eyes. Ardent could have gone 'haha. oops' and shut up shop, selling off the park/land to make a quick buck and yeeted out of the theme park business, but instead they continue to troop forward despite everything working against them. One can argue that they're brave, and another can argue that they're stupid. Ultimately, they're probably both right, but you can't argue that they haven't been resilient.

Whitewater World 😍

Honestly, I'd take that over cookie cutter corflute anyday.

An A-frame with some mass-printed generic corflute signage is not an improvement on hand-painted individually tailored artworks. (I mean, its been a long time since they were individually tailored, but still...) The problem with black and white signage is a lot of people tend to walk straight past them - especially in a village park where A-frame signs are literally everywhere. Give me a 3-dimensional moose you can punch any day.