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Visited the park to experience the event today. It was a fun day and a really good event. Lots of variety in the shows, which were all good. Street entertainment was great and as always, fantastic to have Goldie back in the park. Highly recommend checking it out

First time visiting SW yesterday in many years to check out Levi and the Atlantis precinct. Overall a good day marred by some pretty frustrating operations. I remember reading somewhere that new policies/procedures have had an impact but whatever the cause, it made for incredibly long dispatch times and excruciatingly slow moving queues. Levi is pretty relentless from start to finish. Seems like the main hill is the only semi reprieve. Fantastic layout with tonnes of fun pops of air right through to the end. The view at the top is phenomenal. Takes your breath away and you forget for a moment what’s ahead. I love the horn as the train dispatches that can be heard throughout the park along with the heartbeat sound. Great touch. The spiral queue audio could have a little more depth and variety considering the length of time you spend in the area. Only one train running as has been reported elsewhere - not sure if this is an operational choice or maintenance but I caught a glimpse of some workers looking at the 2nd train in the shed. The station is gorgeous. It could have been made more immersive with doors at the station exit/entry (a la Superman back in the day) as a lot of light bleeds in. I love how much the smoke adds to the atmosphere shortly after a train dispatched but it’s very short lived. Station audio was too quiet in the morning but it was turned up in the afternoon. I also wish that there were some more pre recorded load/unload announcements as staff yelling out over the show scenes ruins the immersion, but little things I suppose! I really dislike that the show scene is prioritised over efficient dispatches. Especially on a busy day like yesterday. The scene immediately before dispatch is cool but not sure if it’s entirely worth it at the expense of extending the queue? It could be viewed as part of the ride, but with others in the station talking etc it kind of gets lost. The ride is perfectly capable of running two trains without stacking for too long if this was removed. Perhaps peak/offpeak settings would help here? Backwards was intense. Glad I did it but definitely a one and done for me - came off feeing a bit sore! A plus was that I could properly hear the lift audio as the chain drowns it out towards the front of the train. Much prefer forward however backward seems to be making them a mint. A lot of trains had the row filled although no doubt most were using it to bypass the 2 hr queue it sat at for most of the day. Onto elsewhere in the park - JR was also running 1 train. I’m sure there’s a reason for this that I’ve missed in another thread but this meant that the ride was at 60-80 min for the majority of the day with the queue extending to the onride photo kiosk. On more than a few occasions the train would sit in load for 1-2 minutes before gates would open. Group sorting was also a little slow... Again not sure if there are new procedures affecting this but there didn’t seem to be much urgency. Virtual Queue was near impossible to grab a slot. When I did for Levi (at 3hrs and 30 mins away) the app bugged out and my slot dropped off. It also didn’t hold on to my day ticket and I had to re enter it a couple of times. Generally speaking the day was fine and Atlantis is a good addition that rounds out the park to a full day offer (again).

On the map, he’s where the grass and trees are You enter through this gate next to the Koala Photos

I was going to post about GL being down. but then I remembered that comment and held back

Large enough! There was about 10 different species in there

It’s not that MW has queues because it’s great the park is busy, but when it gets so busy that every ride has a minimum 2 hour queue, that’s not good for guests. Because they’re only getting to go on a couple rides and the rest of the day they’re trying to watch shows, get food, etc because all of those queues are long too. While DWs busyness is much more comfortable and while there are queue they’re much more ‘expected’ wait times and allows you to still do everything you want

While MWs queues were crazy, even DW had some impressive wait times. The park was the busiest I’ve seen in a while. Every ride had decent queues, with Steel Taipan having an hour wait (and using the extended queue) with both trains and fast operations. Sky Voyager was using the extended queue too. And all other rides had decent queues, was great to see.

I went through the twilight trail today and it’s the same, but better with new signage, lighting and glow in the dark stars (they don’t look tacky) as you walk in. The animals on show has obviously changed slightly since they were all removed several years ago. Great to have it back.

Let’s be honest, the only people going to the theme parks this week are tourists, or locals lacking any form of sense or foresight.

Update, queue has opened!

I know it's not a priority for DW right now, but god damn that Sky Voyager building is an abomination. It was a mistake endlessly complained about on parkz at the time, and the concept art absolutely did not translate into reality. That building wouldn't be out of place at the industrial park across the highway. Here's hoping that the Main St facades (particularly Sky Voyager) get re-done with a consistent, classic and timeless theme after the new attractions are built.