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Jungle Rush soft opened again this afternoon, and I got another ride on it! They've actually added a lot in the few days! There's even more theming and audio in the queue and station, and they've added more theming to the turntable room. It's also a lot darker now too, which was a big complaint I had the other day. Also did Murrissippi Motors, which was a lot of fun.

Some more photos… (spoilers ahead) Flight of the Wicked Witch queue: As you can see, the first section of the queue is very well themed. Unfortunately though, all of the immersion disappears as soon as you walk through the haunted forest and are presented with a bland hallway and a direct view of the studio’s BOH areas. The rest of the area is nicely presented, but definitely not “immersive” as the BOH areas are visible at pretty much all times and no effort has been made to block them out (or at least make them less noticeable). One thing to note is that there is a lot of permanent lighting all through the land, so I’m betting it should look pretty spectacular at night (though I do wish some of the lighting fixtures were more “themed” into the land. Modern suburban street lights do not belong in OZ). Kansas Twister queue: At one point in the queue, you walk through Dorothy’s house. There are a number of effects (such as video screens in the windows showing debris flying past and lights that swing back and forth from the ceiling) that help support the idea that the twister is approaching. You then make your way out to the barn and the ride itself. Overall, I think the rides themselves are good additions to the park and definitely help boost the park’s family attraction lineup. However, the OZ precinct is far from the immersive experience that was promised. Though it’s very nicely presented and there are elements that are quite well done, the overall product sadly feels a little cheap and tacky IMHO.

I'd have to agree that the land is sadly pretty mixed, leading towards the negative. I love the initial themed indoor queues for both coasters, but after that... oh dear.

It sadly just closed for the day when I arrived there, but the staff were nice enough to let us look around the restaurant! It looks REALLY good. There's theming everywhere, nods to Dreamworld's past everywhere (including posters for both Tower of Terror and Wipeout) and has its own theme song that plays. The entrance sign to Koala Country is in there, and one of the old Giant Drop Mammoth Skulls. It's Disney level.

Just got back from taking the nephew, my thoughts: The Good The theming in the queue entry buildings is top tier, very immersive and well themed The land isn't as bare as I initially thought it looked from the Fright Night images Accessibility for people with disabilities was incredible, well beyond anything any of the parks do at the moment Despite the pathway into the land being quite narrow, it didn't feel congested. Even in the main entrance itself I never felt overcrowded Statues at the front are awesome, really good quality and I am sure we will see it 10,000 times on Instagram every week. (Way better than that nightmare fuel flash statue) Munchkin land was neat, if only people would move out of way so you can take photos instead of sitting on their phones in front it. They might need to put some seating in the area for people not riding so they don't use all the theming as chairs The Emerald City projections are pretty neat and its nice to have an airconditioned space to hang for a bit. Surprisingly there wasn't a huge crowd, in fact it was almost empty when we walked through, maybe staff move you along if you hang around too long? KT seems like it is going to be a great number absorber for the park, even with average operations and multiple empty seats the line never seemed to extended beyond the stairs out of the indoor queue section. Which is about the amount you'd fit on both trains. Chatting with some of the people in line they were saying they managed to get multiple rides in on KT easily. The Vekoma trains on both are great, very freeing even for someone with bigger legs. I had no issues getting them past the minimum close which is a struggle for me on rides like Kenny's Forest Flyer over at Dreamworld Both coasters are exceptionally smooth, though I didn't expect anything different from modern Vekoma Tons of staff working the rides, hopefully once they get in the rhythm more things will get faster. Assuming Movie World continues staffing them with that many. The Bad Slow operations. I timed FOTWW at an average of 4:30 per dispatch while the ride lasts just over a minute. KT was around 4 minutes flat for a ~35 second ride. No single rider option. Every single train that was dispatched had empty seats, on average I counted around 4 empty seats per train. Staff send groups up one at a time to the ride from the queue, but then just stand around looking at their feet until they send the next group up. Surely they could pop their heads around the corner, count the number of empty rows and send a few more people through. Our ride on KT had 7 empty seats (including entire rows) on our train, plus 4 more empty single seats on the opposite side. The queue still had plenty of people in it at this time. They also don't seem to even try and group people, there was a single rider in front of us who was put in their own row despite another single rider being further up the train. Fingers crossed this is just while they get used to operating it and things speed up in the future The old pathway through to Scooby was still closed, though it was painted so I assume it will open eventually FOTWW was listed at 45mins when we joined the queue, took over 1.5 hours to get on. KT was listed as 5 minutes, which was closer to 10 given the dispatch times, but not a huge deal. The indoor section of FOTWW's queue is a bit too dark, my eyes aren't the best but also not the worst. I guess it helps the immersion but also makes some of the details harder to make out Once you get out of the indoor sections it is basically a fenced in concrete pathway with very little shade. Despite the queue being over an hour long it just barely stretched into the FOTWW building, leaving most people standing out in the sun The photo area where you scan your photos is shared for both rides and has a very tight doorway to get in, it was full of people and you could barely squeeze in to collect your photos. The section the rides are in is basically unexplorable, the fencing they've used looks a bit different to the stuff over at Rivertown in that the holes are smaller, blocking even more visibility of the theming. There was one photo op with some trees from FOTWW as you exit the ride where you can take photos, but outside of that it was a concrete path surrounded in black wire fencing. I would have loved a section of cornfield to take photos in Overall I think the land is good and step in the right direction. From what I have seen of Rivertown I would rate that higher, however I have yet to actually experience it myself so won't say for certain. For two off the shelf model coasters I think they couldn't have picked a much better option for the plot of land. Of course something custom would have been way better, but 99% of visitors aren't going to know or care. Theming, where it exists, is great. If this is what we can expect moving forward I will be a happy camper. Though I will wait and see if they maintain it, who wants to take bets on how long until one of the screens in the KT queue windows is just black?

Well, I've seen quite a bit of footage as people are visiting today. So, my feelings are based on this, not a first-hand experience. While the courtyard area looks good, I think there's a ways to go. There's just something sterile and "plasticky" that I can't quite articulate. Those flat, monolithic concrete walls and 2D facades aren't really selling it for me. The granular detail in the theming just doesn't feel like it's there. Anyone else get that sense? Meanwhile, from what I've seen, the interior spaces are fantastic. Great music and atmosphere. The Gale House/Kansas Twister queue looks great, but it's the Palace of Oz and Wicked Witch areas that really are on another level. So, well done to VRTP, two outta three ain't bad!

The restaurant is now open daily from 11:30 to 3pm

It’s open!

But which one is more iconic? Put a second sock in for that. Personally, if I had to choose, I'd take DW's coaster over the pretty standard ones at MW. But that's just my preference.

I went down for the opening this morning so thought I would try and put some ideas down on what I think works well and what hasn’t delivered. Of course these are all my first impressions and just my opinions. At 10 we were let into the gates of movieworld at about half of the people there ran to Wizard of Oz. When you enter the world the access to both rides is through the Emerald Palace. There are test seats for both rides when you walk in and a large Wizard of Oz Chamber (which is very impressive). we decided to do Kansas Twister first and the theming for the queue line is really good, you go through Dorothy’s house and it looks really good. We were one of the first in line but had to wait for the executives to get their rides in (why they don’t do this before the park opens I do not know, but it’s never a good look a bunch of Village execs going through fast pass while others are waiting.) Kansas twister is a solid roller coaster with the capacity to take lots of people. We enjoyed it. As we exited Kansas Twister they have the bad witch out for a meet and greet which was cute and my kids loved that, we then did Flight of the Wicked Witch. The wait for this was long and it kept going down, the queue is brilliant and very well themed. The ride was smooth and quite thrilling. We then saw that Kansas twister had gone down. They were extremely slow to load Flight of the Wicked Witch. the land itself looks immersive and well themed. The only thing I find a bit jading with the queue for both coasters is that the last little bit before you load for each coaster you are essentially in an outside queue surrounded by black metal fencing, I wish they had thought of a way to keep the queue indoors right until you load up. i think the price statement around 100 million is rubbish, there are still areas that clear cuts have been made (the walls in the haunted forest are painted which gives it a low budget ghost train feel when looking directly at the walls) but it’s still far away the best theming Movieworld has done recently.

What a dick. I hope his phone gets snatched by a pack of Flying Monkeys.

Looking at the images, the courtyard seems underwhelming. It feels a bit too flat, and I don't like the white box in the middle of the land. I haven't seen the inside of the land yet so I hope that will be better.

I actually laughed at both of those statements, Movieworld love throwing out these big statements

The headline for the article says "From two ground-breaking roller coasters to high-tech holograms, no expense has been spared in this $100m new theme park attraction recreating the world of the Wizard of Oz." Since when were the park spending $100 million on the Wizard of Oz? That's three times the cost of Rivertown. That's the roughly the same price Universal spent to build VelociCoaster. The bar has now been set very high if they really spent that much.

Appreciate the pictures and reports from those who’ve visited. I’m getting the impression this is like Nintendo Land at Universal Hollywood. Small, cheap and unimpressive. Will be nice to +3 the coaster count but nothing in this land suggests it will have the perennial appeal of SDSC or (lest we forget) LTRR.

I visited today around 1pm. KT was showing a 5 min wait and that’s all we waited. It seems to load 40 people every cycle so the wait never went over 15mins that I saw. We waited 45mins for FOTWW. We walked straight through the inside queue section which looked fantastic and spent all 45mins queuing outside in the sun. At the entrance to the castle They have a cast member checking fast track and sending people inside the castle to the loading platform. They should move this to the end of the inside building and have people queuing in the inside themed queue and just walking quickly through the sun area to the castle. It’s like they have wasted this amazing themed inside queue just to have people standing outside in the sun for 45+mins.

Considering they’ve said it’s officially opened, I doubt it

I have to say personally I am disappointed. We didn’t spend long there so I won’t review the rides as we couldnt get on. From a ‘non rider’ perspective the land is incredibly small, boxed in and feels kinda flat/cheap. It almost feels like an old area of a park that use to be alive but lost its energy and pizazz over the years. It desperate for some kinetic energy and life in my opinion. We had a Quick Look in the ride queues, there’s a small element of impressive theming then lots of blank walls and concrete and backstage views with literally 0 effort or thought put in. The wait times for wicked witch are also going to be horrendous. I can’t imagine most families/kids being happy to wait 2hours+ for a short ride. Seems a bizarre choice for a park that is screaming out for capacity and people eaters and who seem to have no interest in efficiencies or operations, but I digress. I’ll admit this is a step up from a lot of recent village installations and there are some really beautiful scenes here and there, but overall disappointed. It’s not an Immersive land at all, it’s a painted courtyard with some theming and a queue for two small coasters. The claim of $100mill also baffles me. Between Woz and Rivertown, I’m hoping it pays off for dreamworld, they’ve put far more effort in this time round and you can see their passion in its endless details and uniqueness.

Great photos @Noll_57 For the most part Kansas Twister looks to have been executed really well (minus the lighting that’s just got exposed cables around the track). And while the indoor queue and station of Wicked Witch looks really good, that transition area in the queue is so poor. The lack of effort to hide anything BOH and the bland walls is pretty sad to see considering their claim it’s world class. They definitely can’t have spent $100 million. But I know the coasters themselves are good, will be a hit with everyone and suit the park well.

I think all things considered the theming is really excellent, particularly the inside queues. But even some of the little touches like the tractor etc around Kansas Twister are nice. If VRTP keeps this level up in the future, I'd find it very hard to complain (though knowing me I'll still try!). It does feel a bit like the Wizard of Oz 'courtyard' at the moment, so it would be great to see a future minor expansion such as an Oz-themed flat ride. This effort they've put into theming makes me hope they will build a decent dark ride again one day, or at least lengthy rides with dark ride portions, as they always used to build. I know it's a challenge, but it would truly be taking the park back to its glory days

Rumour has it 1pm today. New merch at the Motorcoaster store.

Ooft very unimpressed based off the photos so far. What a boring 100 million dollar waste 🤣🤣🤣

I won't be down that way until the new year, any chance someone can grab a photo of the menus?

What's so ground breaking about 3 off the shelf coasters? I know, It's ground breaking for MW, they haven't broken down yet. 🤣

Ride time is 1 minute 35 seconds if anyone curious by the way!

Excited, but it seems there were no lessons learned from the Atlantis opening debacle. I see no good reason other than "getting ahead" of the competition to not just soft-launch tomorrow with a proper opening on Boxing Day. But I guess I'm not an executive, so I wouldn't know any better.

Exciting weekend, but I can't help but think Movie World is going to get some flack when the coasters inevitably go tech this weekend.

Within the park you do only find the characters within Dreamland (and now as a photo op for MM). It’s not like you find them at every corner of the park. If K&B appeared anymore than this then I’d agree, but I think this as a photo op is fine.

I've heard from a few people they're aiming for Friday, with a possible soft opening before hand. Also, the models have been uncovered!