Richard

Where did this idea that VIP passes result in our parks somehow barely scraping by stem from? That this is why we haven't seen these fabled $15+ million attractions in several years? Across the board our parks are financially performing on par or better than they were when they were dropping ~$16 million on rides every few years. That should be end of discussion right there; discounted annual passes aren't the reason we're not seeing these high-end pricetags on new attractions. Look at international trends. The 90s/00s were all about bigger, better, faster rides. Manufacturers were delivering these styles of rides and we even got our fair share. The cost of playing that game these days however is out of reach for all but a handful of parks around the world. Instead we're seeing most parks and manufacturers switch to smaller rides that are more about a gimmick (but then what isn't gimmicky about a roller coaster to begin with?). It's not our parks The Australian dollar up until a few years ago meant that any time an Australian park wanted just about anything significant, they had no choice but to pay $15+ million. Buying from a US manufacturer costs half what it did a decade ago (granted freight is significantly higher these days). If Movie World built Wild West Falls today they'd have enough change left over to actually finish the mountain -- even with inflation.

Movie World Facebook: (Cropped El Loco computer generated image) Oooooh another clue... WHAT could it be????????? Everyone: Umm... El Loco. Movie World: Oooooh... you'll never guess what it is! Stay tuned!! Everyone: Umm... El Loco. Movie World: Oooooh... another picture! What could it be????????

Figured we were due for a name change of this thread... As far as the track goes, as others have said it's definitely S&S. As for 2 vs. 4-across seating. I'd say this would be a likely explanation for the additional diagonal bracing that the Movie World track features but doesn't appear on any of the previous El Loco installations.

Damn... I was hoping it would be turbine themed. Dreamworld needs more turbine themed rides.

Definitely... though I'd go one step further and allow people to reuse their existing photo and simply mail out the passes. The cost savings in labour alone should make this a no-brainer... with say a modest 50,000 renewals at 3-5 minutes processing time of each, imagine the costs in labour.

I didn't get a chance until now to say anything about this. In short server load issues caused the outages. We're still not 100% sure if it was normal traffic or some kind of attack on the server. Obviously we're for the most part back on track but there's still work to be done to improve things more and we are investigating options for the future. We can't guarantee perfect results... especially as we ramp up construction coverage which typically increases traffic by 30-50%.

One limitation of our database structure is that a ride type must be specified... and roller coaster is the default. I wouldn't necessarily read too much into that description.

The Gold Coast parks have all but given up on the international tourism market. Over the years the parks have cited just about anything and everything causing a downturn in international numbers (from 9/11 to SARS to bird flu to Australia's controversial sushi tax) but in actual fact I think we're just seeing parks being dropped from itineraries as Asian parks continue to outdo ours in size and quality. I don't think a standalone waterpark in Sydney would do what the Gold Coast parks collectively can't, and attract international visitors on significant numbers.

As you'll notice, Parkz has been relaunched with a completely redesigned site. It's essentially the same site but streamlined. Some features are gone, some have changed and some have been added (and more will be added). There's been some big changes behind the scenes, namely these new forums (which will eventually allow for Facebook/Twitter integration), and also some database changes. Importantly, most of the bugs have finally been ironed out of the ride stats system so it'll display better, and be easier to modify. There's still a lot to do; I wanted to get the site running in this form so that we could implement some better spam/membership control that wasn't available to us in the previous forum software. In the meantime, it'd be great if people could post any bugs they stumble upon. Screenshots help!

How does the weighing system work? I'd like to think that they'd be smart enough to make it simply display a green light if you're within the requirements, red if you're not, rather than displaying your weight for the world to see.

Parkz has no policy of what members can or can't post. Except in rare circumstances we won't edit/delete "leaked" information -- if someone wants to post it that's their prerogative. I'm personally not that concerned with getting on the parks' "good side" because it simply doesn't work. We've tried a lot of different approaches to this, but at the end of the day if we want to get news out first -- such as our accurate reports of TOT2 back in February, or AquaLoop back in December -- and actually be a source for original, interesting content rather than rehashed press releases, then we need to operate outside of the confines of the parks' own media strategies that are based around TV/print/radio spots around the time of new attractions. Members can post what they like, leak what they want. If other members choose to react to this negatively then that's their choice, but as it stands Parkz has no official policy on the matter.

I'd have thought trimming some weight from the chassis would give them the opportunity to add a row or two of seats to give the ride a much-needed capacity boost. Bizarre to see that they've gone in the exact opposite direction.

I thought the days of calling any two-bit tourist attraction a "theme park" were well behind us? My guess is that we'd be looking at a $20-30 ticket price, and I wouldn't be convinced that people would want to go all the way to Coomera from their accommodation for something like that when there's half a dozen or more similarly priced tourist attractions in Surfers Paradise. It's unlikely that people would tack it on after a day at Dreamworld so I'm really not seeing the merits of this. Come back with three times the budget and a product that outdoes the current parks in some aspect/s and we might be talking.

I'd imagine painting it would be exactly the same in terms of procedure and lifespan as with just about any steel ride (i.e. hundreds of roller coasters) that undergoes a new paint jobs every few years.

I'd be willing to bet that given it didn't do anything for the entire show I saw standing across the road from it that whatever it is on top of the building, it's not activated for the show. Seems a bit high up for fog or bubbles though; I mean the bubbles released from the awnings have no troubles drifting up towards the roof, and fog at that height would be pointless.

I don't think attendance/spending patterns will have a lot to do with it other than recognising that they lost out bigtime to WVTP over the past year or so. To me it's about remaining competitive, and also recognising that in milking tourists for everything they can, they've been increasingly pricing themselves out of the local market. The end date of July 17 does seem to be a logical tie-in with any promotional activities they have planned for TOT. The idea of ending the passes on December 24 is great, and not a repeat of the downright stupid decision WVTP made last year to repeal the blockout dates during the peak period. As themeparkgc suggested, the significance of the image was simply the "staying put" pun.

It would appear to me that John Lennon likes to dress up and moonlight as a Movie World executive in his spare time.

I found a bunch of old Haunted Mansion pics to quickly solve that problem... Awesome work though Gazza... don't think my two photos quite equal the 100 or so you've put up recently!

Don't they just stick them in the pools in the water park until their new or refurbished home is ready? Oh wait...

Making money has nothing to do with unhelpful or rude staff, or a vague chain of command that yields misinformation to the customer. That's a pure and simple management problem and whether or not they're maximising profits should be irrelevant to fixing that.

That may just be the single biggest sign to date that we're dealing with a company with absolutely no strategic vision for Dreamworld.

Totally true, which I think was part of my initial point. Ignoring the fact that Motocoaster's really not a good ride, I think they really dropped the ball on it and it never got a decent run with advertising. I mean aside from just how stale the concept and brand affiliation there was, there was so much more they could have done with it other than a 30 second ad with a bunch of teens riding it. They paid an apparently famous guy for naming rights, why wasn't he appearing in ads that combined him with ride footage and stock MotoGP footage to actually make the ride look decent? Where were the in-person appearances in the weeks/months after it opened that would have had the bogans coming out in droves? WVTP blitzes the market with their discount annual passes, and Ardent/Dreamworld grumble about how bad these price wars are for business, yet when they do finally join in they completely omit any sort of marketing effort like the one that made it successful at WVTP. I would agree that Dreamworld's marketing was good, up until say 2004. Since then though there's not a single way that they've outfoxed -- or even come close -- to WVTP, who after years of struggling to find a message finally came good with MyFun and have actually developed a cohesive brand while Dreamworld have sold theirs down the river for short-term affiliations with MTV etc.

Yeah... probably should have given each year's results more than a cursory glance. In short, looks like combined revenue from this 9-month period is down from $87 to $84 to $79 million in two years. In that time their competition have invested in major attractions across the board. Surprisingly, they have seen growth!

The answer is obvious. When was the last time you saw an ad on TV for a new ride/attraction that actually looked like it was worth visiting for? Primetime ads for a laser show that features absolutely no enticing footage doesn't cut it. The marketing for Motocoaster was perhaps more lackluster than the ride itself. I'd say the last time Dreamworld actually promoted an attraction some some level of enthusiasm was The Claw. At what point, did they decide that building traditional attractions and marketing them the way they used to was ineffective? Because attendance/revenue growth certainly suggests that they were a hell of a lot more effective than anything they've done in recent years. WVTP have succeeded by marketing the crap out of their cheap passes. Dreamworld belatedly copies to the point where it looked like a reactionary copycat move, and there was absolutely nothing for them to capitalise on it because they were so late... it looked like they were just selling tickets cheaper for the hell of it. How come when they want to tack a dollar or two onto the ticket price each year, DW and WVTP are totally in unison, but when it comes to an obviously successful discount, they're months behind? I know they claim they were reluctant to get into price wars, but at the same time it was obvious from day one that they'd be losing out by not swiftly joining in. As I've said many times before, these heavily discounted tickets and annual passes address the fact that our theme parks have been consistently more expensive and more profitable than almost any equivalent parks around the world. It's obvious that these limited run shows and non-traditional (or upcharge) attractions don't sell tickets. The past several years proves this... when attendance is on the up, it barely keeps up with regional population growth, and for the past couple of years it's been distinct drops. The problem is Dreamworld have had nothing to say for several years, and therefore have had no reason to saturate the advertising world in the same way that used to come hand in hand with the 4 or 5% attendance increases. I'm also questioning these numbers released. 2009 9-month revenue (i.e. July 1, 2008 to March 31, 2009) was $70 not $83 million, according to last year's releases. A 5% decrease this year should put the 9-month revenue at $66 million, the lowest since WhiteWater World opened, so I'm not sure what's happened with the accounting in the past year.

I've got one -- where's the steering wheel? Wouldn't it fall off the track as soon as it came to a turn?