Richard

When you look at it, they spent as much on Hollywood Stunt Driver as they would on a major attraction. The difference between it and Jet Rescue comes largely down to its complete lack of significant marketing, whereas the stunt show was given a huge advertising campaign that still seems to be floating around today on TV and other places. I wouldn't put all of it down to lackluster marketing though. The impression I get is that Sea World has a certain stigma attached to it, particularly with the youth market, so it was always going to be an uphill battle because the families already go for the animal attractions and I don't think a whole lot of them would be swayed by a new roller coaster when they could just as easily visit Dreamworld or Movie World for that kind of stuff. Hate to say it, but a roller coaster (however mild) after a decade or more of essentially nothing but animal attractions probably wasn't the best move. However now that they've gone that way once, I think it'd be quite a poor decision to revert to animal attractions... there's definitely room to build some momentum off of Jet Rescue with a few followup rides to give the park a more balanced image. I hope they don't go the way of that water coaster, because it just looks like a waste of space with little payoff... Mack water coasters are pretty ordinary. But something wet should definitely be on the cards. It's been a decade since we saw any new water ride at any park, and last I checked summers are still hot.

OK, someone saw the show six months ago and they found elements of the show lacking. So then it's their responsibility to pay for admission again to see it now that they've gotten their act together and are actually putting on a decent show? Sorry but impressions last. The fact that there have been any reports at all from any point in time suggesting that the show is substandard means that the park hasn't done their job correctly. Forget the "1%" that pick at things and complain. Flip it around and it shouldn't take the 1% that visit the park to the point where they can actively comment the evolution of the show over time to defend the show and tell people they're wrong for thinking the show was a letdown because in their eyes it was when they visited.

In light of incidents that recently occured at Scenic World that resulted in a police investigation, we removed topics that discussed potentially unsafe or illegal activities. You are of course welcome to discuss Scenic World or any of its attractions, as well as their technical side such as how the counterweight system works, but we can't have topics promoting dangerous pursuits.

Really, Movie World's got a handful of really good rides, an ordinary stunt show and the odd street performance. Dreamworld's got a handful of OK rides, plenty more ordinary ones, the odd street performer and then some pretty good animal attractions. I'd say that qualifies Dreamworld as the broader entertainment experience, even if the place has destroyed any semblance of atmosphere they once had, and is a fraction of what it used to and could be.

I don't see any problems with this. For the first time in our parks' history, annual passes are priced at rates that are consistent with international parks.

Wait, WVTP's latest strategy mirrors a past Disney strategy that failed? Who'd have seen that coming?

As some of you will have noticed, we've made a whole lot of new videos available to the public on ParkzTV. These were originally produced for our subscribers but after about six months of exclusive access they're now available to everyone. http://www.parkz.com.au/TV/ Included are videos from: Disneyland Disney's California Adventure Knott's Berry Farm Disney's Animal Kingdom Busch Gardens Africa Islands of Adventure SeaWorld Orlando Magic Kingdom Check 'em all out, and leave comments etc. along the way! Also, thanks to Gazza's supreme efforts on his recent travels, we'll have some more footage from him up soon. And on top of that I do also want to find some time before the end of the year to hit one or two of our parks and get some fresh local content up on ParkzTV.

Just to clarify, there's no right or wrong place to post photos. Members are most welcome to come info the forums and post their latest photos in a thread like this. In many cases I can see the benefit as, for instance, there's more instant feedback from members in a topic like this than if they were posted to the gallery. Plus we are quite selective with what goes through in the gallery and don't readily accept duplicates or poorer quality images. My earlier post suggesting the gallery was more as a reminder that the feature exists -- and when it comes to high quality photos like the ones posted here, it's a better way to exhibit them because they'll be seen by a wider audience and not disappear off into the depths of forum pages after a while like they do in a forum. We're also happy for members to post photos both in the forums and the gallery.

Don't forget you're always welcome to post your favourites on the main Parkz site, where they'll generally be viewed by a much larger audience. http://www.parkz.com.au/content.php?add=photo

In this case near is an adjective and miss is a noun. What actually happened was a miss, but it's described as a near one, as opposed to a far one etc. If you say "nearly hit" that makes sense but now you're using an adverb and a verb. A "near hit" would be a hit because you're describing the hit as near, not as nearly taking place. My real concern is that we've got a topic called "Stunt show is world class now!" and one called "new stunt show a real let down!". Should we split the difference and just make it a single one named "Stunt show is a world class let down!"?

Bob Dylan. I think it's things like this that are just small parts to the overall system that makes Disney parks so great. Obviously they're far too big a company for things like this to be oversights. Simply put, it suggests that other park operators being more strict with their security in this manner is likely not necessary. Granted it's not 100% clear-cut with parks like Six Flags Magic Mountain for instance appealing to a lower socioeconomic market, where perhaps carrying contraband is more likely to occur, but it does say something about how one company with a lot more to lose from bad PR (Disney) choses to operate.

Yeah it's as much about creating the illusion of in-depth inspections to deter people as it is to actually enforce the rule. Same could even be said for airport security etc., which is much more thorough. That said, I had an interesting concert experience recently... saw a show recently in the USA where the artist is known for his no-camera policy (doesn't even allow the normal local press guys to get a few snaps). The bag checks on the way in were about the most thorough I've ever seen in any setting, and all they were looking for was cameras.

Macquarie Leisure aren't going to take the funds that were earmarked for this investment and simply channel them off into other avenues. The reason they were pursuing this is because they were looking at making excellent returns in a very short amount of time. Despite how they've been running Dreamworld this past decade or so, the theme park industry (and leisure sector as a whole) is not a short-run business; they won't be able to make the same kinds of returns as quicky, so logically we won't see them pursue this level of funding for projects that are actually within their expertise (or should that be "expertise"?) as an organisation. More interesting is the hits the park's book value has been taking recently. The park's supposed valuation has been ridiculous in recent years and hugely higher than it should be, and it's good to see some sense come back slowly.

Can't remember exactly how long I spent there... I left St Louis at about 11am, so with a lunch pitstop along the way I'd say I got into Holiday World at about 2-3pm. Pulled into Lafayette, Indiana at about 11pm so that means I'd have left Holiday World around 5-6pm (did some shopping at Walmart along the way as I was camping in Michigan the next few day and had no gear). It really was a quick visit... I got in, rode The Raven, The Legend, The Voyage then The Legend and Raven again on my way out, with a bit of wandering and photo taking along the way. In all honesty though, I'm not huge on reriding ad nauseum, so to me it was a half day park at most. Had I gotten out of bed a bit earlier in St Louis (I was out the night before though so that wasn't likely to happen) I'd probably have gotten all I needed to from the park. Really similar to Movie World in this respect... a few big rides and little else to do. Didn't get on the flying scooters and most of the riders were kids/families when I watched it so didn't see much excitement going on, but you can see how they'd get the reputation they have, especially if the speed's up a notch or two.

Obviously Fisher knows something none of us and no one at Disney knew... My perspective of the situation is that Corkscrew's train was in need of replacement. Hardly a shock given that the coaster is pushing 30. Obviously dropping some serious cash to keep a 30 year old ride going (I'm guessing we're looking at something around a million for a new train, if not more). is pretty hard to justify, so some bright spark came up with the idea of reinventing it as a 'new' attraction. How hard they push it when it comes to advertising etc. will be interesting in coming months. To be fair though, despite the idiodicy of this, I think you can safely say that it's better than simply removing the ride and replacing it with some inferior Intamin contraption... given our parks affinity for unreliable gimicks in recent years.

The Voyage was a great ride. Runs exactly like a wooden coaster should, and it's a pretty insane layout they've come up with for it -- half what that ride does (especially in the mid-section after the first few drops) is stuff that I didn't think coasters were able to do. It blows my mind that for significantly less than our parks keep paying for these gimicky and unreliable coasters, we could have not just a good wooden coaster, but a truly world-class one. My visit to the park was a lot briefer than I'd have liked; I had to make it about 800km that day, so when you slot in a theme park visit it becomes a pretty tight day. Unfortunately I didn't have time to queue for Pilgrims Plunge, being the most popular ride in the park on a warm July 3, and only got one ride on The Voyage in. My impressions of Pilgrims Plunge was that its relatively tame drop and weak splashdown really 'family-ise' what could otherwise be a pretty intimidating ride, but I guess that was their goal with it. Looking at it I didn't feel like I was missing out on much by not riding, and the tradeoff of queuing for an hour so that I could drive for five hours in wet clothes wasn't that appealing to me. The park itself is a lot smaller than I would have guessed... the waterpark was clearly the most popular part, but it's amazing that such a small park gets a million and more through the gates each year. The park itself is run really well. Most of the ride ops seem to be kids (most around 16-18 I'd guess), yet they're all obviously doing something they enjoy and take pride in it... you could know nothing about the park itself but just looking at the staff you know that they're treated well by management. Seeing Pat Koch in her late-70s around the park putting in a solid day's work on the frontline like you'll often read about just shows the sort of attitude the park's owners have towards running the park. The novelty of free softdrink is pretty cool, but I found it strange that normal water was pretty hard to come by. Didn't get to try any of the park's food but what I saw looked good and it was really well priced. It was something like $20-25 for a family meal. All in all I left feeling like I was at a park that actually understands the intangible aspects of running a park, where delivering a quality product is their strategy for making a profit.

A few weeks ago I found myself driving through Indiana and so used the opportunity to visit the renowned family park Holiday World for an afternoon. It's hard to imagine just how out of the way this park is until you do the drive (I was coming from St Louis in Missouri), and I think that this is a real testament to the park's overriding quality that it has done so well in recent years despite being so far away from anything. We've now got nearly 90 photos of the park up in our gallery: http://www.parkz.com.au/parks/US/Santa_Cla..._Safari/photos/

Yeah this seems to be up there on the list of questionable (read: stupid) moves WVTP have made in the past 6-12 months. I suppose you can take solace in the fact that these changes are largely just stupid and not willfully damaging like much of what Dreamworld's done over the past five years or so.

Yeah, the big picture of this Six Flags failure is pretty irrelevant to our parks as the likelihood of this sort of financial failings is all but impossible given their relatively conservative expansions and acquisitions. But it goes to show plainly that people don't like a substandard theme park, and in Six Flags' case a substandard park was caused almost directly by cost cutting. If people didn't notice that year after year they were getting less despite spending more and more, then Six Flags' reckless growth would have been far less damaging than it has been. If our parks think they can reduce the quality of their product without people noticing, then I think they're kidding themselves, and unfortunately that seems to be the trend of recent years. The crazy thing is I think that no park in Australia is copying Six Flags. It seems that they've all come to the same flawed conclusion by applying business strategies that aren't suited to the long-term nature of the theme park industry.

I'm stunned anyone would actually argue that Batwing Spaceshot actually has good theming or a storyline. Sound effects and their cause aside, it's a tower ride that they stuck in one corner, planted some flowers around and stuck a few Batman images on it. Yeah, it doesn't look bad, but that's about all your could say about the ride in terms of theming...

The focus of most businesses isn't customer service, it's profits. If an organisation can achieve maximum profits by disregarding customer service, they will -- including WVTP. There's no gambling of lives at a theme park. Safety comes down to very black and white procedures that are in place. With the specific fog issue, I doubt very much that an altered maintenance schedule for the track and trains wouldn't easily see the ride return to its original fog levels and maximum safety. The likely reason they have done what they have comes back to profits, not safety. Adding cost by adding to the ride's maintenance versus cutting costs by reducing the use of fog? Pretty simple choice, especially for an organisation that has shown again and again in recent months that the little things no longer matter. This likely will be a never-ending debate, because most people here seem to be arguing for an improvement in the overall treatment of guests (and issues like deliberate degradation of theming absolutely does fall into this category). Then there's individuals like you klassen24, who despite being largely on the same side as the majority, seem to be arguing from a perspective that it's impossible for any change to occur for a seemingly endless number of reasons. Obviously change can occur at WVTP. Just read the overwhelming opinions about WVTP parks a year ago versus today. If the corporate culture in place can allow things to go this way, it can go back the other way as well. At the end of the day I just find it disappointing that a visitor to Movie World today won't be getting the same quality of experience that they would have on a visit prior -- even on the same attractions -- yet they're paying significantly more to visit, even when you factor in inflation. (I agree, too much use of "change"... you'd think I were running for president.)

The problem is I don't think the majority of people who have purchased this pass will be visiting every week. Yeah there will be a good number of these people, but I'd honestly be surprised if the average number of visits per pass at the end of this was above five or six. Many of the buyers will those who were planning a single visit but saw this option and figured whether they use it again or not they'll still be in the same position cost-wise. If they find the time down the track they'd use it again but aren't fussed either way. There will also be those who were maybe planning an Easter or weekend mini-holiday and will use it a few times over a concentrated period but not after. I think the majority will be buyers who simply plan on visiting maybe a park a month... whenever they find time between other commitments. All of these groups, and a few others I didn't mention, you'll find will vastly outnumber those die-hard customers out to squeeze every ounce of value out of the pass by visiting every week. And they'd all be likely to spend $50-60 on a meal during their visit. You're right that we probably won't see any major spikes in profit from WVTP as a result, but I think they'll do alright considering at 6pm every night people are told they have no money to spend, and from all acounts Dreamworld is set to have a pretty average half-year.

The maths associated with trying to extrapolate a single weekend's attendance figures across the entire six month period and then working back from there to work out the profitability is a bit dodgy to say the least. It's been a while now, but last time Sea World had a $99 annual pass sale a few years back, I recall a figure of something like 100,000 sales. Given the price, value for money and marketing blitz associated with the latest deal it's not out of the realm of possibilities that they've tripled that figure. If total revenue directly associated with this campaign (incl. in-park spending by participants) is anything less than $30 million I'd be very surprised. Even then it's next to impossible to break that down on a per-park or per-attraction level. That said, it's unquestionable that it'll bolster their half-yearly earnings like nothing we've ever seen. Most of those saying that WVTP haven't made huge amounts off this latest deal seem to assume that the majority of buyers are those that obsessively scrimp and save. I guarantee you there will be a significant percentage of buyers who don't even visit all three parks once. Probably the bulk will make a combined total of half a dozen visits to any of the parks. Yeah there's going to be families that retreat to the boot of the car or the nearest Maccas come lunchtime, but they will be in the minority. You'll surely find a substantial number of families forking over a good $50+ on each visit, mostly in high margin food outlets. There's not a doubt in my mind that in-park spending alone will more than offset the costs of dealing with the additional capacity required -- with or without cutbacks. I can guarantee you that WVTP wouldn't even have started playing this game if there was the slightest possibility they didn't. What we're dealing with here with mention of attraction and retail cutbacks is something that started well before this 6-month pass appeared, and I think it's just a bit too convenient to assume it's caused by either excess low/no-margin visitors, or any purported financial crisis.

Not quite that fancy yet. Colocation is just a term for when a server is owned by one party (i.e. us) and stored in a rented space in another party's data centre. This is as opposed to either running a server from your own Internet connection, or renting a server within a data centre. We've got two servers in the new centre, but they're running independently of one another. Sometime down the track I would like some sort of redudancy; ideally the way to go would be to have the site mirrored in the US, both so that when we have that occasional inevitable downtime, but more importantly, so that international visitors can access the site at the sort of speeds we're accustomed to. Also for anyone interested, as far as data redundancy goes, the server automatically backs itself up daily, and the server's HDDs are in RAID configuration to safeguard against disc failures.

The server is colocated in the Pegasus data centre, moved from the PIPE centre where we'd been for several years.