Richard

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?

I think these dirt cheap annual passes can even stay as a promotional product, but executed sensibly with the holiday periods locked out. When people buy them online, put it in bold, red writing that this is the case. When they show up in person to activate it, remind them this is the case and offer them to opt out (at no charge) or upgrade. When they show up on the wrong day, say sorry and again offer them to upgrade or even let them in for the day for $10 or after 2pm or something. The discounts and other premium perks have to be there in a full-price annual pass. I'd bring them into line with Dreamworld and make it 15% with upgrades/drinks etc. included as well. Just on the topic of drinks, and this goes back to the recent Bermuda Triangle discussion, but at what point did our parks decide that they knew better than not just every theme park in the world, but every single fastfood chain in the world by not including drinks in a combo? I mean do they actually think those folks at McDonalds are hacks that don't know the best way to make a buck?

Before the current forums started there was a version that existed for a few months and attracted maybe a few dozen members and a few hundred posts before the lot was lost in a server move. From memory I'd say they started February or March 2002.

I'm sure as you've probably seen, the Parkz forums now look very different. As we approach our 8th anniversary, the most drastic change in the forums' history has been made. Literally since day one the forums have been divided up into individual theme parks. After a lot of deliberation with the other guys on the staff here it's been decided to consolidate the forums significantly. The fact is we have had park forums with only occasional posts, others which might have one or two active topics in any given week. Even the most active forums rarely had more than 20 or so topics in use in any given month. The result was though the forums remain consistently active, with the discussion spread so thin it often appears that there's a lot less happening than there is. As such, all the individual theme park forums have been merged into one Theme Park Discussion forum. With the current level of activity every active topic of the past month fits onto one page -- compared to many forums where topics from that day sprawl over several pages, I don't think there will be any significant issues like this here, at least not for a few thousand more members. I do appreciate that some enjoyed the sanctuary that the individual forums offered and can accept that, for instance, the Wonderland forum was a remaining link to the long since closed park, but the end result is that our theme park discussion is now just one big playground. Everyone is of course as free as ever to discuss anything they wish to, and I personally believe that this will open things up a lot more now that there isn't any separation -- e.g. comparison topics. In light of this, we simply ask that topics are given clear and relevant titles and where applicable mention the relevant park/s etc. either in the title or the subtitle section. We've also merged Travel forum into Chit-Chat. If you're looking to post about travel you're welcome to post either in the Theme Park Discussion or Chit-Chat.

It's probably just worth considering the facts instead of jumping on the "lawsuits bad!" bandwagon. Parks like Movie World choose to open the main gate then for whatever arbitrary reason hold everyone behind ropes for a while allowing the crowd and excitement to build. They do actively cultivate a stampede of sorts, so when a kid gets hurt as a result you can't really state as a blanket fact that the park wasn't at least partly to blame. I suspect Movie World's lawyers thought the same, and as a result this kid's probably got himself anything from a new iPod to his first car paid for, and I doubt he's the first nor the last.

I definitely don't see it being a problem limited to Australian parks, but the key difference is while our parks seem content to sell a low-quality product at a premium price, at least Six Flags sees itself as the relatively low-cost operator and markets and prices things accordingly. They need to stop hiring these hacks that come in for two years, slash costs and generally screw things up in some misguided ego-driven attempt to show how much better they are then their predecessor, before moving onto a bigger and better job with another company. To stop doing this boards of directors need to realise that they are in a long-term growth industry and that short term gains typically cannot be sustained, no matter how good they make shares look in the short run. I'd say two-thirds of what Disney do so well has nothing at all to do with their size, budget or anything like that. It's to do having some kind of vision or overall strategic goals to work towards beyond "hey we can boost revenue by 2% by not including drinks!", and you're not going to get there hiring people whose main concern is where their next job will be, or with a board of directors who can't understand how completely watering down your brand in the name of profits now won't be much good 10 or 20 years from now.

Please in future if you have a post like this to make, create a new topic for it rather than bringing back one from several years ago, to post something not specifically related to the topic.

You realise you're engaging in a three year old discussion? Or that the arguments and questions you are posing here have absolutely no bearing on anything anyone who contributed here three years ago could care in the least bit about today?

Saw the billboard on my way past this morning. Interesting concept though of course the end result will be carefully scrutinised and tested by market research and probably already floating around on a shortlist in the WVTP offices. I just find it funny that companies these days can get points for being creative and hip by relinquishing the creative process.

Collision indeed Gazza... I was there though didn't see it happen. Word got around pretty quickly and the operators of the ferris wheel didn't exactly try any damage control by spinning the wheel around a bit more to not have the space of the missing gondola at the very top for 15,000+ to see. Personally I've never understood the thinking behind carnival rides at music festivals, especially in Byron Bay where the constant rainfall means that all the stages are concealed within giant circus tents so you can't see any performers or even the crowds. Your most likely riders with this sort of attraction at a festival are drunk teens. If rider error/misbehaviour like rocking the gondola or sitting incorrectly is able to cause one to become unhinged then the issue isn't rider error, it's operator negligence.

As opposed to Movie World with its staggering six rides and a kids zone, or Dreamworld with its unparalleled nine rides and not one but two kids zones?

I do plan on having the image randomised. Originally I was just mucking around to see if the idea would work but it looked good enough to go live. It'll eventually be a transparent overlay as you suggest.. most likely once I get around to sorting out a handful of images to do the job. Thanks for letting me know about the thumbnails... didn't notice that until you pointed it out. For anyone that's interested, I anticipate a few small changes like this happening over the coming weeks/months. Nothing terribly major but after a couple of years I figure the site could do with some freshening up.

The only thing these 'price wars' do is bring the price into line with what I'd consider international standards. Our parks are ridiculously overpriced; $70 for a short day (7 hours) at parks with only a handful of big attractions and a handful of smaller ones is not the industry standard. Cheaper tickets should not equate to worse standards, and no one should be letting our parks get away with it. I mean they're profiting greatly from these heavily promoted discounts, why does it not stand to reason that everything else in terms of new capital investment, maintenance and the like should remain the same... ignoring the obvious argument that they should be expanding to cater for the increased demand by way of investment and upkeen above and beyond what was being done prior. I'm just curious as to why? The ride is no less popular on a day-to-day basis, so why then should it be left to rot? We're not talking gradual wear and tear that has seen it become slowly worse and worse over the years as it was very well kept for many years, but rather a sudden drop in standards as soon as the current upper management team were in place.

Haha the photographer riding near me while I filmed it deserves at least partial credit for diagnosing the ride within its first 10 minutes of operation...

Superman tracks fine, but I definitely think the many sudden transitions don't really lend themselves well to the constricting restraint style. Granted it's by no means a rough ride but it's never struck me as smooth.

I don't think I'd say Superman is particularly smooth... Corkscrew was definitely the benchmark for smoothness in Australia, which is a pretty sad thing to say.

It was definitely going to WhiteWater World at one point. White Water West were advertising that Village Roadshow has purchased four of the looping slide at IAAPA in mid-November and I'd expect all the papers were signed months before then and so WhiteWater World were finagled out of the ride months before the dates on the ProSlide plans. Naturally, the info took a while to trickle down to us.

Now that's true. WnW made the cheap move when they used their muscle to wrangle the attraction out of the hands of WWW. But I have no sympathy for WWW when they obviously didn't move swiftly enough on it. However at that point WWW should have moved on and gone with one of the many different cutting edge water attractions on the market that Australia is yet to see. What we're seeing is a retaliatory move that is, as joz put it, just a middle finger to WnW.

I'd say no more than three or four years before it closed the ride received a fairly major overhaul that saw the ride's systems more or less completely automated. You have to wonder what an upgrade like that sets you back and how many years they expected it to increase the ride's lifespan to get the budget for that sort of upgrade...

150 words to debunk what was nothing more than a simple ironic aside? That's pretty futile.

I think it's a very different situation when an international park with many times more attractions than our parks shuts a ride during normal operating hours for a function. Especially when you consider that international parks also have much more reasonable opening hours. Losing one out of 20 or 30 attractions for an hour or whatever when the park is open for 12 hours or more during the day isn't going to be a significant loss. If Movie World rented say Superman Escape to a group during normal hours, realistically that's a quarter of the main attractions gone for about 1/8th of the day. A restaurant booked for a private function isn't going to then take money from other customers only to tell them that they won't be getting a meal because the place is booked out. Now, I've been sticking clear of this whole discussion and it's all largely moot at this point, but if all anyone's going to do is break costing down on a dollar-by-dollar basis then you're looking at it in a pretty shallow manner. Saying nah, too expensive for my liking/what you get etc. is one thing, but to suggest that the organisers of such an event aren't entitled to some remuneration for their hard work is pretty insulting. I assume no one would have a go at the TPR folks for profiting off their coaster trips?

You think it's rude for one business to develop a strategy to outperform their competition? Undiscounted theme park pricing in Australia has become excessive; that's a fact. As a result of the increased competition from WhiteWater World's addition, we will continue to see substantial discounting offered. We predicted that on this website before WhiteWater World even opened; why didn't its management do the same?