DaptoFunlandGuy

It's still 'just a lazy river'. I don't think Rapids are going to be the big blockbuster feature that will tip in their favour. It's the equivalent of Malibu Stacey's new hat. There needs to be a REAL point of difference.

But that's just building Calypso again. that's the whole point - that's what Dreamworld have already said they don't want to do - it has to be a unique offering, not just immersively themed gardens because that's all calypso is! oh sod off.

Jesus you're bipolar. You can ignore all you want, i'll continue to reply to your dribble so others can see there is an alternate viewpoint than your own shareholder-motivated shitposting.

Yeah for annual passes, I don't really see it as any different than say - the Village memberships that were pay by the month on direct debit. Who said barren concrete lazy river? WnW has a lazy river. it's landscaped with lush gardens, and at various points had a few structures and props from movies. Structures created waterfalls and such, as well as a 'beach house' vibe at one end, but otherwise its just a long winding river that is nicely landscaped. If Dreamworld were to install a lazy river, with nice landscaping, a waterfall or two, some bridges overhead, maybe a few cabanas - the wouldn't really be offering anything different or better than WnW. So they'd be building something they already have down the road. However, if they built one with a wave machine (wave or extreme river), or a water dump, Or built it next to an aquarium of turtles and stingrays Or have it go through a tunnel of an acrylic aquarium (Those last images are from Singapore's Adventure Cove. In addition to the Aquarium aspects, they also have a water dump, and there is also a section of flume that is elevated over lower ground levels, and that flume is clear acrylic so it also has a see-through floor.) I'm not saying Dreamworld should copy what they have in Singapore either, i'm just saying there is more than one way to do a lazy river and plenty of additional effects and add-ons that you can put in that would give your product a point of difference people would want to try. Heck - provided they do all due diligence to determine if animal welfare is an issue, I'd be totally fine with them having an acrylic wall between lazy river and a tiger enclosure with a similar pool inside. Imagine swimming with Tigers - that would be a drawcard over Oxenford's "nice plants". The point is - they didn't rule out a lazy river because WNW has one, they said they don't want to build 'the same thing'. Yeah this conversation has been done to death. Nobody cares right now - the priority is the dry park. once they've got it on solid ground, i'm confident they'll look to improve the waterpark, but that. isn't. right. now. Well haven't you got your judgy pants on. Afterpay costs nothing to the consumer to use. Why in the hell would I pay $1000 today if I can split that into $250 payments every couple of weeks, thereby earning more interest on the money I have in my account rather than in theirs? I put most things on a points-earning credit card for points, but the credit card has 'up to 45 days interest free' and the 'up to' just means 'depending on the statement issue date' - so there is potential for the interest free days to be lower. I always pay the card off in full before interest accrues, but because the interest free days vary, sometimes i'll use a BNPL option because I get more time interest free. Yes, the system is ripe for abuse and there are people who use it because they can't afford it otherwise, and microloans can be harmful to people who overextend themselves... but being so generalised over every person who might choose to hold onto their money rather than paying in full is a stretch. You might as well tell people with a car loan or a mortgage that they're living above their means because they don't buy them outright.

Yeah what Tim said. You're contextualising it to suit your narrative. They don't want to build something that will just be the poor man's version of what the guy down the road already had (See also: Vortex vs. Wipeout), but they will do it if it can stand out with a point of difference - something better than the existing standard.

I'd be interested in seeing a breakdown of visitor numbers - who is buying a day ticket or a short term combo pass, vs. who is coming in with an annual pass (and how many of those are local postcodes). I don't think many people are making a choice on waterparks based on day-ticket prices, and would assume most visitors would secure a combo pass or similar, where the value proposition is a lot more convoluted. In my personal experience - The last time I visited WnW was a while ago. Pretty sure Jetstreams were still a thing as was the Fly \ Sky Coaster. The park has done nothing to make me want to return - even when I had a VR annual pass - MW and SW were still reasonably frequently visited - but just had no interest in going to WnW... A lazy river would be nice in WWW, but the wave pool is just as nice to sit and relax in and i've been to WWW multiple times in the past year.

A price increase is also overdue for WWW.

My first thought on KFF is potentially they're installing the rail line, but TS isn't impacted by that. TS is 6 days though, more than enough time to complete a bunch of tasks - i'm not across the operations manual so who am I to judge whether a week is a long enough maintenance period for a flat ride...?

We all know your angle. they haven't added anything to the park to warrant a price increase. so you can save your breath. Conversely: Wages have gone up Utilities have gone up Supplier costs have gone up If you're not currently aware, the cost of practically everything is up. Some businesses can absorb increases for a time while keeping prices the same, but others can't. Some go for as long as they can, and eventually it has to be passed on to survive - even if the product continues to remain the same, as the cost of delivering the same product has increased. Village pricing went up for all properties in December despite only opening WOZ in MW - but you're not campaigning about Sea World and WnW having a price rise... so your agenda is pretty transparent - even if you don't know why, the rest of us do... To be honest i'm surprised they've continued to keep prices as low as they have for as long as they have - especially with the competition being so much more expensive, you can afford to go higher on your prices and still be the more financially attractive option.

There is no way the IP cost more than the hardware.

Have you visited other parks? Like... literally any? And if so, which ones? Abyss is horrid. rough. janky. Riding it once was too many, and the second try was worse.

Yeah, WOZ isn't $100 Million no matter what the Village C-Suite is smoking snorting. But why spend it? Because Arkham was an open wound on the park. It was clearly a void in the park lineup and you couldn't just get away with paying no attention to the man behind the curtain. If they really wanted to, Wild West could be closed off and the park wouldn't look like it was missing something, but the alley ways to arkham from literally 3 different areas of the park are a bit hard to paper over. They had to fill in a big hole in their lineup - both demographically and geographically.

Yeah right, and doomsday was neutered 'due to guest feedback' too.

Actually, Fair Work has to apply the 'better off overall' test to an EBA - it has to show that workers are better off overall with the EBA than the award, so things lost from the award are made up for in other areas. Also the workers voted for it. The second one. It has to be better than the award.

Honestly, if they can't operate it as intended, if they have to neuter the experience to the point it isn't worth doing, yes, i'd rather that they closed it.

It sounds like the kitchen is the trouble spot rather than the ordering system. Having an order taker processing orders means each ticket drops to the kitchen a few minutes apart, so they have a staggered production line. Having QR codes and not opening until it's well and truly lunch time means you seat half the restaurant in the first 20 minutes and everyone's orders bomb the kitchen at the same moment. If the restaurant opened at 11, you'd have more staggered tables. There's a bunch of different ways they can ease pressure on the kitchen, but I don't think bistro style queueing to place your order is the answer - you've got tables occupied by groups all sitting and waiting for someone to go place the order - so the turnover of the tables is slower too. Maybe full table-service wait staff?

Looks like they turned on the beautiful victorian weather they're all known for.

Yes - Don't engage an inexperienced firm to fuck around forever and burn up your budget and leave you holding your dick and scrambling at the last minute to deliver a product after they've fucked off with all your cash. It's a shame they couldn't have thought of this brilliant idea a week ago.

Last I heard, admission to WC was costed, or already included in an annual pass, which, shock horror, also has admission to the same rides during the day time.

It shouldn't have to be. the land is officially open, they should have opened it to guests. it defies logic as to why they would keep their brand new attraction closed. Like I mentioned in my Rivertown Restaurant reply, I'm happy to not sling shit on a poor employee trying to do their job and put it down to opening day jitters. I'm sure all the ops crew have learned from a few days of stress test and they'll all work out what works best. A friend of mine visited KT and the grouper was essentially sending one group yellow, one group orange and constantly alternating the flow unless one particularly large group was sent in one direction. Saying the cast have no concept of counting is a bit harsh - you've got no idea what level of training they were given or instructions they were told. I've got an easier one.

I saw a lot of cargo boxes stacked around that were clearly intended to be seating as well as theming - or are they too well themed nobody realised they were allowed to sit in them? Yep can back this up - we were timing 2:15 dispatches (without Greg operating it), and also saw a number of younger kids looking scared being led out of the gem room where all the booming sound effects were. Indoor sections definitely could have used more dressing - but not sure how much they can do when the turntable moves across most of the space. Rather than a cavern, perhaps if the turntable was enclosed, so you couldn't really perceive the switch movement? i don't know. the gaps are gone, the light is from the portals to the outside track. Night rides will be pretty cool I reckon. So for our experience: Gates didn't open until exactly 10am. Those who headed to rivertown were held at the rivertown archway for a further 10 or so minutes. The rail track that was removed behind rivertown has been mulched over. Likely temporary, but it shows they aren't planning on restoring the train track there in any hurry. The VIPs were allowed to proceed through rivertown, and then a minute later guests were rope-walked down to follow. A small stage had been set up at the base of Jungle RUsh with small pyro boxes on poles wrapped in vines. Then ensues probably 30 minutes of speeches and officialdom that started with greg's welcome, then a welcome to country by an indigenous representative. The 'acting' mayor then got a say and waffled on for far too long - especially since she started out with an acknowledgement to country immediately after the indigenous welcome to country. The state minister for tourism also got a few words in though was mercifully a little shorter than the councillor (and was also smart enough to thank the indigenous representative for their welcome to country rather than waffling on with another acknowledgement of country. Gary weiss then said a few quick words, and finally Greg had a few people to thank too. They had their official "vine cutting" with the novelty oversized scissors, and then 'welcome to the jungle' played along with quick bursts from the pyro. A few photos and then a few minutes while the event team broke down the pyro units and sound equipment before we were permitted into the ride. We probably only queued for 15 minutes, but were near the front of the 'general' group, and the ride was showing 45 minutes immediately after we got off, so one ride was enough for us today. We departed backwards. the queue was really immersive, and nice that it was so cool, especially immediately after the baking we got at the hand of the execs. there were wall mounted fans hidden discreetly in the shadows of the queue, and it was great to enjoy that respite. There were some details I noted while walking through that jarred - The final queue divider - a section of 'bamboo' scaffolding, were wrapped with rope details at guest level, but left bare overhead - the unwrapped details revealed the bamboo was fake, whereas if all the joiners were wrapped, it would have preserved the illusion. Another bamboo structure earlier on in the queue (where the T O T skull is) had poles held together with shiny new zinc plated bolts - which further stood out and broke the illusion. The place is nicely themed, cleverly lit, and has loads of details I look forward to exploring when the queues quieten down later in the year. Load procedures were easy (and as noted, the depart backwards queue moved a lot quicker than the forwards one). loose items procedure could be improved if they went with a loose items box like the Wipeout - accessible from the rear - rather than the sliding doors that they weren't really using. Disappointed that the crew working the attraction were in generic dreamworld polos. I would have liked to have seen those guys in the same (or at least thematically similar) shirts as the execs who were wearing rivertown button down shirts. Ride experience was fun, not too forceful, and I look forward to the re-rideability of it. The second exit from the turntable had a quick snappy turn that caught us reverse riders by surprise - it was a little uncomfortable but i think riding forwards wouldn't have the same issue through there. I did find the turntable room a little bare - and while I hope its true that there are more pieces to come to flesh out the room, I also hope they didn't have an 'official opening' if it wasn't truly finished - so on the fence about that. Would definitely like to see more in that room, or perhaps some lighting effects to give more kinetics to the space (lighting triggers can be built separately depending on if you're facing forwards or backwards so you could again offer a different experience each time) If they could cure the light bleed from the tunnels that would be good too. Not sure how easy it would be but it would be worth it. Ride photo system worked perfectly, and we were able to get our photo immediately. We had planned to visit DW well before the opening date was announced, and had a different plan for our day, so ultimately we tried to get JR in first to tick it off before getting on with our day - so we just got lucky with the ride opening in time. The downside of being in the inital crowd was we got rushed through the first stage of the queue and not enough time to really explore all of the details. I look forward to spending more time in the area when it quietens down. We didn't bother with MM given it's full queue by the time we got out so we left Rivertown at that point. We'll be back in a few weeks and we'll give it another go then. I don't begrudge them a little opening ceremony. And I know the big wigs all want to have their time at the podium to speak of how great their contribution to the project was (especially politicians) but I really feel like this could have been handled better. Guests were baking in the sun for over 45 minutes and were audibly complaining with each new speech-giver. They should have opened the park gates say - 15 minutes early (they clearly had the staff there to handle guests in park as the VIPs were already in-park by 9:30), mustered people down to Rivertown and had their speeches before official park opening so that guests could be welcomed onto the ride at or at least close to 10am. While the sun baking wouldn't be much different (though more shadows earlier in the day may have provided some relief) you wouldn't have cost people an hour of their day to give some politician their 5 minutes of chest beating. JMO.

Scuse me, but that's a Parmi right there. The numbers have gotta stand out, and while theming is nice, i think what fits the theme is something brown, beige, cream, or green and those just aren't going to pop out hard enough to be seen by servers across the restaurant. We went yesterday and tried out the restaurant. Although advertised as 11:30 open, staff informed us it wouldn't open until 12. We waited around, and were the second group seated, though some of our party joined us a few minutes later. Drinks took a little while to come out (nothing too fancy) and then we all ordered food using the QR code. We watched as other groups came, ate and left. Several senior staff came in wearing their jungle rush branded button down shirts and some with dreamworld staff nametags, with groups (I assume their family) and also ate, and left. So the service was reasonably efficient. Our second round of drinks came in a reasonable amount of time given the restaurant by this time was packed. Unfortunately our food didn't arrive. Well... one dish arrived (so we knew the order had been received) but nothing else came out... We waited almost 45 minutes (we waited this long as several wait staff running food kept coming near, looking around and then returning to the kitchen, so we weren't sure if this was our food but kept the hope that ours was the next one out of the kitchen) before one of our group approached the bar to raise the missing food. To their credit, they checked our table number, went immediately into the kitchen, returned a few minutes later and advised our food was coming out the door in moments, but acknowledged that it most definitely should not have taken as long as it had. Compounding the issues they also advised they'd experienced an "IT issue" with their ordering system. They offered what was a fair compensation for the delay, but it did end up taking two hours out of our day by the time we had eaten (kids meal didn't come out with the other main meals and we had to ask another waitstaff to go check and it arrived about 5 minutes later. Putting the delay aside, the food was delicious, perfectly cooked and well presented. There was a small hiccup with salads being delivered with incorrect ingredients (one of our party specifically ordered one salad over another because the other had coriander in it. The alternate one had coriander in it but wasn't listed on the ingredients. The replacement they sent out was a different salad (the one that had coriander on the menu) but without coriander... so a little odd there, but again, resolved quickly once it arrived. I noticed Greg come through the restaurant while the bar staff were sorting our food issues. He came through chatting to folk and a few minutes later was manning the bar - nearly got a drink from the man himself but I declined his offer as we needed to speak with the staff member we'd dealt with on our food issues. We saw him moving about Rivertown throughout the day and I think it's great to see a really involved leadership team. It was clear to see the restaurant had issues, and around the time we approached the bar, the restaurant suddenly swarmed with dreamworld staff who were very clearly not the restaurant wait staff. (At a guess, I'd wager they even pulled in office \ admin team to clear plates and glasses.) Overall, while I know the restaurant had opened a few days prior, I'm happy to put it down to essentially opening day jitters. I don't believe the park has had this level of full service dining before, and the venue itself hasn't operated in over 6 years. Teething issues are to be expected, in or outside a theme park. My local had a new store open up in July this year and our first visit on opening day was a nightmare and we left after 1h20m without food - however we returned 3 weeks later to perfect food and speedy service. I'll be trying out Jane's again in a few weeks time - I suspect the team will have found their rhythm and bedded down their procedures \ ironed out any kinks. At least, I hope they do - but will update our experience when we can. ETA: I should add while all the dreamworld nods are cute, and the animatronics certainly give the place a certain life - it kinda feels jarring against the rest of rivertown. It's like it was designed by two different companies - there's a whole bunch of thematic elements that just don't fit the 'rivertown' canon. It's a great place to cool off in the heat and sink a beer by the river though, i just hope the animatronics don't end up looking like the old koalas that surfaced a few years ago - need to ensure they're maintained and kept up.

Interesting to drop that literally the day prior. it does sort of feel a bit keeping up with the joneses but we have no idea how long they've had that date in mind. Sounds like a bonus for anyone going to the final nights of White Christmas with the new land open there'll be night rides on Oz well before the After Dark rides on Jungle Rush in January!

Don't forget K&B on the tables inside Jane's... And the character merch\plush\keyrings etc in the main street gift shop... I wouldn't be surprised if there's K&B faces all over JR...

Am I reading you right - you think something is 'hit or miss' and you haven't even seen it? By that logic I think you're a bit hit or miss yourself... AKA: Enthusiasts can't even wait until they've ridden something before judging it these days. I know they've been leaning into K&B for nostalgia and lack of licencing, but i do with they'd ease off a bit. K&B aren't Rivertown. That's the Tasman Co. K&B have their own land. they should stay there. JMO.