webslave

Yeah, that's a very ordinary menu. Rick's used to be what made eating at the park tolerable.

That's... a bit naff.

Yeah, I also found Super Ripper to be very slow, to the point that you almost stop.

For a place struggling with staff numbers they always seem to have enough to push churros and so-cones...

I'm not sure if you've noticed, but you're not really getting a lot of support here for your point of view. The customers seem pretty upset about it too. Maybe - just maybe - you might be living your own reality on this one? I know you love to defend the VRTP properties but this one is a bit of a stretch.

Who was caught off-guard? Are you telling me now that the issue was not actually availability of staff but that instead the parks were just caught off-guard? That seems at odds with comments you made earlier. I don't for a moment believe that the park was caught off-guard. I think they knew what type of attendance to expect, and captain surly on MW's Facebook page would even have to agree. It's unfathomable that they did not know. And yeah, people know the last two years have sucked. That's been part of the marketing to get them to the parks; get a break from the last two years and have fun. What you don't get to do is engineer a situation where demand greatly exceeds supply, still charge those people full-whack, and then hand-waive it away as "well the last two years has sucked". Lots of us are struggling for staff. If we don't have enough staff then we have to forego the work - rather than me just taking the money, spreading the crew too thin, and screwing my customers.

Well, pretty easily given for the last six months the industry has been advertising for people to do just that. If you advertise for it to happen, and then you sell tickets that would suggest people are going to do what you advertised to get them to do then it probably isn't on the punters. After all, we do not tolerate a hotel selling rooms that they do not have, we do not tolerate restaurants taking bookings for tables they do not have and we do not tolerate cinemas selling more tickets to a film than there are seats in the theatre. The expectation from a consumer is that their tickets will be fit for the purpose they intend. No consumer intends to spend all day in line and be able to do two attractions. At some point you need to stop selling rather than blaming the customer.

I just can't imagine what would give the public the impression the parks were ready, willing and able to welcome back the public... I mean, the messaging has been all about "we can't wait to welcome you back" and "it's great to have our parks open and firing on all cylinders again", rather than "but not too many of you because we don't have enough staff to cope". If you know you're running thin and you don't have any levers to pull to increase capacity then you either choose to collect the cash and let people have a shitty day, or forego the cash and look after the customers. Being turned away at the gate for one reason or another (in this case because the park is full) is something that the park knows how to handle, and is a one-off disappointment to a customer (that, I might add, you could probably do something about in advance) compared to letting those customers in and having a full day of misery that you present as the genuine experience.

Take the lead from businesses that are already universally regarded as anti-consumer, money-grubbing pieces of trash? Yeah, good one. Well, yes, they probably should have. Otherwise at what point do you shut the gates? I mean, if you hit the number you can safely admit to the park you're having to say exactly that anyway, so it's not like you're never prepared to say that. Same outcome as shutting the park on days where the weather is unsuitable to operate ("sorry you paid, but we aren't opening today"). Contingencies exist for handling that situation - it's not like it's impossible. The notion that you just keep admitting as many guests as turn up no matter what it does to your brand is lunacy, and I'd think you'd be above seriously suggesting it as a viable option

I don't think that's what people are accusing them of. Instead they are variously accusing them of incompetence, laziness, and money-grubbing at the expense of the bigger picture. Can you really, honestly say any of our parks haven't ably demonstrated each of those in at least the recent past?

Tbf, if a restaurant churned out the trash I had at the VRTP parks a few weeks ago they wouldn't stay a restaurant for very long. You either play properly in the restaurant space and as such can make comparisons to what is and isn't allowed in restaurants, or you keep doing what you're doing now with abysmal offerings and turn a blind eye.

If it's as unavoidable as claimed they don't have to keep admitting people to the park.

That looks bleak!

Yeah, just on the staff shortages thing "because Covid" or whatever. To the paying customer when they can seem to find plenty enough staff to wheel around popcorn or churro wagons or operate cheap upcharge carny games but can't adequately staff the attractions people have paid for you tend to feel pretty ripped off. I appreciate these are differing skillsets, but we are talking about by-and-large unskilled labour here for both, and Covid ain't new.

I stopped in recently and... yeah. Not a great vibe there at all. I'm sure there's a million excuses ("the Covid"), but there weren't any excuses made for still charging the prices they do. For reference my wife (who does not at all stay up to date with the parks and isn't interested in doing so) came away saying the place "is looking very sad". Interestingly we went to Top Golf afterward and the bay attendant asked how the park was and when my wife said it was pretty sad she agreed and noted that several others had said the same thing this week. Justice League was a complete and utter shambles. There's no point operating the ride in that type of condition, except if you're trying to cover up for a lot of your other rides being down (which, really, isn't actually making that situation any better). The guns had a life of their own and bore no resemblance to what you did with them. A significant proportion of the usually-lit set pieces were not lit. The projection elements (where visible) were out of sync, non-interactive, and of very poor visual quality. Elements like the mist screen didn't have a hope in hell of working. Photo screens at the exit mostly did not work, and for those that did the quality of the photograph was abysmal. Superman was down, which is a lost drawcard. Batwing was down, which created a zone of the park right as you enter where your view is dominated right away by rides you can't ride (Batwing, Superman, Arkham). West was down, which creates an entire dead wing of the park, especially given Doomsday does not announce its presence well to passers-by, and frankly is pretty sucky and unpopular. The kids area is probably around two flat rides (and dare I say a play structure) short of being good. If you have a young kid you will probably miss the height for Speedy so you're going to be restricted solely to the carousel, JDS, Sylvester and Tweety Cages (if your kid is okay to ride alone), and railroad. Railroad is mighty uncomfortable for an adult and the rope-based restraint system ensures capacity is very low, so you're probably not going to want to do that many times. Not having more characters doing walk-arounds of this zone is a missed opportunity. I appreciate that they will do photos at times throughout the day at the entrance to the area (the backdrop to the photos is an odd-choice though), but it's not the same as a chance encounter with a character as you explore the area for the kids. I'm not sure if it's a new thing but it's a shame that staff won't also take a photo with your phone in addition to their professional one so that more families can get photos together. I'm sure there's a Covid excuse brewing there, but that doesn't feel like the motivation when you're in the park. On the topic of characters and photos though; setting Batman up with Robin and the batmobile at the head of the main drag behind a red rope next to a sandwich board that spruiks $80/photo with them is fucking gross. I lost count of how many kids I heard on the way past say they wanted to go and say hi to Batman only for them not to be able to. Fantastic guest experience. On the plus side the folks appearing as Shaggy/Scooby were really fantastic with the guests whenever we saw them, and I sincerely hope the park looks after them. I'm not sure what's so hard about getting wait time signs semi-accurate out the front of major rides (especially given there's far less to keep up to date with half the park seemingly down), but we never saw one that was even within a multiple of accuracy. It was frustrating watching Rivals advertise a 10 minute wait when it was a 45 minute wait, and all the more frustrating watching the load attendant on several occasions accidentally mis-count riders to be admitted and then rather than correcting the mistake when it was found instead just dispatching with empty seats. That type of thing is hard to hide from guests when they have 45 minutes to watch it happen over and over and think "that could have been me on there". The parade seems worse every time I see it. Now we are down to the point of the floats never stopping and characters staying on them which doesn't make it very interactive or memorable. Again, I'm sure excuses re: Covid, but jesus, fleeting contact and outside area. Doesn't even need to be contact, really. I also would avoid having the characters on the floats ignore the customers at either side of the road and play to the crewmember with the un-whitebalanced handycam for the big screens (that near-nobody is watching). The stunt show was also worse than I remembered. No fireball, no car jumping, little comedy, laughably poor quality LED screen. I'm not sure who it's aimed at entertaining, but I'm guessing it's Showtime FMX. Food and beverage is slightly better at Movie World, but generally abysmal across the VRTP parks. Rivals is still good once you get on it. Didn't bother with GL. Scooby still had broken and crappy effects in the first half, but the disco room was quite passable. Clearly the maintenance-related items are issues the park is choosing to have, because a short walk away at AOS they aren't choosing to have the same problems.

Hahaha brilliant "It will reduce your wait time" !== "We shortened the ride".

It's good to hear from yourself and @Rivals that the reporting on it being rough was likely overstated and no longer current! For me, Scooby was always quite reliant on theme as without it it's just an uncomfortable, jerky coaster.

What's concerning to me (literally, me, because I'm in town then and weighing up where to take the family) is that come mid-March Movie World will have the following rides down (not accounting for unscheds): - Superman Escape - Batwing Spaceshot - Wild West Falls - Doomsday Destroyer Additionally, we know that Justice League is in very poor condition, and Scooby is similarly not in great nick and GL has hardly been a paragon of reliability of late. I think I remember reading here that Rivals is pretty rough at the moment and running at reduced capacity, too. Elsewhere a third of the kids area at Sea World will be out. Over at DW it looks like only the Motocoaster down during the same period. Makes it very hard to pick VRTP.

I checked into that for you, and it turns out nobody cares.

It really is. I think on most rides in general people note the positioning of the restraints on their first ride through and will adjust them the next time for a more comfortable ride (unless you get lucky the first time around). It's not to say that a stand-up is bad if you don't take care with the restraints, but your ride experience can be significantly enhanced if you do.

Did it, was uncomfortable the first time and it was still really good regardless. Second ride I knew how to position the restraint better, and it was great. Front row both times.

That should help the numbers a lot, because every time I've been I've found the staff to be MIA. Made me think the service culture in Australia would make the model difficult to be viable.

The location was only one of the problems. There were far more; Pricing was far too high for what any locals would consider paying. It was stationed in the middle of what is basically a future dead mall. Parking around it turned into reasonably expensive paid parking, and when that turned out to be a stupid idea nobody got the memo when it changed back. Full of pretension about doing "flights" on the wheel that didn't land as marketing. It did practically nothing to appeal to the locals. Beyond this, I considered that for travellers to Melbourne the wheel was the worst kind of false advertising. Seeing this thing lit up and flashing away on the skyline gave you the impression it was smack in the middle of party central - like an LA Live or even a Darling Habour type of setup. The reality was far removed from that.

I mean, you could go the route of truth and advertise "visit now, or miss out later!"