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I haven't been to Orlando but have been to California, and Disneyland there. I would say much the same as in the last post. Of course, how good you judge a place to be depends very much on what you're looking for. For me, having plenty of exciting and fun things to do (including but not limited to theme parks) is high on my list. As I said I don't know anywhere in the world that could provide that better or more affordably than the Gold Coast.

What at a brilliantly simple and innovative solution inverted. I like it! T-bone, as far as I'm aware Disneyland is not a failure. I would say its extremely successful. If your comment was intended as sarcasm, please read my last pos. We're all here to have friendly discussion about a shared interest. Let's do so without having a go at each other!

Surely we can keep our discussions friendly can't we? It's a bit insulting to tell someone they might need counselling, just because they state their opinion. If your opinion if different from mine that's quite ok by me, and I'm happp to debate things if you want to, or else just agree to disagree (but in a friendly way)! In the spirit of theme parks, I hope this forum can be fun for all of us!

Fast track is a terrible idea for 2 reasons. First, the whole concept of theme parks is that once you're in, everything is free. Second, why should someone jump a queue just because they have paid more? Totally unfair and very distressing for those who are patiently waiting their turn.

Alex please don't take it for granted. I can assure you that apart from the weather you're experiencing at the moment, you live in one of, and very possibly the best place in the world. Most inhabitants of this planet would give anything to trade places with you. I am hoping to be living there myself soon and certainly won't ever take it for granted.

Well there may well be places in the world that are even better than the Gold Coast, but in my opinion you'd have to be incredibly hard to please to not find the Gold Coast and amazing and fantasticly fun place to be. I have travelled a lot and seen a lot of great places in the world, but nowhere I've been has come close to the Gold Coast, overall. Some countries offer certain things the Gold Coast doesn't perhaps, but as an overall package the Gold Coast takes a lot of beating from my perspective. It is absolutely amazing!

Well I've been to many parts of the world and it's the best I've seen! Sure beats boring Adelaide!

I have just returned from a wonderful trip to the Gold Coast. As always it's the best place in the world and this time I discovered many things I didn't previously know about. I tried zorbing at Ozball, the most awesome experience of my life! I have lots to say about the various parks etc but I'd just like to share a few comments so far about where I can see opportunities for improvement. I don't mean to pick out the negatives to be miserable, but as the parks as so fantastic overall it is a real shame that a few very simple but very important things let them down. To me these are easy things to fix. At Sea World one day last week there was a problem with the chairlifts which meant they had to close for an hour or two. These things happen, but what annoyed me was that the operator did not close the ride queue (rear station) which meant people (including me) kept lining up, only to be told when the operator finally noticed they were there (which took several minutes) that the ride is closed. Well either the operator has absolutely no initiative and common sense, or she does but doe some strange reason she's not allowed to use it. Either way, it needs to be fixed and isn't hard to fix. On another day I was there at closing time and noticed that the chairlift operator DID close the ride (rear station) at exactly 5pm. I saw many people trying to join the queue and finding they couldn't, including one mean on crutches, for whom the walk back to the front of the park would be quite a long one. Again, either she didn't realise that the chairlifts are a means of transport from the back of the park to the front where the exit is, or she did realise but didn't care as she just wanted to get off duty as quick as possible, or she just wasn't allowed to do the sensible thing and keep the ride open. I would say a reasonable thing would be for the front station to close at 5pm and the rear station to let people queue until 5.15pm. Just common sense and common courtesy for the enjoyment and convenience of guests. The monorail does however tend to stay open till about 5.15pm which is good. In wet & wild on hot days some of the pathways (especially near the front of the park) are so hot they literally blister the skin on your feet. Either they need to sell rubber socks of some sort (that are suitable for wearing on the slides) or provide more shade, or replace the paths with some sort of cover that doesn't get so hot. Ideally do all 3 of these. It was wonderful to see that the adventure playground in sea world and the high ropes course are now free, as are the pedalos. I am very pleased to see that village are remaining true to the principle that all rides should be included in the entry price. These new attractions were chargeable last time I visited but I guess now that the initial construction costs have been recovered (or at last partially recovered) they have dropped the charge, which is just as it should be and fantastic to see! Oh, back to wet & wild, there were 2 days it was particularly busy and I faced a queue of about 20 minutes to get on the lazy river, which I had never had to queue for before. Again it's simple to fix and I would have thought common sense would suggest that when it's that busy they should limit access to only one entry point, make sure nobody uses more than 1 tube, make sure nobody takes tubes out of the lazy river, and limit everyone to one full circuit of the lazy river. Obviously it's nice to stay on as long as you want but on very busy days I think the above strategy is definitely needed.

I agree with a lot of the points being made, but at the end of the day a theme park is in the business of providing pleasure and fun for guests. They should make sure the way their locker fees are structured does not in any way impede guests pleasure or fun!

It's stupid morons like that woman that ruin the fun for the vast majority of people. Wet N Wild certainly DOES properly warn you what to do if you become stuck, and the escape hatches are there for precisely that reason. Money-grabbing like that should just not be tolerated. I'd like to meet her and really let her have it, but it's probably just as well I can't or she'd sue me for causing her some sort of traumatic syndrome. Grrrr! Well there certainly is something wrong with her mentally, I won't deny that!

That Rachel does not sounds like she has the right attitude to be working in tourism. It could be partly managements fault for not providing good enough training for her, but mostly she just sounds like she has a bad attitude which no training could really make good. If I experienced that I would have definitely complained to management whilst there on site. It's just not on. Consider that for the nearest thing you could get to a day at a theme park in Adelaide it would cost about $20 per person for entry, then on average $10 per person per ride. Let's say you went on 5 rides during the day that's about $70 per person for ONE DAY at ONE venue, that's only open for one week each year (I'm talking about the Royal Adelaide Show). Compare that to paying $80 for unlimited entries and unlimited rides at not one but 3 fantastic venues that are open all year long! In that context I reckon they could easily quadruple the price of an annual pass and it would still be unbelievably cheap! I still say extras that you buy once in the park should cost little or nothing though. I expect theme park entry to include everything I will need once in the park (basides REASONABLY PRICED food, and souvinirs should I choose to buy them (optional).

I've never been to one but would love to, and would happily pay a bit of a premium for it as it's not something I'd do every day. But as an occasional treat it seems a wonderful idea.

Talking about service, I have had one or two experiences at Movie World and Wet n Wild where I found the staff at the entry gate to be surly and officious. Not at all the sort of attitude I would expect. Why could they not have automated entry gates (in fact they do at Wet n Wild but often don't seem to use them properly. If you have a pass it should be a very quick and simple matter of scanning it as you pass through the automatic gate. Nothing more. Have security watching in case anyone tries to abuse it by jumping over the auto gate or whatever, but for the most part it should work very well. Instead I often find that even though I have a pass, I have to queue with all the people who are paying at the gate, then be greeted by a miserable person in a box who takes several minutes to do what should surely take 2 seconds. It's not a great start to the day!

I live in SA, and the only time we get to enjoy something like a theme park here is when the (admittedly excellent) Royal Show is on. Yesterday I paid $20 each for entry into the show, then it's between $8 and $20 PER RIDE. Myself and my nephew and neice went on 6 rides and spent something like $60 each. So ignoring the cost of food and souvinirs (which you'd pay for in Gold Coast theme parks too) it cost around $80 each for one single day entry. There was also plenty of fantastic live entertainment which was included in the entry cost. This really made me painfully aware that I paid the same price for ONE DAY at the Royal Show as I paid for a whole year of unlimited entry to 3 fantastic theme parks in the Gold Coast! It's crazy! As I explained in my earlier post, I am concerned about 2 things. One is I want long term profitability for the parks (so they'll still be around in many years from now for me to enjoy), and decent pay for the staff. The other is I do not want to pay extra for things once I'm in the parks (as has started to creep in in the last few years). It reminds me of when I visited the Phillipines, where a 3 course meal in a nice restaurant cost the equivelent of AU$3 each. I am normally not one to give tips as I strongly believe restaurants should pay staff sensible wages. However on that occasion the price was so ridiculous I very happily gave them an extra $7 to make it up to $10, which is still very cheap for a nice restaurant meal. One must expect to pay for what things are actually worth to some extent, or else they will not continue to be viable.

I'd definitely upgrade if it's only $20. I also agree the annual passes are too cheap. I even told the sales consultant that on the phone. It's not often I'll say this to anyone, but PLEASE CHARGE ME MORE for my annual passes! I only say this because I want to make sure the Gold Coast theme parks have a long and profitable future, and they can't possibly be making a profit by charging $90 for unlimited access to 3 parks for a whole year, it's ridiculous! I'd be happy with something like say $150 for annual pass to one park, $200 for 2 parks, and $230 for all 3. The if you want to upgrade to include the Halloween night, and maybe even one entry into the Australian Outback Spectacular, there could also be reasonable uptions to do so. At the same time as wanting to pay more for my annual passes, I should also point out that I expect every ride to be included, with no "upcharge" attractions in any theme parks. I also strongly object to paying $10 to use lockers in wet n wild. I'd much rather they charge more for the passes, then make the lockers something like $1 per hour (since most people don't stay there all day anyway, and that way they'd have more lockers available because people who are not there all day wouldn't be tying up lockers for the day just because they paid $10 and want their money's worth!

In my opinion Wild West Falls is the best ride, and Scooby doo is probably 2nd. Of the shows the car stunt show (not sure what it's called at the moment) is the best and the 4d cinema the 2nd. I did like the Lonney runes river ride too but and would have put it as best or 2nd best ride, but apparently it's closed permanently. That's very sad IMO but we'll see what replaces it.

Brilliant! I couldn't agree more with all those ideas.

Wild West Falls is the one I meant, thanks. Sad loss to see LTRR go as I love dark rides of all kinds. Not the end of the world though as there is still wild west falls at Movie World, and with some luck they might replace LTRR with a new dark ride (I hope).

It's very sad if that's also closed permanently, but the ride I was referring to is the one at the back of Movie World. Can't quite think of the name of it off the top of my head.

I am a bit sorry to see Bermuda triangle go as I love dark rides. However as has been pointed out, there is still a very similar ride at Movie World, so not the end of the world. I look forward to seeing this new ride and it's certainly better than them just leaving Bermuda triangle sitting dormant (pun intended) forever. If anyone's interested, I made a copy of Sea World on rollercoaster tycoon 3 (complete with all rides as it was a couple of years ago, and a Sea world resort too). It includes a version of Bermuda Triangle and I made a video of it which you can see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gahow8zNyk. I'll be honest, the first few minutes are a bit boring in this video, and I have actually spent a lot of time improving the ride since then, but I haven't as yet made an updated video. Anyway this will give you an idea of what it's like and if anyone wants me to make a video of the improved version, please let me know. If you have RCT3 and would like to download the park itself, you can get it from here (search for sea world on the link provided and you'll need to have the "Wild" and "Soaked" add-ons).

Does anyone know what's going on at Puzzle Park? Their website says "closed for redevelopment". Is it just the website that's closed or the actual park? If it's the park then what are they actually doing? Are they doing anything that might represent a substantial improvement? I've always thought Puzzle Park and Greenhills have a lot of unfulfilled potential, and both are ideally located and have plenty of land and could become fully fledged theme parks (obviously would take a lot of investment). If even just one of them were to install a few decent themed rides, or better yet a waterpark, to me that would take living in Adelaide up to an entirely new level and also make South Australia a genuine attraction for international tourists. The owners of these parks obviously don't have a lot of spare money to invest but it's a real shame something can't be done about it.