elemist

Just think it could be the Lego version of Disneyland!

I don't understand the purpose of these types of developments? Is it a case of build it and hope the parks can scale up to create the demand for the accommodation? Or to relieve pressure on accommodation in Surfers itself? The reason this works in Anaheim is three fold. Firstly, the parks are far enough out of LA (showing ~1 hour each way plus traffic) to make it quite a distance to travel, and they're located in the same vicinity. Secondly, the parks are big enough that it takes more than one day to see them. From what i've read/heard/understood you could easily spend 3 - 4 days between the parks. Thus making a 1 hour commute each way each day is some what of a time suck. Thirdly these parks are open long hours - 8 till midnight each day, so its just not practical to do the commute each day. In comparison lets look at the Gold Coast - you have 2 parks in Oxenford, 1 park at Coomera and 1 park at Main Beach. Not exactly all clustered together in a nice location, and none of the locations alone are big enough to be a destination in themselves. The parks are generally only open standard hours, closing at 6pm. The nightlife around the parks is pretty much 0, apart from what a Maccas? Travel times from down town Surfers is only 25 minutes each way, and there's plenty of easy travel options available to tourists from car hire to regular public busses and then dedicated tourist shuttle busses. Down town Surfers has a pretty good amount of night life and activities to do of an evening. It has plenty of food options for people to enjoy, and its right on the beach - which is probably a big reason for people visiting anyway. Surfers also has a massive variety of hotels, from cheap motels up to luxury pent house apartments catering to a wide variety of tourists. Lastly, none of the parks in themselves are really big enough to spend anything more than 1 day in each at the present time. Sure this may change in the future, but i doubt it will be any time soon. The only way i can see this type of development working, was if Surfers didn't exist, and the alternative was to stay in Brisbane and commute to the parks. Then it would make sense to develop this kind of infrastructure around the parks.

True - but part of the reason is most people won't pay a premium for something they can get out of the tap for free. At least paying for coke your getting something for your money that you can't otherwise get. I would imagine though if they did water at $1.50 or even $2 a bottle vs $4 for coke then more people would go for it. Branded isn't actually that much more per bottle - instead of 25c your looking at 40c based off the coles/woolies prices.

I agree with the general consensus that in most cases it's a one off visit or a once every few weeks visit, so therefore not a massive problem. I think the parks biggest issues are keeping costs at a reasonable level that people can afford to buy food. With the exception of the pass holders, most people have just spent a hundred or so on entry (more for families). One thing that really gripes me though is the $4 - $5 charge for a bottle of water. If i can buy a 24 pack from woolies or coles for 25c a bottle, its pretty blatant price gouging to go charge $5 for the same bottle.

That's a weird location - not a lot of room in that area.

My 2c is it will make a small difference but not a devastating difference. The business they will lose is the tourist that only has a short amount of time to visit all the parks and has to sacrifice one. However by MW having the hyper it should increase tourism to the area anyway. I know each of the 3 times i've been to the GC i've done all the theme parks. Really the only ones i would skip now are Sea World and Wet n Wild. Playing arm chair CEO / Marketing Dude i would think the following... I'm on the too soon band wagon for Dream World to go out and build something massive and go all in your face with the marketing something like that would deserved. I think they need to be spending this time removing TRRR, building the memorial they've spoken about and planning. Get everything behind them, and then start with a clean slate. Otherwise they will just keep dredging it up again every time they do something with the area and keep tainting their image and bringing it back up in peoples minds. Out of sight = out of mind. Then come the new year - 2018 - they need to start with a bang and then keep it rolling - Maybe a massive new years party, followed by a new years day party. Regular announcements about new things and changes. Doesn't have to be expensive new rides, hold a new event - funny hat day, dress like a wiggle day, hell hold an eating competition! Good clean fun style events. Throw in some prizes - free return entries / season passes / discounted F & B / Merch etc. These will do two things - bring back the existing pass holders and encourage them to spend more time in the park, which will make for a better atmosphere all round and 2) draw in the kids, and the parents and hopefully just make people happy all round. As an added bonus the winners of the free return entries / season passes they will hopefully return again. Come April they'll have the Commonwealth Games in town - so big time for tourism. They should have some related activities scheduled for that period - IE mini commonwealth games events. These things will not only continue the good clean fun, but also soak up the crowd a bit. Then in the lead up to the end of the year start an adventure world style campaign like they did for Abyss. Gorilla style marketing, subtle hints and challenges to solve a riddle and get the story line etc. Basically do the complete opposite of Movie World.

I think you'll find nostaglia is the key to Disneyland, and pretty much the whole reason it exists. Sure they bring out new movies regularly - most which are based on nostaglic characters from the past. But i think you'll find the actual people with the money buying the tickets are doing so largely in part because of their memories of childhood visits.

I don't know if it was the intention with the purple and green tracks, but the whole way through i was waiting for them to split and go in different directions! That would be an awesome illusion to do half way through - have them split left and right, and have the coaster keep going straight.

I haven't seen anything in any article to say whether or not the ride had seatbelts. From my memories or TRRR it was only a velcro belt anyway that was more appearance than function. It might be a bit early to say whether there was a ride fault or not. On the face of it, that appears to be correct, but in the comments of one of the articles i read there were some mentions of shallow waters and the raft striking the bottom a few weeks prior. Obviously public comment and it was somewhat of an unknown news site - so take it with a grain of salt. Interesting to note the "full" slats on the conveyor of this ride too..

http://news.sky.com/story/drayton-manors-splash-canyon-closed-over-patient-in-water-10870380 From the images and description the ride sounds very much like the TRRR. Will be interesting to see if the media links the two. Either way horrible incident and thoughts to the family.

It's kind of an awkward teenager really. It's not yet a full adult park big enough that people will come and spend the day just at that park, yet its big enough that it really deserves more than being a foot note at Dreamworld. I feel if they kept it separate they really needed to invest in stage 2 (or 3??? - call it the next stage), to bring it up to snuff to stand on its own. I suspect though with the current losses that's not going to happen anytime soon, except in the event of a sale. It's sad, cause its a great park and the rides they do have were pretty good too. It's just too small to really spend the best part of a day at. The last couple of times i've been, we've spent a couple of hours there and then headed to dreamworld. For what it's worth though, WnW we bailed around 2pm cos we had done everything.

Has probably been on the cards since she completely ballsed up the handling of the incident last year. I would assume they wanted to try and maintain some stability initially to reduce the bad press. I guess there could also be some link between the incident and her stepping down - maybe the investigation results are being finalized. There's not really been any further information released around the actual cause of the incident.

I would much rather they go a generic movie title than continuing with only DC comics names. Personally i have never gotten into the comic book realm or anything batman/superman/justice league etc and i'm sure there's many others. So keeping a variety of movie lines would be better i think.

That's a significant amount to write off.. Given the age of the attraction you would think it would have very little value remaining. It will be interesting to see what the difference is between the Merlin incident and the Dreamworld incident over the longer term. Whilst Dreamworld was a multiple fatality incident, in terms of PR the Merlin incident may be worse. It's left some highly visible long term impacts. IE every time one of the victims who lost a limb makes a public appearance, it dredges it up in a very visible manner. Whereas the impact of the Dreamworld fatalities is somewhat hidden in that it's a mental impact on the families.

Yep - has been mentioned in a few of the articles i've read. But looking at ride photos from Google Images shows plenty of instances where there's two heavy people in the back and a small child in the front..

I think pretty much any rope / line of any type would be fatal if caught around the face/neck at 120k's. My brother suffered a nasty deep slice under his neck from riding into a rope washing line on a bicycle when he was young. Wasn't on a hill and was riding a mountain bike, so would exactly be breaking the sound barrier, but still did a phenomenal amount of damage. A better idea might have been to have a catch net under the ride - like the net under a trapeze.(or you know.. engineer the ride to people can't come off it!) Interesting that it ran for 2 years without this happening, so must have a been some contributing factors. There's comments from witnesses saying he flew out of the raft into the netting which is how he was so badly injured, however the other two people in the raft suffered a broken jaw and broken ribs, so its not like it was a single restraint failure ejecting 1 rider. Obviously something happened to the raft itself. It would appear the raft was fully laden weight wise, it was just 4 pounds under the max weight, which i guess would have increased the speed going down the main hill, but it should have had a counter effect going up the hill and then the amount of air over the hump.

Here's some on ride footage - interestingly looks like a young kid at the front as well. Doesn't appear to go very fast over the middle hump though?

I thought the same thing - stills from amateur video or something! What a horrific thing to happen...

I would argue the decrease in visitor numbers was more related to the fact half the park was closed. Funnily enough once the rides reopened visitor numbers started returning to normal.

Well that was a good start at least! Have to say i'm amazed they didn't bring up the GL incident during the piece!

Personally i think this is over kill (depending on the situation of course) and will lead to a litigious society like what the US has. People should accept that these rides are machines, and like any machine there will be issues from time to time. As long as they're not left there all day and there was no actual danger, i don't see why compensation should be offered. Dedicated call in numbers and feedback cards etc will make it out to be a bigger issue than it is. If i received an apology card with a dedicated phone number and incident number i would be rather concerned about how serious the situation was. Same goes if management are on the scene. It does of course depend on the situation - if it were serious such as the Green Latern issue, then yes by all means steps like these should exist. I just see taking this kind of action for something as simple as a sensor fault to be opening a giant can o worms. I do agree with your other points about automated generic responses being played, and regular updates from the operations staff member. I've been stuck on a few rides at Adventure World over the years (the Rampage was unreliable as hell when it first went in). The number of times we were left hanging upside down for 10 - 15 minutes until maintenance arrived i would have to take my shoes off to count! But - the ride operators were great, there would be an announcement straight away that they were having a technical problem and maintenance were on the way. Then a few minutes later, that maintenance were on scene and working on it etc etc. There was never freebie's, senior management, dedicated call in numbers, or free hugs offered nor requested. Everyone laughed it off, jumped off the ride and re queued straight away!

I would love to see the parks start combatting back against the media. Just a few behinds the scenes videos would be a great start. They could do some interviews with the ride engineers doing their morning walk throughs, explain what they're looking for and that they do this every day etc etc. Could do one of a test evac procedure on a ride showing how its done and why it's being done. Maybe another explaining some of the many safety systems on the rides. I would suggest something like a today tonight special interview and behind the scenes video, but i wouldn't trust them to not turn it into a "special report on the dangerous irresponsible theme parks"

Haven't been on DD yet, so can't comment on that. Out of the remaining three, Claw wins hands down. Surf Riders ok, but its a bit on the boring side. Wipeout is too rough for me, and the time spent upside down and flips etc always makes me queezy. I have the same problem with the Rampage here (hasn't stopped me riding it a few hundred times over the years though!). The claw is just smooth and comfortable. Yet has the thrills of looking straight down from a decent height.

Correct - and share prices are all about public opinion. So little things can very quickly become big things!

That part was all me i mistook the inverted comments to mean the passengers were upside down rather than the fact it's an inverted coaster!