aaronm

More family ride capacity is a good thing for the park, as others have noted it's somewhat lacking in that area which is why WFF and SDSC are always relatively busy. Clones or not, Vekoma's recent offerings have been fairly high quality and thankfully they haven't cheaped out on some awful Zierer or SBF installation. I suspect the success of this new area will largely depend on the theming. There's potential for the new land to look and feel fantastic if they put in the effort.

So the ride has been closed temporarily this morning while they search for someone’s lost phone. Am I wrong in thinking the park should just tell them “sorry, it’s gone, we told you no loose items.”

I was back at the park yesterday and they’d sped things up considerably, trains dispatching every 2.5-3 minutes which seems to have kept the queues much more manageable.

The mountain of improbability.

Fair enough, but if that dinner had cost $500 just a few years ago it would be reasonable to comment on the increase and suggest the restaurant was getting greedy.

Both trains running today but it didn’t do much for wait times. Load op was also grouping, and it was taking longer to group people than actually seat them and check restraints. I’m talking a full three minutes just to line people up at the doors while and empty train sat in the station. Plenty of parks around the world just allow guests to self-organise in the queue, would definitely speed things up a lot.

When did backwards seating on Rivals jump to $30? Takes it from something we’d do every visit to maybe once a year, quite a steep increase.

Great to see Aussie World getting new additions. If I’m reading the article correctly the ride is open from today before the official opening on Wednesday?

I feel like we would have heard if this was opening for the winter school holidays, September perhaps?

I'm not making excuses for Village, clearly the whole area has taken much longer than expected. And it's anyone's guess why Trident has taken so long to get going, this should have been the easiest of all the attractions to complete. But delays are common at the moment - for those seasonal US parks anything opening after Memorial Day usually indicates a missed schedule, and Atlantis still hasn't been under construction for as long as the Tron clone in Florida!

Seems to be the case that rides are generally taking longer to complete at the moment. While Leviathan is probably an outlier for its delay, there are several "new for 2022" coasters in the USA that are also seemingly running behind (e.g. Aquaman Power Wave, Wonder Woman Flight of Courage, Dr Diabolical).

$49 to hire a plastic tent for 75 minutes, I guess Dreamworld are convinced about people loving those covered seating areas.

Good that they are upfront about ride opening hours, at least guests can know what to expect ahead of time rather than turn up and wonder when something will open.

I'd be surprised if they kept it closed during the school holidays given the park needs all the capacity it can get.

Wasn’t the Big Banana building one as well?

Any news on Dingo Racer? Thinking of heading to the park late June.

Rivals running one train seems odd given the crowds and wait times, presumably something is wrong with the second train and they can't run it?

I must be a terrible enthusiast, what the heck is a beach ward?

I think they are the other most likely buyer apart from Merlin, unless private equity steps in (god forbid we see a repeat of the Macquarie years…). But whoever was to buy the park needs some deep pockets and a fair amount of patience, as well as industry experience, if they are to succeed.

If Merlin was to swoop in I would be optimistic, with the potential to build a Legoland gate next door as well.

I imagine most on these forums would have some sort of annual pass, but I find it hard to believe a day guest would spend $110 on admission and walk away happy with the current park offering. There always seems to be at least one major ride out of action and some fairly lengthy waits on others (seemingly due to the park choosing to run fewer trains or have fewer staff present). And even of the open attractions, a few (Scooby, HWSD, JL) are in a pretty sad state these days. When Rivals opened it felt like the park finally had all the elements of a fantastic lineup in place. The ride offering isn't a problem any longer, it's understaffing and poor maintenance, and guest feedback is dismissed "because Covid".

Agree the risk level is not really any different from sporting matches, which were largely operating "as normal" until a few weeks ago. Unfortunately as we're seeing in Melbourne it doesn't take much to go from normal to outbreak lockdown at the moment, which is why I'm surprised that Village are powering ahead. Regardless, has been too long between haunts for me, glad this year's event is going ahead and hope to make it up there!

Bearing in mind that a good portion of the target market (under 30s) are unlikely to be fully vaccinated by October, I’m surprised this is going ahead. Seems an ideal environment for a COVID superspreader event and much harder to enforce social distancing than during the daytime.

Unless it's one of the smaller dive coasters, I tend to agree that B&M's offerings are probably too big for the market. Something like Vekoma's Lech Coaster or a Gerstlauer Infinity coaster would be about right size and budget-wise.

Still 60+ minute waits for Superman, Scooby, GL. I guess Rivals being closed doesn’t help but it’s definitely not quiet.