djmcbell

Well, I'll be moving near Melbourne in the next few months (currently in the UK). As much as I'd love a new Disney park in the area - though the only one I'd think of would be Avalon - I don't think it'd happen. I think it'd be far more likely, if one were to happen, for it to be in the Gold Coast purely because it could feed off the number of people coming to the other parks. That said, I'm unsure whether a Disney Australia could happen anyway. Let's face it, the only main places that'd use it would be Australia, New Zealand, and maybe some other small areas - other places have better access to other Disney parks, with parks in America, Europe, China and Japan.

Nintendo did that Pokemon game a while back where you shot them... ... WITH YOUR CAMERA! Yeah, Pokemon Snap I think it was. Supposed to be crap. But you could perhaps work it into a "hey, let's shoot take pictures of the happy smiling fish and get points".

Reminds me of when I visited last year from the UK, and at Wet 'n' Wild there was a family (don't know where from) hunched round an iPad watching what appeared to be a cock fight (no, not that kind of cock...).

Dark ride - I'd say keep the shooting, but have it where pirates are invading the castle. Possible pirate ghosts. Or set it on a pirate ship. Either way, I'd definitely say keep it, and I'm warming to the original theming idea (as, after all, loads of piers around the world with rides have rides that aren't connected to the sea). Plus, must remember that Pirates Of The Caribbean 5 was partially filmed in the Gold Coast. Cash-in, maybe? Of course, it couldn't be official - Disney would rise from his grave specifically to slap you across the face.

Very good, especially creating a new area out of nothing with the pier. One thing (and probably the only thing) I'm not keen on is the Castle Defender shooter ride, as I'd think that Sea World would be after something more "nautical" (and then also not really be that keen on a ride where you shoot our aquatic friends). But other than that, really really good and shouldn't break the bank either. Plus, having a pier into the stunt show lagoon would also make the show a bit more daring too if they can pass under the pier.

The park contained Mrs Browns Boys stuff. It being wiped off the face of the earth was probably for the best.

A voyeurism simulator. In first-person, apparently.

Having seen the edited video, I agree with everything AlexB says. If you are, or are caring for, a person with disabilities, you unfortunately need to accept that there are things you may not be able to participate in without adaptations. Had the family checked online, as AlexB says, they would have found the section regarding disabled visitors. Rainbows End in Auckland is mentioned a fair few times - they themselves seem to have a H&S policy which is basically "if your condition could be aggravated by the rides then we won't let you ride them". Which is fair enough, and pretty much what DW and other major parks do. I don't know how this is checked, but DW did check the girl in question and gave her approval for a fair few (admittedly "kiddy") rides. They could have simply said "no, she can't ride anything". I assume that, as they've said that it was the manufacturers who "set the rules for those rides", they went back in and queried the ride selection. I honestly wonder if she's supposed to be allowed on the Disk-O at Rainbows End... And if they didn't go back to query the ride selection, well, any sympathy I had (and I did have some) would evaporate. The only thing I can perhaps think of as being wrong is maybe DW's staff got their hopes up a bit, saying "oh yes, you'll be able to go on all the rides and everything". As POP said, "first world problems".

As Brad2912 said, a lot of it can be summed up as "because it's good". A new ride isn't automatically good, but something that we, as ride enthusiasts, will try anyway to see whether it is good or not. Going on rides is not a past-time we can consume lightly - unlike books or DVDs, we can't go on roller coasters from the comfort of our own home. On-ride videos just won't cut it as going on a ride is mostly about the physical sensation. So, when I last went to Islands Of Adventure, I made sure to try the new (for me) Harry Potter & The Forbidden Journey, which is probably a very good example of a ride that is new yet, for me, wasn't very good. What excites us about the newness of a ride? Well, first we need to identify what we want out of a ride. Movie World are apparently building some new stuff, including a new area, flat ride (or two, or whatever) and a roller coaster. Out of these, the roller coaster is by far and away what I'm most interested in and excited for. Flat rides - well, I don't really go on them that much anyway. If you were to think of them in terms of food, a flat ride is a small side dish or starter, compared to roller coasters which would be the main part of the meal. Stories in rides - again, it depends on the ride. Hulk at Islands Of Adventure has a story, or at least a setup. It doesn't need one. Basically, Bruce Banner, trying to rid himself of the Hulk persona, has built a roller coaster that may do the job. Needless to say, it doesn't. In a lot of rides nowadays, the audience is "asked" to participate in the story. Not actively participate in it, but act as if the story is "happening now" and they're observing it. So it must come as something of a shock, if we're to think in narrative terms, when we go on Hulk and the experiment doesn't work and so on, then we decide to go on it again and the experiment doesn't work and so on. And on Harry Potter & The Forbidden Journey, it's Muggle open day or something and Harry decides to interact with the audience and whisk them off on an adventure which is seemingly repeated every 30 seconds. In a movie, this mostly makes sense because movies don't interact with the audience, but on a ride, and when the ride narrative takes special care TO interact with the audience, it does come across as condescending and sometimes unnecessary. However, an alternative is the happy-slow-dark-ride where you trundle through mostly static scenes from Cinderella or something like that. They're fine. I'm down with them. They mellow me out, send me to sleep mostly. I guess Pirates Of The Caribbean is a good version of this. However, for more extreme rides to have a story, which "sets up" the ride only (such as Hulk) really isn't necessary. As I say, you do get rides which have a good story - Harry Potter is one, but it seems that Harry is taking everyone off on this extraordinary adventure 24/7 which kinda breaks the story a little. But it still works. As for taking the same amount of enjoyment from a ride, well... I think you can probably answer this better than I or indeed anyone else. A ride is a ride, like a film is a film. You may watch a film numerous times and enjoy it more or less on each viewing. Same with a ride.

Enough of this merriment! Ah, sod it...

I'd doubt that Universal would let Wanda get their hands on the JP/JW property too, but then I imagine it depends if Universal see Wanda in Australia as any sort of threat. The nearest parks Universal have are a pretty hefty plane ride away, and I guess I was going along with all the people who said "Wanda got shares in Universal - Jurassic World Park guaranteed!!!". Chances are Universal has their own plans, but it depends whether they let Wanda have a stab at it too. As for Warcraft, I think the game itself is still quite popular... in China and Korea. Not so much in other places. I'm probably wrong about that. Have to see how the movie does. All this does make me wonder whether Wanda will actually go all-out and build a Disney resort (providing they get the go-ahead from Disney). Disney have the properties, their parks lend themselves well to expansion on new films/characters etc. (for instance, try shoehorning Godzilla into Jurassic Park-land), and their rides tend to cater more for the kid-friendly market (whereas I think Dreamworld and Movie World seem to be a mix of family and thrill).

It'd be very interesting to know what properties Wanda would have at the park. We know they've got a stake in Legendary which will give them access to at least some of their properties (hence the hype about Jurassic World, which they'd be silly not to use - providing Universal let them) but a lot of others, such as Batman, have been taken already by Movie World, or already have upcoming attractions (such as Kong, again being taken by Universal). As good as many people think Pacific Rim is (hey, I liked it), I think it'd be too "dark" (alongside Jurassic World" to be an area, unless they can do a 4D ride based on it (I think somewhere did that recently). They are developing the Warcraft movie though, which I can imagine would be a big crowd draw and can be an actual area (alongside Jurassic World). I can imagine the park being created like an Islands-of-Adventure park, with different areas themed to different actual properties (such as Jurassic World, Warcraft area, etc etc) rather than Disney which is mostly Western, Fantasy etc. It's just difficult to suss out what franchises they'd use, and the only way they can incorporate Disney (which, let's not forget, consists of Star Wars, Marvel, Avatar, and of course all the Disney/Pixar stuff itself) is to go full-on Disney and Disney only - Disney properties only exist in Disney parks, and nothing else exists in those parks (except for Marvel stuff at IoA, but that was down to Disney buying the properties after that area had been created). Either way, I would anticipate this park to have a Jurassic World area (based off the movies - let's not forget, there are more coming and chances are they'll be out before or around the time the park opens) and a Warcraft area (I think I recall hearing there would be more Warcraft movies, probably a trilogy).

I'm still very new to the Australian theme park scene - in fact the only ones I've been to are most of the Gold Coast ones and both Luna Parks. But I would say that, currently, Dreamworld isn't in any danger any time soon. It's got a good location, and it can feed off the success of Movie World to an extent. I would imagine parks over around Perth, and maybe Aussie World, would close before then. Having said that, if Wanda does manage to open up a park on the Gold Coast, then things could change quite drastically. Judging from my (admittedly brief) visit, and what people seem to think about both Dreamworld and Movie World, Dreamworld would be the one least prepared to adapt and weather the storm.

Long story short - yes, "innovation" can get me to visit the same park twice over visiting another park, because we all like something new - though it is obviously more noticeable when it's a new ride. I don't visit a park for the restaurants, or for shows, and I don't care about my mobile phone telling me that such-and-such-a-ride has short queues. Give me new rides, or ride improvements, any day. Look at the amount of people who went to the Harry Potter world at Islands Of Adventure, for instance - so popular they decided to open one next door at Universal Studios! Looking at your questions individually: 1 - why visit a different theme park instead of just one? As I've mentioned, to try different things. Going back to Florida, as it's a prime example of people visiting different parks for different reasons, look at all the Disney parks - Magic Kingdom, Epcot, Animal Kingdom, Studios, plus the water parks. Then you've got Busch Gardens, SeaWorld, Universal, IoA, other water parks, Legoland, a few other tiny tiny parks nobody really bothers with... the major ones stay in business because of their rides and franchises. Like Disney and Harry Potter? Well, that's a minimum of two parks. Want to do some kick-ass coasters? Busch Gardens has loads, and IoA has Hulk and Dragon Challenge, not to mention Universal has some good ones, and SeaWorld too. Four parks there. 2 - innovation? Well, if it's a new ride then I'm interested. Anything else - not so much. Though if a ride has been rethemed to make it quite a different experience then I'll have a look. Lightwater Valley here in the UK rethemed their "Sewer Rat" ride into "Raptor Attack". Basically, it's a roller coaster in pitch black, and always has been as Sewer Rat. All Raptor Attack did was add some dinosaurs and strobe lighting that comes on as you pass certain bits, which improves it quite a lot as it scares the living daylights out of kids. 3 - technology in parks, well, I'm not the target market - at least not yet. I think they're targeted at families with kids who have to make the best use out of their time, book character meals and so on. In a few years, possibly. As it stands, I'll just "eyeball" the length of the queue, or use the boards in some parks which displays wait times. When we go to the Pleasure Beach we'll just pass rides and decide, as we go, what we fancy going on and whether the queue looks acceptable, and the same for restaurants really.

Well, since this forum mainly covers the Gold Coast parks, I'll do a brief bit about my experience there. Went there last year with some of my family. They'd done all the parks there before, so simply got the ticket so they could do the usual (Movie World, Wet n Wild, Sea World). However, my wife and I hadn't, so we decided to do a separate trip to Dreamworld (which was fair enough, nothing special, not as good as Movie World in our opinion). Why did we want to do Dreamworld, even though we'd been told it wasn't as good before we went? Simply, to do something different. It was our first time there (and so far, our only time there - though we will return) and we enjoy our theme parks. As such, even the chance to ride Escape From Madagascar will be leapt at by us. And now that we're moving to Australia, we're keeping an eye on developments. New stuff at Movie World! Potentially a new theme park! Both of these have us excited, and roughly in equal measure (since it's much less likely the new theme park will be pulled off). A new ride at Movie World would definitely be ridden by us, and whilst we're excited for that, we're also saddened that we won't be able to ride the upcoming ride at Blackpool Pleasure Beach (not our home park, but it may as well be) before we leave. Slight tangent - we're also happy that we got to ride Smiler at Alton Towers before the accident. Not all roller coasters (or rides in general) are the same, and we like experiencing them. Also happy that we got on Disaster Transport and Wildcat at Cedar Point, Jaws and Back To The Future at Universal, and some Skull Mountain water ride at Six Flags America before they went. As I say, rides can be vastly different. Compare something like the Grand National or Wild Mouse at Blackpool Pleasure Beach to, say, Scooby Doo or Superman at Movie World. Completely different experiences (even though Scooby Doo is somewhat related to Wild Mouse coasters). Technology - we don't really use the new stuff at parks. Mostly we see the queues and make a judgement call, or see one of the signs giving queue time updates. However, we do use Disney's "fast pass" queue-for-you thing at their parks, which is still pretty low-tech - simply get a fast-pass ticket for a particular time on a particular ride, for free. That way you should get to go on a fair number of rides in the day. Going back to the first (and second) questions, when you're at a theme park you experience the park AND the rides. It depends entirely on what you want. I've been to Movie World and been on Scooby Doo a few times, but it's still fun. I'll quite happily go on it again. I've been to Florida before and Universal and Islands of Adventure are practically next door to each other - we've been in Islands, then Universal, and then back into Islands in the same day, just to experience different rides. Conversely, you can be quite happy in the same park obviously - we spent two days in a row at Cedar Point, and also at Disneyland Paris. Think of it like a buffet with different tables offering different foods, and mix and match as you like.

Heh - we went to Alton Towers last year and spent ages looking round the park for a place to eat. Yes, there were higher quality options, but as soon as they opened they were jammed full of people. In the end we were going to a fish and chip place, which was shut, so we plumped for... yes, a burger.

Y'know, all of the pictures that I've seen here look really nice. This is going to sound odd but, in my short visit to parks in Australia, I still haven't eaten any of the food. I went with my sister and her family, and my mum too, and we took packed lunches in. However, the meals shown here do look great. From my experience, UK parks (still in the UK, got the visas though) leave a lot to be desired. Normally the main option is about £5, if not more, for an absolutely awful burger (a soggy beef patty that's barely 5mm thick, normally with a load of gherkin, in a tiny bun) with "fries" that are even more flexible than the ones we get at KFC, and Coke which I'm pretty sure has more water in it than Coke. Fortunately Pleasure Beach has a Burger King on site, but I really wanted this picked up at Lightwater Valley. Where I live, there's a market nearby which sells HUGE portions of loads of things, like popcorn chicken, curly fries, chicken goujons etc. for £2. If they could get this into the park and even double the price if they wanted, people would still flock to it. American parks - again, mainly fast food options. We did have a very nice sit-down meal in Busch Gardens Tampa a while back but on later visits, especially around Six Flags parks, we found that a lot of the more sit-down meal places were shut which lead us back to having to have burger and fries, or a sub. The only other place I can speak of was Ferrari World in Abu Dhabi where they more or less coated the fries in salt. Pretty sure one fry was composed entirely of salt. As for places in general - I seem to recall fast food places here in the UK started doing salads a few years back, but have now stopped. Why? And also, as one veggie friend attests, McDonalds seem to have stopped doing their veggie burgers so now there's no vegetarian options. I did like the idea though that Lightwater Valley did start doing (I think) which was jacket potato and soup. Unsure how that would work in Australia. Also, Busch Gardens Williamsburg and their Irish stew was different.

I'd still hope for a great coaster in the wild west area - a proper thrill-seeking mine cart coaster would be brilliant. All the theming of Big Thunder Mountain, but with loops and stuff - a proper thrillseeker's coaster, but given a western theme. I hope that the new precinct and hotel they're looking at building can, and does, allow the attractions at Movie World to work well together. I'd still hope for a cinema, some bars and restaurants, a few shops, so that people staying overnight have something to do (and people visiting can stick around longer, or bring new people in).

Possibly moving away from "how can they improve operations", what can be done so that more people can experience more attractions? The obvious answer is "buy a fast pass", but screw that - people spend enough money getting into the parks (though Gold Coast parks do seem quite cheap if you get year passes), they shouldn't really have to spend more to do what they should be able to do anyway. I'm now reminded of my last trip to Flamingo Land here in the UK, and waiting 2+ hours to get on Kumali (we only managed four rides on the entirety of that day, simply because queues were do damn long and they were loading fast pass people as soon as they came on, which meant multiple cars left full of fast pass people before us lowly peasants got a go - nearly left the line to get fast passes myself, which I've never bought at any park). But I really like what they do at the Disney parks, or at least my experience of it from Disneyland Paris. Fast passes are free, but limited to what you can do with them. Go to a machine and get a fast pass for a particular ride, which also gives the time your fast pass is valid. Come back at that time and go through the fast pass queue. Made it much easier and meant that, even when it was busy, we could still go on a good few attractions. Plus, as people are going about getting and using these fast passes (you can only have one at a time), ordinary queues are shorter. The only issue (that I see) is that it doesn't generate revenue for the parks.

They really should ban this kind of show from daytime TV - it probably lead to a huge spike in depression-related suicides. Just the intro made me wonder where the nearest length of rope was. For all those thinking it could be "entirely" Jurassic-whatever themed, I very much doubt it. Even Harry Potter, with all his lands springing up all over the place, just has themed lands. Same with Star Wars. Disney didn't make "Mickey Mouse Land", instead coming up with different attractions themed to different Disney properties. Jurassic Park / World *may* be a themed area in it, and the same could be said for virtually any other property (depending on what Wanda gets permission to use, and decides to build, if ever it comes along). It's as pointless speculating at this moment as it is about, say, a Star Trek area with a full-scale Enterprise to wander about in.

It definitely would be strange if JP and JW were split up, but existing JP "themed lands" are themed around JP, and don't really have the space (I think) to incorporate new JW attractions, or JW theming (since JW is a lot more modern). I don't think they'd build an entire park around JP/JW though, it'd just be an area, but it'd make sense for them to theme it to JW over JP now - especially if they can see how the sequels are going to turn out too and work that in (the sequels are still years off, but so is this park - if it materialises).

Saw a recent documentary about Walt Disney recently, and about the dedication he put into his projects. Apparently he was out painting and helping in the hours before Disneyland opened, trying to help out getting it open in time.

Whilst I've never been to the original Wonderland, I do hope that this leads to another one being built. The world needs more theme parks (or at least I do).

What would the Doomsday tower consist of? Because they've already got Batwing right outside the Justice League ride. Would it warrant another?