joz

Matrix, Mad Max, Animal Logic as a whole (Australian based CGI/animation company, famous for Lego, Legend of the Guardians, Happy Feet), Where the Wild things are, Narnia, San Andreas, Kong V Godzilla (dueling coaster anyone?) Aside from that you could theme to a genre, for example a horror themed area with attractions to House of Wax, The Reaping, or sci-fi movies like Interstella, Contact, Ready Player one, Gravity, or Australian movies like Crocodile Dundee, Red Dog (there's a good animal show in both of these), or do something completely left feild like Sherlock. Also if you could get rights to Tolkien stuff you could do something really special. Of course if you didn't want to do that you could just put a gyro swing in and call it Wonder Woman. Quick Edit to add; you could do Mad Max as an AA replacement, personally I think when you give up on Doomsday completely in a couple years, put a new flat ride there and turn Villans land into a Mad Max mini land instead.

I think SW too. If you were going to do MW, a way you could do it is have a Movie Memorabilia museum (Show case is fine) and have a vault for a cursed for a cursed movie prop, maybe a 'genuine' mummie that was used as a prop for a movie that was never released as everyone who watched it pre release perished in mysterious circumstances. Some basic shit like that anyway.

Apart from I don't think Mad Max is the right theme for a madhouse, that is all basically fine. Madhouse suits something supernatural, Mad Max is dystopian future, not really magic. I might also be inclined to put the Mack Twist and Splash elsewhere, maybe WnW as a whirlpool replacement, or in WB Kids. Personal taste would be Mad Max RMC behind West/Scooby rather than towards Superman, and use AA's land for a Matrix Coaster (your flyer would work for that). All of this is like 10+ years worth of investment in 2 short paragraphs

It was probably about the same time that Amazon put MySpace out of business

Oh for sure! Not having a go or anything, but just saying as an explanation it doesn't fully make sense. Kinda seems like half the story is all.

Yeah I love that sort of thing. I remember at the height of their battle with the locals, signs were put up saying 'Scream! You're at Alton Towers!' So question for those in the know (which from the looks of things many people are); when are they hoping to have Big Dipper up and running by? Is it a "Hopefully by boxing day" thing or is it more "All things going well, early December"?

@Brad2912this post triggers me a lot. The only rebranding needed at Sea World Resort is to drop the '& Water Park'

That makes no sense. It's not like they under some contractual obligation to do a Heros and Villans extended trade event. Surely it makes more sense that they moved it to Summer because they wanted a summer event and hadn't done that one for a while.

I suppose with Hereos and Villans being moved to Summer there's a vacant spot in the calander for an event this year

This touches on a much a bigger topic that I won't explore to its fullest here, but its worth mentioning ;to me it comes down to big thinking verses small thinking. Big thinking is how how do we make this the best it can possibly be? And small thinking is 'What's the cheapest we can do and still get the same result?' I think all our parks are properly capable of both, but HSD being in the state it's in for years, but that's fine because it's cheap and uncomplicated is small thinking. Incidentally, it's not just a theme park thing; The proposals for Brisbane Olympics is a classic external example of small thinking. Did you know they're going to totally rebuild the Gabba, and when they're done it will have 5,000 more seats for a total of 50,000? Meanwhile Stadium Australia for the Sydney Olympics which they did some big thinking for was 110,000. Same with the GC comm games too.

I mean as a theme park fan it's better than residential. I've never been big on places that try to be both a resort and a tourist park at the same time, but I guess there is a market for that sort of thing or those places wouldn't have popped up everywhere. You'd have to assume this will be in the Lagoon corner of the property, so here's an idea for the cheapest easiest slam dunk in the history of theme park hotels: Build a train station connecting to the park. If Dreamworld wants this to be a family theme park resort, build it so it's got a unique theme park selling point with some creativity. There will be 3 or 4 theme park hotels on the Gold Coast in very near future. What makes yours special?

If the place had one room, and only Austrlain Coaster fans went, it still wouldn't be full most nights. Coaster fans are not important or sizeable demographic. Also the M1 is going to be the bigger issue as far as noise goes. I'd expect some pretty decent sound proofing going on. The target market one is interesting though. Hotel V sounds like it's one of those dimly lit trendy places that is everywhere in surfers these days. It doesn't scream family hotel like say 'Movie World Resort' would. I wonder if the market is more the Top Golf/ Corperate/ sophisticated crowd while Sea World Resort stays being all about the families. The name to me seems more consistent with Gold Class Cinemas than it does a theme park holiday hotel. My standard 'Village isn't a lifestyle brand, stop trying to make it a thing' rant aside, that's what it sounds like to me. Less family resort, more cocktail lounges. Yes resort stuff with nice pools and whatnot, but no tipping bucket if you know what I mean.

Yeah righto. Can we not make it personal.

To be honest if you could run Rivals without stacking, then the capacity would be plenty. That would mean opening the entrance gates as soon as the train parks like is standard around the world, and having more than 2 station staff. It would actually be fascinating to see the numbers and if an extra 2 loaders would be instantly paid for by increased ride photo/On ride video sales.

See kiddie rides are the one area I think DW do really well with. I passionately hate ABC kids world, but a couple of really small rides and some slightly bigger kids rides in DreamWorks makes for a pretty decent selection. Also if ABC kids world and Motocoaster aren't going anywhere, then Motocoaster should be rethemed to the rocket clock from play school. Don't even attempt to change my mind because I know I'm right.

No. But Showtime shouldn't write the shows either. Outsource the writing and get a proper production company to produce the shows, and hire Showtime FMX to execute them. FMX shows are pretty ordinary, but the ones written and produced in house aren't any better. Has anyone actually watched Seal Guardians or Affinity?

If it's fir MW's 30th, why the photo of a rake? Also it's SW's 50th. Not saying anything but would that not be worth a little bit more of a push since it's a round number, and you're launching a heap of shit?

I kind of imagine DW's ride selection process for about the past couple of decades has been to jump on a ride manufacturer's website, click sort by lowest price, then click add to cart on the top result. Buzzsaw is a classic example of that.

I think it's a question of if people act in good faith or not. Some people act in good faith, some act in bad faith, and some people have been known to bounce around between the two.

I have a really low tolerance fpr queuing. Longest for me was I waited about 90mins for Raptor and about an hour for a few other rides the same day. I wouldn't wait 90mins for Rivals since I can always come back on a quiet day, but I have thought if it was at an overseas park I totally would wait for it, and I would consider it worth the wait too.

Cheers for that, perfectly explained 🙂

Sorry if I've missed it, but how do you get to GD? Is the path still open between the train track and Steel Taipan?

Bermuda's preshow wasn't good, but it did set up the ride really well. Toons was almost the exact opposite. Good preshow and made you feel like you were on an adventure, but didn't make a ton of sense. The best is EASISLY the original Batman preshow. If you scrapped the simulators and just put a few extra 'In cave' effects you actually could potentially have had a fully satisfying attraction just with that. If Batman Adventure: The Preshow was at Fox Studios it would have been the headline attraction. Second place to Gremlins, honestly it was almost 2 stand alone attractions in one there. Worst would easily be Lethal Weapon. Giant Drop's was also shit, but also went for all of 20 seconds, so hard to be mad at it. Similar story for Wild Wild West's original preshow. Also not a preshow as such, but the whole ToT thing was strange and unnecessary. I guess it gave a good chance for anticipation to grow but the whole attempt at a story was woeful. On the flipside, again, also not a preshow, but the walk through the wave on Wipeout always got me super pumped as a kid, and even waiting in there was really exciting for some reason. EDIT: Also not an Australian park, but the preshow for Hex at Alton Towers is phenomenal.

The other issue for Australian parks is the busy days are spread out. You can't rebuild a train in a school term, so you're guaranteeing that some of those busy periods you're always screwed. Look at MW the past holidays and tell me that the parks only need to buy 2 trains because they're only busy enough to use them 20 days a year.

Am I the only one reading that article thinking 'So they haven't started looking yet and won't have anything till 2023 at the absoloute earliest'.