joz

Well colour me surprised that the event was busy, thought between the combination of the cold and confused marketing regarding tickets that it might flop. Hopefully that bodes well for genuine extended trade after boxing day. If it is a success it might be nice to see JL and GL (assuming it's available) stay open later too

Better than 'Blown away' 😊

It wasn't open yesterday.

Sodomise it with the hype sausage!

Maybe if KFC got rid of that rule and worried less about wastage I could go in at 9.30 and actually buy some food. 'The only thing we have left is chips and nuggets' 'Well shit do you want me to get out my car and show you where the fryer is?'

I kind of agree that marketing it is hard, but the promo image they have is pretty good. I think having a shot of people sat in the chair and whisking it away into the sky would sell the concept as well as some vague promises of 'the most advanced simulator in the world' and 'You've never experienced anything like this in Australia before' would do the trick neatly. Calling it I-Ride or flying theatre would be a mistake imho. It'd be like calling MWs new ride 'HyperCoaster' Also just to nip it in the bud; Blown Away would not be a good name for the ride.

I've been keeping up to date with this thread, and while I have detailed thoughts on a lot of it, what I find interesting is how many people think this stuff is new. Maybe it's the fact that Movie World opened 2 new rides in 2 years that blinded everyone from the true state of the park. The irony is that I think the park is looking either as good or better than it has for years, it's just that people have taken their blinders off. I also understand the reality that they have implemented a new ticketing strategy with a long term focus which will cost them in the short term, at the exact same time as rest of the group has had an awful year. That's why you're getting community month being extended and half baked stuff like afterglow and cost cutting, but even with the cost cutting its better now in terms of having outlets open than I've ever seen it. That doesn't mean I think everything is great, but I think it's as good as we can reasonably expect from Village. People in management don't understand theme parks, they understand the Village way of doing things. Here's an example of the sort of thing I mean; there is a policy in place that if f&b staff eat left over food it's theft and staff caught doing it will be dismissed. You have to be a special kind of asshole to think that way as you ask kids on $20 an hour to throw out hundreds of dollars worth of food. So the people who are successful in the department are special kinds of assholes, and stupid policy lives on. There are nice supervisors by the way who allow it, but it's understood that it's the manager being nice, not the company, and the nice ones (overall) tend to get weeded out before progressing further. A friend of mine recently got a job in marketing doing social media. They studied social media and know the parks intimately. Instead of using that knowledge and creating engaging content they were locked in an office and were asked to scroll instagram to find photos guests had taken. This is why you get the inane unengaging crap that Village post on social media all the time. Of course the people who know how crap what they're doing leave and the people who think the social media presence is fine persist into management. At village, with a couple exceptions, mediocrity rises to the top. I think Clarke is good for the parks but the culture he inherited is one that will need work and it's really hard to do when there's no money. What's interesting to me is that the low level staff who are good like him and feel they could go to him with a problem. People with crappy attitudes complain because they have to stay at work longer. I think it'll take a while and a management clean out to fix things, after all things are pretty mediocre at Movie World, and that's where all the management is based and trying the hardest. Have you been to any other VRTP parks lately to see how they're doing? Spoiler alert, not as good as MW.

I can understand why you would open BW instead of GL. Height requirement and prominence favors BW being open but agreed it's strange not to open GL too. I guess they're just playing it super conservatively with this one, it's definitely a mini event for sure. Hope it works, still holding out hope for a true night parade one day.

Looks like 3 rides open to me.

Yeah what Brad said. What's funny to me is they've tried so hard to tie pass sales in they've confused the public on what the event is. Good work marketing!

I dunno, 8pm is actually a pretty decent effort. The other events go till 9 at the latest and they aren't included in normal admission.

Legit this is last years Carnivale at Sea World but back at Movie World and included in admission. I mean they've got hardly any rides open, some 'up and coming musical' acts, watered down street food menu and random street performers. On the other hand, it can be a bit meh, it's included in admission price and they have booze on. I'll take my cynical arse down there one of the days and have a few just to be sure. The website is suspiciously lite on details though; like what time does it go till?

It's rather a lot worse on mobile

Just checked and it's not listed in order. If I was a casual guest I would have missed Arkham's closure and probably be more angry that I checked and wasn't informed.

Well we didn't say it was going to happen last time, people just got excited and speculated.

Rodney was done brilliantly. It was a funny interaction from the start that just got more and more silly as it went on so everyone got it at their own pace. Shooting him over the set might well be about the funniest bit of any theme park show ever. On the other hand Seal Guardians for me its not worth having a plant. 'He got wet' just isn't really that funny. Apparently Sea World agree because they've now 'plussed' the joke by having him on his phone and then get upset. That's not funny, that's just mean. I don't understand who thinks guests want to see other guests treated badly? As a show it does fall short on almost every level. The message is so simplistic and in your face that you just want to kick over the next recycling bin you see. The screen character is a total waste of effort and seems to be there to appeal to people who like educational software on their iPads. The show uses outdated internet language to try and appeal to the kids which falls flat because that's not how kids talk anymore so it just come across awkward. The plot is weak as piss. "There is rubbish floating towards the station and we need to fix it". OK, so the show requires you to suspend your disbelief and pretend you're looking at a research station. I can do that. The show requires you to suspend your disbelief and pretend you're in the open ocean. OK fine, I can just about manage that. The show requires you to suspend your disbelief that there is a wall of pollution floating towards you. Yeah no can do. I think anyone above the age of 5 will struggle there. The humor much like the rest of the show skews far too young. In the past these shows have been for the whole family, this show is for pre-schoolers. If they want an educational show or a show with a message they'd have something more engaging if they did a straight up educational seal presentation with a few jokes. Seal Guardians is a waste of space and needs a complete redo.

Well they've got 1.5million years on the ToT magnets

I don't understand why bowling alleys need consistent branding, and I understand even less why you would license someone else's. It makes even less sense why you would license someone else's branding when its so dull and boring. At the end of the day, it's a bowling alley, it lives and dies based on if people want to go bowling, not the name of the place. 100% get rid of the dull branding and put your own in.

There were 3, now there are 2. The 3rd is on the back road.

I dunno, looks like a worse collection of slides with the same mob running it. Seems worse than Sydney to me.

What Paul said.

It is, but if we correct that then honestly we would never be done correcting people.

That's entirely my point though, to future proof the park you need rides. The park needs rides and will at some point in the next 20 odd years need to update it's identity. It's bullshit that is the case because they genuinely haven't done anything wrong, but that is looking like it doesn't matter. As for closing it, yeah ask Disney or Universal if they think there's any advantages to be had having multiple parks in the same market. SW MW and WnW with proper investment and a good mix of attractions will make more than if they sunk every cent they have into MW. I think the financial results from the past few years demonstrate that too.

The problem is the park doesn't have a headline act. There's no ride where you say 'You MUST go to SW to go on that ride'. Nothing there captures the public imagination in the way a Tower of Terror or Rivals does. Jet Rescue and Storm are both decent but not enough to visit the park for; ultimately they are filler. Surfrider if it moved would just be more of the same, filler. But worse than that its an old ride so not even something new. Worse than that its closed 6 months of the year. Worse than that it has a 140cm height requirement in a park aimed at small kids. I don't know if they're still thinking of moving it, but by the time you move it and set it up properly it'll end up costing a few million anyway. May as well spend that on filler which is new and more appropriate for the park. Least something actually new might drive attendance.

I won't go into massive amounts of detail, but Sea World does need a big new full sized coaster. It also could do with a smaller broad appeal coaster (a spinner would be ideal), a new family ride and a dark ride. All 3 of it's main shows are woeful and need to be rewritten from scratch, and for the love of god just reopen the Flume already. The only thing the park doesn't need is new animal attractions; there are enough of them and animal attractions are increasingly a problem for public perception. I think long term (20+ years) SW needs to transition to not being an animal park with a couple rides, but an Ocean theme park with a few animals. At the moment if they wanted to shift focus away from animals for public relation issues they can't because they have too little else to highlight.