joz

Managed to get a ride on it earlier in the day. I'll share a few thoughts. First thing to say is the queue is untouched, so guess the foam can't be that dangerous right? The station is still the same, except that instead of seeing Scooby in armour from the queue, there is nothing. There's not much to say for the ride. It's as bad as you'd think it is. Nothing to see at all in the dark ride section. In fact there are 2 themeing elements left; the swinging blades (they aren't lit but we're randomyl swinging) and the random Spider in the disco room. Of all things to leave, the spider? Really? Ring of Fire room is just an empty room with a random blue light pointing at nothing. All the themeing has been removed all the way to the unload station, but the themeing at the station has been left untouched. Overall, pretty awful. The closet to nice things I can say is; it's darker than it looks in photos, the reality isn't quite as bad as the photos suggest, but it's not exactly much better. It's also a refreshing change for Village to have a preference for a ride being open, but it looks bloody sad. It's sad seeing the ride as is, if it were me I'd fog the shit out of the dark ride and add some strobes in ala the freezer/film vault mazes that get around as a desperate measure to get through the school holidays then close it to get new themeing in. Ring of Fire room could also do with having anything put in it, and plywood walls with lanterns installed between that room and the unload station. That is the stuff they can do NOW to lessen the shitness, before fixing it properly. A Scooby Doo figure wouldn't go astray either. I like to think the plan isn't to leave it like that, but I'm not optimistic.

Why? What do buggys have to do with Movies? Also Outback Spectacular is a dinner show, not a park, so would be a waste to put it there. PC would kinda fit, but they just don't get the crowds that would enjoy such an attraction. WNW is probably where it fits best, sure it's not a waterslide but parks are allowed to have more than one type of thing.

They've got their own standards. They decided a few years ago that they weren't going to use foam for any new attractions, but that everything already installed was fine. There's nothing illegal or even inherently dangerous about it, particularly with the fire suppression systems in place. For whatever reason though, Village have decided that it has to be removed immediately, even though they're not ready to replace it.

I don't think I can buy that as an excuse. It's not like Movie World presents itself as some carnival. The niche it's carved for itself is Australia's best themed park with the best intellectual property and quality execution. That's what they want to be. You can't take your best executed ride and butcher it because all of a sudden you've decided something that you've known about for years is a problem. I think a lot of people knew that they'd decided to remove the themeing, but I'm shocked that they decided to not even try to make it look good. Even when Wild West Falls caught fire they put SOME effort into getting it back to scratch. Someone go get some plywood walls from storage and put something in there even if it takes a couple of weeks.

If Disneyland closed down pirates of the Caribbean and re-opened it as a ride through a warehouse it wouldn't be 'Great of the park to get the ride open for peak season'. Having the ride look like that can only be called an utter disgrace.

Yep that's about the worst thing I've ever seen. I'm surprised they're allowed to keep their Warner Brothers licensing with a ride looking like that

It doesn't really fit at Movie World or Sea World either. It kinda suits Paradise Country, but I can't really see it being a success out there. Of all the Village parks I think it probably suits WnW best. http://wildbuggy.com/ Given it's a franchise of a standalone attraction I wonder if internally at least, it's viewed as extra business for Oxenford rather than an attraction at Wet 'n' Wild, kind of similar to what Top Gold will be, only this one happens to be inside a park.

Yeah be very interesting to see what it's like when it re-opens.

See I know that same line of thinking, but I just can't see them doing it at this time of year. Without pointing to a specific time, we all kinda know there are times when rides are closed longer than they need to be. Again I can't see them doing it, not with their new ride, and not at this time of year. Doesn't mean it's OK though, this is the reason Intamin don't sell as many rides to Australia as they used to.

Wait so you think what happened is they did the incident investigation for thunder rapids, finished up and then said 'well we've got to inspect more rides, what's close?'

I know Slick already called this out as being made up, but I do love when stuff gets proved wrong quickly.

I don't think they know what will happen to it yet, but they know that if it does reopen it won't be anytime soon, hence removing it from the park map and blocking it off.

Sea World's Serpent througherly shat all over Fantasmic's dragon. Just saying. I think it's hard to really communicate to people who weren't around then just how impressive that show was, and just how much effort went into it. It was a bit cheesy for sure, but it was so big and so creative with what it did that it was just a delight to sit through. They just threw everything they could at it. There's on bit of the show that illustrates this perfectly; OK kids, let's set the scene, there's a massive evil fire breathing surpent on the Island, our heros have been firing rockets from boats at it to defeat it, all to no avail, what's the next scene? A Fucking helicopter flys in and hovers next to the serpent, and starts firing pyro at it, making massive explosions go off on the ground all the while the helicopter is being projected on by lasers making it look like something out of the matrix (before the matrix was a thing mind you). The whole show was a bit like that, It had such a weird tone, it was sort of this odd Sci Fi/ fantasy fairytale fairytale mash up, but again it worked just because of it's scale and how much creativity they threw into it. You could never do a show like it again, it's not even on my wishlist to try and top it, it was such an unattainably good show and the tone would be so hard to get right from scratch. It does show though that with effort and imagination (and cash obviously) you can do something special in that location, there is so much unused potential at that park just waiting to be used for something incredible. Instead we get Carnivale. For an extra price. With no big show. For 2 nights a week. In a park that has less rides than it did 20 years ago. Does my cynical lack of excitement make sense now? Lol

I don't know if you know many 18-23 year olds, but as a general rule they aren't crying out to work Friday and Saturday nights in peak going out season. Weirdly, one of the things I really agree with is not doing the parade. Different entertainment offerings work better at different parks, and Sea World doesn't lend itself to a parade. There isn't a logical parade route, and even the ones you could invent aren't set up to host parades; there's no speakers, no lights, and the atmosphere is hard to build on Sea World's winding paths. I think the issue is that they've replaced the parade with nothing. A show on the main lake to round out the night would be ideal. Not having the big entertainment option is one of the failings of the event, and does bring the issue of only having 2 rides into focus. Also before anyone says that 'national music acts' are the big entertainment offering, I'd point out that they also had these at Movie World, AND a parade. This in my mind is the other fundamental issue I have with the event. In the middle of the school holidays, when the park packed with tourists, at 5pm, we kick them out and replace then with VIP passes (who we largely gave free tickets too) and just kind of hope they spend money. Reality is that Tourists spend more money than locals; they are the people you want in the park, they are the people who are likely to want to be in the park longer despite it's shorter attractions roster. It's not just F&B sales either, when everyone leaves the park at the same time the Sea World shop gets slammed, there'd be a lot of people who walk into the shop who get the hell out of there as quick as they can. Stagger the exit times and you would do wonders for retail sales. Instead, we rush the people who want to spend money out of the park quickly. With the hard ticket set up they've got, how much money does a F&B outlet make between 4-6pm? How much does it make before 6.30 when people finally get down there? No one in the park is going to get a second meal because they'll be going soon, and it'll take a while for a big chunk of the crowd to even get to the stalls, that is if they haven't had dinner elsewhere before they arrived. I think including the event in park admission, and adding an after 5 ticket worth $30 would be the way to go, hell even have a 6pm Dolphin Show so day guests stay in the park longer and late comers think they're getting a deal. I don't think it's an awful looking event, and I think some people will eat it up, Sea World is a great park at night, and having a metric ton of street performers and a few pop up stalls is great! There is a sizeable segment of the population that this will appeal to. I just feel like for very little investment and with a bit of actual effort they could have done something really special. For me though, it just feels like something that was thrown together very quickly and on the cheap. It has that vibe of "We need to do something at Sea World and we have no time or budget" rather than something that was well considered or planned out. The fact that it excludes the resort in it's entirety (no Monorail, the entire back half of the park is closed off), the days of the week it takes place on (Only on Fri/Sat is an odd choice, they aren't the traditional busy days during the Christmas holidays) the fact it has no signature entertainment offering and is an upcharge really stand out as phoned in choices.

I don't know why they haven't brought me in to be honest, I'm doing all the right things; relentlessly criticising the park in an online forum is the best way to get ahead right? Haha

Wow so many great things in this! I love that they've included it in the entry price, because at this time of year the goal should be to keep the high spending tourists in the park for longer. Per caps take a hit when the park is busy as the shops just fill up and people bypass shopping, so spreading out people's departure should help with that, as well as help traffic which is a nightmare around 5pm in town. The cheap twilight tickets should help get some extra butts through the door at 5pm too! Also really looking forward to the 'Fish Detectives Masquerade Ball' show. Heard through the grapevine that there are no new animal behaviours, it's just a new script so it won't have cost them much, but for a show with a 3 week run that's fair enough I think and should be a good draw. Same with the 'Rhythm of the night' show on the main lake at the end of the night, live percussion music with water fountains low level pyro, fire, lasers and other special effects. Sounds like it could be really good fun! Finally, it's good that they're bringing in a couple temporary carnie rides to help fill the day out for guests, and have more to do at night, otherwise it's just 2 adult rides and a bunch of kiddie rides. New thrill ride and family ride are just what the doctor ordered. I'm glad they didn't just transport' Movie World's version of the event over, minus the parade and act like it's good. They've really adapted it for the park it's in. Sorry, I was so underwhelmed by what they announced that I just made up my own announcement.

Sad to hear! I've known about Adventure World for a long time, but it really wasn't on my radar until your stewardship. It wasn't just the fact that you posted on here, but all the recent reviews of the park and the last years results have proven that you get it. I hope you go on to a long career in the theme park industry in Australia, hopefully on the Gold Coast

The flame thrower above the down chute outside the volcano didn't operate if there was any wind, it only took a very small amount of wind for it to not operate, so more often than not it was turned off. All the fire effects worked pretty well until the gas main was eventually severed and not repaired.

The other thing worth remembering about Scooby is it's themed to a movie which was an absolute blockbuster, that was filmed at the studios, it's a rather good tie in. I think updating it for a new film (which let's be honest has every chance of being shit) is a waste of time, because what ever boost you get from doing it, you also get from leaving the ride as is. There are things I'd do to Scooby, but change the film it's based on isn't one of them. As for Mr. Freeze in Batman & Robin, I'm just going to put it out there that Arnie is the only thing that makes that movie watchable.

Having been on the UK dark ride you speak of, I can confirm that adding guns to a ride is a gimmick that does nothing to improve the ride. Besides that, the problem with Bermuda wasn't that it was unpopular, the problem was it was literally falling apart, and would have cost a few million to fix, and that's before you even touch the effects. I don't blame them for not being keen to spend the cash.

The house on the Island 'settler's cottage' is still there, the sets they used for the show used to be about halfway between the waterfall and Koala Country, just slightly north of the petting zoo.

Hmmm, I don't think we'll have to change the title of this thread, ever.

Apparently she has a pre exsisting condidtions. This is why they have signs.

Really? That's what you're going with? It's the resort so it doesn't count. You know they're the same company right? Then 'the train is different' how? It took 8 years to demolish the station. You're smarter than this, you can just say 'oh yeah forgot about them' The Sea Viper one is weird, it was dead a long before the announcement was made, but since people aren't across that and nor can expect them to be, I can't really get as riled, and a couple months isn't an awful turnaround.

Bermuda sat closed for like an entire year or more. Sea Viper was closed after already being closed for months. I'll give you skyway and then I'll remind you about the train which still has remenants around the park and the decaying remains of the water park.