joz

From memory the entire east coast was being hit by a Cyclone at the time.

@themagician Yeah that pretty well nailed it in one, cheers

I don't have a nearnap account sadly

So who wants to stitch together a massive high res photo of the entire Movie World property with one scale left in it for me?

To be fair Roadrunner 4D is awesome! I think people on here can get a bit carried away with 'OMG isn't the new thing amazing!' To me, Doomsday is pure filler, but the park needs a bit of filler so sweet! Is it a good ride? It's fine, I doubt I'd go on it unless I was with a group of people who wanted to go on it, but the area around it is nice, and it gives new life to a pretty neglected corner of the park. That's about it really.

Here's a question, if a 3rd of the train is paying $5 for VR, would a second train now pay for itself?

My god the fake photo was bad enough, but 24 bloody replies Incidentally, if you see a photo, have doubts about its validity, do a reverse image Google search. This particular photo was taken from TPR http://www.themeparkreview.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=1744202

I'm still trying to figure out my cynical take on this whole wristband thing. It's $15 to basically play themed games on an Xbox connect. On the other hand though there are a bunch of cool practical effects with many of the games. It's not like Universal where the wands are vital to the effect of casting a spell and it complements the theme perfectly, this is literally just 'swipe your souvenir wristband to play'. It's an arcade game. But it's unlimited, play as much as you like. The wristbands aren't themed, but they have characters on them, and if you did theme it what would you do make it look like? A police monitoring tag? Print outs of the characters obviously makes much more sense as a souvenir. The purest in me is kind of thinking screw this 'we'll only theme if we can put a dollar figure on how much the themeing will generate' mentality. Next step of course is swipe your wristband before you go on Scooby to make all the effects work. That's me at my absolute cynical best/worst. On the other hand, why not do it? It's an arcade really, and it's a known thing that I'm all for having those in parks. But not only is it an arcade, but it's a themed arcade with unique games with practical effects that once you pay you can play as much as you like and you get a little souviner thrown in. Overall, I guess I like it, but not going to lie it was a close run thing.

Spoiler alert; it wasn't me.

I wonder if an upcharge tour would work well in the Studios? With small controlled groups you could provide lockers and make people put their phones/cameras away, and the studios finally have enough history that interesting things have happened there. I don't know if it's something you could do with a big production in town (not without a change to the hiring agreement anyway) but I've got a suspicion that there's a bigger market for behind the scenes studio tour than there is for a behind the scenes theme park tour (despite the theme park tour being significantly more interesting to me).

QFT

The tombstone has always gone up, it's more noticeable now but I think that has more to do with the audio being a bit quiet at the moment and it making a bit of a noise as it rises up (and drops back down). Again, don't want to be to harsh on what wasn't working because I don't think they're done yet.

Here's the thing about the last room, it's been plussed in the same way the whole ride has. If they did what they did to the last room and left the rest of the ride as it was, you'd say 'Oh they've put some effort into making the last room good again, great job MW!' I'm also not quite ready to go through the list of 'what's working what isn't' because they are clearly still working on it. Just to ram that point home, the on ride photos aren't working yet.

The TNT are static sticks that have been placed throughout the ride. Does it live up to the standard I was hoping for? Yeah it does actually. Given I'm a fairly pessimistic person I was ready for it to open identical to how it was, so to see so many things pluses was a pure delight. I don't want to oversell it because if someone told me it was amazing before I went on I'd have been a bit disappointed, but as a theme park fan I'm very happy with what they've done. WWF is genuinely one of my favourite rides in th park, I made the comment in another thread that if the park opened with WWF it would have had a significantly more successful first few years. So to see that ride looking it's best again is so pleasing to me, I would have stayed to ride again (something I never do these days) had the line not blown out. Could they have done more? Here's the thing; what they did was go through and plus the entire ride, the whole ride looks great; ghost town has animal bones in it, there are hand painted signs everywhere, again the train bridge looks great, the insides have been relit and look great, the last room has had some extra props added to it so it's not so bare now. If it were my project, I would have blown the entire budget in the last room. So while they could have done more in the last room, the improvements to the whole ride more than make up for it.

Just rode. It's good. Train bridge was a particular highlight. The ride is largely unchanged, but it's much fresher. Some of the audio was missing (Indian Village, and first turntable were notable) but probably due to trying to just get it open today. There has been a ton of stuff added throughout the whole ride; mostly in the form of dynamite and themed signage, far too much to take in on one ride through, as well as some lighting changes, particularly noticeable in the first room. Backwards drop doesn't feel like you're dropping through a warehouse as much as it did. And the thing that people will ask about; The last room is mostly unchanged aside from the addition of a bunch of props. Photos to come from others no doubt ?

Sounds ideal to me. They can even change the runout so it's smoother when you hit the bottom runout. That's all that's needed

I hope when they say 'new and improved' they mean 'exactly the same'. Best slide in the park, just pure fun, not extra gimmicks required.

As plausible as it sounds that Movie World had a heap of coaster parts for Scooby in tech services, then instead of moving them to Scooby, they moved them to by the side of the road for no good reason, I don't think we should dismiss the idea that they are building a MACK coaster.

It still makes me cringe when I see the '& water park' branding on Sea World Resort. For how much money has gone into the resort and how good it's looking at the moment, it seems so strange to me to give almost equal billing to a defunct feature that really wasn't really that great in the first place.

It's probably because the interiors of the F&B outlets haven't really changed in any meaningful way; they still look very similar to what they did before. They're nice and generic, which much like the whole area, is fine.

Weirdly the poles in front of the facades don't bother me. Ok so the good news is I can see where the difference between us is. It's my use of the word generic, so I'll explain what I mean. This is Pacific Wharf. It's themed to look like an old wharf. There are multiple hints that this isn't an area of a theme park, but it's a real wharf with its own history and backstory as to how it looks like it does. It makes you feel as though you're not in a theme park, but you are at an actual Wharf. This is a retail shop at Sea World. It is a retail shop. It looks like some effort has gone into not making it look like it's not the flat building that it clearly is. It evokes no place other than the the fact it's a retail shop at Sea World. It's fine, it's not unpleasant but it hasn't got any character either. Again, the new plaza at Sea World isn't bad, what it does for the park is great! All I'm trying to say is they didn't really do much. All they did was put a roof on it, do some work on the shop fronts to change them a bit, and rework paths. The net result is something significantly greater than the sum of its parts.

I don't see how anything I said is at odds with anything you said though? My comments aren't that it's bad, but merely that it's unambitiois in places. I said that it works well and it's a massive improvement. I don't think the fact that it looks nice at night changes anything.

I'd describe it as greater than the sum of its parts, which is lucky as its parts aren't that impressive. The shops are the same, the facilities are the same, the midway games building still looks like crap. The new facades, while a welcome change are pretty bland, and lack the detail that an immersive themed area would include. It's also fairly generic, it could be any shopping centre built in the past decade. Its unambitious; the Sourthern end feels like it's missing a stage or big screen. The eastern side feels like it should have a proper row of shops (Bar?). For an all weather venue there is no Monorail drop off, so if it's raining it's a 300meter walk through the rain to get to your all weather function venue. So it's crap right? Well, no. It's a massive improvement. The real breakthrough is the approach from the South, and the way the paths have been done; it makes it feel like the plaza is the obvious way to go through the park, rather than the inconvenience it has been previous. The best feature is the roadway through the middle of the area. Not only does it guide you Through the area without you even realising it, but unlike Main Street there are no kerbs, it's 100% flat in the plaza making it totally wheelchair friendly. It feels like this is part of a master plan rather than trying to fix what was in truth rather unfortunate placement at the start. It's big it's airy and it's pleasant to be in, and that's a big plus for the park.

My brain hurts from reading this thread.