joz

I think it's pretty piss poor to say "You asked, we listened" when what they're doing is reducing the operating hours. Very poor, though I suppose it's good to see Village Roadshow making pissing off all the locals a priority, rather than just an unintended side effect like in the past. Makes watching the mess from QLD all the more interesting.

Quick question: How does Luna Park count attendance? Is it 600,000 people in the park in a year or 600,000 ride pass sales

I think a cheap late entry price is unlikely since they'd rather you just purchased a VIP pass. Otherwise though I totally agree, keeping the parks open late without charging an extra ticket price would be awesome.

Why is Movie World's attendance higher? VIP passes. They're really cheap and it gives you unlimited entry to Sea World, Movie World and Wet 'n' Wild. Honestly, look it up if you don't believe me. Seriously though people may think Dreamworld is the best park (and I reckon they do) but most people think the other 3 combined are better than Dreamworld, and White Water World hardly comes into it.

This topic continues to give me a headache.

This topic is giving me a headache.

He's quite right though, the sign is the wrong way up for the story of the ride. Should definitely be turned upside down. If this one gets fixed then we'll know someone at Sea World reads this and cares

I'm not aware of Superman's maintenance being that long in the past, but it's not unusual for a ride to have a longer period of downtime every few years.

I doubt either one of them are keen to come clean on exactly they did wrong when it looks destined to go to court in some form or another.

I think when the park hits capacity often, you can afford to make more people pay full a one day price at the expense of discouraging a few clicks on the front gate turnstile . It's also pretty well established that people who only come to the park once spend more money on their visit too than a pass holder would too. All this is only relevant if the demand remains super high next year, and you could make a compelling argument that the demand won't be as strong next year and pushing passes is the best way to go. I'd still like to see a few tweaks to the pricing to bring the number of passes down though, and to encourage more one day tickets.

You're probably right about the extra nights for pass holders. If they did evening sessions for an entire month it would still mean around 5000 potential guests a night. Not sure if that's high attendance or not but that's a ton of operational hours that would need to be added, so unless the park that works at a profit without charging admission it is unfeasible. I probably also agree about that they shouldn't have to be refunding money, but at the same time it's not the pass holder's fault that the passes were way oversold and that there was a lack of planning. The tickets weren't sold as "COME TO WET 'N' WILD WHENEVER YOU WANT UNLESS THE PARK IS FULL WHICH IT OFTEN WILL BE!" They were sold "UNLIMITED ENTRY!" so people (rightly or wrongly) feel entitled. I totally understand the people who have had enough. When you've done all the things required to get a family to a theme park only to be refused entry I can easily see why people would say "Stuff, it, I've had enough crap from this park, I can't be bothered with it anymore and want my money back". It's also not as if the park has been busy but everything else has been super amazing as well: Many Mybands weren't delivered, the photo website didn't work for a long time, the park has many polices that almost seem designed to piss people off, parking is a ripoff, people have complained about the food (price and quality), the queues are not just long, they're unorganized, and the calender is short (though I suspect likely to change). Added with NYE, (which I'm aware didn't affect pass holders but adds to the perception of the park being the park being a disaster zone) I totally understand people wanting refunds, and think on balance, I think they should probably get them. 100% spot on. Agree with everything here. I read on the WnWS Facebook page that they recommend guests with food allergies bring a note from a doctor so they can get their food in the park. How a park can have such a disregard for it's customers is almost a thing of beauty. They sound like the sort of joyless people running airport security, not a fun park. It's easily the 'Lowest hanging fruit' of things to do to improve the public's opinion of the park. Also surely there is a smoking area in the park? I mean has anyone in the park met a smoker? I think we've all known smokers who don't take being separated from cigarettes for more than an hour very well. Again, totally agree. I think why I'm being harsh on the park is because I want it to be massively successful, and I worry that by doing the things that they're doing, they're condemning the park to a future of mediocrity. Remember, Jazzland had a very successful first season, but they did a great job of pissing off all of the local population, and in it's second season had a 40% drop off in attendance. Jazzland was declared bankrupt less than 2 years later. I don't think WnW is in danger of failing, but I think they are in danger of turning off so many people that attendance drops off fairly dramatically in the coming years, unless they can act proactively to become part of the community, rather than merely a soulless corporate money focused machine.

I get the impression watching from afar that the original plan was to 'Stay the course' with all the bad feedback. I mean sure it was busy straight away after opening, but things will calm down and work themselves out. After NYE however they've just had to go into total damage control, and do whatever it takes to stop the massive amounts of bad will which exists in the community, and it seems like there is a ton of bad blood out there for a bunch of different reasons. You could make a case about the NYE fiasco not being WnWs fault, but no one really knows who or what One Cube entertainment is, Wet 'n' Wild however has a name, and rightly or wrongly (jury's still out for me) the public backlash is WnW's problem. For me, I think there are a few proactive things they can do to stop the blood loss rather then just giving up: Start by having a bunch of pass holder exclusive days and nights in February which require pre booking with limited numbers as a show of 'good will' to pass holders. You can't piss off as many people as this park has and expect a long term successful future. The 'no outside food' rule needs to go. From all reports the outlets are running pretty much at capacity, with many guests going hungry, so letting guests bring they're own food in won't hurt anything. Also if it can't be done for this year, they really should also be adding BBQs to the park for next year. WnWGC never went broke with them so it won't hurt WnW Sydney. Expanding the street vending count to soak up extra crowds could also be a wise move. Finally, they obviously need to have learnt their lesson for next year with ticket prices. Lower one day prices and higher season pass prices to ease the pressure on the park but still encourage new visitors. Throw in a new high high capacity attraction for next year (along with a full calendar) and they'll be OK, but they can't totally ignore criticism of the park by locals forever. It's locals who have to support the park so they should keep doing their best to get them back onside.

The first one is called "Super speed cool cool bear". Anyone who doesn't want to ride that needs their head checked

It's a fluff piece. It's not something to be taken seriously, but something that can fill a few inches in a newspaper supplement. The list is supposed to give a broad range of parks from all over the world, it'd be pretty dull if it just listed the 8 Orlando parks and Disneyland. Take it with a pinch of salt and move on.

Ha, people posting here has potentially forced a change in the park, take that change.org! Maybe they'll take on board the idea of either reopening the train or redesigning that part of the park with a proper fix.

There's a few things to mention about this. Firstly, the thing about the amusement industry is you don't add new attractions because the park is successful, you add then to make your park successful. Wonderland was left to rot and die on the vine by Sunway. There's no other good reason why the park failed. There were a few creative things done by park management to try to save it, but Sunway were uninterested in investing to make the park work. I also think under performing is different to generating a loss. Wonderland opened with huge attendance predictions that it never hit, but businesses don't run for 30 years without making money. It must have done 'OK', just never as high as the lofty predictions. Sydney has a bit of a history of attractions opening with high expectations that aren't met (Sega World, Fox Studios, Wonderland) Then you've got Wet 'n' Wild however. They set themselves a huge goal of around 900,000 a year when they thought they were going to open in September. They're going to get reasonably close with a fair chunk of the calendar taken away with a late opening. I think it's fair to say that the early results have been massively promising. To say a company like Village Roadshow, who are talking openly about having a desire to open new parks would never be interested in building a full scale park in Sydney is pessimistic. They nearly built one in Melbourne, and they've now got a pretty decent toe hold on Sydney, and think about how successful they have been about turning one successful property into 5 successful properties on the Gold Coast. I think it'll take the continued success of Wet 'n' Wild for Village to consider a full park seriously, but I wouldn't be surprised if it they did consider it down the line. I also think that a next generation full park in Sydney is inevitable. Wether it's Village or someone else is anyone's guess.

The thing about this to me is the rendering is is a sterile, uninteresting row of shops with a couple of rides (which aren't similar to rides which were at the original park) in the background. It'd be like if Disneyland closed down, and many years later someone built a row of shops with a couple of rides and said "Look, we've rebuilt Disneyland!" They're not rebuilding Wonderland, they're opening something totally different called Wonderland (they hope). It's mixed commercial, which means restaurants, shopping and amusements. That's could be either a good or a bad thing. Remember, Wonderland was a bit stale relic when it closed. They aren't bound by what Wonderland was, so they might end up doing something truly amazing. Or they could build what's in the rendering, which is an uninteresting ride collection, presented uninterestingly, in an uninteresting setting with uninteresting rows of restaurants. Having said all that, I doubt that the rendering is anything solid. It looks like it's just supposed to communicate the concept of restaurants and rides in the same development to investors.

That's potentially not true. If enough people are doing it, and Sea World know there is a potential for someone to get injured, then they are obligated to do something to mitigate the risk. A good lawyer would probably be able to get them on the grounds that Sea World failed in its duty of care, in allowing a dangerous situation to continue. I don't think it's morally right, but I think legally they could be exposed.

Yeah that was my fault, I knew there was something about their ticketing stratergy that changed halfway through, and since I was somewhat under the influence of alcohol I just figured it was silver passes and didn't really spend much effort thinking about it.

It's really interesting watching WnWS strategy unfold. The thing about this park is it was always going to be a success. There really was no chance a quality water park during summer in Sydney would fail given the lack of competition. So it's interesting to see the park set it's price, apparently worry that it was pricing itself out of the market, reduce it's price with a Silver Pass, then get totally overwhelmed with guests. I don't propose I know what they should have done at each turn, but it's interesting to see it all play out. It's interesting that they have people saying "It's too expensive I won't go and neither will anyone else", while at the same time they're hitting capacity and having to turn people away. I hope they keep being transparent, because as someone who follows the industry, it's fascinating to see the success the park is having verses the turmoil it's also suffering from. If the numbers keep going the way they are it's tempting to be talking about what's going to be the new attraction for next year to soak up the crowds, as it were.

So are we in Mickeys imagination? Are we in our own imagination? Or is Mickey just putting on a show he came up with? Are we in the abstract concept of imagination? And what does anything in the show have to do with anything else? It's awesome, but it's fairly abstract and hardly a compelling story. Also I mean their entrance was visually interesting, after that they mostly sat around and did very little, but that worked for the story. Fantasmic seems to use the water screens to transition from scene to another, and again, it's great, but there are a few times early in the show where it just slows things down too much. Again, just so we're clear I LOVE Fantasmic, just pointing out the things that another show did (IMHO) slightly better.

I really like Fantasmic obviously, but there is quite a lot of the show that is just looking at a screen, often with not much going on while scenes are resetting. It also doesn't have a coherent story, it's Mickey's dream (apparently, it's never properly explained) so it's an abstract assortment of scenes. Serpent Slayer didn't have those issues, at the start the story is explained, the cast arrive on set in a really visually interesting way, and the story unfolds. The lasers did more impressive things than Fantasmic, there was more pyro in Serpent Slayer, plus the Serpent looked amazing (it had to, it was onstage for a long time), whereas at the time Fantasmic's Dragon was a head on a stick. Again, love Fantasmic, probably my favourite thing at Disneyland, and a serious contender for my favourite thing at any park. Serpent Slayer is like an alternate reality take on Fantasmic, and since I saw it first, and possibly because I was a kid when I watched it, it's my favourite of the two.

I just hope it's not the case that people have complained so they've changed it.

Yeah I remember this, the show was 'Surpent Slayer', it was it must be said, an epic show. It's was basically a fairy tale of a princess that had been taken by a Sea Surpent, and the prince having to go rescue her. There was a massive animatronic fire breathing Surpent on the island, pyro was shot at it from the ski boats, then from a helicopter (while lasers pointed directly at the chopper made it wickedly cool). Finally, the prince slays it with a sword, they rescue the princess with a huge firework finale. The whole show was filled with pyro, lasers awesome lighting, and a massive mist curtain hung across the ski lake, and to be honest, it was probably as good if not better than Fantasmic! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=en64vJaF_cg 7 mins 45 seconds in, there is a split second look at the show. If you've got a video of the show that'd be awesome!

Good on them, I hope it's a success and the rest of the plans move forward. The attempted hype is a bit of a joke though; calling an aqua play structure a new theme park, and saying we're trying to be like Disney are both pretty far out things to be saying about something so modest. Even though it's totally unfair, it is funny to compare this to what's going on with WnW Sydney.