joz

Again, what do you expect the park to do? The park is at capacity. If this happened at a football game would it be the grounds fault?

What do you want WnW to do though? If the park is at capacity, it doesn't matter if it's the only day they can go, or how far you've driven. It doesn't matter if it's only one person or a group of 20. It's full, that's it. The only thing they can do is admit people as others leave, and you'd have to accept that you might be waiting for hours to get in. Not trying to be a dick but seriously, what should the park do in that situation?

Theme Parks a Go-Go is all over this! Also, no to mics

This is old info on my part, so the situation may have changed, but it's basically that after many years of repairs and extra fibreglass being added, the boats are heavier than they used to be. The upshot is that it's no longer feasible to consistently load the ride with 4 full size adults anymore, because boats bottom out and get stuck the brake before the drop which sits under the water. Almost the same thing happened with 'it's a small world' at Disneyland, so it's not an uncommon problem with boat rides, and while Disney shut down Small World for months, a new type of brake that was on the side of the channel rather than under the water would totally fix the issue at SW. As for Dreamworld, if I were in a position to spend money on upgrading a ride I'd probably be in charge of the park to some degree, and if I were in charge of Dreamworld MDMC wouldn't have a long term future, so I wouldn't waste any money on fixing it. Probably just spend the money on a 2nd train for Cyclone, and some changes to the station to make it more efficient.

I know this will sound sacrilegious, but honestly, I'm not a huge fan of stories that are forced onto rides. It's a log ride with dragon boats, honestly that's story enough for most people. Short of enclosing the whole ride from the station to the top of the castle it's just not going to be effective. A total Valhalla type make over could certainly be pretty cool, but if I was in the position to be dropping serious money on an existing attraction, it'd be on 3 brand new monorail trains (with air con). In my eyes all Viking's needs is a redesigned top brake to allow for fully loaded boats again. Oh, and maybe some modifications to the station to allow for a shorter interval between boats.

Yeah I can see why you're confused now, that'll happen when I don't pay attention to what I'm typing and end up saying two completely different things FWIW when I say they could build more games, what I mean is by pushing the games back from their current location it'd open up more space so they could add an extra game or 2 to the plaza. When I say I oppose new games I mean I think the games shouldn't spread to other areas of the park. #back-pedalling

I'm very much in the same category, I hate the sort of crappy games that are common at local shows being in proper theme parks. I particularly hate when they're installed cheaply and in an unimaginative way, like is that case at both SW and DW. My suggestion isn't for more games, it's to move the existing ones to improve crowd flow. Having said all that, I accept that as much as I hate them, they're here to stay, and there are other issues more worthy of my online ire.

There are a few issues with that area. Firstly, you need to know why the gates closed. I think the reason is pretty clear but just in case you're unsure I'll just spell it out: It's to get people to go past the shops. Pretty straight forward. You also have to understand that the gate can't be turned into a different type of roadblock because heavy/tall vehicles can't go through the plaza due to the Monorail track, so that means no new ride or extensive garden blocking the road. Also pretty straight forward. It has always been an issue with the layout of the park, but I think an operating train ride through the middle made it a little more forgivable to most guests. Now it's clearly just a cynical money making ploy. Given so many people jump it it's probably an OH&S issue too. For me the solution would be rather simple; since they've apparently decided that they aren't going to bring back the train (sigh), that whole area simply needs to be reworked. Expand the plaza to include the area on the other side of the train tracks, and rebuild the cheap and nasty games further back, so basically they're still forcing people though the plaza, but without making guests detour quite as much. Use some of the extra space for extra seating, some for more cheap and nasty skill games, and some for more retail space and I think they'd be on a winner.

There's already something like this in Australia, it's called Warner Brothers Movie World.

It doesn't work on Safari. People need to stop automatically thinking that poor website design must be an internet explorer issue.

Posting here isn't a commercial purpose, just in case anyone is wondering. Commercial purpose is profiting from the photos, say by turning them into a postcard and selling them.

^ it's not 100% spot on, but for the purposes of this site, it's close enough. As for the debate about which is better between Storm and Bermuda; look they're different, so compelling arguments could be made for both rides. Personally, I think Bermuda at its best was probably a little better, but Storm is a perfect fit for Sea World, is an awesome ride in its own righ, and a worthy replacement. Also from my ride, I'll say that Storm without fire is much better than Bermuda without fire.

Yeah there really isn't much ride there for $20million. I have to wonder what that covers, and if it includes things like re-routing the Flume ride, demolishing Bermuda and fixing up the building.

Ah crap, I accidentally deleted a post I wanted to quote. Sorry who ever that was! Anyway, my point was going to be that pretty much everything in Goldrush Country is a rusting mess waiting to be torn down, so a good argument could be made for clearing the whole area (apart from Buzzsaw) and starting again.

Wow. Just wow. As for a real answer, honestly I think all the parks do really well in this area, with Movie World probably being the best, just for the sheer number of facilities available. Sea World would probably be the park that could most use some new facilities, as the current ones can sometimes be over crowded and for many guests, hard to find.

Early mail is 120cm

Nothing, but he has a proven track record that stretches back nearly a decade. Basically that's the extent of it. Also Brad, yeah I thought your post was needlessly rude and abrupt. That's why I called you out on it. I was going to break it down and explain why I thought so, but I figure no one reading really cares, and I can't be bothered being a keyboard warrior tonight. You're right about one thing though; your post wasn't any worse than what some other members get, but like I say, Bussy has been around for years and is a reliable source of good information. It's not your fault for not knowing that, but now you do so great.

Calm down, Bussy is passing along information relevant to the thread. Not that he needs me to defend him, but being a dick to Bussy won't be tolerated.

Maybe it's supposed to be 2am? I think Gazza is spot on about the 11pm closing leading up to Xmas. I agree that after Xmas is surely when late closings need to happen, but given how excessive 11pm is I think 8pm is probably fine. As for how they came up with the operating calendar; it looks almost identical to operating hours that US water parks employ.

I think those hours are all over the shop. Surprised about the lack of weekday trade (not even 10-4, really?) and the extremely late hours. For a company that won't run full theme parks after 5, it seems odd to me to see them run a water park with not much nighttime entertainment till 11pm. Also, that 10am till 2pm thing must be a mistake surely?

I've been beating my head against a wall about height requirements for a few years now. Village have some if the highest height requirements in the world. Just at SW, Corkscrew had a requirement of 122 cm for a long time, which was reduced to 120cm with the upgrade great. But then they raised the restriction by 10cm for the sake of it. Jet Rescue for some reason requires guests under a certain height to ride with an adult (why exactly is anyone's guess). Even Storm when it opens will apparently have a restriction of 120cm (according to 7pm project), which is a full 13cms higher than the same sort of ride overseas. That's just one park, and there are a few more restrictions around the park that leave one scratching their head. I'm obviously not anti height restrictions, and understand why they're important, but by international standards the restrictions at Village parks are clearly excessive.

Frog Hopper Given its LPS though, an S&S shot ride is possibly a bit loud, and since you'd want guests screaming into the harbour a drop ride where everyone is on the same side would be ideal. Personally I like free fall rides better than shot towers, but I think that may be a side affect of living on the Gold Coast.

I think the phrase "If the demand is there" is doing quite a lot of work in this story. Of course they'll open if there's shown to be demand. Given there probably won't be though, I think it's a long shot that they'll be open, even for weekend only trade.

I predict a very long, uninteresting rebuttal...

Here's something that tells you everything you need to know about mismanagement: Ardent Leisure made a release to the stock exchange which reveals attendance numbers for last year. Dreamworld and White Water World (and possibly Q1, it's not made clear in the report) drew in 1.8million guests combined, In that same time Movie World drew 2million guests. Those numbers don't count park hoppers, but I doubt there was any park hopping going at MW so I think comparing the two is fair. So Movie World alone outdrew Dreamworld and White Water World. Let that sink in for a moment because truly, that is extraordinary. I'd understand if Movie World had been doing something special, like opening a couple of new rides a year, or doing something to improve customer service, or some sort of genius advertising campaign, but no, they're just doing normal stuff; the occasional new ride, and the odd improvement here or there. There really isn't an excuse for MW to be outdrawing DW, never mind both DW and WWW. The VIP pass is obviously why MW's attendance is so high, but Dreamworld is giving away the gate too, there should not be that big a difference. I think Gazza's idea (building a multi-slide tower in stages) is a pretty good way to start addressing the decline at WWW. Fixing Dreamworld is a more difficult undertaking, but I'll tell you one thing, the first step of turning Dreamworld around shouldn't be to close pretty much every attraction in the park for a portion of the day.