joz

See gloating and taking joy in lower attendance, as well as extrapolating that to mean the park is doomed is obviously a silly attitude to have. Having said that it's pretty clear that the park is much quieter than normal, to deny it is just willingly putting your head in the sand for the sake of an argument. The important thing is these return to open days are pretty irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. We really won't have much of an idea of what's going on with attendance until February rolls around.

Mack's last hyper came in right on 1,273 meters. It'll be close from the looks of it.

What a very New Zealander thing to say. Sea World seem to have decided to go exclusively after the parents with very young kids demo at the expense of everything else. The way they're doing that isn't to build more stuff that appeals to that group, it's to let everything that doesn't fade away to nothing. I get the feeling Sea World management would be happier if it were a 70acre luxury resort with animals rather than a theme park. What's shocking to me is that the park is being so poorly run yet the management team get to persist. I've seen people get fired from Village for far less serious things than taking one of the most profitable and iconic parks in the country and running it into the ground. The only element of the park that isn't a disgrace is the animal care side of things.

I think whatever chance Eureka may have had went out the window last month. If Rocky Hollow closes, as is looking increasingly likely, that corner of the park will need some serious love with 4 SBNO attractions as well as the old Blue Lagoon site.

I think a Facebook post on each of the Village parks Facebook would've done the trick. I think it was a bit of a missed opportunity that Village didn't honour Dreamworld tickets while they were closed without making guests surrender them so people who pre-booked tickets for holidays didn't have their plans ruined, and those who could hold their tickets to use at Dreamworld later still could. Would've been a good chance to do something good for the Gold Coast tourism industry as a whole.

I don't think Sea World announcing the closure of Viking's Revenge on the same day as Dreamworld's reopening was Village trying to steal a headline, it's them trying to bury the story. It's not like 'We've closed an iconic ride for a new attraction in 3 years' is a good message after all

I'm glad someone still has some optimism, really I haven't seen anything that would make me suspect anything good is coming. I'm still utterly blown away that they just closed the ride and said the replacement was 3 years away.

Yeah I do remember that! From memory it was mostly kiddie rides a bouncy castle and stuff like that, but yeah that was definitely a thing! Caribbean Carnival maybe? Yeah that's the thing, the park needs the energy and life breathed into it now, hence the traveling ride suggestion rather than permanent rides, I don't know how much they cost to hire but you'd suspect $10million would cover that easily?

It's been turned off for a little while now, I'm not 100% but I believe there was an issue with either the pump or the structure itself or both. @Slick probably knows. I went down to the park today, while it was good to see it open again I think they really need a few of those big rides open as soon as possible. It creates a slightly eerie feeling of 'somethings not ok here' which I think totally makes sense on the first couple days, but I think they may want to fix that perception. Rides like Claw, Wipeout, Shockwave and ToT will help the most I think. Most of the people there I saw were families with young kids, so I'd say there isn't a problem with attendance, but rather they just successfully got the word out that the thrill rides are closed, and I wouldn't be surprised if there was a lot of people who thought the park would be too busy. A final point on attendance, December is a quiet month. After Boxing Day it goes off, but before Boxing Day everyone is too busy Christmas shopping to do theme parks. 1,100 is a low turnout, but it's what happens after Boxing Day that'll tell us what the recovery will be like. But yeah otherwise I'd also echo the sentiment that the staff were fantastic, really going above and beyond at any chance they could, and you could tell they really tried to keep the crowds entertained as best they could with plenty of street entertainment. Also just a totally random one, noticed Dingos in cub kindy at one point during the day; great idea!

2019? 3 years away? That's taking the piss. How much damage are you happy to do to your name in the next 3 years? It's desperate enough that they need to hire a couple of traveling rides and set them up for a couple years in the field next to Jet Rescue. Also FWIW I don't think Surfrider is really worth the effort to move, I think it's a good fit at WnW, and rather than move it, I might be alone in this, but I'd like to see that water park line be blurred a little be more to set WnW apart from all the other new water parks popping up.

Stop feeding the trolls

So Dreamworld have added big fences around TRR to block the view of the ride, they've also popped up here:

Although if you open up a path behind Scooby to Arkham (maybe with a new Villan ride) you could have a proper themed land. Just saying ?

Bless them! ❤️

That doesn't really clear things up since the log ride is no where near the bit of Goldrush that's been closed off

It's been said, but that area of the park is pretty DC heavy, it'd almost be silly not to make the new ride DC themed too. After that they can start balancing the park out with different movie themes, but for me the new ride is the wrong ride to start with.

Surprised they didn't lump GD in with AWE since it's closer and more connected than Gold Rush (assuming the path through the middle of Goldrush is closed off). I must admit I haven't ever been a fan of Dreamworld's current map style, makes the place look cold and less fun to be in, the compromise with the train is pretty understandable, but it does add to that general vibe. Also I don't know why, but I suddenly want them to do a short Captain Sturt style show with the train at Blue Lagoon.

Ferries. Admiralty been closed for a long time, but for a large chunk of the park's life that was a thing. It's fair to say that the park was a bit stagnant for quite a time before the current regime, but that doesn't to me justify the accelerating downwards trajectory the park is on. I did forget battle boats, I don't think 1 ride that's borderline a kiddie ride really changes the broader narrative though.

What sort of ride can you buy for the couple million they saved? Anything that you know will be as big a hit as the flume ride? Certainly nothing as big as the flume, probably nothing as family friendly, and certainly not something that's seen as a tradition or right of passage ride at the park. I think they've officially lost the plot out there now. What is their ride collection now? Two coasters that manage to be intimidating enough that they don't work as family rides, but aren't thrilling enough to keep thrill seekers entertained, and a small collection of kiddie rides. The monorail is the only genuine family ride in the park, and that runs slower, and at reduced capacity compared to what it used to. This is very sad for a park that for a long part of it's life ran 4 transport rides, 3 thrill rides, 2 water rides (one of which was also probably the country's best dark rides), a couple kiddie rides and a free water park with 4 totally different types of slides and 2 pools. I'm not against change, seriously I'm not, but whatever changes they're making should make the park better, not worse, and it's clear as crystal that the park is a shadow of it's former self. Just run a white flag up the flagpole out the front of the park and be done with it, although there probably isn't the budget for flags, that flagpole has had nothing on it for a few years now.

I don't know now, this time of year freshening up their park signage and campaign make sense too. Also I think the lead in times would preclude this from being a reaction to what happened, so without any basis in fact, I think it was probably planned before last month. Dreamworld alone know, so they may now sit and judge and say 'this idiot has no idea what he's on about'

One years numbers are pretty irrelevant, the trend over the longer term is up as the local population increases. Village achieved record profitability in the last few years, Movieworld alone passed 2 million for the first time ever recently, and whatever is going on at Sea World, the focus on Sea World Resort has seen an increase in occupancy. Dreamworld has been pretty flat over the past few years with capital being redirected into the park rather than flashy new rides. While you would expect the parks to suffer something of a hit this year, I have a hard time imagining numbers won't return to around trend levels within a couple years, and frankly doom and gloom talk is just muck raking, speculation, and trolling.

Or he was talking out his backside

Have you been from Nerang to Surfers using the Nerang river? Are you aware that it takes about 4 times longer than by bus? The only people who would use it are tourists using it as part of a package, or school groups who want to squeeze an extra activity into their excursion to the Nerang Aussie/Chinese cultural mish mash. Not a totally irrelevant market mind you, but nothing approaching what is required to sustain the park.

See that makes sense about being conservative with the list they're putting out, they might even know deep down that the Dreamworks stuff will totally be done by then. So what's the other rides they should have going? You'd say Claw Wipeout and the Train would be the ideal candidates to get going first? Oh and btw, if they do get the train going, close Billabong Cafe station and Rocky Hollow Station and also just run it constantly rather than every half hour.

Just reading that list, I think they should stop saying the Dreamworks area will be open given that none of the rides will be. There's already going to be a lot of people who didn't get the memo that there won't be rides open, probably don't need to make that worse.