Levram__

Studio Proof is Mark Watson, he has done a lot of work for the Australian industry.

Agree, there’s no real surprise here. You only need to look at the past three months, a scaled-back Heroes and Villains event with no after-dark parade, the Batman fly rig removed, no extension or replacement for Thunder Lake, the cancellation of Carnivale, cuts to leadership positions, and reduced trading hours. There’s clearly a strong bottom-line focus driving many of these decisions. Taken together, it does make you wonder whether a sale might finally be somewhere on the horizon. Unfortunately, it now appears that one of the park’s strongest after-dark events has also fallen victim to the cuts. It’s disappointing to see short-term creativity and innovation being progressively stripped away. What makes it even more noticeable is the contrast with what we’re seeing up the road, where continued investment in product, events and experiences appears to be paying dividends.

share?

Honestly, is it just me, or can you two put it to rest!

It should be acknowledged that the image may not be AI-generated. This type of layered visual style is well within the capability of professional graphic designers, and similar works have been produced internally within park creative teams.

The position appears to be a combination of both. My understanding is that the area will remain as is until the park determines its longer-term plans for the space. While a number of ideas have been discussed, I am not aware of any active development currently underway. In terms of the broader park presentation, while the overall licensing agreement does carry some significance through the annualised visits from the WB team, I understand the park has also adopted a renewed focus on overall presentation standards more generally.

Cash at rebuild is not an accurate reflection of total investment costs. During that period, cash reserves continued to be deployed across a range of initiatives, including buy-back schemes, which are an example of non-direct investment expenditure. A large-scale investment for a Village or Coast asset would typically sit within the $20M–$30M range. In the current environment, any capital deployment beyond that level would generally require a robust and well-substantiated return on investment case. While it appears unlikely, based on Greg’s comments during the call, if a decision were made in the coming months to proceed with an investment of that scale, and allowing for a 16–20 month delivery and opening timeline, current operating performance of DW/WWW and capital investment trends indicate the business could reasonably absorb up to two-thirds, if not more, of the project costs through operating cash flow, while still maintaining a healthy cash position.

Their cash position is still extremely healthy, not to mention they still ended up reporting a growth in their cash inflow over the 6 months, with the King Claw capital costs being absorbed within operating cash flow.

Well, maybe the guest experience specialist should have it changed? Safety isn't a cop-out; the legitimate length of the parade now means that all elements of the parade can't be consumed inside the roundabout to avoid any double-passing. So, as such, it is unsafe for those older, wide birth floats to pass each other down the street.

Both parks did indeed have production and execution challenges with Pico though.

I agree, i don't know why they didn't just carry over the same queue rails they are installing at King Claw but with a brown powder coated finish. Bit of a miss here..

Batman Exhibit I agree with for Fright Nights, I don't think its a necessity to the offering. However I agree with the view that all other primary attractions should be on offer to manage the guest experience. At the end of the event its all going to contribute to what the average guest perceives the value to be. The ability to quantify the number of rides, experiences and shows on a visit to the parks is often a go to metric for the average guest when considering "value for money". Which I'm sure would heavily impact the NPS score for the event.

Its my understanding the essential infrastructure for the fire ball still remains.

Risk was not the main driver here. In a pandemic recovery period, every significant financial decision was being scrutinised. Unfortunately timing and cost played a key factor in the effects demise. That's also not to say it wouldn't or couldn't return in the future if its creatively considered essential to the new show. In that instance the reinstatement would become a capital cost to the project verse, general R&M.

There would have been equivalent indirect expenses in FY24 and lose of revenue associated with this payout however. Its not a silver bullet... There would also be risk associated with the claim regarding impacts on the premium. Which they also appear to have done a pretty reasonable job at reducing their premiums in the corporate spend space.

I did say "these days" being present tense. Important to note, particularly in QLD significant changes have occurred since 2015 with regards to the legislation and the introduction of the code of practice. There is a greater responsibility on all parties involved in the process, the engineer, the operator and the regulator. Love your optimism though...

Regardless of who the OEM is for a device, Intamin or a cheap Chinese device, these days the risk of such a serious design flaw in a device entering or being installed in Australia is mitigated by a very stringent design registration process. Which requires one of very few, Australian registered and qualified engineers to verify the design of a amusement device in order for the regulator to issue design registration, among many other things. That includes assessing the loads on critical components etc. Most states follow the same guidelines with some minor variation here or there. For example I believe Victoria allows devices pre 1995 to operate without design registration, but that's being proposed to change.

Workplace health and safety one year during their annual audit campaign went on a bit of a rampage around appropriate work areas illumination to manage the risk of fatigue.

This is correct and it should be seriously considered when you talk about growth, for either of the two properties on the site. A challenge Australian parks are always going to have to navigate is keeping their opex at bay and avoiding that from ballooning with the addition of new attractions. Take MW as the prime example right now, sure you can say that WOZ replaced what was Arkham. However the opex for Arkham has not existed for many fiscal years so a new "expectation" would have been set. Now all of a sudden you have essentially 3 brand new coasters that significantly grows the direct expenses of the attractions department and similarly for the direct and indirect expenses to the technical services department. Not surprisingly the boomerang racer stopped racing pretty quickly.... DW on the other hand you could say that a good portion of their opex for Rivertown has been balanced out over the past two to three fiscal years because you have the vintage cars as a relocation and then Jungle Rush is an absorption of labour from Wiggles World. Then you have the maintenance costs, any of these new Vekoma coasters is likely attracting 200K - 300K in annual R&M, rebuilds, labour associated with those works and annual engineering assessments etc. I think its very unlikely you are going to see either business rush to growth their attraction lineup in the short term or long term, without, significant growth in their markets/demand, which is not currently the trend that's being seen. Another rant for another day, but its a very likely reason why DW have struggled with getting the idea of a Lazy River off the ground for White Water World. The ongoing operating costs and direct expenses for an attraction like that is huge.

The new lighting is just another feather in the cap for me when it comes to the in tune decision making DW leadership are making for the park. Not something they needed to do, but they have. It might be a small thing, something that's likely to go unnoticed, but you take a dozen small things and its start to become ongoing meaningful improvement.

Does anyone know how long its been since the family boomerang racer stopped being a racer?

Body slides.

I don't complete disagree with this view, there certainly is going to be some benchmarking going on. However it doesn't change my statement. With or without Rivertown, WOZ would still be the same offering today based on the decisions made. Which in my view stems from the lack of operational planning, strategic planning, creative planning and most importantly collaboration. When an executive wanders the trade floor of an industry expo and commits to the purchase of a new attraction without first getting together all of the half a dozen key stakeholders from differing disciplines to collaborate on the project in a first instance then this is what you end up with, a fair comparison and a bar that will likely continue to be raised, within scale. No one may have said anything about themed garbage bins in The New Atlantis, I certainly didn't in my comment above. However what is fact is The New Atlantis was a far stretch from what was conceptually presented as an immersive experience/environment. Not to mention WOZ follows the same trend as The New Atlantis. Some things have been done right, however there is a lack of consistency and cohesion. The same can't be said about Rivertown.

I wouldn't be shocked if we saw this happen in the near future though... the amount of money being spent on staff wages for these attractions would be rather high... There are staff everywhere to both operate and to navigate the design/layout of these attractions.

I think this might have been said previously but kudo's to the Dreamworld leadership team on the execution of Rivertown. Rivertown excels as an experience because as Gavin said, you had the genuine interest of the DW leadership team to add in things like easter eggs, depth to the story, repeat discovery etc. All the things that make up an expectational international themed experience. We can't lose sight that the key players in the Australian market are executing projects on our shores in the millions, not the billions. So when you really look at what's been achieved with Rivertown, all three of the keys parts of this land have been underpinned by operational planning, strategic planning, creative planning and most importantly collaboration. This isn't just one persons view or opinion of the finalised product, I have no doubt this is board collaboration within the team at DW. The unfortunate part is I couldn't confidently say the same about the project down the road. Both Pico products. Budgets may have varied. Internal timelines from conception to completion similar. Both benefiting from the expertise of the same OEM. However one of the biggest influences between the two when it comes to what we have now is no doubt what I've said above. If Dreamworld can continue this recipe in varying scale, then I look forward to their continued success and growth!