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The speakers have now been reinstalled.

No, those were off too. Not a single thing in the area was working. The strange part is that the park recently did quite a lot of maintenance work in Villains Unleashed, including replacing the old faded billboards, repairing some of the statues and repainting a number of things around the area. But bizarrely, they’re doing all this while also pretending the precinct doesn’t exist and turning off all of the effects and music. It doesn’t make any sense to me.

Noticed today that the music and effects in the area have once again been turned off. It’s dead silent though there now.

There’s currently a guy dressed up as the grim reaper out the front of Movie World with a sign reading “They ignore safety, I will wait!” No idea if this is a disgruntled staff member or what.

It is a good thing. I was using the parking situation to demonstrate how much the park’s attendance has improved and how they’re now consistently pulling in large crowds.

A bunch of wooden planks have now been added to the Motocoaster entrance gate. I’m pretty sure these are new, as I’ve never noticed them before.

It hadn’t been a thing at Dreamworld for a long time though and it’s now happening quite often, sometimes even outside peak times (it was full the day Motocoaster closed for example). There’s been a few weekends recently where I struggled to find a park and they were outside peak holiday periods.

It definitely won’t be getting retracked yet, being such a new ride and all. However, considering its location being right on the water and all the extra wear and tear that would cause on the track, I imagine it could happen sooner rather than later.

I think Dreamworld is going to have to consider expanding the car park at this rate. It was once again completely full today, with not a single free space available. People were even resorting to parking in garden beds, over pedestrian crossings and on the nature strip near the highway to try and get in (I opted to park in a side street and walk back). Inside the park it was absolutely packed, I’ve never seen Main Street so busy (even during previous Easter holiday seasons)! It was literally a sea of people. Despite this however, the park still had a great atmosphere and it seemed like operations were (at least for the most part) keeping up fairly well.

They really should be using actual graphic designers, not just outsourcing it to a computer. That’s very true, but I noticed a few potential signs of AI generated art within the image that really stood out to me. The most noticeable for me is the odd lighting and the very smooth, overly shiny and glossy look to everything, which is quite typical for AI images (you can really see it on the dragon and the top of the Dreamworld tower). I could be completely wrong (and I hope I am), though I wouldn’t be surprised if the image has at least been run through some sort of AI filter.

Unfortunately, it’s not just their social media. Some of their new promotional images appear to be AI generated too.

It’s front page news in the GC Bulletin today.

Movie World is now cashless too.

The first official Bluey attraction in a Disney park has just launched with the “Bluey’s Best Day Ever” stage show and meet and greet at the Fantasyland Theatre in Disneyland. It looks to be a fun show for the kids and has apparently been extremely popular so far. Alton Towers in the UK are also about to open a Bluey themed roller coaster in their Cbeebies Land area. Theme Park Worldwide did a video on it recently: I’ve got to say, it’s pretty surreal to see a local Aussie show that’s produced and set in South East Queensland doing so well on the world stage.

I noticed that the old faded Superman billboard at the front of the land has surprisingly just been replaced with a brand new one. It looked like a few other pieces of theming had received some minor touch ups too. Is this a sign (no pun intended) that the park might be looking at keeping the area?

It was an email that Dreamworld sent to Jaggs Journeys that said the ride was “closing to get ready for its next chapter”, which I still think is weird wording and kind of implies a retheme. I highly doubt it will end up simply being Motocoaster 2.0 though. I think it’s possible that the new ride might use some of the bones of MC in places, but will have so many changes and modifications that it will essentially be a new attraction.

Went on the ride multiple times today and am pleased to report that a lot of these issues have now been fixed. The audio in the switchback room was nice and loud and was playing in sync with no drop outs on every ride-through. Some of the other sound effects around the ride that hadn’t been working for a while (such as the bats in the tunnel and the eerie soundtrack in the gem room) were all playing again and sounded fantastic! The gems in the switchback room were rising and falling again and there was absolutely no jolt from the turntable. Unfortunately, the water feature in the switchback room still wasn’t working, but I’m confident that’ll be addressed at some point soon. At least it’s clear the park is making an effort to maintain show quality with the fixes they have carried out.

Popped into the park today and noticed that the train has now been taken off the track. No other noticeable changes though.

That’s because Dreamworld handle crowds much better than Movie World these days. DW’s faster operations and better ride availability would go a long way in terms of overall guest satisfaction.

I believe it originally went down as unplanned maintenance a couple of days before it was scheduled. Either way, I’m surprised (and somewhat concerned) that it needs so much extensive maintenance after it was already down for so long just recently. I certainly hope that’s the case.

It seems Movie World are having more problems with Flash as it’s down on maintenance yet again and the train has been removed from the track. Ropes have also been attached to both sides of the track. I do need to give MW some props though. Since my last visit, a lot of noticeable improvements have been made throughout the park. First of all, a lot more seating has been added in various areas including around Superman and the Wild West section which is great to see. Additional chairs and tables have also been added in the bank, which now features a screen that shows classic movie clips. A lot of the movie related cars that were in storage for a long time have been put back on display in the park, including the Batmobiles and the Loony Tunes vehicles. They’ve also (finally) sorted out a lot of the audio issues that have been plaguing the park for years at this point. New speakers have been installed around the Wild West Village area and the original area music loop has returned. It sounded terrific and added so much to the atmosphere. The majority of the other areas around the park also had their music back on and playing at a decent volume level which was fantastic to hear. The only quiet zone without music was the Looney Tunes area (around Tweety cages and Yosemite Sam Railroad), but hopefully that’ll be addressed in the future. Also, a few buildings around Main Street appear to have been repainted recently and are looking nice and fresh and the staff seemed a lot friendlier and happier than usual. Unfortunately, operations were still absolutely awful, but at least it’s starting to look like progress is being made. I’m wondering if something has changed in upper management that’s caused all these positive additions to occur all at once? Either way, I really hope this trend continues as it’s really what the park needs right now. Also, for those wondering what the old WB showcase/show stage looks like now… Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like a new show or attraction will be opening up here anytime soon.

Spotted this today. Dreamworld are advertising that they’re “Australia’s best rated theme park”. Not sure if this claim is entirely accurate though, as they appear to be neck and neck with Adventure World in Perth who have the exact same rating of 4.4 on Google and a slightly higher rating on TripAdvisor (though they don’t have as many reviews overall, so I guess that’s where DW might technically have an edge). It’s by far the highest rated park on the Gold Coast though. Ironically, I saw this at Movie World, which is currently the lowest rated park by quite a margin (with a rating of 4.0 on Google and only 3.5 on TripAdvisor).

Apparently Motocoaster was running without riders today.

I also went for one last lap on Motocoaster today. It’s definitely strange to think it’ll no longer be around, but I can’t wait to see what happens to the site. Also, the car park was completely full again which was great to see!

Maybe, but I’m not sure the park would make a statement like that if the ride was truly leaving, as parks tend to not mention when rides are sold and moved to other parks (I don’t think Dreamworld has ever publicly acknowledged that Buzzsaw was moved down to Gumbuya World for example). At least it seems the ride will live on in some form whatever happens. As much as I’d love to see a new water ride or dark ride built, I think the most likely outcome is that Motocoaster will be reworked in some way (likely with new trains and possible tweaks to the ride layout) to improve it and allow it to integrate better into Rivertown. We’ll see what happens though.