Noll_57

Yeah, I’ve been through it 4 times now. The first time it growled at me because of my belt. But strangely, all the other times it let me through without an issue. It seems to be very hit and miss in that regard from what I’ve observed. As for the ride itself, wow, what an upgrade from the original Claw! The new restraints are a huge improvement over the original ones, super comfortable and they allow for quite a bit of movement. You feel so free in them. Pretty much everything that was great about The Claw has been retained and improved upon dramatically. The ride is ultra smooth, while still being extremely forceful with fantastic airtime.

Yeah, there’s actually a lot of sound effects around the ride. The King Claw sculpture roars and you can hear waves crashing under the boardwalk as you travel over it. When you get inside the main queue area (The Ferry Terminal), these wave sounds combine with seagull and clanking pier noises. Then, when the ride starts, these sounds die down and the cinematic score takes over. Overall, the sound design is fantastic. There’s also themed safety announcements which is a pretty nice touch.

It’s open!

King Claw hasn’t opened to the public yet, but it’s running constant test cycles and a queue has begun forming at the entrance of the attraction. So it’s looking very likely that it will open at some point today. Even from just viewing it off ride, I’m already blown away. The spectacle of it swinging over Main Street is fantastic and the ride’s soundtrack (a dramatic orchestral score that syncs up with the ride and can be heard throughout the surrounding area) creates an incredible atmosphere. More theming has been added to the queue line and the surrounding area. It also looks like the ride will have a great lighting package at night with various stage lights (including a moving head) placed throughout the area.

I was recently down in Melbourne and went past the park while I was there. It hasn’t opened for the season yet, so these are the best photos I could get from outside the property. The new slides do look impressive and are a great investment for Adventure Park (who haven’t added any major new attractions for quite a few years now).

The park has just updated their website to reflect the rebrand: https://www.funfields.com.au

Yeah, I much prefer the old one. The new one seems a little too generic in my opinion.

Funfields have just revealed that the park is going through a major brand refresh this season to celebrate its 40th year. This will include a new logo and tagline “take a one day holiday” (sounds oddly familiar).

I imagine it’ll be similar to how Dreamworld have been gradually rolling out their retro logo over time. The only difference will be if WB themselves have mandated that the branding needs to be updated within a certain amount of time as part of their licensing agreement.

From what I’ve seen, the view that Movie World has really gone downhill has become fairly mainstream lately. I’ve had many non-enthusiast friends, family and work colleagues tell me they’ve been disappointed in Movie World during recent visits and that they found Dreamworld to be far more enjoyable. I’ve seen similar discussions in various (non theme park related) online communities too. I honestly don’t really care if it’s currently considered a half day park or not. I’d much rather visit an overall decent park with care for the guest experience and lightning fast operations like Dreamworld over a park that continuously frustrates guests like Movie World.

There’s still lots of theming elements sitting around in the former Rocky Hollow area. I wonder when and where they’ll be added to Rivertown?

The most I saw it go up to when I was there was 20mins, which was impressive considering how busy it was.

I’ve been hearing a lot of rumours and speculation online that Funfields are planning on building some kind of roller-coaster next year. Pretty much all the major Aussie theme park YouTubers have mentioned it in podcasts/live streams and I’ve seen numerous comments about it online. Supposedly, a planning document was leaked from the park that confirmed a coaster was coming. However, I can’t find anything about it anywhere. Apparently it was doing the rounds on social media about a month ago, but if it existed, it seems to have now been scrubbed from the internet. Does anyone know anything about this supposed “leaked document” and if there’s any truth to this rumour at all?

The park had a great atmosphere, it was really buzzing. Wait times varied quite a lot for each attraction, but in general the operations were fantastic. Jungle Rush in particular was a standout. It had an advertised 50min wait, though it only took me around 35mins to get on. They were getting the trains loaded up and dispatched extremely quickly. It was a similar story with Steel Taipan, the staff were doing a great job trying to get the trains out as fast as possible. I think the attraction with the slowest ops and longest wait time in the park was the Dreamworld Express. For some reason, it was taking almost 10mins to load/unload guests at both stations. It would definitely be good if the park could look at speeding that up a bit.

Some updates from today. It’s coming along nicely! Also, the park was unbelievably busy today and the crowds were some of the biggest I’ve seen in years. The car park was literally full, with people resorting to parking on the grass at the rear of the car park and along nearby roads. By comparison, Movie World’s car park wasn’t even half full when I popped in during the afternoon.

I noticed that a bunch of tape is now hanging below the launch on Superman, as well as in a few other locations on the track around the ride. Flash is still dismantled, though the loading platform has now been roped off too.

Looks really good! Definitely a much better location for it near the lake.

I noticed that Superman Escape is now listed on RCDB as “SBNO” and the page says the ride “operated from 12/26/2005 to 8/2025”. I asked a staff member at the park today what was happening to the ride. They told me they didn’t know what was going on, but believed they were “trying to figure out what to do with it”. They said it’s unlikely to reopen anytime soon.

I’m very surprised that Mad Max hasn’t had any major presence at the park thus far. It seems like it would be the perfect IP for them to utilize in a big way.

This was in the GC Bulletin today (there is a digital version, but it’s behind a paywall).

They’re now painting the front of the castle. I was able to get a little glimpse inside while they were working near the entrance. I’m not sure if this is directly related to the Scooby refurb, but I noticed the speakers that were located on this lamppost (that used to play the Scooby music) have been removed. The ones on top of the castle are still there though.

Something’s definitely up with Superman, the launch cables are currently hanging down.

A couple of photos from today (I didn’t get too close, as there were a lot of workers on site).

They’re making a lot of progress on the track, there were a bunch of people working on it today. If they can keep up this pace, I think they could potentially be on track (no pun intended) to open it for the September school holidays. I noticed they’ve resurfaced the crossing near Main Street station too.

Noticed a couple things at the park today. First of all, the roof looks so much better now that the painting is complete. I also happened to notice that the park have finally replaced a lot of the old standard rubbish bins with these new proper theme park style ones, similar in design to what you see in many big parks around the world. They look great and are even colour matched to fit the theming in certain areas too. Some of the bins have been placed in front of the Remota Boats and the pool has been drained. I hope this is just a temporary thing during maintenance and they’re not retiring them. They’ve also changed the background music in Kenny and Belinda’s Dreamland. Instead of playing generic pop music, they’re now playing whimsical/old timey music which is a really big improvement and fits the atmosphere a lot better IMHO.