GoGoBoy

I agree. I think this idea is pretty awful - and why on earth would you need 5 themed restaurants at a motor sport park? Weird. I would also like to see the Gold Coast parks lose their obsession with motor sport and move on to something more interesting and imaginative

That'd be great... I reckon they should put the Flowrider where it belongs... in a waterpark!!

Haha Kenny this is a surprise! Well I can't speak for everyone but I would personally like to welcome you to Parkz and think it's great to see you on here. As you will see there are many passionate theme park enthusiasts on these forums. We want our parks to be the best they can be - so we will often talk about both the positives and the negatives. Hopefully now that you have joined up with the forums you will take on board some of the comments and pass them on to the Management and Directors. We all have our opinions about what works and doesn't work and more often than not we agree on some of the major issues. Here's hoping the big bosses might start to look at some of our feedback and work towards creating a bigger and better Dreamworld/WhiteWater World

TERRIBLE!!!

Thanks for sharing all the info you could Bmull19! You are doing a great job on facebook... you should join DW's marketing team one day!

Thanks Spotty nice to get the first official confirmation! Where did you find this info?

Thanks for the pics. It looks like the slides are actually properly translucent (unlike the Wedgie) meaning you will be able to see people going around the loops

That's good news to hear that ToT will be closed for a month before the school holidays - giving them time to hopefully get some serious work done. I just couldn't see how this upgrade would be anything major without it. In my opinion the upgrade is going to need to be spectacular considering the decreasing likelihood of DW adding a major new ride this year. 6 years without a new ride (as well all know we don't count the dud that is Motocoaster) is pretty poor

Thanks once again for a great update! So nice to get construction photos back on the site. I'm happy that one of the parks are installing a Splash Battle - should be a really unique and fun attraction. Water rides are always popular with guests too. Even better is the fact that it appears they will be theming it properly... hopefully this marks a turning point and Village will go back to theming their attractions properly. Interesting to note the signage outside the front gate advertising the VIP Pass along with the new attractions to open this year. This is where Village once again has one up on Ardent. When people are deciding whether to buy the DW/WWW yearly pass (if they even know that DW is doing one) or the Village parks yearly pass they are more likely to go with Village because they know that they will be adding a number of new rides and attractions this year. Whereas with Dreamworld, as far as the general public are concerned, there is nothing happening this year. At best just an upgrade of an existing ride

I don't like it at all. I'd much prefer a waterpark stick to true waterpark attractions. WnW is becoming a big mix of random attractions plonked all over the place with no consistency or theme. I much prefer what Village did with their WnW Phoenix park - http://phoenix.mywetnwild.com/Park-Info/Interactive-Map.htm

The sad thing is that Ardent/Dreamworld still don't appear to have learnt their lesson. They might be matching Village's prices but their marketing does not appear to be keeping up. A lot of people have heard about the Village $99 offer but not about DW/WWW's counter offer. Living in NSW I always get a fair idea of when Dreamworld is breaking through to the wider Australian general public with their marketing campaigns. As I have said before, the last time this occurred was when they added the Claw. They played the very-effective commercials on TV in Sydney quite a lot and I remember people I was working with at the time talking about the ride and wanting to go to Dreamworld. Over the last few weeks 3 different people I know have mentioned the Village parks $99 pass to me. My friend visited the GC recently and bought the Village offer for himself and his nephew/niece. He mentioned the '4 new slides' going into WnW as an added incentive to buy the passes (whereas as far as he was aware there was nothing being added at Dreamworld - and he hadn't heard about DW's discounts anyway). 2 others have said similar things to me and I also noticed a Jetstar print ad in the free Sydney commuter paper today with reference to Village's $99 pass. Nobody has mentioned Dreamworld

Thanks very much for this info Bella. Can I ask whether you think the general public (and of course all of us on here) will be impressed with this upgrade or is it going to be pretty minor in the scheme of things? I think a lot of people will be very disappointed if they don't use this opportunity to at least fix up the queue and theming

I was wondering this exact thing myself! I figured it was to give the new slides a better 'show off' position so that it is clearly visible from the highway. But I guess the explanations above make sense. I still think it looks a little odd... but then again Wet n Wild does not seem to care much about layout these days... just look at H20 Zone as an example

The Aqualoop design looks great. It looks like the slides will actually be truly transparent/translucent which should really add to the spectacle. This is unlike WhiteWater World's Wedgie which claimed to be translucent but, in fact, wasn't

It just shows if you provide a decent product that people actually want - they will pay to go - recession or no recession (take note Dreamworld/WhiteWater World)

I agree with this comment. As an Ardent Leisure shareholder I will be really annoyed if Village ends up wiping out DW/WWW again with much better revenue and attendance figures. Ardent should have learned from last year

I have heard that DW's $99 pass will only be available to purchase until the end of August. This again tells me that they might be hoping that the ToT re-launch will be a big enough deal to draw the crowds in (as it's supposedly opening in September). If this is to be the case they are going to need to do a lot more than just add a themed tunnel to the ride

This hurts the parks and significantly affects their margins. It probably explains why they are looking to cut back in other areas. $99 for 3 parks for a year is ridiculously cheap. It was only a couple of years ago that the parks were charging just a bit less than this for ONE entry to ONE park. I'd be very surprised if this heavy discounting won't have a significant impact on their revenue and ability to fund new attractions

Thanks very much for this update. Some fantastic pics of the Wedgie! I think WWW should borrow some of these pics to put on their website... the pics they have up are fine for their facebook construction updates but they are far too amateur to cut it on an official park website. I'm guessing their marketing budget has been cut along with their ride budget

$69 for 2 parks for 6 months? $99 for 3 parks for a whole year? Sorry but I just think that's crazy and ridiculously cheap! Considering a year or 2 ago you would have to pay much more than $69 to enter DW and WWW for only one day and now you get them both unlimited for 6 months for less money. I really don't think this is good for the parks. I understand that overseas parks offer discounts and season passes but the reality is our parks are now significantly less profitable. It's not like attendance is increasing to make up for the discounted prices. Essentially the parks are making less money and will therefore probably spend less on new rides. I just can't understand why there is a need for such discounting when our economy didn't even go into recession!

That would be terrible... we all know the park is in desperate need of a major new ride IN ADDITION to this ride refurb. Can you imagine if both the new ride and the ToT refurb did not materialise this year?!

I think it would be absolutely terrible if the River Ride was closed. The attraction is an absolute classic. It reminds me of some of the Disney rides and you don't see Disney removing their older attractions in a hurry! Some of them date back to the 60's! The ride has so much charm and atmosphere as you are floating along the river. And then there is that fantastic climactic end which everyone loves - no matter how old you are

Thanks for posting the article Joz. I think it's a great idea and I'm glad to see Ardent Leisure being proactive and putting their new Qdeck acquisition to good use. This style of attraction would suit Surfers Paradise perfectly and give something else for people to do when they visit

I'm just wondering how they are going to get this 'major refurb' completed if they are only working on the ride until 1pm each day? According to the maintenance page there is no shutdown planned for ToT for the rest of this year. My question is how are they planning to transition from the old ToT to the 'new' one without a proper shutdown? This also throws some doubt over just how major the upgrade will be. I guess I should let go of my hope of a re-paint of the main tower. And possibly no major queue adjustments either?

I am guessing this means attendance and spending is still down at Dreamworld during this last quarter of the financial year. I was puzzled at first as to why they would allow unlimited entry until December considering they will be launching the refurbished ToT in September and should gain a natural boost in attendance from this. I then noticed that the tix can only be purchased up until 17th July - so we may find that there are no more major discounts released around the period when the ToT campaign begins (and hopefully another new major ride - although I'm starting to doubt this)