Slick

Just so we're all clear, if an opinion on either side involves a level of cognitive dissonance that leads someone down a self-justifying pathway of "someone or something did something bad there I/someone else can do something bad" then they're not having a conversation based on logic, they're just mad the other kid in the sandpit threw sand at them. It's why the Movie World Vs. Dreamworld "thing" often feels like it's less about passionate fan discussion and more about slinging mud. Consider opinions on "world class" - it's a throw-away marketing term, and yet enthusiasts take it to hold up Village up to an unimaginably high bar in order tear them to shreds when literally anything isn't "world class". Are those enthusiasts aware the Dreamworld site and Dreamworld's CEO uses that term too? Does that mean I'm allowed to cry foul whenever Dreamworld falls short of being world class too? Or would I be considered being resentful and petty? Food for thought, that one. Being reasonable and understanding is the key here. There's no joy in being the kind of enthusiast that's so hell-bent on preserving some identity-crisis bias that there's actually no winning outcome for our parks to operate in. E.g. "How dare Movie World close Justice League during the school holidays! That would've ticked off so many families" in equal tow with "how dare Movie World wait months before closing Justice League? The ride's state would've ticked off so many families". If you can disconnect from the rivalry, the more interesting thing to ponder is what everyone's metric for success is. Like properly ask yourself "what's my bar for what's good?" If it starts with "well Dreamworld/Movie World did this, therefore.." I'd say you're looking at it the wrong way. Consider the perspective of looking at what the rest of the industry is up to globally and start there. There's parks like Phantasialand that are smoking our parks at every level despite charging less for entry. That to me is far more interesting than a discussion of who sucks more based upon how long their waterslides were closed. If you were to apply my basic bar for what's good (that things should be replaced by better things) then any step backwards should be either called out and/or remedied. That applies to the aesthetic of themed areas just as much as it does the current state of existing attractions or with the considerations of building new attractions. Justice League definitely needs a look at. Wild West Falls could do with a pressure wash. Overall park appearance clearly needs some minor improvements etc. etc. All totally doable, and i'm sure the park will do in due course.

How was foot traffic @aussienetman

Is it better or worse than Nightlife?

Good catch. Will be fun to watch how long it takes for them to ignore this thread but then magically fix the same problem. 😜

As mentioned nothing remains sans the one theatre. I'd recommend checking YouTube for references and drawing up a map from there.

I'm not sure I'm following, could someone fill me in? Are they bundling the parks into cruise packages and bussing everyone from Hamilton to Sea World Resort? What I think I'm getting here is that if you buy a cruise package you can get 15% off theme parks, which is a good idea and i'm all for that, i'm just not sure a coupon code is press release material. Disregard that, noticed the unlimited entry bit which is the interesting bit. So if you book a cruise I wonder when you can use the unlimited entry?

Terrible April fool's joke if not.

I wasn't, I was explicitly clear, and you've now shifted the goal posts and ignored the vast effort I went to in replying to your post. Again, your interpretation. It doesn't imply that and it's sure as hell not naive or innocent. For example, basic economic modelling isn't naive or innocent just because it assumes certain variables and discards others. Your argument only checks out if that you assume that I think that they must spend every appreciable dollar on being better in every way every single day, which isn't the case at all. In most cases (like say replacing Gremlins with Scooby Doo) you can indeed do better within a realistic budget. True brilliance (like in the case of Bermuda Triangle or the Gum Tree Gully animatronic show back in its day) was doing something that appeared to cost a lot but for very little.

Two points worth adding I think (both of which don't inherently disagree with what you mentioned): Firstly, I'd say the second guiding star I have (lol, can't believe I'm calling them this but here we are) is "did they spend the money they had wisely (regardless of how much or how little it was)". Take the pathway from the Main St station to Giant Drop - they've spent a fair chunk of money trucking in literal tons of rocks to theme, and hopefully, tie in a pathway that is, at the end of the day, outside of that theme's physical or visual boundaries. Those rocks are also a fun trip hazard (especially considering the park has two rides where guests look directly up) and make the pathway and surrounding space hot and inhospitable. That's not great given the fact that guests mill about there waiting for their friends or family to ride. I'd argue grass would be infinitely cheaper, and the money they saved they would've been better spent on shade, seating and landscaping that improves that would improve the space exponentially. If you look at that old photo I mentioned, what it has going for it is nice shade, nice seating, nice grass and nice landscaping. And i'd argue you'd get all of that for the price of several metric tons of rocks. The same can be said here. Are they spending their money well here? Is it additive or subtractive to the space? My second point is that theme parks are a hospitality and service business through and through. Likewise, if a large chain hotel starts losing money, they don't fix the demand issue by simply cutting their average total cost over time. They'd continue to experience a loss if instead of fixing the pool, they just close it. Or if a guest breaks through a large glass door, they replace it with a cheaper alternative that sticks out like a sore thumb. Nope, they do what the JW Marriott at Surfers did and re-invest on new fixtures that let them shift their business and functional strategies and ultimately get them back into profitability. TLDR; you don't fix quality issues by cutting corners.

So it's hard to come to conclusions about what the park should do. Should it spend its scarce money on themed fencing to embrace the old vibe of the park and prevent aesthetic decay, or build quick and affordable fencing to save money for critical projects that drive gate? Basically, this. There's a lot of whataboutism and false equivalencies going on there which i'll try and break down. They should absolutely look after what they have and maintain a standard throughout the park. They should also not waste millions rebuilding nostalgic rides for nostalgia sake, especially when the intent is for those rides to drive gate (which they absolutely won't). They're also two different things and shouldn't be confused. Take the repainting of the main station. That doesn't drive gate, and I'd criticise any theme park exec who think it would. What you don't want though is for guests to finally return after five years to Dreamworld on the back of Steel Taiapan's opening, only to find that the park is awfully run down, ruining what little brand trust they had left and have folks vow never to return. FYI, I think what they're doing with the main station is bloody great. It's not going to save the park, but do enough of that everywhere, combined with adding in proper, modern replacements for the rides they've closed, and in a few years you've got a great park again. In short, you don't win the hearts, minds and wallets of the market (which is what Dreamworld need to do at this point just to survive) when you do the bare minimum, especially when there was a time (as I showed in the photos) where the bar was placed far higher and the paying public are aware of that bar. This ugly fence (and the area that surrounds it) is a pretty clear representation of that bar being dropped, and if the argument in turn is "they don't have the money to do anything better" then i'd argue that perhaps another owner should take the reins.

@Dom there's a level of irony tucked inside the cognitive dissonance in that last post, because in the first paragraph you've criticised my post for having drawn conclusions, and then in the last paragraph you've drawn conclusions about my stance about Dreamworld. Furthermore, I'm not mocking anyone specifically nor the community at large, you're adding that connotation. Mocking, by definition, would imply i'm making fun of you or someone in a cruel way. That's just not the case, but if you chose to use that word because you've felt yourself get hot under the collar about having your opinion challenged about theme park fences, well, you're in for a treat when you discover Twitter. Whew-boy, that's a toxic joint if ever there were one. Parkz is about robust conversation, welcome. Get amongst it. Don't take it too seriously. With that in mind, and not to diverge too far away from the topic, but when it comes to theme parks, most of my opinions are founded on a pretty basic fundamental guiding star (a guiding star that's mentioned in dozens of posts and is something i've said to you in person) and it's this: If a park replaces something, it should be better than the thing it replaced. My opinions of Dreamworld are shaped from this perspective because the fundamental reality is the park was once good and now it's not. It's such a truism that there's Facebook pages (albeit run by incredibly toxic individuals) that are founded on Dreamworld's formative years because it was that much better. Put it another way, a lot of the things they've replaced haven't been better than the things that were there before, and this has been going on for close to two decades, well before you were into theme parks. Perhaps the greatest error you've made in your post though was that you implied I wanted to see Dreamworld die. Mate, I literally changed my entire life so I could study an MBA so I can get into the industry and support businesses like Dreamworld to thrive. And to be clear, I want Dreamworld to thrive and that's why i'm so openly critical of the joint. You simply don't find success by blowing smoke up people's arses, and i'm not about to alter a perfectly reasonable opinion founded on good, sound reasoning because it might mean a business might not invite me to their pressers. And god forbid if a business is that insecure about industry opinions - if that's the case they've got bigger issues to solve anyway.

Yeah cheers - I was hoping someone would bring these fences up and inevitably lead me to the point everyone missed because they were too busy playing into the Village vs Dreamworld trope that's been done to death. Disneyland had crappy fences at the front when it first opened. Over time they've improved it and this is what they look like now: This is what that area looked like when it first opened: This is what it looks like now: You don't arrive from the first picture to the last picture in either scenario by one massive leap overnight. It's usually additive over time or subtractive over time (also known as death by a thousand cuts). Consider then that the fence is symbolically and literally another stake in the ground where the park has lost a just a tidbit of charm. Initially it's the retirement of one of the steam trains. "It's okay Slick, they've got another, don't be so hard on them." Then it's retirement of the steam trains altogether. "Slick don't be so petty by hyper-focussing!" Then Dreamworld pulls out the waterfall and lets the stations and their gardens fall into disarray. "Look it's just one bit here and there, don't worry about it." Then the next year a station gets removed. "Nothing was there anyway, who cares." Then the train line gets shortened, then there's gravel instead of grass, then ugly fences go up. "Bloody hell Slick, give them a break, Village put up an ugly fence once so why can't Dreamworld?" Do this a few more times and one day you'll find guests and enthusiasts alike walk around the park going "jeese, there's no charm left, I wonder what happened." And it won't be immediately obvious because it's not just one thing that makes the difference, it's a thousand things over many years, one of which is the chain-link fence. Reading my opinion and thinking i'm hyper-focussing on the fence in order to nit-pick and then pointing out a competitor's fence is just missing the point completely and doubling down in the aforementioned trope. Consider the bigger picture, is this an additive step or a subtractive step? Given what once was, it's a subtractive step. Granted, wider context, Village should also be held to the same standard. And thanks to Dreamworld, theme parks in Australia are a litigious nightmare and fences are a necessary evil. But c'mon, you've got rocks in your head if you think this looks good in isolation.

I really don't get the effort people are going through to justify an ugly fence. It's a theme park, it should be presented way, way better because, and I can't stress this enough, it's a theme park. And look I get safety, and that should be a consideration in picking something appropriate, not the justification for picking something inappropriate. At present we've got one thread on the site where the community is going deep on minor details being missed (and rightfully so) and in another thread huge sweeping passes are being made for mediocrity.

From that angle, Nara Dreamland had more charm.

Yeah $5 to enter after hours to enjoy a stack of food (albeit no rides) is fair enough. I still question if that "stack of food" is enough to off-put the opportunity cost presented by having no rides open at a theme park event.

Couldn’t be because of shipping delays, I got my new iPhone delivered in three hours! It happens. 🤷🏼‍♂️

Are they using Dreamworld’s train?

I also think a large issue is just the reality that attendance isn't crash hot. Buzzsaw's new colour is nice. I wonder what the theme will be?

Hopefully they didn’t use a Native American interpretation like your Google Search did.

Oh look! A themed launch!

Happy to, with thanks to @Dean Barnett whose photo I may have destroyed via Photoshop.

Even just grass underneath the ride. The drone shots they had for the marketing of the ride were ace, but were let down because the whole joint looks like a construction site from above. No more rocks. Just grass. Grass makes it look good.

Yeah I think I mentioned that earlier as well - it's in desperate need of a pressure wash.

Yeah, that looks crazy clean. Curious pondering, is it expensive to drop some dye in the water?