Slick

Theming should be relevant to the context of where the viewer is standing. I'd say that's pretty much 101 basics when it comes to Disney theme and design of their parks. If you're in Fantasyland, most of what you see should be Fantasyland. So what do you do if you have a ride that peaks over sight lines like Space Mountain, the Matterhorn, Guardians of the Galaxy at DCA (formerly Tower of Terror)? You do one of two things, you build future theming in mind to hide or compliment those broken sight lines, or you just accept that it's a big attraction and it's unavoidable you might see the white steel cap of Space Mountain in another themed land. If that weren't the case, then you'd be theming the entire park to the largest visible ride, which is kind of nuts when you think about it. If that were the case, then the whole park would be themed to Tower of Terror, much like Sea World would be themed to Storm or Movie World Rivals. Therefore the arid-desert/snake theme works well in the context of Steel Taipan's courtyard. Outside of that space it doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense on the walk to Giant Drop and it's really not needed here. A basic colour with some climbing figs or vegetation would be far more appropriate in the context of City Hall/Dreamworld's entrance.

This has come up a treat. Probably the best it's looked in a long, long time. Here's hoping the sign makes a return with some period-appropriate design aesthetics. I'd also love to see the station adorned with some appropriate trim when the painting's done (reverting the clock to something more old school, changing out the light fixtures for something more period appropriate, putting in benches undercover like you would a train station etc. etc.)

What’s the significance/story of the totem pole and the flowers?

Meanwhile they've held onto the building of a closed ride that that blocks the view of Steel Taipan for reasons. I'd argue that I wouldn't want folk's first or second view of Dreamworld as they enter the roadway to be "oh look, is that where Buzzsaw used to be?" and remembering that there's a bunch of rides gone and feeling like they're not getting their money's worth before they've even parked. In regards to the fence, really the question is "was the end result money well spent?" Looking at what's there so far, my gut feeling is no. I think what @rappa is trying to convey (and that's been subsequently misconstrued) is that they need to walk the walk if they're going to talk the talk. Plonking a once beloved piece of history (steam train) outside of a closed attraction (just like they did Big Red Car) is basically shouting "remember how you used to be able to enjoy this back in the day?" It'd be fine if the park was in a place of newfound success and these attractions had functioning replacements, nostalgia then is appropriate, but they don't, and that's not where the park's at. I'd wager then that parading their tarred history instead of throwing every single penny the park's future (Steel Taipan's opening) is a giant mis-step.

Wait, haven't you travelled across the country on more than one occasion to ensure you have every last credit? (inc. kiddie coasters) 😄 I'd be surprised if any park let you wear a strap on. Or did I read that wrong? @Dean Barnett I'd be keen to hear your thoughts on Steel Taipan's presentation in comparison to other global parks.

Nearmaps I’d say.

It's a good looking train, to be sure. Will definitely give Steel Taipan a run for its money in that regard. Here's hoping they install some good lighting for the ride - would be cool to see that train sparkle at night.

Yeah I'm confused by this too. Looking specifically at the extended trade evenings - it's only two nights from a two week school holiday period, so you'd firstly assume that they're not doing these two nights on to drive gate, right? Otherwise you'd be doing as many nights as possible, opening the rides and making it a big thing. In which case, if it's not driving gate, it's attempting to capture additional F&B revenue from in-park guests. But they've already been in park the whole day and probably tried the things they wanted to try, so why would they want to stay in the park if they've done the attractions/experiences they've wanted to do and they've already tried the food? Realistically then, are they trying to market to local passholders to go out of their way to come in for those two nights? And if so, why would passholders make that trip if the rides are closed? I'd say that the novelty and really the load-bearing assumption of why this would be successful is precisely because it's in a functioning theme park. If you take the functioning element away (which also subtracts wildly from the atmosphere and in turn, the experience as a whole), I think you lose the reason why passholders would go out of their to make the trip for those two nights. At which point, I have to wonder - who are the two nights for? Interstate tourists staying at the Coomera Motor Inn who don't want to walk to Coomera Westfield for dinner? Critical thought regarding the two nights aside - the creative is nice and fresh and I can't argue I'd be doing much different if I was in Ardent's C-Suite from the goal mindset of "creating a value-add for each holiday period to get passholders in the door."

They just need to pressure wash the mould off the rockwork and she’ll be squeaky clean. 🍻

Good move in hindsight. Five month delay, eh? I’d love to see some insight from Sea World regarding the delay. 🤔

It has happened in the past but with a few other rides having un-planned maintenance I wouldn't hedge my bets nor make the park wrong for not opening earlier than expected.

Just curious - how many rides do you think Movie World can have down at any one time before you consider it a major impact to the daily experience?

What are the odds? 😐 The artist behind Dreamworld’s founding creative has passed - thought I’d share here given the terrible timing and the Dreamworld link

And we’re saying he wouldn’t be interested in having his likeness out the front of the current Dreamworld. Multiple people now have explained their ideas and articulated them with a fair bit of reasoning and detail, and you’ve been pretty rude and disrespectful to those not aligned with your view.

Isn't that a lot of correlation equalling causation? No one else in the industry was co-ercing WorkSafe to extend plant registration without an RPEQ sign-off and huge gaps in paperwork. No one else in the industry was re-engineering large chunks of rides and passing them off as maintenance fixes. No one else was pro-actively ignoring a $3,500 fix that would've saved lives because minimising OPEX was viewed by executive leadership as more important. I could go on - point is, the systemic symbolic failure that lead to those deaths was Dreamworld's fault and Dreamworld's alone. The notion that the industry as a whole was caught with their pants down implies that other parks had similar deficiencies, which by and large wasn't the case.

Context is key. That incident wasn't caused by Village's organisational culture having a literal "don't even worry" value-in-action about park safety for three decades.

Most large organisations pour over Net Promoter Scores because in the case of our parks identifying satisfaction in park departments (F&B, Ops, GS etc.) is a key base metric to ensure repeat visitation occurs. Why is that important? Because repeat visitation is one of the fundamental keys to driving revenue for Australian parks (I think it sits at like 2.3x visits average from memory). And believe me, you make more money from a nuclear family coming in for a second visit than "scalping" a few regulars to skip the queue. Therefore, it's safe to assume that provided park management and executive leadership are in alignment on the organisation's goals (which I'm very positive they are) and therefore it'd be very un-likely they'd be taking trains off duty to drive revenue at the cost of satisfaction. A far more likely scenario is that part availability sucks. But what do I know? It's just my opinion, i'm not in the room with leadership. Therefore, let's all be mindful that correlation doesn't equal causation. Another side-note - I often wonder how much enthusiasts extrapolate performance based off whether executive leadership is in touch (or out of touch) with the common man? In either case, I think it'd be foolish to assume any level of leadership is not trying to do their best in the frameworks they're provided.

Someday when Village finally recover from 2016 and 2020 and there's a nice big hotel and a promenade on-site somewhere I can totally see it being a thing. I'm sure some folks would balk at the asking price of a basic monorail, but having that inter-connect essentially strips Dreamworld of it's major marketing advantage (being able to easily park-hop).

My worry is that the organisation that bought Joypolis won't "get" why Joypolis is such a success, at least in Tokyo Bay. Sure, they can copy and paste the structure of the idea (indoor, big atrium, arcade stuff, roller-coaster, some simulators?) but what ties Joypolis together compared to other indoor centres is the fact that Sega's nutso culture makes the whole thing wonderfully eccentric and engaging.

To be fair it's not like they're trying to process it through an ING Orange Card - at a basic level, their ability to draw on whatever options they have (in both instances) is based on their ability to pay back or return value.

Kind of sad to see the Sega brand continue to shrink - my Dreamcast kicked ass and Joypolis in Tokyo was incredible, especially the bits where it had that crazy Sega flair about it.

Can vouch for this - the Abu Dhabi airport facade was something Weiss wanted.

That’s it. And then if you rebuild the Captain Sturt, it’s not travelling between three country themed lands anymore, you’ll have a 19th century paddle boat docking between a kid’s area, a fake boat, a green concrete jungle of a coaster entryway and the remnants of an opening day building that’s been all but abandoned. If I were rescuing Dreamworld, building a boat is not the solution.

This aligns well with what @joz mentioned in the tributes thread for John Longhurst's passing - they're so keen to be like Disney or tap back into the past of Dreamworld without understanding the question of "why?" In this particular case, why build another Captain Sturt when towards the end of its life the Captain Sturt was robbed of any purpose? Initially the boat was an elegant and beautiful solution to meet up with the steam train and put hundreds of people in-front of where the bushranger show was being performed. But for close to a decade after the show stopped, all it did was ferry Japanese tourists to the koalas and, occasionally, have the Wiz put on a hand-magic show in the back. It was originally a large audience mover, but it was eventually a boat to nowhere, and like so much of John's legacy, was misunderstood, left to rot and eventually bulldozed. Rebuilding the Captain Sturt at a time when the park can barely get enough people in the door to watch the light version of the bush-ranger show out the front of the train station would be wasteful spending at best, and at worst, nostalgia for nostalgic sake. It's akin to nearly building a lazy river for WhiteWater World at a time when driving gate was critical and park throughput and capacity was anything but critical (which is precisely why Fully6 was built and not the lazy river.) If it were up to me, i'd be building attractions on the island FIRST, and then building some cool, smaller, steampunk style boats (like Tokyo DisneySea's) to navigate the waters and build on the park's kinetic energy.

After John sold Dreamworld, he went back less than a few times - a few weeks after the sale and a few years ago. On his last visit, he remarked to me personally that he hadn't slept for days after witnessing the state of the park, noting that while Main Street (pre Sky Voyager) looked nice enough, everything beyond there was largely unkempt and not to the calibre or standard he would wish for. That's not to say John was always right about Dreamworld's future or how parks as a whole had evolved in the decades since the sale of Dreamworld - his hatred for any large "un-Disney-like" thrill ride was, at times, almost amusing - he was well known to hold his hand up to cover his face and the view of Dreamworld as he drove past, and we debated on more then one occasion about the merits of Rivals, large rides as a whole and how the industry in Australia had evolved and changed over the years. Having said all that, my point is this - despite some of his industry perspectives not evolving with the times, I can guarantee you John would hate having his face forever plastered out the front of that park that doesn't understand his fundamental legacy in the same way he would hate having a roped-off, un-operational steam train engine plonked out the front of a closed train line, seemingly taunting guests about a memory that once was and is no longer.