Slick

As someone who was on the coal face for a long time and was a part of the team that saw guest feedback first hand I can sleep soundly knowing you’re wrong on this one. Even despite that fact, how is it nonsense? Would rather you articulate a post of value instead of flinging mud.

General public sentiment was unequivocally "if they died on the mild ride, I'm 100% not going on the much scarier rides which look and feel far more dangerous."

You've confirmed that with the park yeah?

Yeah it's definitely shuffling deck chairs around and thus not worthy of praise, but it's still a nice area nonetheless that really didn't need much change to begin with.

Oh so many reasons why Steel Taipan hasn't been the success they wished it was. Firstly, in answer to your question - the general sentiment shared seems to be that it's not as scary as Giant Drop or Rivals (height plays a factor psychologically for most people, which checks out) and most people don't have a fine-tuned awareness on where everything is in a park (especially when there are no indicators in that area to suggest that's where the ride or incident was) so you can logically conclude it's not intensity or placement. I've openly shared in previous posts that had the pandemic not happened the park would've returned to profitability in 2020 (the 2020 HY release hints at this). It's because strategically the only way is up - if you close attractions and don't replace or expand, austerity will inevitably kill any amusement park. Ergo, constant capex is the only strategy to maintain profitability and why 18 months of nothing post-incident did no favours for Dreamworld's return to profitability efforts. Dreamworld's marketing & strategic efforts understood the grim reality the organisation faced and knew it had to double down, or else the gap between Ardent and Village market share would continue to increase, hence the "Biggest Pass" campaign and the 50M spend. Then the pandemic happened and the park changed strategy and comms. Ignoring the inevitable long-term macro-economic forces at play and Village's tripling down on capital expenditure, the new park strategy was about contraction both physically and fiscally in a new play to remain viable post-pandemic. Does a 30M+ capital project still make sense with a park that's trying to count pennies? Absolutely not, but at that point with all the hype garnered and pieces on site it would've been worse to not build than to simply crack on. So we've got a park with a coaster that doesn't make sense with it's current strategy that hopes to capitalise off the same magic Rivals had in bumping Movie World's attendance, revenue and reputation, but without the marketing budget, notable IP attachment or landmark differentiation that were major antecedents in accelerating Rivals' flywheel to success. Then the park has it's 40th, and instead of spending every penny on getting Steel Taipan out there, it splits the budget on marketing both it's birthday and the park's biggest ever investment, during a time where every dollar is being scraped. This is also at a park that has (at least in the general public's mind) a reputation for closing many beloved thrill rides and has nothing fresh beyond what people already know from their last visit, which is important when you considered the following: Iif you're an interstate nuclear family itching to travel to the Gold Coast for a holiday after the pandemic and you want to have the best theme park experience possible, do you risk your 5-10k holiday on saving a few hundred bucks on theme park passes and go with the smaller, contracted, shell of its former self Dreamworld that has one new ride, or just get the more expensive passes that appear to have "heaps of parks" and "stuff to do?" Well, the proof is in the pudding, and people voted with their wallets on whether or not Dreamworld Light was a good idea or not, which is why the park is now course-correcting again with announcements on similar sized projects to Steel Taipan. Really the question is if Sky Voyager landed with a thud, and Steel Taipan didn't generate the revenue they were after, is three times a charm? Also, not sure where you got that the park is shifting towards a family-oriented experience. You could at best assume that's the case given their recent announcements, but as always, correlation does not equal causation. They've clearly identified that their attractions mix is still severely lacking and this is their best attempt at fixing that. But make no mistake, hyper-regional parks like Dreamworld languish when they hyper-focus on one market segment and ignore all others. You can do that for a marketing campaign, but not at the strategic level. Sea World is a great example of how it plays out - when you don't give everyone in a family group something fun to do, they go somewhere else, which is precisely why they built Atlantis.

Here's the reality - there was nothing wrong with the coaster. Because if there was, it would've been scrapped instead of sold, and instead of thriving with very minimal downtime, it would've had the same kind of opening that Leviathan had. Buzzsaw's issue was that people didn't want to do thrill rides that seemed psychologically scary right after the incident. This continues to be the park's problem and why Giant Drop has had minimal ridership post-incident. It also doesn't help that Buzzsaw's position was essentially metres from the incident. The nail in the coffin was that the ride needed some ten-year maintenance (read: major work) at a time when the park's management thought that the only way out of their pandemic-exasperated fiscal woes was to contract the park's cost-base by any means necessary. Was it necessary? Prior to the government intervention/funding, maybe. But the on-flow effect of transforming the park from "The Biggest in Australia" to the opposite of that in 2023 is that demand for the Village offering has soared while Dreamworld's demand hasn't kept pace with general market demand.

You're right, doing so would be hiss-terical. Luckily they've never made a mistake like this before.

Yiiiiiiiiiiikes. Trademarking a porn star's name was one thing, and then naming your kid's land after an abandoned Disney knock-off theme park is another, but now we've got snake killer the ride. With Dreamworld's history (not to mention it's also part zoo with a strong conservation message attached to it), I wouldn't touch any word or theme remotely close to the idea of death or killing animals/people/things with a 395-foot freshly painted steel pole. Looking forward to all the stans who will inevitably try and justify such an obviously bad name.

So why do you reckon they did it if there wasn't a real reason?

What's the minimum amount of days that are okay for you?

@Flea c'mon you're better then that. The nostalgia bit of me says those skinny few months where Thunderbolt and Cyclone were both open was peak Dreamworld. Still had steam trains, chairlift, IMAX, Mine Ride, River Rapids, Australian Wildlife Experience, Tiger Island with the cougars and still plenty of remnants of old school Dreamworld. Adult Slick agrees with @joz - having seen a ton of old school pictures of the park over the years it's clear to see what we're missing out on today.

Bermuda Triangle kicked ass - it’s kind of crazy we were able to pull something like that off (and in-house!) that had that many animatronics and special effects (the pepper’s ghost UFO was stunning as a nine year old). Storm’s good, but it’s not better. Naturally Tower of Terror is an obvious nod - it’s the thing that put Dreamworld on the thrillseeker’s map globally, particularly at a time where we were all jumping online for the first time. It was the thing we were all proud of and it had some crazy cool technology to boot. Also the skull and the original pod design was badass. F*cking t-bar restraints 100m+ in the air? Yes please. I was lucky to do a few cycles where I was the only one in the pod and getting just that little bit closer to the top of the tower made it feel unsettlingly bonkers. Shoutout to Wipeout which is still one of the best themed flat rides ever. Never should’ve been replaced with nothing. I can appreciate a Dreamworld without Tower of Terror because it regularly ruined the ambience of the park and aged poorly, but Wipeout? It’s still not Dreamworld without Wipeout. It’s the ride that literally saved the park. It's iconic. When they said it was going to close and the Ardent price dipped lower to a market cap that was far lower than the cost of a replacement thrill ride, they should've course corrected instead of doubling down on shaded seating. Special mention to the IMAX theatre and the steam trains. The majesty of the IMAX theatre was how unassuming and how well integrated it was into the Central Plaza. It also was a stunning experience that folks couldn’t get anywhere else. It was so good it was the lynch pin in having the park achieve 10,000 pax days in its first years. Imagine that, a Dreamworld with less rides but with the same pax as Movie World on a busy day? Mental. Sky Voyager is good, and has the potential to be great, but that facade is tragic and did incredible damage to the success of the ride and the immersion of the greater area, as will the Zierer Swinger when they knock out the fountain. Real shame that. As for steam trains, the topic’s been done to death. They’re iconic, and leaving one out the front is a bit average, imo. EDIT: new adds Batman: The ride - like Tower of Terror, aged horribly. But again, as a nine-year-old, it was spectacular. As a young kid, I had just come back from Disneyland and it genuinely felt more iconic than Star Tours. From the massive cavernous library into the tiny little caves back open into Batman's lair and the animatronic that you could never quite tell was real or not. Suffice to say, whilst I am nostalgic for it, I do think Justice League just eeks out as being slightly better. Also, Police Academy. Everything from the gags (including pre-show) to the stunts was as captivating for kids as they were for adults. There's a special magic to getting something like that so spot on - I think it's why Bluey and Pixar films have had so much success. Funnily enough, I still haven't ever seen a single Police Academy movie and I dare say I never will. And that's the beauty of that show, you really didn't need to. I'll be bold and say that Movie World's single biggest mistake in its history was axing that show. EDIT: Interesting to see that I've already posted in this thread, and even after two years the under-currents of Police Academy, Bermuda Triangle and Wipeout still ring true.

If you’re still calling it X and not X2 maybe you need to go back and give it a go with the newer trains.

These organisations profit not from the quality of their content (and by extension, how accurate or factual it is) but rather from how well it engages with their audience. And to be clear, it's about engagement of any kind, good, bad, whatever (there's a whole bit there about evolutionary negative bias, but let's not go there). So when you've got both the people defending the parks and the people lambasting them both engaging in equal measure, it's clear to see why they'd keep copying and pasting the same dribble. The best thing to do is to not share the content around and have independent conversations with the people you know.

Yes and no. Let me explain. Firstly, what you're asking is essentially about Intellectual Property Licensing Agreements and all of those contracts are commercial in confidence - and there'd be a lot of contracts, causes and stipulations. So instead of putting numbers to these things, i'll put it another way. Say a park wants to have cartoon characters that kids see on TV in their park because the research tells the park that it'll bump revenue by at least 20% if they pick the right characters. So the park looks around and talks to a well-known cartoon character owner. Now, this cartoon character owner is a business a hundred times the size of the park and thus, has the controlling power in any deal made. So eventually the character owner says if you want a bunch of characters to walk around the park, it'll cost you X amount per year in licensing fees. Want toys made of those characters? Then pay the character owner a royalty % of the toy's profit. Want to name a ride after a character? That'll cost the park another licensing fee. Want to name the park after the character owner's brand? That's another fee. So on and so forth for everything the park and the character owner does together in partnership. And the best bit is that in order to ensure the park is upholding a reasonable standard of quality and doesn't tarnish the reputation of the cartoon characters, the cartoon character owners get the final say on everything. Now, like everything in life, none of this is black and white. My own experiences have been that some brands really keep tight leashes on the final product (I remember Dreamworks having creative guidelines for how costume characters should be photographed) whilst others less so (Dreamworld itself couldn't really ever figure out if it was Wipeout or WipeOut internally). You can also imagine that if an "IP Holder" representative came town, anything that was non-compliant or unapproved gets hidden and almost every single physical asset, right down to the stitching on costumes gets a once over. No.

If I were to expand my vision for Movie World right out there long term - I'd refurb the Roxy with stadium seating and all the latest bells and whistles to become Village's go-to theatre for movie launches and whatnot. From there, I'd redevelop the WB Showcase building to either what @jozsaid or a flying theatre variant, and connect that building's entrance/exit into the aforementioned new Half Pipe Coaster area just to the left of Wild West Falls. Add in a nice dining/events space and a small family flat ride and you've got yourself a hell of a western-themed area that obliterates Dreamworld's offering for the next five years. The Capex-friendly version is to pop it next to Jet Rescue or where the old Viking's Station was at Sea World and call it a day. No repaint or real theming needed.

This is 100% not the reason why Buzzsaw was sold and there’s no rule as such as @Gazzaexplained. Ifffff it had to go to Movie World, why not up near Wild West Fall’s drop area? You could finally expand the west area and make use of what is a strange dead end path, and you could easily theme it to a whacky blacksmith perpetual energy device or something. Honestly, the DC fatigue is real, I just don’t think we need anymore DC anything for a hot minute.

I think we'll disagree on this one. To those who think it'll end up at Movie World, sure, maybe, but I also wouldn't take something unofficial on Facebook as gospel. For what it's worth (and @joz sorry but not sorry) but its home was and should've always been at Sea World. That park is screaming for the last little bits it needs to have the perfect attraction mix, and I reckon that gets it nearly there.

It’s 2023 and so this bad boy is closed. 🍻

Flowrider was already closed pre-COVID because it needed parts and wasn't generating the revenue needed to keep it running. Anyone could see it was doomed to fail because it was ultimately wedged in between a sea of nothingness that forced casual users into walking 200m in the opposite direction just to buy tickets. Also worth noting Dreamworld staff ran the ride and that Waveloch/WhiteWater West has a local presence in the country - availability of parts and support weren't the issue.

How recent is that screencap?

It’s been posted elsewhere that other parks did nothing and saw a larger % increase in attendance than Dreamworld. Roller-coasters are supposed to drive attendance, no ifs ands or buts, so with that context in mind, it’s tough to justify the ROI of the project, let alone confusing it with an EBITDA profit over an actual profit.

For something that wasn't a big deal on a website no one cares about, they sure move quickly when they see something on Parkz.

Eh, others have already debunked the logic of this. Billboards don't go down at night when shops close just in case people get misled. People just aren't that dumb that you need to coddle them that much. Billboards drive awareness, not conversion, therefore literally no one makes major purchase decisions based on a billboard alone.

This is super easy to fix. We just de-regulate working conditions to be like America, bringing down the price of labour to a point of parity, thereby reducing the single largest cost-base for the company which they can then reflect in their pricing. Also, the majority of Disney's guests aren't annual pass-holders, whereas it's the opposite in SEQ. Therefore, most single-day admissions are artificially inflated to make the cheaper-than-industry-average annual passes look far more lucrative. Changing gears, are people just mad there's not an A-frame out the front communicating it's a new ride and to be patient?