Slick

I think what you've missed there is that even most regional theme parks have a pipeline of attractions five or ten years in advance so that when something closes, something is ready to take its place. Dreamworld being caught with its pants down in the form of the incident really showed that the business not only had no long-term succession plan but failed to maintain what it had in place of a long-term plan.

It's always been a back-of-house tiger pen. Nothing more, nothing less. Keep in mind the cats were on a constant rotation program between pens, the island, dens and daily activities like walks to keep them enriched, all things that are vastly more complicated without tiger-handler interaction. My guess is that the redevelopment of Tiger island (which is at best a huuuuuge waste of money in the endeavour to have overzealous risk management for risk management's sake, going so far as ignoring the best professional opinions in the industry to do so) is going to require millions of dollars of new chutes and pens to move tigers from A to B, and this is the start of those works.

You can have a scan through Qimagery, you can juuuust make it out in some of those aerials.

The two parts that were fabricated were stored roughly where the koala sanctuary is now behind Tiger Island for roughly a decade before they disappeared (likely for scrap).

You're 100% on the money. Also, now's a great time to point out how invaluable that northern parcel of land is. Ardent's short-term interests to turn a quick buck at the expense of the business's future viability as a whole can't be overstated enough - remaining competitive against Village requires that land, and having the parent company try and parcel up the remaining land should ring alarm bells. I'm quietly thankful the latest flood reporting has come out that shows the flooding situation for Oakey Creek, and by extension, how nearly impossible it will be to build there without major infrastructure investment, and has in turn slowed down further quick sales.

Just to touch on this - I think most folks understand the reality that in order for a theme park to be successful it requires constant investment and therefore there's almost always going to be something being built in a theme park. Having said that, is it more the sentiment that people find Movie World lacking when Scooby Doo is closed? Or is it more the whole Tower/Wipeout/Log Ride/Big Red Car/Flowrider at Dreamworld thing?

How long are you staying for and does the rest of the party you're going with love theme parks?

I tried to get John Longhurst to recall some information about it on a few occasions - what I've been able to cobble together is that he got exclusive rights to build a Corkscrew Coaster with Arrow Dynamics to do a midway style install similar to Cedar Point or Nagashima Spa Land where the corkscrew would head over the top of the pathway. During the construction of Dreamworld, he had a corkscrew fabricated to see how it would look in person, hated it, and when Keith Williams called about building one, he gave the rights away. Interesting to think how that would've shaped the identity of Dreamworld, or if he had the funds he wanted, had built a castle instead of leasing the land to Kenny Lord to build Thunderbolt.

That’s some ace early 90’s Dreamworld right there, especially with the old horse-drawn carriage. The horses were kept in a field where the maintenance shed exists today, along with an un-built corkscrew element and other odds and ends.

Given the media's fascination with ride maintenance, when you go that route you end up with stuff like this: Better to not give folks a chance to make a meal out of whatever widget it is, and infer to a degree. Intelligent folks will get it anyway.

The key difference is that Disney is large enough to self-insure their parks division. Therefore, the company can make different decisions on their appetite for risk compared to almost the entire industry which relies on a third party for insurance. There are also other factors - Walt Disney World's local government is essentially operated entirely by The Walt Disney Company (definitely helps with litigation and regulation hurdles). Also, many if not all of their rides are designed to avoid huge pops of airtime and extreme, sudden changes of motion, which results in loose articles staying within ride vehicles. Even the Disney coasters I have been on that go inverted still didn't have enough negative g-force to pull my bag away from the train. Only Jet Rescue and Superman have this issue and with the latter, there are huge components of the ride where the train comes within centimetres of guests' heads outside. Whilst sitting in a hot queue for half an hour and being forced to talk to people you're riding with kind of sucks, it's not the worst thing ever. Could be easily improved with something more interesting on the tellies.

Ahhh, so the time a loader should be spent loading? What if someone queues, assumes it's free and doesn't have any cash or card on them because they left it with a friend? Do they leave the queue and queue twice? What if someone is unsure of the transaction process or what they're buying and want to know more information? Does the loader tell them to just leave the queue because they only have 20 seconds? What happens if there's a situation that requires more care from the loader pre-boarding like someone with additional needs or a height issue? Do you sacrifice takt time for an entire load of guests to process those transactions or do you forfeit the revenue for that cycle because it'll create a ripple effect to the overall hourly capacity demands? From an operations design perspective, there are way too many points of potential friction to even consider the idea.

There's a bit of irony in bemoaning everything Australian parks do that inhibit efficiency and then suggesting that ride-ops should also handle payment processing during a load. 🥴

I'll go a little bit off-topic here for just a smidge more. It's less about having a dual approach and more about having a clear strategy with a prominent hook for news and media to pick up and a well-executed customer journey/funnel that understands the audience and the platform they're communicating in. TLDR; you can walk and chew gum.

Yeah agreed. Then you throw some record-breaking attendance and it's a recipe for disappointment for sure. Full disclosure - I get marketing/comms is not everyone's cup of tea so feel free to skip reading the next bit. Yeah, that's an interesting case for sure. I think their last big announcement was a little bit too much information - there was a fair few different art styles shown and it all felt a bit too hodge podge for my liking. Cool for enthusiasts to nerd over, but not clear and succinct enough for the mass market to ultimately adopt the message Dreamworld is wanting folks to adopt. I think I've been barking on about comms since at least 2015, maybe earlier, and how Disney and others have pivoted from a "smoke and mirrors" approach to a wholly transparent approach. @Naazon touched on this as I was writing this post - I look at all of this through a weird hybrid lens of hospitality and storytelling. Whatever's communicated should be engaging, clear and have a degree of certainty, all of which leaves readers/guests with a sense of excitement and anticipation for what they'll get to experience. Perhaps most importantly though is that when communicating anything, be it any kind of storytelling content, is that you treat the audience with respect. When you do that and something goes wrong, folks are generally far more accepting when you treat them as though they're the intelligent, reasonable people they are. If you look at everything the parks do through that lens, then date changes on a website with no more information (Leviathan) could be perceived as feeling a bit contemptuous. In regards to Scooby, the date change happened in the middle of the night so will be keen to see if anything more is said to soften the blow. "Ruh-roh! We've had to extend Scooby Doo's closure by a few more months. Here's why. It goes without saying that safety is our highest priority. Our intention is to offer the kind of iconic, world-class experiences guests know, love and come to expect from our park, and Scooby Doo: Spooky Coaster is no exception. We understand that people love this ride, and we do too! We also don't close rides unless we absolutely have to, and in the case of Scooby Doo, we made the hard decision to close this beloved ride earlier than expected to allow us more time for us and our international partners to do the work it needs to live on for decades to come. And whilst we do everything we can to get attractions out from maintenance and down-time as quick as possible, the reality is that supply chain shortages caused by the COVID-19 pandemic still impact the speed in which our guests expect us to re-open rides. The up-shot of this is that we will have the time needed to properly refurbish Scooby Doo back to a standard better than when it first opened - with newer special effects and storytelling that will leave you wanting to re-ride over, and over, and over again. It's all part of our masterplan to continue to make Warner Bros. Movie World the country's #1 theme park - in the coming months, we'll continue to show you some of the behind the scenes that will make Scooby Doo even more incredible, plus exciting information on new attractions that will give guests even more to do while we refurbish the rides you love." Yeah, something like that.

I've maintained that throwing Surf Rider in there would cap off a perfect attraction mix for a nuclear family. The kid's stuff is covered, the family group stuff is covered and with Leviathan and Vortex, they've got some great teen thrill rides to complement Storm and Jet Rescue. But is it enough to get a teenager enthused about going for a full day with their family? My gut says maybe juuuuust, but the second one of those rides goes down for maintenance it's not enough. with Surf Rider, that mix is basically up there with the likes of Dreamworld and Movie World. In any case, the stark reality is that demand is at an all-time high at Movie World, and any way to give people more to do and eat up pax without going through the same supply chain delays everything else is suffering is a major win, so I totally get the move.

It's been "rumoured to get moved" for longer than the ride's been open to be fair - so much so that the official unofficial word is that it was always destined to go to Sea World, but there was a last-minute plan change. Internally the joke was always "I'll believe it when I see it." Could you speak further on the considerable loss of capacity? For whatever reason, it's really unfortunate. My gut says it was going to be a mid to late 2024 opening and they're being cautious because they've already chewed up the slack in the project timeline. Would love to see some more transparency about this from the park in the form of a blog post or something - people are far more reasonable when you can communicate the reasoning instead of defaulting to smoke and mirrors.

I too often thought that the biggest let down to Superman Escape as a ride is that both the helix area and the courtyard are incredibly visually unappealing. I'm totally okay with white sheds (it's a movie park, totally buy that) but to go from Main Street with its beautiful fountain area that's adorned with immaculate garden-beds and manicured landscaping to a drab smoker's area and a few basic pathways left me feeling wanting more. The pathway to Lethal Weapon back in its day from Main Street had some real charm, Wild West Falls still has a great deal of charm, Superman Escape though has always had real Six Flags vibes from the outside. If finally putting the ride in this area gives the park the justification to beautify both rides in one hit and make this a pleasant area to be in then i'm super all for it.

FYI a zero car is only a zero car if it has a wheel assembly underneath.

If you continue down that rabbit hole, fundamentally all flat rides are just differently shaped spinny things.

I never made that connection until today - is it a weird subtle dig at Leviathan you reckon?

100% - can't argue with that. It would be weird not to theme it DC at that point. And if it ends up going down that way, here's hoping the colours remain bright and bold and a stark contrast to Superman so that it's visually distinguishable in spite of the similar track design. Still think it should go to Sea World though, it would compliment the existing attraction mix perfectly.

Place your bets now - numbers 1 to 4 is Movie World, 5 to 7 is Sea World. I'm hoping it'll end up at Vikings (7) or Wild West Falls (4).

I'm just begging it won't be another DC-themed something or rather crammed in at the front of the park.

Context is key. I didn't say they don't care about thrill rides, which is what @New display name is inferring. In fact I've said the opposite - when replying to @Guest 239 I mentioned that parks like Dreamworld need a mix of attractions, because if they don't attendance dips, and pointed out that Sea World did exactly this. What I said was that post-incident public sentiment was risk-averse about the park, and rightfully so, but it isn't the sole factor, which is what old mate is trying imbue on my end. In fact, as myself and others have pointed out, Buzzsaw in particular was sold when the 10-year mandatory major rehab came due. I'm absolutely sure someone did the maths and decided that a bunch of factors (including ridership and ongoing costs) didn't stack up under the current strategy. Meanwhile, with Giant Drop, could you imagine if they closed that too? It'd be the final straw for many, and so in spite of present low ridership, I'm sure they realised it's worth the long-term effort. That strikes me as a sound call as well if the intention is to eventually sell the park. Also doesn't hurt that the depreciation rates the ATO provides specifically for The Giant Drop are pretty great and would do a lot more to help cashflow than doubling down on a 10-year rehab.