Sea World Celebrates 50 Years

[themagician]

They’ve somewhat tied the front of the park up, there is some signage throughout the park and they’ve painted Wally gold.

[joz]

I do quite like those 50 banners. I'm not sold on Gold Wally, also think any sign beyond 'Sea World *Year*' is messy as hell. Must we have hashtags in real life? But otherwise all the 50th stuff seems like a thing.

[Coasterjoe]

I know Vikings Revenge has been discussed on this thread already but I was at Seaworld last night and honestly would love to know what they are planning to do with the space and the ride itself. Its just an eyesore, either refurbish and reopen, or remove it. 

[Brad2912]

1 hour ago, joz said:

I do quite like those 50 banners. I'm not sold on Gold Wally, also think any sign beyond 'Sea World *Year*' is messy as hell. Must we have hashtags in real life? But otherwise all the 50th stuff seems like a thing.

Gold Wally looks worse in person imo… I thought it looks super tacky a few weeks ago at Spooky Nights. Some gold highlights (maybe his hat or something) would have been much better 

[themagician]

@Brad2912 agreed. A golden hat and tusks maybe and then do a few full gold dolphins and place them around the park. Then they could make it a treasure hunt for the kids. 

[Naazon]

6 hours ago, Coasterjoe said:

I know Vikings Revenge has been discussed on this thread already but I was at Seaworld last night and honestly would love to know what they are planning to do with the space and the ride itself. Its just an eyesore, either refurbish and reopen, or remove it. 

They recently re-surfaced all the bridges over the Vikings troughs and the station looks like it had a quick once over clean. The roof beams look somewhat recently painted.

Otherwise no word on it.

[Smol bean]

^ Ok but why would they all this work for a defunct ride I'm not saying that the ride is coming back but it seems kinda odd for them to do quite a bit for this ride.

[themagician]

The bridge works needed to be done for access to Storm. The cleaning up could just be so it doesn’t look like a pile of mess. But if they have done some repainting, that is strange 

[Whombex]

If you can hide away a SBNO ride on the edge of your park, you can get away with it. If you have a SBNO ride/area in the middle of your park, you can't pretend it doesn't exist. The station and castle is a generous footprint for a new attraction, but New Atlantis is the current Capex focus.

Plus, there's no easy back-of-house access to that part of the park for heavy vehicles/machinery. They will have to take that into consideration when replacing VR.

[Naazon]

14 hours ago, themagician said:

The bridge works needed to be done for access to Storm. The cleaning up could just be so it doesn’t look like a pile of mess. But if they have done some repainting, that is strange 

When I say recently, the paint isn't faded, peeling or dusty. Recently could have been 2 years ago but from what I was looking at, they looked fresh.

And ontop of one of the stone pillars in the station is what appears to be a new bottle of mount franklin water, with their new bottle design/label (not sure how long ago it was introduced though). Would be tricky for a member of the GP to put that there, so people for sure have been in and around there and I doubt a cleaner would leave rubbish like that.

[Smol bean]

Cant wait for this start to start a long thread about Viking reopening maybe

[Naazon]

18 hours ago, Smol bean said:

Cant wait for this start to start a long thread about Viking reopening maybe

Eureka Mountain all over again.

[Slick]

23 hours ago, Smol bean said:

Cant wait for this start to start a long thread about Viking reopening maybe

If it was five years ago when it closed, I would've said (and did!) that they were crazy not to spend the money refurbishing Viking's, particularly during a period where they didn't have a lot of attractions on offer. Now I wonder if they spent the money tomorrow, would it be worth it? I figure they've got plans for the castle but it'll be after Movie World's next build, so we're talking a few million to refurb only for a SBNO to run for another year or two? I don't see it ever happening now, unless the castle is 100% staying and just being gutted. Even then, is that the best case scenario for the castle, a new ride and Vikings?

In a perfect world, redesigning that castle from the scratch is the way to go. Designing a building to look like a lighthouse (or whatever you like really) that can encompass a dark ride, the log flume and even some sort of observation space would be brilliant. Hell, bonus points if you can fit a new ropeway platform in there too.

 

[DaptoFunlandGuy]

On 30/10/2021 at 11:17 AM, themagician said:

They’ve somewhat tied the front of the park up, there is some signage throughout the park and they’ve painted Wally gold.

The clean-up at the front entrance is mainly down to a redesign of the souvenir shop. Instead of exiting through the shop, you do a u-turn and exit through the same doors you entered the shop, and then quickly exit through a small gate beside the entrance booths. 

So the giant fuck-you billboards are gone because they no longer need to steer you back inside the entrance plaza to flog you a shitty greenscreen photo, because by exiting you beside the entrance booths, you walk straight by it. 

It's time they redesigned and refurbished the entrance plaza and begin using it the way they used to again.

[themagician]

Interesting. Because when I left the park the other day, I exited through the gift shop and out the usual exit door