The Decline Of Movie World

[Rivals]

41 minutes ago, joz said:

If your test is 'new slides closed = can't run a park' then the one you're simping for doesn't do well.

good thing i never said that lmao. I said i forgot about the new Wnw slide complex having issues, never said that was the soul reason for the park being run bad, the reasons the park is being run bad is due to all the factors (and more) listed in the post i’ve replied too. next time i’ll make sure to restate everything the prior comment said just so you can understand 

[joz]

2 hours ago, Rivals said:

honestly completely forgot about Leviathan and that whole mess as well as Wnw new slide complex’s issues so my bad movie world isn’t the only one in that company being run bad. 

You literally did.

[Rivals]

12 minutes ago, joz said:

You literally did.

stop putting words in my mouth… i said “honestly completely forgot about Leviathan and that whole mess as well as Wnw new slide complex’s issues so my bad movie world isn’t the only one in that company being run bad.”

meaning, i forgot about the whole leviathan mess and the issues going on with wnw’s new slides. Then replying to the many factors they said about how Sea World and Wnw are being run bad, i said “so my bad movie world isn’t the only one in that company being run bad.” 

so like i said, next time i’ll make sure to rewrite everything the prior person said just so you can understand. 

Edited April 6, 2022 by Rivals

[joz]

Right well apparently issues with new slide is now not a factor to consider when deciding if a park is run well or not? Glad weve established that, and all it took was a comparison to DW.

[DaptoFunlandGuy]

I mean - Coomera is as much of if not more of a shitshow than Oxenford right now, but in terms of the points I made earlier:

WWW: Fully Six - manufacturer fault.... anything else i'm not aware of?

WNW: New Slide Complex - Manufacturer Fault, Sky Coaster always closed. Zip Line never runs. SurfRider always closed.. don't get me started on the buggy complex either.

 

I think that's the point he was referencing.

[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.

 

[New display name]

You know what's more annoying than reading a biased opinion?

Reading people getting told what they should think and say.

[Slick]

2 minutes ago, New display name said:

You know what's more annoying than reading a biased opinion?

Reading people getting told what they should think and say.

Yeah look it's important to consider opinions are like arseholes - everyone has one. Honestly though no stress though, the irony in being annoyed about that post is noted.  

[New display name]

3 minutes ago, Slick said:

the irony in being annoyed about that post is noted.  

Thank you.

[Guest 239]

22 minutes ago, Slick said:

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.

Honestly, and maybe I am wrong, but I've always considered the 'world class' thing to be more of a joke than anything else because it lost all meaning after being used for the umpteenth million time. I doubt that anybody is actually crying foul because of the usage of the word and more so just making a mockery of it, similar to how many make light of the fact that Leviathan is advertised as 'World’s greatest family rollercoaster'. It's all puffery at the end of the day. 

But for arguments sake, I think the difference in your comparison is that the examples you included are referring to a 'World Class supplier' and 'world-class tourism infrastructure asset' respectively, unlike Movie World which has 'Australia's #1 Theme Park' flat front and center on their website as well as Sea World having 'Australia #1 Marine Park'. I think it does deserve some criticism when they fall short of their brand's hero message and identity.

I'm one of the many that will happily agree that our theme parks fall short in all regards when compared to the world stage. PhantasiaLand is a great example because VRTP absolutely wipes the floor with them in terms of attendance, yet Phantasia turns around and laughs by creating groundbreaking, legitimate world-class products with seemingly relative ease. This has a bit to do with geography, and I discuss it further here, but because of this I don't think it's unreasonable for people to criticize the presentation and business practices of what is advertised as Australia's #1 theme park. 

I'm in the privileged position of having visited many theme parks around the world and my bar is pretty darn high when it comes to actually impressing me, but my metric of success as a guest comes down to something fairly simple; how successfully does a park utilise what is readily available to them to improve the guest experience?

And with this in mind, I just don't believe that Movie World at the moment are successfully utilising their available resources. They are performing lots of big picture refurbishments and it's clear that they're considerate of their brand and image with things such as the Royal Caribbean deal to get guests through the gate, but once you're through those gates is when they start failing in many regards on the smaller stuff. It would be fine if it was some things here and there, but this thread alone shows that it's obvious that its not. The guest experience is suffering, and you can't ignore that for very long when you're main revenue opportunity is convincing the public to enter your premium gated venue.

With their neglect towards internal presentation and a further shift towards predatory purchasing practices, are they making more money than usual? Probably! But so is Disney World, and look how their lack of focus on the guest experience is going for them in terms of public perception. 

The benefit for Movie World is that with my metric of success it's very easy for them to turn the situation around by placing that focus back on the guest experience, which is also why it's so disappointing that they aren't doing this already. 

[aaronm]

I imagine most on these forums would have some sort of annual pass, but I find it hard to believe a day guest would spend $110 on admission and walk away happy with the current park offering. There always seems to be at least one major ride out of action and some fairly lengthy waits on others (seemingly due to the park choosing to run fewer trains or have fewer staff present). And even of the open attractions, a few (Scooby, HWSD, JL) are in a pretty sad state these days.

When Rivals opened it felt like the park finally had all the elements of a fantastic lineup in place. The ride offering isn't a problem any longer, it's understaffing and poor maintenance, and guest feedback is dismissed "because Covid".

[Noll_57]

So I stopped by the park again yesterday and was disappointed to see that all of the above mentioned issues have only gotten worse. Gardens have only become more overgrown, there’s still barely any background music playing around the park and even the main entrance gate has a massive crack in it in plain sight. Not to mention the terrible operations and staff who clearly didn’t want to be there. I was hoping there might have been at least some chance that VRTP could have looked at some of these issues before the busy Easter school holiday period, but that clearly isn’t the case. Can’t see too many people being impressed with the current state of the place. 

[nomdeplume]

On 05/04/2022 at 9:50 PM, Rivals said:

if they were in a bad financial situation, they wouldn’t have been able to refurbish both road runner and WWF at the same time, build WNW’s new slide complex, introduce the new animal experiences to paradise country, refurbish Surfrider (even if it still isn’t open yet) or introduce new events such as Hooray for Hollywood. This also doesn't make sense as their other properties aren’t being run nearly as bad as MW. 

 

When dreamworld was declining, they copped a lot more and they weren’t cut any slack or had excuses made for them, so why isn’t it the same now they’ve swapped places?

Most/all of this spend was committed to before covid (and is being funded by huge debt).

At its worst point, the joint had a couple of weeks left to run before it was lights out.

It’s going to take many years before this is a healthy business, and right now there are much bigger priorities.

There are about 20 people on the planet that notice the trivial issues being discussed here and they’re all on this thread.

[New display name]

41 minutes ago, nomdeplume said:

There are about 20 people on the planet that notice the trivial issues being discussed here and they’re all on this thread.

We were having the same discussions about DW's appearance right before DW killed 4 people.

I'm not suggesting this is about to happen at MW but it does raise the questions if MW it letting its appearance slip, what else is MW letting slip?

Edited April 11, 2022 by New display name

[Brad2912]

1 hour ago, nomdeplume said:

There are about 20 people on the planet that notice the trivial issues being discussed here and they’re all on this thread.

You clearly haven’t been on any of MW’s social pages of late. Complaints are endless. 

[Rivals]

6 minutes ago, Brad2912 said:

You clearly haven’t been on any of MW’s social pages of late. Complaints are endless. 

even in park the complaints are bad, overhearing park guests talk about how bad the park looks, the lines are moving and even overhead a family requesting for a refund due to “the day being a waste of money.”

even i go with my GP friends, and they bring up how movie world use to be so much better.

[DaptoFunlandGuy]

While there may only be about 20 people currently discussing it in this thread, rest assured, a lot of people are noticing it. Not necessarily consciously - until you mention it to them and they go 'oh yeah! i did notice that!'. 

It used to be - when you'd point out the horrible state of something in Dreamworld, you'd point to a similar 'thing' at Movie World and say 'see? that's how you do it'. While the tables certainly haven't turned (DW still has a long way to go) MW is racing to the bottom fast.

[themagician]

It was a very busy day at the park, with WWF having the longest wait of 2 hours 

[DaptoFunlandGuy]

I mean, not sure if the park is really busy or if they've just neutered a ride with great capacity by eliminating the continuous load station and introducing individual lapbars. Like sure - health and safety reasons are fine, but the capacity loss is still a loss.

(It also doesn't help to have an entire boat cycling the ride completely tagged out. I heard a boat sank in the trough the other day too.)

[Levithian]

On 11/04/2022 at 10:58 AM, nomdeplume said:

Most/all of this spend was committed to before covid (and is being funded by huge debt).

At its worst point, the joint had a couple of weeks left to run before it was lights out.

It’s going to take many years before this is a healthy business, and right now there are much bigger priorities.

There are about 20 people on the planet that notice the trivial issues being discussed here and they’re all on this thread.

Yeah..... No.

Don't get it confused with the position Ardent was in. Village roadshow had money in capital but were also able to refinance loans if need be, they just said it would be irresponsible (to investors) to take on more debt at this time and were going to run as thin as possible to see out the covid downturn/closures. Ardent were told they have no options available to them, they had nothing to borrow against as they had sold off pretty much everything of value and nobody would issue them any credit. That's two vastly different positions.

Remember theme parks are just a division for village roadshow, they are also one of their businesses that actually makes a profit every year. You aren't going to sacrifice a core of your business when you have the potential to sell off other parts which aren't as/profitable, or borrow more and refinance existing debt. They had to take on more debt following the dreamworld accident and the huge downturn the industry experienced, this included their big spend items at movieworld and seaworld. In effect, what happened in 18-19 financial year is they sold off wet n wild sydney, they sold out of their cinema partnership in singapore and they sold the land movie world and wet n wild are built upon. Not only did they sell off properties costing them money, they received over 250 million from the sale of the above. This meant they reduced their liabilities over 90 million dollars, knocked 120 million out of their loans, earnings within the theme parks division doubled to 76 million (big recovery following the accident), the equity in the company actually went up 50 million, while the debt went down.

The plans over 2018-2019 also allowed them to refinance their loans which provided them with over 100 million to draw down on over the immediate future if need be. The end result for VRL was a net loss of 6.6 million, but if you dig further you'll see that cash flows increased by nearly 4 times to over 80 million, cash flows used for investments and to manage debt went up nearly 30 million, while repayment on their loans dropped over 100 million dollars. So you had a company that sold off underperforming assets, reduced not only their debt, but also their repayments, but were still investing money back into the company.

They were in an excellent position prior to covid, recovery was in full swing, revenues were well up, the equity in the company alone was valued at over half a billion dollars. Why do you think they attracted multiple buyout offers approaching 1 billion dollars if the company was so close to collapse?

At the end of the 2020 financial year it showed covid cost them an additional 70 million dollars. Remember that 100 million they could draw down upon? This is where the covid cost comes from, they drew down 70 million dollars on what is basically a line of credit to cover operational costs with multiple businesses shut and provide them funds to trade through into the next financial year when revenue was basically wiped out. They had more immediately available to them if needed, and that was before looking at refinancing on existing loans they had previous worked to pay down. All this was all before the government reached out with an offer of support too. Since the take over, the continued impact of covid and the fact that their cinema division was still basically shuttered, it cost another 38 million across the 2021 financial year.

They weren't even close to being on their last legs, they were still in a better financial position with lower amounts of debt and lower repayments to their loans even after covid came along and wiped out their revenue streams and generated additional debt due to running costs/overheads. Have a look at the covid 19 report Mittleman Brothers released and why they were unhappy with how much the company was actually undervalued during takeover offers. 

If that's all too much to read; have a look at net debt totals across the last 7 years. 

2020-2021 - 228.5 million

2019-2020 - 278.3 million

2018-2019 - 219.6 million

2017-2018 - 338.5 million

2016-2017 - 527.1 million

2015-2016 - 534.7 million

2014-2015 - 402.2 million

2013-2014 - 305.5 million

For reference, net debt is essentially gross (all) debt, minus available cash balances.  
 

Edited April 12, 2022 by Levithian

[Levithian]

It's entirely the reason why I said before that I think it'll be basically business as usual, not to expect anything too drastic as the village group continues to trade out of covid. Given how cheap they purchased the company for, If they keep chipping away at things while keeping spending low, BGH could see an investment return of a few hundred million dollars in very short period of time. That's all they will be focusing on, how to get the best bang for their buck. Plowing 100-150 million into the company probably isn't a good return on their investment. 

[nomdeplume]

On 13/04/2022 at 9:16 AM, Levithian said:

Yeah..... No.

Don't get it confused with the position Ardent was in. Village roadshow had money in capital but were also able to refinance loans if need be, they just said it would be irresponsible (to investors) to take on more debt at this time and were going to run as thin as possible to see out the covid downturn/closures. Ardent were told they have no options available to them, they had nothing to borrow against as they had sold off pretty much everything of value and nobody would issue them any credit. That's two vastly different positions.

Remember theme parks are just a division for village roadshow, they are also one of their businesses that actually makes a profit every year. You aren't going to sacrifice a core of your business when you have the potential to sell off other parts which aren't as/profitable, or borrow more and refinance existing debt. They had to take on more debt following the dreamworld accident and the huge downturn the industry experienced, this included their big spend items at movieworld and seaworld. In effect, what happened in 18-19 financial year is they sold off wet n wild sydney, they sold out of their cinema partnership in singapore and they sold the land movie world and wet n wild are built upon. Not only did they sell off properties costing them money, they received over 250 million from the sale of the above. This meant they reduced their liabilities over 90 million dollars, knocked 120 million out of their loans, earnings within the theme parks division doubled to 76 million (big recovery following the accident), the equity in the company actually went up 50 million, while the debt went down.

The plans over 2018-2019 also allowed them to refinance their loans which provided them with over 100 million to draw down on over the immediate future if need be. The end result for VRL was a net loss of 6.6 million, but if you dig further you'll see that cash flows increased by nearly 4 times to over 80 million, cash flows used for investments and to manage debt went up nearly 30 million, while repayment on their loans dropped over 100 million dollars. So you had a company that sold off underperforming assets, reduced not only their debt, but also their repayments, but were still investing money back into the company.

They were in an excellent position prior to covid, recovery was in full swing, revenues were well up, the equity in the company alone was valued at over half a billion dollars. Why do you think they attracted multiple buyout offers approaching 1 billion dollars if the company was so close to collapse?

At the end of the 2020 financial year it showed covid cost them an additional 70 million dollars. Remember that 100 million they could draw down upon? This is where the covid cost comes from, they drew down 70 million dollars on what is basically a line of credit to cover operational costs with multiple businesses shut and provide them funds to trade through into the next financial year when revenue was basically wiped out. They had more immediately available to them if needed, and that was before looking at refinancing on existing loans they had previous worked to pay down. All this was all before the government reached out with an offer of support too. Since the take over, the continued impact of covid and the fact that their cinema division was still basically shuttered, it cost another 38 million across the 2021 financial year.

They weren't even close to being on their last legs, they were still in a better financial position with lower amounts of debt and lower repayments to their loans even after covid came along and wiped out their revenue streams and generated additional debt due to running costs/overheads. Have a look at the covid 19 report Mittleman Brothers released and why they were unhappy with how much the company was actually undervalued during takeover offers. 

If that's all too much to read; have a look at net debt totals across the last 7 years. 

2020-2021 - 228.5 million

2019-2020 - 278.3 million

2018-2019 - 219.6 million

2017-2018 - 338.5 million

2016-2017 - 527.1 million

2015-2016 - 534.7 million

2014-2015 - 402.2 million

2013-2014 - 305.5 million

For reference, net debt is essentially gross (all) debt, minus available cash balances.  
 

This is a very simplified version of what actually happened. Having been in the boardroom before/during/after covid I can tell you it was a hell of a lot more complex and dire than this.

The group went very close to maxing out the existing debt facility mid 2020 before finally securing new financing. In July 2020 VRL was a very unappealing business to be sinking money into so this was far from a guarantee...and at the time it was burning $15m a month. 

EDIT: the government announced it would commit to supporting the business, and then provided no specifics about how and when this would happen.

Edited April 14, 2022 by nomdeplume

[Brad2912]

No RF cards on the interactive elements in the supervillains area, and also appeared to be none for sale. In lieu of this they have decided to let Killer Crocs’ water feature just run constantly, which is cool, except the drainage wasn’t build for that, so it just floods the entire pathway (and also seems a decent waste of water….)
 

Gees…. Just went on JL. Time to just gut that place and start again… I’d say at least 50% of the targets don’t work/register, or the 50% that do, half of those don’t go dark after hitting. 2 from 5 of the projection screens do not work at all (but audio plays for the scene you cannot see), the fog curtain doesn’t work, the doors are stuck open so the effect of the portals are useless, and half the animatronics are dead/frozen. 
 

1/10. Do better Movieworld. 

[themagician]

What’s annoying about that water going everywhere is it flows into the entrance and queue of Doomsday, so when the ride eventually reopens you have to step through the water to ride. 

[WalleyWorld]

2 hours ago, Brad2912 said:

No RF cards on the interactive elements in the supervillains area, and also appeared to be none for sale.

2 hours ago, Brad2912 said:

1/10. Do better Movieworld. 

Just remove the kinect games already.

That whole area is a masterclass of how NOT to design a theme park land. The #1 worst decision execs made was swap the position of the gift shop and the Doomsday ride entrance - for the sole reason of forcing entry through a gift shop, in order to sell more upcharge wristbands. They hid arguably Australia's best ride entrance sign (also a very instagramable photo op) at the back of the land. And instead built a lacklustre faux brick gift shop as the land's entrance portal. This shop with the tall themed billboards obscures the 'reveal' of Doomsday from the midway (as you walk towards WWF) - making the ride look smaller and thus less grand/intimidating.

Upcharge experiences should compliment an existing experience. Yet in this case, all it did was ruin any positive potential the land had. And now you can't even use the games!

0/10. Put the land and Doomsday in the bin.

Edited April 30, 2022 by Luke