Wizard of Oz - Movie World Arkham Asylum Replacement

[Noll_57]

Some more photos… (spoilers ahead)

Flight of the Wicked Witch queue:

 

As you can see, the first section of the queue is very well themed. Unfortunately though, all of the immersion disappears as soon as you walk through the haunted forest and are presented with a bland hallway and a direct view of the studio’s BOH areas. 

 

The rest of the area is nicely presented, but definitely not “immersive” as the BOH areas are visible at pretty much all times and no effort has been made to block them out (or at least make them less noticeable). One thing to note is that there is a lot of permanent lighting all through the land, so I’m betting it should look pretty spectacular at night (though I do wish some of the lighting fixtures were more “themed” into the land. Modern suburban street lights do not belong in OZ). 
 

 

Kansas Twister queue:

 

At one point in the queue, you walk through Dorothy’s house. There are a number of effects (such as video screens in the windows showing debris flying past and lights that swing back and forth from the ceiling) that help support the idea that the twister is approaching. 

 

You then make your way out to the barn and the ride itself.

 

Overall, I think the rides themselves are good additions to the park and definitely help boost the park’s family attraction lineup. However, the OZ precinct is far from the immersive experience that was promised. Though it’s very nicely presented and there are elements that are quite well done, the overall product sadly feels a little cheap and tacky IMHO. 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited Friday at 04:53 AM by Noll_57

[GoGoBoy]

I think all things considered the theming is really excellent, particularly the inside queues. But even some of the little touches like the tractor etc around Kansas Twister are nice. If VRTP keeps this level up in the future, I'd find it very hard to complain (though knowing me I'll still try!). It does feel a bit like the Wizard of Oz 'courtyard' at the moment, so it would be great to see a future minor expansion such as an Oz-themed flat ride.

This effort they've put into theming makes me hope they will build a decent dark ride again one day, or at least lengthy rides with dark ride portions, as they always used to build. I know it's a challenge, but it would truly be taking the park back to its glory days

Edited Friday at 04:59 AM by GoGoBoy

[Lakyn17]

10 hours ago, Park Addict 93 said:

Exactly this, it feels very petty “we want to open before DW”. I’m really curious as to if there will be any real fanfare/proper opening festivities. I’m confident the original plan was to soft open today.

According to the app no Oz shows are even happening today. I don’t think they are stupid enough to open the land without the characters appearing however.

The standard Dorothy “Somewhere Over The Rainbow” performance that has been on Main St for years has been moved to the new land according to the app, but is only listed as from the 27th along with the other 2 new shows as part of H4H. The H4H show schedule on the website states this show is still taking place on Main St.

They have also put this on the website presumably for Guest Services to point at when people inevitably complain about the ride not operating.

“Flight of the Wicked Witch is opening under technical rehearsals and operational times may vary while our teams fine-tune their operations of the attraction.”

The somewhere over the rainbow performance was at the land today. They also did a few new little shows not listed on the app at the land. When they do a character appearance they sometimes perform so it’s not listed on the app yet but Glinda sang a song when she appeared, the Oz gang did a song and dance and obviously Dorothy’s somewhere over the rainbow. Felt like there were performances all day. 

[themagician]

Great photos @Noll_57 For the most part Kansas Twister looks to have been executed really well (minus the lighting that’s just got exposed cables around the track). And while the indoor queue and station of Wicked Witch looks really good, that transition area in the queue is so poor. The lack of effort to hide anything BOH and the bland walls is pretty sad to see considering their claim it’s world class. They definitely can’t have spent $100 million. But I know the coasters themselves are good, will be a hit with everyone and suit the park well.

[Sammus77]

I have to say personally I am disappointed. We didn’t spend long there so I won’t review the rides as we couldnt get on. From a ‘non rider’ perspective the land is incredibly small, boxed in and feels kinda flat/cheap. It almost feels like an old area of a park that use to be alive but lost its energy and pizazz over the years. It desperate for some kinetic energy and life in my opinion.

We had a Quick Look in the ride queues, there’s a small element of impressive theming then lots of blank walls and concrete and backstage views with literally 0 effort or thought put in. The wait times for wicked witch are also going to be horrendous. I can’t imagine most families/kids being happy to wait 2hours+ for a short ride. Seems a bizarre choice for a park that is screaming out for capacity and people eaters and who seem to have no interest in efficiencies or operations, but I digress. 
 

I’ll admit this is a step up from a lot of recent village installations and there are some really beautiful scenes here and there, but overall disappointed. It’s not an Immersive land at all, it’s a painted courtyard with some theming and a queue for two small coasters.

The claim of $100mill also baffles me. 
Between Woz and Rivertown, I’m hoping it pays off for dreamworld, they’ve put far more effort in this time round and you can see their passion in its endless details and uniqueness. 

[eggplant8585]

What are the operations like? I know at dreamworld the train is typically ready to go about 10-20 seconds after the other train gets to the brake run

[Levi]

yeah i think Rivertown definitely has been executed a lot better then WoO. i think when you hype up a product so much like they have for 4 years, you need to deliver more then you promised, especially when you’re saving money using cookie cutter layouts. the fact they haven’t even covered the concrete tunnel on FOTWW with atleast some fog speaks volumes. however, i haven’t seen it in person, so i’ll reserve my final judgements until i see it for myself.

Edited Friday at 05:43 AM by Levi

[CR4ZE]

Is it not possible that the theming/queues can be finished in stages?

[Ash]

 

1 hour ago, Levi said:

1 hour ago, themagician said:

Great photos @Noll_57 For the most part Kansas Twister looks to have been executed really well (minus the lighting that’s just got exposed cables around the track). And while the indoor queue and station of Wicked Witch looks really good, that transition area in the queue is so poor. The lack of effort to hide anything BOH and the bland walls is pretty sad to see considering their claim it’s world class. They definitely can’t have spent $100 million. But I know the coasters themselves are good, will be a hit with everyone and suit the park well.

Loving the reviews etc so far and the honesty. I agree with the Magician, the Kansas Twisters que line looks good, but there are is definitely room for improvements. 
The $100 million they claim surely would include the removal of Arkham but even so that seems like overkill. 
 

Space has definitely favoured Dreamworld in this instance and the backdrop of the river etc behind Rivertown, but overall it looks like Rivertown might have won this one, but the public in general win with 3 new coasters and a massive improvement in scenery compared to what we are used to 

[themagician]

12 minutes ago, CR4ZE said:

Is it not possible that the theming/queues can be finished in stages?

Considering they’ve said it’s officially opened, I doubt it

[Coppertine]

2 hours ago, eggplant8585 said:

What are the operations like? I know at dreamworld the train is typically ready to go about 10-20 seconds after the other train gets to the brake run

For Kansas Twister? Pretty good, I would say it's around a minute to a minute and a half for dispatches and since it's a boomerang coaster with 2 trains at once, it's a capacity eater.

Flight of the Wicked Witch on the other hand has only got 1 single train (because the model VRTP used can only brake in the station (ala Kenny's Forest Flyer) and therefore is forced to have 1 train of 20 rows of 2) yet the train takes around 5-8 minutes per cycle (I did a stopwatch with one being 7 minutes and another being 5 minutes.) I hear the queue has gotten better over the day. But I just feel VRTP should have picked a model that allowed for more than just 1 single train to take in that amount of guests since it's technically the newest inverted coaster in Australia.

[Sly086]

For the people that have rode it, is there storage boxes for your loose things?

[themagician]

Here’s a Flight of the Wicked Witch POV

https://www.facebook.com/share/v/19YvSvs7M2/?

[Narra]

Just got back from taking the nephew, my thoughts:

The Good

• The theming in the queue entry buildings is top tier, very immersive and well themed
• The land isn't as bare as I initially thought it looked from the Fright Night images
• Accessibility for people with disabilities was incredible, well beyond anything any of the parks do at the moment
• Despite the pathway into the land being quite narrow, it didn't feel congested. Even in the main entrance itself I never felt overcrowded
• Statues at the front are awesome, really good quality and I am sure we will see it 10,000 times on Instagram every week. (Way better than that nightmare fuel flash statue)
• Munchkin land was neat, if only people would move out of way so you can take photos instead of sitting on their phones in front it. They might need to put some seating in the area for people not riding so they don't use all the theming as chairs
• The Emerald City projections are pretty neat and its nice to have an airconditioned space to hang for a bit. Surprisingly there wasn't a huge crowd, in fact it was almost empty when we walked through, maybe staff move you along if you hang around too long?
• KT seems like it is going to be a great number absorber for the park, even with average operations and multiple empty seats the line never seemed to extended beyond the stairs out of the indoor queue section. Which is about the amount you'd fit on both trains. Chatting with some of the people in line they were saying they managed to get multiple rides in on KT easily.
• The Vekoma trains on both are great, very freeing even for someone with bigger legs. I had no issues getting them past the minimum close which is a struggle for me on rides like Kenny's Forest Flyer over at Dreamworld
• Both coasters are exceptionally smooth, though I didn't expect anything different from modern Vekoma
• Tons of staff working the rides, hopefully once they get in the rhythm more things will get faster. Assuming Movie World continues staffing them with that many.

The Bad

• Slow operations. I timed FOTWW at an average of 4:30 per dispatch while the ride lasts just over a minute. KT was around 4 minutes flat for a ~35 second ride.
• No single rider option. Every single train that was dispatched had empty seats, on average I counted around 4 empty seats per train. Staff send groups up one at a time to the ride from the queue, but then just stand around looking at their feet until they send the next group up. Surely they could pop their heads around the corner, count the number of empty rows and send a few more people through. Our ride on KT had 7 empty seats (including entire rows) on our train, plus 4 more empty single seats on the opposite side. The queue still had plenty of people in it at this time. They also don't seem to even try and group people, there was a single rider in front of us who was put in their own row despite another single rider being further up the train. Fingers crossed this is just while they get used to operating it and things speed up in the future
• The old pathway through to Scooby was still closed, though it was painted so I assume it will open eventually
• FOTWW was listed at 45mins when we joined the queue, took over 1.5 hours to get on. KT was listed as 5 minutes, which was closer to 10 given the dispatch times, but not a huge deal.
• The indoor section of FOTWW's queue is a bit too dark, my eyes aren't the best but also not the worst. I guess it helps the immersion but also makes some of the details harder to make out
• Once you get out of the indoor sections it is basically a fenced in concrete pathway with very little shade. Despite the queue being over an hour long it just barely stretched into the FOTWW building, leaving most people standing out in the sun
• The photo area where you scan your photos is shared for both rides and has a very tight doorway to get in, it was full of people and you could barely squeeze in to collect your photos.
• The section the rides are in is basically unexplorable, the fencing they've used looks a bit different to the stuff over at Rivertown in that the holes are smaller, blocking even more visibility of the theming. There was one photo op with some trees from FOTWW as you exit the ride where you can take photos, but outside of that it was a concrete path surrounded in black wire fencing. I would have loved a section of cornfield to take photos in

Overall

• I think the land is good and step in the right direction. From what I have seen of Rivertown I would rate that higher, however I have yet to actually experience it myself so won't say for certain.
• For two off the shelf model coasters I think they couldn't have picked a much better option for the plot of land. Of course something custom would have been way better, but 99% of visitors aren't going to know or care.
• Theming, where it exists, is great. If this is what we can expect moving forward I will be a happy camper. Though I will wait and see if they maintain it, who wants to take bets on how long until one of the screens in the KT queue windows is just black?

[Ogre]

I'd have to agree that the land is sadly pretty mixed, leading towards the negative. I love the initial themed indoor queues for both coasters, but after that... oh dear.

[LoZza]

At least it isn't just rollercoasters with a few comic panels outside of them

Edited Friday at 09:37 AM by LoZza

[PNK1622]

I visited today around 1pm. 
 

KT was showing a 5 min wait and that’s all we waited. It seems to load 40 people every cycle so the wait never went over 15mins that I saw.

We waited 45mins for FOTWW. We walked straight through the inside queue section which looked fantastic and spent all 45mins queuing outside in the sun. At the entrance to the castle They have a cast member checking fast track and sending people inside the castle to the loading platform. They should move this to the end of the inside building and have people queuing in the inside themed queue and just walking quickly through the sun area to the castle. It’s like they have wasted this amazing themed inside queue just to have people standing outside in the sun for 45+mins. 

[CR4ZE]

4 hours ago, themagician said:

Considering they’ve said it’s officially opened, I doubt it

Why?

I'm not one to give VRTP much grace, however it's entirely plausible that they've rushed through the final stages of construction to get it open on time, even if that means there are "finishing touches" forthcoming. That's certainly not unheard of; for some reason, I seem to recall that there's been some recent Cedar Fair or SeaWorld projects that have "opened" unfinished with extra theming added later. @Ogre mentioned in the other thread that there's already been some enhancements to Rivertown over the past few days. And let's be honest, for all intents and purposes, today really was a soft-launch to preemptively get it running smoothly for the Boxing Day crowds.

If nothing's been added by February, I'll happily be proven wrong, but I do get the sense they've rushed to the finish line and that there may be further works that couldn't be lined up on time.

[Coppertine]

15 minutes ago, CR4ZE said:

Why?

I'm not one to give VRTP much grace, however it's entirely plausible that they've rushed through the final stages of construction to get it open on time, even if that means there are "finishing touches" forthcoming. That's certainly not unheard of; for some reason, I seem to recall that there's been some recent Cedar Fair or SeaWorld projects that have "opened" unfinished with extra theming added later. @Ogre mentioned in the other thread that there's already been some enhancements to Rivertown over the past few days. And let's be honest, for all intents and purposes, today really was a soft-launch to preemptively get it running smoothly for the Boxing Day crowds.

If nothing's been added by February, I'll happily be proven wrong, but I do get the sense they've rushed to the finish line and that there may be further works that couldn't be lined up on time.

In terms with Rivertown, that was still classified as a soft opening. They haven't classified it as being fully open to the public yet. If it was, we would have all gotten an email for the grand opening date. Dreamworld seems to be adding in stuff as they come and only want to fully open the area when it's ready.

[aaronm]

Appreciate the pictures and reports from those who’ve visited. I’m getting the impression this is like Nintendo Land at Universal Hollywood. Small, cheap and unimpressive. Will be nice to +3 the coaster count but nothing in this land suggests it will have the perennial appeal of SDSC or (lest we forget) LTRR.

[Naazon]

1 hour ago, CR4ZE said:

@Ogre mentioned in the other thread that there's already been some enhancements to Rivertown over the past few days. And let's be honest, for all intents and purposes, today really was a soft-launch to preemptively get it running smoothly for the Boxing Day crowds.

Yes, but Rivertown isn't advertised as "Open". 

[Baconjack]

Oh boy that 2nd half of the wicked witch queue is awful. Station looks about as good as Rivals too, a mural in the station is a massive step backwards from what we got on Leviathan 2 years ago.

There's no way $100m has been spent on 2 off the shelf rides with incomplete theming past the preshow and the start of the queues for the coasters (which I'll admit is pretty good). I thought the land was $60m a few months ago, why's the figure been almost doubled? $100m is approaching Universal/Disney territory

As for rushing construction, this started its build much earlier than Dreamworld did with Rivertown. Even if there was stuff left to be added, they had the head start by a few months on a project of similar scope. You'd think it would be in a better state than this?

Edited Friday at 02:03 PM by Baconjack

[CR4ZE]

1 hour ago, Naazon said:

Yes, but Rivertown isn't advertised as "Open". 

How about re-reading my post a little more scrupulously.

[Levi]

i’m not sure if i’m remembering correctly, but wasn’t Wicked Witches station meant to have screens and show the Monkeys flying away as the train departed the station? i swear this was announced when the whole area was announced.

[Ogre]

56 minutes ago, Levi said:

i’m not sure if i’m remembering correctly, but wasn’t Wicked Witches station meant to have screens and show the Monkeys flying away as the train departed the station? i swear this was announced when the whole area was announced.

I don't think it was announced, but the concept art the park posted does suggest a similar station to Leviathan's. Coaster Studios were also told by Village (when they visited last year) that WoZ would have the "same theming standard as Leviathan".