The validity of Google reviews

[DaptoFunlandGuy]

20 hours ago, joz said:

So take your 'only got on 3 rides' reviews and fuck off.

Your 'bad decision' day does let you get on five rides, and this is achieveable as a solo adult, or a group who entirely follow the group plan unwaveringly.

This is not the only demographic in the park. A family with smaller, and older kids, for example, is going to have different priorities. 

You didn't see any shows, or main street entertainment. You only grabbed a quick service bite to eat, rather than finding somewhere to sit and ordering food for everyone, and then having kids that take a while to eat their lunch (And certainly not wanting to waste it because it cost you the GDP of a small african nation). You didn't get photos with any of the kid's favourite characters, you didn't browse the giftshop so your kid could spend the $10 Grammy gave him on the small piece of plastic crap that is all he can afford...

And TOILETS. You haven't allowed a single moment for the umpteenth trip to the toilet because Sally's bladder isn't bottomless and the bottomless sipper is.

I can't really be bothered going through a hypothetical analysis on the queue wait times and what not, but if you throw in 'wanting to go to the toilet' and 'wanting a snack' and 'need another drink' and 'can we get a photo', as well as trying to herd the 16 cats that make up your family, I can assure you, 3 rides in a day with a family of mixed age kids isn't outside the realm of possibility. Especially if the kids age groups mean that a trip to WB Kids is necessary so the little guy can ride something too (sure families can split up to do things like that simultaneous but not all families want to do that).

Can others do more? Yes. Does that mean the 3-rides in a day reviews are bullshit? No. We've long talked about guests in general leaving their brains at the door. they're on holidays. they don't walk into the park with a game plan... and they shouldn't have to.

13 hours ago, joz said:

How many people want to go on Rivals AND JDS? In the history of the park, I'm pretty sure the answer is 1, and she wasn't there on Monday.

I think I covered this, but just to be clear, you seem to be discussing a single person's experience in the park (And I agree, probably only one person who wants to do both) but in the scheme, Dad, maybe Mum, definitely Teen are heading for Rivals, but early primary schooler wants to do JDS, so as a unit, that family wants to do both, and therefore has to line up for both. 

Yeah, the teen is probably going to go off on their own (these days they've got phones) but Dad and maybe Mum probably want to ride Rivals too - and someone has to look after Jimmy who isn't tall enough to ride yet.

[joz]

To be clear, I on occasion go with family, and probably do 1-3 rides. We also see whatever is in the roxy, watch whatever incarnation of a stunt show is playing, watch the parade, have lunch. It's a full day out and at no point has it occurred to me to get mad at the fact we're getting 3 rides in. If you're the sort of person to whom rides are the priority, but you can't prioritise them, I'm sorry but I don't know what you want the park to do about that.

 

'Are you saying there are no issues and everything is totally fine?'

 

No, that's not what I'm saying and you know full well it's not. Is it possible to go to MW and do 3 rides? Yeah sure. Is it the parks fault if that happens? No, if you want to do rides, you've got to be a little more involved in making sure you actually go on them.

[Dean Barnett]

12 minutes ago, joz said:

No, if you want to do rides, you've got to be a little more involved in making sure you actually go on them.

I did a huge europe trip last year - at every park I managed to get every single roller coaster that was open on the one day (with the exception of Thorpe Park and Alton Towers.. Merlin sucks. Wicker Man was the only coaster not open for my visit)

No prior planning was required. I had enough time to do shows, eat food and ride flat and dark rides. For the size of our parks this is a reasonable expectation. 

For context I visited April/May - although it wasn't peak, most of the parks were full of school kids (especially the merlin ones).

You've gotta understand that if you take your family (2 adults, 2 children) to the parks .. for over $440...  $~50 per hour for your day, it is a reasonable expectation that you will do all the attractions that you wish to do. With the limited opening hours (which surprises all the thoosies coming through now) and the rubbish operations - it simply is not possible, and it should be. 

With the express pass you're looking at over $1,000.. for one day.

Edited January 26, 2023 by Dean Barnett

[joz]

Cool story bro. I went to Alton Towers and rode everything without planning. I love it when we share meaningless stories!

[rappa]

14 minutes ago, Dean Barnett said:

For the size of our parks this is a reasonable expectation. 

When I go to America and order a large Big Mac Meal I get 100kg of food. When I order one in Australia I get a modest sized meal. 
Both things say Large Big Mac and both restaurants are the same size. 
 

The sooner you realise Australia is not other countries and keep expecting it to be the same as your experiences elsewhere you’ll have a much better time. 
 

25 years ago Wild West had 1 1/2 waits in Christmas School Holidays. This time of year being horrible to visit Australian theme parks is nothing new. 
 

 

[ShakeShack]

Talk about moving the goal posts to suit your own narrative and agenda.

Maybe it's time to shutdown and delete the thread? That's generally how this works right?

[rappa]

Exactly what is the agenda and the narrative?

Go to the start of this thread, you’ll see that it’s about overly critical reviews being unreasonable at this time. So how is anything being changed?

 

The fact that operations are not as efficient as they could be/we’d like them has already been covered pretty well. 
 

Would you like to start your own thread discussing how the leaders are the laziest in the company or that they only work there for notoriety?  
 

Which goal posts, agenda or narrative would be to your liking today? As apparently I know everything I’m happy to discuss any you’d like. 

[Brad2912]

Wow this has blown up while I’ve enjoyed my day at the beach. Getting evac’d out of the water due to a shark wasn’t in the plans, totally a 1 star review coming up for Burleigh Beach… 

 

End of the day, if you want to go on more than 3 rides, even on the busiest day, you will.  Parks have family swap to assist with getting on some rides, if you have little kids you can comfortably get them on all of WB kids offerings in well under 2 hours (probably closer to 1) giving you, an adult, plenty of time to go on the big stuff. If you want to fart around to watch shows and take photos then that’s fine, and it’s what I personally would want from my day at a park, but it’s my choice to do that so I’m not going to whinge and moan that my choices cut down my ride opportunities. 

Edited January 26, 2023 by Brad2912

[rappa]

Seems a pretty reasonable view to have. 

[REGIE]

It’s possible to get on 5 rides in the hoildays but that’s running across the park and spending all your time in the queues. No stunt show, no Roxy, no parade, no food (except a churro and coke) and it was this order. WWF, SDSC, DCR, BWSS, SE. DCR was a 2 hour wait when I went. 
 

btw somewhat off topic how accurate is the thing on google maps that tells you what day is usually the most quiet? https://www.google.com/maps/place/Warner+Bros.+Movie+World/@-27.9069522,153.3109216,17z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m5!3m4!1s0x6b9111264c525139:0xf02a35bd7207180!8m2!3d-27.906957!4d153.3131103

[New display name]

14 hours ago, Brad2912 said:

Wow this has blown up while I’ve enjoyed my day at the beach. Getting evac’d out of the water due to a shark wasn’t in the plans, totally a 1 star review coming up for Burleigh Beach… 

You just wrote a bad review because you can't swim.   Me, myself and I surf the sharks.

[New display name]

Maybe if Village got the simple things right, they wouldn't get so many bad reviews.🤪😂

 

 

[joz]

2 hours ago, REGIE said:

It’s possible to get on 5 rides in the hoildays but that’s running across the park and spending all your time in the queues

I mean I don't know how much clearer I can be with this. If you got to the park at opening time, and rides were the main priority for you, it's 5 minimum, not maximum. That's doing the wrong thing 100% of the time.

 

Making better decisions will get you on more rides and free up time for other things.

Edited January 27, 2023 by joz

[New display name]

A box of crayons might help.🤪

[Naazon]

3 hours ago, REGIE said:

btw somewhat off topic how accurate is the thing on google maps that tells you what day is usually the most quiet? https://www.google.com/maps/place/Warner+Bros.+Movie+World/@-27.9069522,153.3109216,17z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m5!3m4!1s0x6b9111264c525139:0xf02a35bd7207180!8m2!3d-27.906957!4d153.3131103

It's based off people who have google maps location data enabled, so most Android users. Their formulas extrapolate for the population based off the android market share. It's as accurate as 'live traffic data' from google maps.

[Gazza]

So what is a reasonable number of rides to do on a busy day and feel "satisfied"?

[pin142]

12 minutes ago, Gazza said:

So what is a reasonable number of rides to do on a busy day and feel "satisfied"?

Enough that it starts to become slightly painful to keep going.

[WalleyWorld]

If this topic is indeed about the 'validity of google reviews', a good place to start would be to discuss what is actually being said/complained about in those reviews. Reading Movieworld's Google reviews (from the last week or so) one of the top three complaints that keep showing up is: wait times are too long per ride. There doesn't seem to be people complaining about the qty of attractions they did in their day.

And then the question is, are the comments being made about the wait times in those reviews valid? e.g. are the wait times per ride indeed too long?

Edited January 27, 2023 by WalleyWorld

[REGIE]

2 hours ago, joz said:

I mean I don't know how much clearer I can be with this. If you got to the park at opening time, and rides were the main priority for you, it's 5 minimum, not maximum. That's doing the wrong thing 100% of the time.

 

Making better decisions will get you on more rides and free up time for other things.

Yeah that was with no plan. I was trying to further prove your point. It’s better to do a bit of everything to have a filling satisfying day. I went on a bad day with no plan because a had an opening and took it. Planing a better day to go is the better option like you were saying. 

[joz]

It actually raises an interesting point. Scooby and West both to some degree appear to be struggling for throughput. If you made the overall problem worse by closing one, would you actually get fewer complaints?

 

As for this thread; you need to remember it is born out of people with quite a negative bias using bad faith arguments to further their bias. In renaming it, I made it seem like it was started by someone who was being far more sensible than they actually were. A couple of other people also jumped in with quite bad faith arguments. Once you get past the nonsense bad faith stuff you can get to what I think the actual issue is. Namely that the family attractions, West and Scooby have struggled capacity wise with the peak attendance. Thrill ride waits have been long, but you know what, welcome to peak season at every park everywhere. West needs another pass over to see how you get more than 300 people through it an hour (invented number but feels about accurate), Scooby needs an overhaul, and they need more family rides, maybe some extra thrill capacity too.

[New display name]

Scooby has great capacity but has only been running half the cars so hopefully when MW purchased the new cars they acquired 18 of them.

[WalleyWorld]

45 minutes ago, joz said:

Thrill ride waits have been long, but you know what, welcome to peak season at every park everywhere.

Not sure if recent Google reviews for Dreamworld are a valid argument against this statement? 🤷‍♂️ But I can't seem to find complaints pertaining to queue times in the last few days (except 1 about express queue, which I pasted below). Instead we have people leaving reviews praising queue times (some examples below):

Edited January 27, 2023 by WalleyWorld

[joz]

2 minutes ago, WalleyWorld said:

Not sure if Google reviews for Dreamworld are valid argument against this statement? 🤷‍♂️

Thrill ride waits have been long, but you know what, welcome to peak season at every park everywhere *that is popular and highly attended

 

[rappa]

Not being busy and having small wait times is not an indication of a park doing well.

If it was busy as hell and had small waits that would be awesome, but that isn't the case.

 

As @joz basically said, the biggest issue at MW is family rides not having enough capacity, which is also a function of not having enough family rides. Hopefully once Wizard of Oz is built the park will have 4 mass appeal family coasters in operation to greatly help this.
This is one of the main reasons I thought adding a bunch of family coasters was a good idea vs a big thrill attraction.

 

[New display name]

15 minutes ago, rappa said:

Not being busy and having small wait times is not an indication of a park doing well.

Did you go to DW over the holidays?  I went to DW thinking it was going to be quiet and it was far from it.  In saying that I've been on SV in the busy times and quite times and no matter what time you ride it, I would say it's the worst run ride on the Gold Coast.

I only had to go 5 reviews deep to find this @WalleyWorld