Movie World Scheduled Maintenance 2024

[themagician]

8 hours ago, aaronm said:

Another copy-paste statement trying to deflect how poorly the park is run in the name of “safety” and gaslight their guests into feeling reckless for complaining. 

They also had this response to make it ‘feel’ more personal

[Dean Barnett]

Can't get a ride stoppage if you don't open the rides! 

 

 

[DaptoFunlandGuy]

15 hours ago, Ashley Jeffery said:

Trying to save face?

 

This is entirely reactive to the poor sentiments they've received across the board recently, and it is absolutely pathetic. Whoever authorised this message needs to be fired. Right the fuck now. They need to read the room.

14 hours ago, themagician said:

This is the parks response to someone’s comment about the lack of open rides

^and THIS - fuck me they don't just need to be fired, they need to be blackballed from the theme park industry. These people have no idea what the fuck they're doing.

I saw a reply to this on one of their posts and it's 100% right - they're showing absolute contempt for their guests.

13 hours ago, TomiJ said:

Yea fair enough hahah, I was 9 when they closed. 

Valid points. I didn't know that Wonderland Sydney's last major ride/attraction was the "Aussie Wildlife Park," which opened in 1996. (according to what I have researched, feel to let me know if I'm wrong). 

My views have been changed. 

Don't want to derail this thread off this amusing Village bashing, but a few quick points that could have easily been googled (these dates sourced from either Wikipedia or WonderlandHistory.net :

• Wildlife park opened in 1990.
• Demon opened in ~1992 (old expo '88 Titan)
• Fred Flintstone's Splashdown opened in 1993
• Space probe opened in November 1995
• Skyrider went in in 1997 (old moore park cable car)

9 hours ago, wikiverse said:

Hot PR tip for the person managing the social media account: If you're explaining, you're losing.

Everything in that statement prior to the last paragraph should never, ever be said publicly or privately to a paying customer. 

They do not care about why the rides are closed, planned or not.  They care about the fact that they've paid $110 to enter the park to watch HWSD2 while eating $20 chicken nuggets and possibly getting a ride on WWF, if it's open. They care about the disappointment they're experiencing for paying so much money to effectively enter an overpriced, extremely limited shopping mall.

Movie World's failures are not the customer's fault - even if scheduled maintenance is listed on the website, people expect the majority of rides to be open, not one ride for part of the day.

Acknowledge the unplanned stoppages and then direct people to guest services and tell them that you want to make it right.  Don't say that guests are going to be 'well informed and an outcome achieved'.  That's effectively code for 'Go F*** Yourself, no refunds'.

Just acknowledge the disappointment, acknowledge the unplanned stoppages, acknowledge that this is not how you want guests to experience the park and then direct them to guest services because you want the chance to make it right.  That's it. 

What guest services offer can be tailored to what the guests want, but don't blame the visitor because Movie World can't keep on top of ride maintenance enough to keep even ONE roller coaster operating.  Right now, you're taking a bad situation and making it worse.

You're 100%. They should be in damage control, not making excuses. 

The tide is turning.

[Brods]

Big oooft. Looks like a lot of these honest comments have been deleted, along with the potato responses from MW.

[Dean Barnett]

 

This one with a flat out passive aggressive reply 

 

 

and .. "Even the drier was closed!"

 

[DaptoFunlandGuy]

That passive agressive reply is something else. 

Pointing at the website when even it is misleading (eg: Scooby is no longer in the main maintenance group and you have to scroll to the bottom to see the news. There are so many comments on socials this week from people who have a trip booked and are only just now discovering Scooby will be closed.

Even if intending guests check the website - Scooby doesn't appear in the maintenance sections, and it definitely looks like they're trying to hide it by putting it at the bottom. IMO, it should be at the top, since its a family favourite.

[themagician]

20 minutes ago, DaptoFunlandGuy said:

it should be at the top, since its a family favourite.

But that would mean people know about it, so then they wouldn’t visit until it reopens, which means they loose revenue.

When Scooby first closed, it was listed within the attraction maintenance schedule, but after a few months it was removed and place below as its own thing.

[DaptoFunlandGuy]

1 hour ago, themagician said:

But that would mean people know about it, so then they wouldn’t visit until it reopens, which means they loose revenue.

That's just it though isn't it. This past weekend illustrated that they've stopped giving a shit. Replying to people and saying  the equivalent of "you should have checked the website before you visited, so it's your fault, LOL" is really really bad form. 

And social media comments this week has revealed just how many people were still unaware scooby was down for several years - even more than a year after it originally closed. 

The ride is a fan and family favourite. They could have closed it, knocked it down and put up another DC attraction, or an upcharge, but instead they've decided to invest in it's future properly by taking the hard decision to close it down for several years and fix everything - which is a bold decision after the time it spent in next generation limbo.

They should be proud that they're doing this - refurbing a classic instead of gutting it as a place to store more parade floats - and they should be doing everything within reason to ensure guests are aware of it... rather than burying it at the bottom, hoping people don't notice it and still decide to visit because if they don't notice, and pay to enter, they've already got your money, and if they profited off you, they don't care how you feel because people still keep coming. 

but the tide is changing.

[Rivals]

Doomsday’s maintenance schedule now has no reopening date and just says “From 5 Feb 2024.”

this is what they did to Arkham before silently closing it, maybe they finally decided to pull the plug on Doomsday.

[Brad2912]

11 minutes ago, Rivals said:

Doomsday’s maintenance schedule now has no reopening date and just says “From 5 Feb 2024.”

this is what they did to Arkham before silently closing it, maybe they finally decided to pull the plug on Doomsday.

The entire area is in disarray, when it could be one of the best themed lands/worlds in our parks. 

 

 

[Noll_57]

Things really aren’t looking good at MW right now. Apart from all the previously mentioned issues (such as constant ride closures, poor operations, temporary fences at every turn, lack of music and atmosphere in most areas, a large amount of dead/disused spaces, rude/disinterested staff and terrible communication with guests), general presentation and upkeep around the park is severely lacking. There’s so much exposed wiring and conduit all over the place (some in very noticeable locations like the Scooby Doo facade and Wild West Falls), lots of broken equipment, numerous severely faded and worn out signs and gardens full of weeds. The whole place just feels very neglected at the moment. Here are a few “highlights”. 

I could go on, as issues like these are literally at every corner of the park and are so consistent that you can’t help but notice. It’s so disappointing considering how well kept the place used to be. 

[jbjimmyjb]

I've travelled up to the Gold Coast for a few days, went to Seaworld today which was a full day of walk-ons (although ops were so slow, JR and Levi ran 1 train every 10 minutes), Dreamworld tomorrow, but with the current state of Movieworld, there's no chance I'm going to waste my time (and lots of money) going there.

And as a solo rider at SW today, I chatted to quite a few people who have been to MW in the past few days and other than the obvious phrase for DCR, it was overwhelming disappointment at the closures. So hopefully the sentiment is becoming negative enough that it starts to impact MW's bottom line and VRTP wake up from their hibernation.

[TBoy]

The first two images look fucking pathetic. It is sad that the cost cutting has gone so high that they let the concrete get destroyed, leave wires out and try to leave fixing their rides as long as possible. And in a matter of weeks they have shuttered Aqualoop and now possibly Doomsday, what is next?

It has gone downhill since the BGH acquisition. BGH have shown they are not fit to run a theme park. Time to sell the parks to someone else who can actually have the rides open, not leave wires everywhere and who can fix up the park.

Edited March 7 by TBoy

[themagician]

That’s actually disgusting to see the park has come to that. Sort your shit out Village.

Edited March 7 by themagician

[TBoy]

10 minutes ago, themagician said:

That’s actually disgusting to see the park has come to that. Sort your shit out Village.

It is sad to see MW start to look more like an abandoned theme park than a operating theme park

Edited March 7 by TBoy

[Ashley Jeffery]

Jeez even Dreamworld at its lowest wasn't this bad. Have they thrown everything into Wizard and forgotten the rest of the park?

[DaptoFunlandGuy]

The worst of all of that is this - please tell me this isn't an electrical connection that's been taped together and just left for so long even the electrical tape has perished?

As far as i'm concerned - you can't pin all this on BGH. They might be slashing budgets, but a lot of the same people are still in the same roles and these images just show a lack of attention to detail all round. the cables strung all over the place - sure they might be temporary, but there's no excuse to leave them dangling over scooby, or hung up on the awning supports over the old photo centre. 

FFS tech services needs to take more pride in their work in that regard. 

I'll give things like the ground speakers a pass because that's budgetary and if theres no budget you can't replace things that are broken - but fixes like speedy's - this cable is a joke - someone has set up a catenary to go over the ride path, presumably to charge the ever aging old batteries in Speedy's - but why? and why isn't it run through a conduit? what happened to the previously installed power? Did they dig it up to install Marvin? 

[DJKostya]

I'm no WHS expert, but surely some of those things above clearly don't meet WHS standards, especially some of the electrical things. Being a theme park with lots of families I would be deeply concerned about some of those and what would happen if small hands got hold of them. To me it looks like MW is 1 accident away from another major disaster.

[New display name]

12 hours ago, Ashley Jeffery said:

Jeez even Dreamworld at its lowest wasn't this bad. Have they thrown everything into Wizard and forgotten the rest of the park?

It was, you just must go back and read some trip reports to refresh your memory.    Most of us thought, DW looked like a dump, but we didn’t believe the rides were being dangerously neglected.  We were wrong and people died.   Hopefully history doesn’t repeat.

[themagician]

46 minutes ago, New display name said:

It was, you just must go back and read some trip reports to refresh your memory.

This one is a perfect example

 

[Baconjack]

17 hours ago, Rivals said:

Doomsday’s maintenance schedule now has no reopening date and just says “From 5 Feb 2024.”

this is what they did to Arkham before silently closing it, maybe they finally decided to pull the plug on Doomsday.

And Bermuda Triangle/Skyway/Corkscrew/Looney Tunes River Ride/Sea World Monorail/Batman Adventure etc

15 hours ago, Ashley Jeffery said:

Jeez even Dreamworld at its lowest wasn't this bad. Have they thrown everything into Wizard and forgotten the rest of the park?

At least movie world aren’t throwing spare buckets of paint on the ground of queues of rides, leaving rides sitting there in the open for 10 years to rot away, not taking care of buildings (and making them look fucking ugly), letting nature take over natural features, or leaving scenery pieces to rot. Hell, even not having a maintenance logbook on their rides at all whatsoever.

Old dreamworld regime didn’t care for their park experience (or guest safety for that matter). There’s plenty of reading you can do if you go back far enough on these forums, or look at the coroner’s report on these things. Laws are in place to make sure pre-2016 dreamworld cannot happen so this comparison is baseless.

Edited March 8 by Baconjack

[Aw hype]

1 hour ago, Baconjack said:

or look at the coroner’s report on these things. Laws are in place to make sure pre-2016 dreamworld cannot happen so this comparison is baseless.

That document is one of the more shocking and eye opening pieces you will ever read. Not so much for the gruesome details, thats a given, but the general complacency and neglect of the park through their maintenance team, lack of training and poor procedural expectations/knowledge. Dreamworld deserved every dollar and bit of backlash they copped, its just absolutely devastating it took 4 lives to bring their malpractice into the limelight. 

[brett7889]

8 hours ago, DJKostya said:

I'm no WHS expert, but surely some of those things above clearly don't meet WHS standards, especially some of the electrical things. Being a theme park with lots of families I would be deeply concerned about some of those and what would happen if small hands got hold of them. To me it looks like MW is 1 accident away from another major disaster.

I used to work at the theme park back in the day and now work in construction as a HSR. Hard to tell from the photos and one would hope this isn’t the case but if any of these electrical wires/conduits are live it’s definitely not up to the Electrical Safety Act.

[Park Addict 93]

On 7/3/2024 at 10:25 PM, Noll_57 said:

literally at every corner of the park and are so consistent that you can’t help but notice

It’s ok, it’s not like they are overly noticeable….

oh wait..

This was taken on Feb 16 and it was still the same yesterday. Don’t they have a flat sign printer onsite? Hall of Justice is looking shocking too

Edited March 9 by Park Addict 93

[themagician]

Doomsday now has no reopening date. Could this finally be the end of the rides life? It wouldn’t surprise me if they wait until after Flash opens before quietly removing the ride from the website entirely