Movie World Scheduled Maintenance 2024

[Noll_57]

15 hours ago, DaptoFunlandGuy said:

Dreamworld isn't there yet, but they're showing signs of overtaking Village, and they're doing all the right things to get there, while Village is in a race to the bottom. 

Dreamworld have already well and truly overtaken Village in terms of guest experience and presentation IMHO. 
 

10 hours ago, Baconjack said:

Village can get away with this shit because people who come from interstate are indifferent and are still going to visit their parks regardless. Old Dreamworld did this until they killed people. It’s quite frankly a huge shame because new dreamworld is a better park than it used to be but the reward for effort hasn’t been there because of those aforementioned deaths

Dreamworld’s effort is being rewarded in that the park is finally seeing an increase in attendance and is receiving plenty of praise and positive reviews. That good word of mouth will certainly help and people are slowly starting to realize this isn’t the same park it used to be. Things will be even better after Rivertown opens up. Many of my friends and family have noticed and commented on what a poor state Movie World is in currently compared to Dreamworld. People do pick up on this stuff. 

[DaptoFunlandGuy]

7 hours ago, Noll_57 said:

Dreamworld have already well and truly overtaken Village in terms of guest experience and presentation IMHO. 

I don't disagree with you, however the metrics I was working on was in terms of 'choice'. It's clear just looking at the carparks where people are choosing to spend their time (and money). 

The tide is definitely turning though, for the reasons you mention.

7 hours ago, Noll_57 said:

Dreamworld’s effort is being rewarded in that the park is finally seeing an increase in attendance and is receiving plenty of praise and positive reviews

Can confirm -

Current review scores on trip advisor and google (note the scale is compressed, total review score out of 5)

	Trip Advisor	Google	Average
WWW	4	4.4	4.2
Dreamworld	4	4.3	4.15
Sea World	4	4.2	4.1
WnW	3.5	4.2	3.85
Movie World	3.5	4.1	3.8
Paradise Country	3.5	3.9	3.7

 

[Aw hype]

4 hours ago, DaptoFunlandGuy said:

I don't disagree with you, however the metrics I was working on was in terms of 'choice'. It's clear just looking at the carparks where people are choosing to spend their time (and money). 

The tide is definitely turning though, for the reasons you mention.

Can confirm -

Current review scores on trip advisor and google (note the scale is compressed, total review score out of 5)

	Trip Advisor	Google	Average
WWW	4	4.4	4.2
Dreamworld	4	4.3	4.15
Sea World	4	4.2	4.1
WnW	3.5	4.2	3.85
Movie World	3.5	4.1	3.8
Paradise Country	3.5	3.9	3.7

 

I suspect this one post has displayed more patron analytics then anything VRTP marketing has drummed up for themselves over the past few years.

 

[Naazon]

2 hours ago, Aw hype said:

I suspect this one post has displayed more patron analytics then anything VRTP marketing has drummed up for themselves over the past few years.

 

Maybe VRTP just aren't tequila fans?

[Aw hype]

6 minutes ago, Naazon said:

Maybe VRTP just aren't tequila fans?

[Rivals]

DC was closed all yesterday and is now listed under “unscheduled maintenance”, the only rides the park has to offer is Green Lantern, Wild West (both unreliable) and the kids rides, but they’re still charging $100+ for single day entry. 

[New display name]

If people don't like paying $100.00 for GL/WWF, catch the next bus and go to DW.

[Ogre]

1 hour ago, Rivals said:

DC was closed all yesterday and is now listed under “unscheduled maintenance”, the only rides the park has to offer is Green Lantern, Wild West (both unreliable) and the kids rides, but they’re still charging $100+ for single day entry. 

DC opened at the end of the day yesterday

[Rivals]

43 minutes ago, Ogre said:

DC opened at the end of the day yesterday

the ride is back down again today

[themagician]

Good day to not visit MW

This only leaves Green Lantern & WWF as the only operating rides outside of Kids WB

[TBoy]

51 minutes ago, themagician said:

This only leaves Green Lantern & WWF as the only operating rides outside of Kids WB

I emailed Village and this is what they told me:

"Following guest feedback, we have decided that customers prefer rides to be closed rather than operating. Thank you for understanding." Also heard that was the reason for Aqualoop closing.

Being serious though, surely this is a cost saving measure. Imagine being a family on holiday who cannot wait to ride DCR, Scooby, Superman etc. and it is all closed. Maybe Village should rename the park "Warner Bros. Maintenance World"

Edited March 2 by TBoy

[Rivals]

Green Lantern is also currently down and has been for a bit from what i’ve heard. let’s hope Wild West doesn’t close by the end of the day.

[themagician]

37 minutes ago, TBoy said:

surely this is a cost saving measure

I don’t think it is from a ‘we’ll close rides to save money’ perspective, but more a lack of organisation in their maintenance department to ensure they have all the necessary parts for any unexpected downtime. And also a lack of managing their attraction downtime periods to reduce overlaps. 
 

Rides have and will always need yearly maintenance, but in reason years MWs attraction seem to be needing more of it, for longer periods and more rides are closing at once. The impacts of the TRRR incident has definitely had an impact on maintenance periods, but they need to get on top of this and streamline their maintenance processes.
 

Rides will always have unexpected breakdowns from time to time, but the way to reduce the impact from this is to not have any more than two (whether that’s two main attractions, two kids attraction, or one of each) closed at a time (Obviously having Scooby closed for several years effects this, but in this case I wouldn’t include that in this formula). And try not to have the closed attractions next to each other in the park (for example, don’t close Doomsday & WWF at the same time because that makes one quarter of your park closed).
 

For a long time they would close Storm Coaster at SW from Feb to April because that aligned with shortly after when the attraction opened and they had to ensure they completed maintenance the same time every year. And to fix that they did two lots of maintenance so its annual schedule could be moved to the much more sensible time of the year (winter). So maybe they need to do this again with all of their rides at MW. This would mean there would be a year when some rides would need to close twice, but if that meant a better schedule for the years to come, I think that would be worth it.

So no I don’t think they’re closing their rides on purpose to save money, but I do think they are saving money by not investing in a catalogue of (backup) parts that they keep in back of house so that when rides do go down, they don’t have to order and wait for them to arrive. This cant necessarily be done for every kind of part for every ride in the park, but at least some effort should be made. But I don’t have any evidence of whether that’s fact or not, but whatever they are doing now isn’t working. They have become shit at managing their park, attraction operations and their maintenance. And if it continues like this it’s going really start to hurt their performance and most importantly (from their perspective) their pockets.

Edited March 2 by themagician

[TBoy]

1 hour ago, Rivals said:

Green Lantern is also currently down and has been for a bit from what i’ve heard. let’s hope Wild West doesn’t close by the end of the day.

So basically 1 ride for teens/adults open? That is even worse. Imagine walking down the DC pathway and seeing absolutely nothing open, then you walk past the fountain to see Superman and Flash closed, then you turn left from main street and Scooby/Doomsday is closed. Something needs to be done. I wouldn't be surprised if we end up seeing everything but the kids rides closed one day.

PS I just checked the QueuePark and Marvin and Road Runner are closed. This means all 5 rollercoasters are closed. Imagine going to a Six Flags park and seeing all the rollercoasters are closed.

 

Edited March 2 by TBoy

[Aw hype]

This is Actually insane. To think they moved a coaster over to cover capacity loss from Scooby, just to piss fart around with it like all their maintenance jobs and not have it open, along with everything else. It's deplorable that they'd have the gall to both open the park and charge full price knowing families won't have the foresight to check what's running. No park in the world gets away with this crazy level of shithousery, nor do they let themselves exhibit such poor function in the first place.

[themagician]

So out of a possible 16 rides, they have 6 operating. Well done Movie World, well done.

[wikiverse]

This is why attractions like the Movie Magic Special Effects Show and the old Batman Simulator rides are important in a park's line up.

Even if half the simulators break, or if one effect isn't working, you can still operate the attraction at reduced capacity, or stretch out other parts of the show to fill the time.

At this point they should just do a Luna Park, open the park for free and sell wrist bands to kids that want to go on rides, hope that parents spend up on food and merch.

[themagician]

I don’t know the facts behind how they could get to a point where over 60% of there rides (with the majority being ‘major’ attractions), but I’d hope that the park realise how poor this situation is and they tried to make the guest experience better in any way possible.

I wasn’t in the park today so I can’t confirm this (if anyone was, please comment), but if they had more characters on Main Street, more show times, offered any sort of voucher/free merch/return ticket that would be at least be putting in an effort to try and make up for maintenance issue.

I’ve already seen comments online and people indeed are not happy/impressed by the park today (and in general) and have said they won’t be returning. So I hope the park begin to realise that people just aren’t going to continue to visit with the park in this state. 

[STRAWS]

4 hours ago, TBoy said:

I emailed Village and this is what they told me:

"Following guest feedback, we have decided that customers prefer rides to be closed rather than operating. Thank you for understanding." Also heard that was the reason for Aqualoop closing.

Being serious though, surely this is a cost saving measure. Imagine being a family on holiday who cannot wait to ride DCR, Scooby, Superman etc. and it is all closed. Maybe Village should rename the park "Warner Bros. Maintenance World"

I don't think they are trying to save money for all the rides being closed but when does this happen at DW I ask. 
every now and again a ride will close for technical issues but it almost always reopens again .Movie World takes a few days to reopen its rides. plus, DW plan their Maintenance schedule far better than MW

Also, I'm calling it right now when wild west falls goes down for maintenance it will be extended, and all the boats will be having issues so they will be testing them with water dummies like the past 3 times its happened. 

[New display name]

You're kidding yourself @themagicianif you believe MW isn't cost cutting on purpose by increasing maintenance times.  DW are cost cutting by reducing park hours, MW are cost cutting by extending time frames.   MW mechanics aren't working on 4 closed rides, every day at the same time, for 2 months.  

[Noll_57]

7 hours ago, themagician said:

I’ve already seen comments online and people indeed are not happy/impressed by the park today (and in general) and have said they won’t be returning.

Already found this one on Productreview.com.au (where Movie World currently only has a 1.5 star rating). 

 

Here’s a sample of some of the other reviews on the site:

[Dean Barnett]

If no roller coasters are opened - everyone should be offered a return for free pass at the gate. No questions asked. It’s embarrassing - I can’t recommend anyone go there.  
 

You either go in peak school holiday season when you’re lucky to get on 4 rides during their piss weak operating hours - or go during the off season when it’s not even possible to line up for a ride.  Pathetic. 
 

Heaps of parks (even Disney) offer to return for free if the rides are closed due to circumstances they can’t control (weather) - Movie World are in complete control of their maintenance schedule and they still choose to charge full price. 

[themagician]

@Noll_57 further to those, here’s some from google and Facebook in the last day

 

[TomiJ]

Yea this is disappointing and embarrassing. This is poor management by VRTP. Lols Movie World at the moment is reminding me of early 2000's Wonderland Sydney. 

I had the unlimited membership from 2016 to 2023, prior to that I had the yearly pass for several years. It will be long time until I will be back at VRTP and I don't know if WOO and Scooby is enough for me to spend my money at VRTP. 

[Baconjack]

18 hours ago, New display name said:

You're kidding yourself @themagicianif you believe MW isn't cost cutting on purpose by increasing maintenance times.  DW are cost cutting by reducing park hours, MW are cost cutting by extending time frames.   MW mechanics aren't working on 4 closed rides, every day at the same time, for 2 months.  

I wouldn’t class it as “cost cutting” personally id rather class it as “bad management”. The bulk of movie world’s major rides are over 10 years old (excluding Rivals). Quite a number of these rides are difficult to get parts for (compared to dreamworld’s ride list where they got rid of all of those types of rides). So they will need more time to work on these rides - that’s just part and parcel of what happens when rides get old and more time needs to be spent caring for them. 

From my view these woes are more of a victim of poor planning. Scooby’s renovation was as pointed out by many a snap decision and should have been foreseen much earlier (or done proactively) to take into account for lead times. That decision means one of the park’s biggest crowd draws will be down for between 2-3 years.

Likewise Arkham’s replacement has been too slow. The ride sat there for years with zero action while movie world came up with a thousand ideas on what would replace it. They should have known they had to replace this ride for a while, given what happened to Corkscrew, but it was again another spur of the moment thing. That replacement ride is now due to open 5 years after the ride it replaced closed. 

Both of these things are managed properly and people wouldn’t be writing these reviews because rides are open. Was this done to save money? Probably, but that’s not the primary reason. Movie world management know these all have to be done eventually so why take the “she’ll be right mate” approach and take your sweet time with these things and make decisions on the spur of the moment rather than with some foresight.

Cost cutting to me means nothing gets built - so the Wonderland comparison is moot in that regard.
 

Edited March 3 by Baconjack