Your chance to FLY the family to Warner Bros. Movie World for a 5 day ESCAPE.

[dreamworld_rulz]

Purchase any Value Meal for your chance to FLY the family to Warner Bros. Movie World for a 5 day ESCAPE. ENTER NOW for your chance to win a daily prize of a SUPERMANTM Merchandise Pack! Good luck! EDIT : This is for Hungry Jack's

Edited June 29, 2006 by dreamworld_rulz

[Gazza]

Ugggg, They keep using the words Superman, and Escape, but why cant they just mention Superman Escape and have a picture of it, its as if they are deliberatley trying to advertise it poorly.

[dreamworld_rulz]

I don't understand why they are promoting Superman but have a pic of WWF.

[goliath]

IMO that ad's pathetic. You wouldnt even know that they just installed a $12 million coaster. How about a picture of SE, I mean, WTF is with a picture of WWF?!? It's a Superman ad! What were they thinking?!?!

[Richard]

My guess is the company that designed the ad wanted a picture of riders screaming. The closest photo in Movie World's stock photo catalogue must have been a WWF photo. Of course, that far from makes it anything short of dodgy.

[nev]

It's entirely possible that while the park has the rights to create and market a ride with a Superman theme, they may not have the rights to tie their ride to the current movie. Rights ownership and permissions are not simple things - my guess is that the reason why the coaster isn't included in the promotion is because Movie World isn't allowed to trade off the movie's name to promote a ride.

[Dylaan]

Yeh, probably. Isn't that the problem they had a while ago with WWF? IMO they need to majorly update their media gallery. They have a few pics of teens on the ride, one of the tophat and one showing it exiting the tunnel housing the over-banked turn. They have no pics of the actual SDSC. Only a few pieces of concept art, and there's only that pic of WWF shown in the ad. Sure they've got enough Superman Escape pics but they need to let people know what the ride's name actually is! If anyone's got media centre access and has seen the latest 'Adults At Kids Prices' voucher distributed in the mail, you should know what I mean. I've attached a cropped photo of the voucher. I apologise for quality and/or file size. It was taken on my camcorder. (1.7megapixels) EDIT: That's not to say that the media centre isn't doing a good job. The quality of the photos is amazing. About 300dpi.

Edited June 30, 2006 by WnW_Rocks

[Gazza]

I have actually seen that photo before, i think it appeared on that Newspaper liftout thing about WVTP, thats why I was wondering that paticular photo wasnt used. Its a good point that Nev makes about usage Rights etc, but you would think as a company they would just put that aside and work to improve profits. And another thing, on the SE website they had a countdown to the opening of Superman Returns, which is an example of cross promotion, so maybe there arent any issues. Prehaps we could just put it down to HJs clueless marketing team, who seem to be stuck in a rut of using annoying songs and constantly advertising the Whopper.

Edited June 30, 2006 by Gazza

[Richard]

The recent Coke competition advertised Superman Returns alongside Superman Escape with footage of the ride does it not?

[DaptoFunlandGuy]

coca cola and streets ice cream both had a promotion at one stage or another regarding WBMW and Superman. The tie in was with the release of the movie, and not once did they use the words "superman escape". I think it is possible, since the movie and the ride share a common theme but a different name, that the marketing people do not want to use both titles simultaneously. Box Office "yes, two adults and 4 children to superman escape" Clerk "including airfares, accomodation, entry tickets.... and popcorn... that will be $973" I don't have a marketing degree, but I do have a lot of marketing experience, and that seems to me to be the simplest explaination on why the lack of mention. WBMW is advertising SE heavily in certain markets. Shopping centres, like Macquarie Centre in North Ryde have information kiosks throughout the centre, and footage of the ride surrounds the campaign, but of course, in this case, there is no mention of Superman Returns.

[Richard]

I think we're onto something here. If you look at the Superman logo and overall theming used throughout Superman Escape you'll note that it's distinctly different from the styles used in the new film. A simple comparison of the logos shows how it differs: Superman Escape's logo: http://www.roller-coaster.com.au/gallery.php?gid=125 Superman Returns logo: http://www.monitorduty.com/mdarchives/supershieldfanzing.jpg The new one is more curved, has greater beveling and the S is significantly different, especially towards the bottom. This suggests that Warner Bros. Movie World only has the rights to the DC Comics Superman character, not the Warner Bros. Superman character (which is of course based on DC's). This makes sense because WBMW have had DC comics licensed since day one, and it would have been a lot less fuss and perhaps even less costly to use this character rather than go through Warner Bros. to get licensing for the new one. It's a strange one, because in the past new films have been very closely tied to their ride counterpart in terms of advertising. The true legal reason beneath it all would be very interesting, because there's no way WBMW would opt to not cash in on the new film. Of interest is that at Islands of Adventure, Universal holds no licenses for the modern adaptations of the Marvel Comics used in the park. Hulk and Spider-Man are both very "comic booky" attractions with no ties to their respective films - you'll note that the Spider-Man films aren't even Universal productions, but rather Sony Pictures'.

[DaptoFunlandGuy]

its also interesting to note that in some of the pictorial advertising done by the large food\confectionery companies, that they show a shot of the WBMW gateway\arch, and SE can be seen in the background, however the blue wall, (See link in Richard's post) where the superman escape logo is, has been completely "blue"d out onto a plain blue wall. At first I thought it might have been just before the signage went up, but on closer inspection, the logo has simply been photoshopped out. I'd say that the desire to distance themselves from the movie because of licensing, confusion, or any other reason is completely un-coincidental, and 100% on purpose for the possible reasons Richard and I have explained above.

[Gazza]

It could very well be that they might wait till afte the movie had died down before advertising the Superman aspect of the ride. Just another little advertising thing, MW was on Australias funniest home videos on sunday night. They showed some good footage of most of the rides between each segment , somehow tieing it in with each clip, for example the host said "MW has so many rides, but all of them are better than this", before showing a clip of someone sliding down a wier on a rubber ring. Another example was when the host interviewed bugs bunny, but then they showed a clip of someones home video taken at MW where a kid farted on Bugs. It is interesting to note SE wasnt blanked out or anything, they just spoke about it like normal.

[joz]

Well all this may explain why the themeing/dark ride segment didn't get much (ok, any) airplay in the ads.

[Ian]

on a side note the coke ad with the picture of the arch with the red carpet, is my photos i did for publicity the red carpet was photoshopped in after.

[Spotty]

Wow, do you feel like a celeb now Ian?! Anywho, I knew they would use your photos in something good, A few were also shown on the SE website!

[DaptoFunlandGuy]

I think it is fantastic when a park recognises the skill of their in park photographers, a lot of parks I have been to, the photographer is a retail cast member with a camera in their hand, and it is very rare to find someone in retail who has that ability. The bum of it is of course as a professional publicity photographer, that shot would have made you thousands, whereas as an employee they dont have to pay you any more than normal... I've been there. I used to do the same thing at wonderland and had many of my photos used for publicity shots, including for the channel 7 popstars series, the helitours (which now operate out of Sydney Tower centre, and take off somewhere in sydney) and of course Action Man and Milennium Magic. Its a great feeling to see your photos up on a billboard or in every corner store though, isn't it Ian? My best memory of my park photos is driving down the M4 motorway, on board the Wonderland Express towards the park, and seeing my photos up on a giant billboard on an overpass.... ahhh but enough reminiscing.... Ian - since you took the photo you could confirm, was the logo for SE photoshopped out? or was it just not erected at the time of the photo?