Article: Village Roadshow buys Nara Resort Monday 25 September 2006 - Sea World Village Roadshow, owners of the Sea World, Warner Bros. Movie World and Wet'n'Wild theme parks on the Gold Coast has announced its plans to purchase the remaining 50% of the Sea World-based hotel. Read On...

The resort is in debt? Well that doesn't surprise me as the rooms sleep 4 people (2 double beds) but yet they charge per person.

It's manageable debt. Most companies out there have debt. It's a fairly standard thing - seen by the fact that the parks also carry significant debt. WhiteWater World is being funded primarily by debt. It's only when you're like Six Flags who have more debt than they could pay off with their profits that it becomes an issue. I'll be interested to see what this means for the hotel long-term. If Village end up putting a hotel at the Oxenford site (which is logical given the four growing tourist attractions there)

And anyway, $5.5 Mil of debt is nothing these days.

You'd think another hotel would be somewhere on Village's long term plan, the only thing they have to do before building a hotel out at Oxenford is give people more to do out there besides the parks. I don't think its going to be easy filling a 400room hotel so far away from Surfers based purely on the parks. Nara gets knocked by how far away it is from Surfers, and its literally a 5min drive from 'downtown', and I just feel that people will want to do more then the theme parks when they're on holiday. Aussie Outback is the kind of thing I mean, something to give the area a bit of substance beyond the parks, because again, I'm not sure people want to shun the beach for the parks in any significant numbers. Good on them for buying Nara, hopefully that'll mean more of an intergration between the hotel and the park in the future. Its always struck me how segregated Nara and SW are from each other, the only common link between the two is the monorail station, and the name. I mean how great would it be to see the water park open after park hours in summer exclusively for hotel guests, or even just having staff being interchangeable between Nara and the other 5 properties. I don't think most SW staff know any Nara staff, or even anything about Nara, and I suspect most of Nara's staff don't know a huge amount about the park. Again, I think Village taking full control is great, hopefully they take the chance to improve things there.

Aussie Outback is the kind of thing I mean, something to give the area a bit of substance beyond the parks

What about a shopping precinct with Cinemas, Bowling Alleys etc like what is being planned at...oh wait never mind. I think something like that could work if it were a really good resort, sort of like the Nick resort in Florida, I would probably pick it because of its proximity, I actually stayed at this place called the GC holiday park which was fully booked when i was there, it was pretty good too, and they were planning to build a motor inn type section too, if they can survive I think a resort could too.

What about a shopping precinct with Cinemas, Bowling Alleys etc like what is being planned at...oh wait never mind. I think something like that could work if it were a really good resort, sort of like the Nick resort in Florida, I would probably pick it because of its proximity, I actually stayed at this place called the GC holiday park which was fully booked when i was there, it was pretty good too, and they were planning to build a motor inn type section too, if they can survive I think a resort could too.

My sister and i stayed there last year. We only stayed for 1 nite though. It's a good Caravan Park easy walk to MW. However you need a car as public transport is poor. During the day it's fine but after 5pm you need a car.