Article: WhiteWater World performs above expectations

[Richard]

Article: WhiteWater World performs above expectations Wednesday 28 February 2007 - WhiteWater World Despite an unseasonably cold first half of January, Dreamworld's new water park addition WhiteWater World has performed with Queensland attendance ahead of expectations. Read On...

[GoGoBoy]

Thanks for the article. Certainly some good news there considering some of us had concerns that the performance of the park may have been below expectations. Sounds like WWW has done quite well in its opening season and should certainly improve as the word spreads. I was looking over the reports and specifically they mention that Queensland attendances were above forecasts while interstate were below normalised levels. As mentioned in the reports and in R-C's article, the interstate should improve over the next few holiday periods, particularly with focused marketing attention. Interestingly the food and beverage and also merchandise sales have been higher than Macq Leisure was expecting. The 1000 visitors per day mark over December doesn't sound like a lot but it should be noted the period before christmas is always fairly quiet. Over the month of January the park apparantley did well and while I'm not sure of exact attendance levels, the park generated over $3 million in revenue and over $1.5 million (or thereabouts) in earnings

[dreamworld_rulz]

That's great news for WWW. The interstate market will pick up after all the park opened after most holiday makers had already purchased their holiday. Come the Easter hols I'm sure the park will be packed.

[joz]

The 1000 visitors per day mark over December doesn't sound like a lot but it should be noted the period before christmas is always fairly quiet

Took the words right out of my mouth there. 1000 people a day for a park that most people didn't even know was open is not a bad result at all IMHO. Plus I do seem to recall reading that they wanted to acheive something like 400,000 vistors a year, and you don't need an average of much more then 1000 a day to reach that. Good to hear they're pretty much on track.

[Dylaan]

Just wondering, that image in the article... Has it been modified in any way? The sky looks way too blue to be normal, and the colours are extremely vivid! Looks great though!

[D.C.]

I was just about to comment how awesome that photo looked!

[DaptoFunlandGuy]

photographically speaking, I will guarantee that little or no post-process editing (such as photoshop) has been applied to this photo. Its just a nice, sharp, wide angle lens, using a circular polariser (the angle of the shadows on the ground puts the sun to the left of the shot, which rings true to the fact that the sky is light blue to the left and darker on the right. Its possible that an intensifier has also been used, but since this is digital, using the "vivid" colour setting on any good quality DSLR will do pretty much the same thing. Its nice, but its not an above average shot, considering that it was done by a decent photographer to begin with.

[Gazza]

White Water World isn't the only park that has had a good season: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story...947-643,00.html

....Mr Burke said the theme park arm would instead remain Village's largest division, and its main growth driver as the group explored Asian expansion. "We see theme parks as a big horizon for growth into the future," he said. The fully owned theme parks contributed $23.2 million in earnings this half, up from $7.9 million at the same time the previous year when it was only 50 per cent owned. Earnings at the cinema division fell 21 per cent to $10.4 million, while the distribution division's earnings were flat at $10.8 million......

So I think we can lay to rest these fears about parks failing, needing heavy discounting, an over saturated market etc. Edited March 1, 2007 by Gazza

[GoGoBoy]

Richard I noticed in your most recent article on the main site (attendances up across the board) that you referred to WhiteWater World as being off to a 'slow start' with reasoning cited by management as poor weather conditions. Yet the article relating to this thread is about WWW performing ahead of expectations. Can you clarify this please? My understanding is that the park did quite well throughout the January period with revenues of over $3 million

[Richard]

Granted, the park performed above Macquarie Leisure's financial expectations, but these expectations are taking into account the bottom line, ROI etc., moreso than overall industry trends. The Attendance up across the board article was looking at the industry from a non-fiscal view, from the perspective of market trends and overall industry performance. There are other articles looking at the financial side (this one, one for Dreamworld and one for WVTP), so it would have been redundant to bring in these aspects for another article. Given the park is only in its first season of operation, they can only really rely on the financial aspects to set expectations as there's no benchmark. Macquarie Leisure are also very conservative in terms of setting goals and expectations; I'm yet to see any results from the company where they didn't exceed expectations, typically by significant amounts, suggesting strong financial strategies but very grounded growth strategies. From an industry perspective the park did get off to a slow start, though by no means a 'bad' start. You can guarantee that if we had a better start to the year in terms of weather (it was pretty strange weather up here for about three weeks from the last week of December), WhiteWater World would have had even stronger figures for January.