VRTP Backwards Seat Pricing

[TV15]

Towards the end of July this year, following Dreamworld's addition of a second spinning gondola to Steel Taipan and a significant reduction in the upcharge experience price, VRTP adjusted their own one-shot and backwards seating upcharge prices.

Both DC Rivals and Leviathan saw their backwards seat pricing reduced — DC Rivals from $30 to $20, and Leviathan from $25 to $10. Following this change, I noticed an increase in the number of people opting for the backwards seat on DC Rivals. However, I didn’t visit Sea World, so I can't say if the same happened there.

As of this week, the prices have gone up by $5 again.

 

DC Rivals still seems to be getting good usage at the new $25 price, but Leviathan continues to go out mostly empty. What's going wrong here? While I’d love to see these lower prices stick, it feels like VRTP isn’t doing enough to let people know about the reduced pricing. Without better marketing and promotion of this price reduction, VRTP might see from their ridership data that price isn’t the issue and decide to return to charging higher, and arguably unreasonable prices.

[themagician]

28 minutes ago, TV15 said:

As of this week, the prices have gone up by $5 again.

It could be related to it being school holidays

[TV15]

Just now, themagician said:

It could be related to it being school holidays

Yep, I should've explicitly mentioned that—it's likely related to the school holidays, and I assumed most people would know that. However, I didn’t notice any significant increase in ridership for Leviathan, even with the lower price during this period. VRTP might see from their ridership data that the price drop isn’t having the desired effect, which could influence their future pricing decisions.

[Tricoart]

47 minutes ago, TV15 said:

DC Rivals still seems to be getting good usage at the new $25 price, but Leviathan continues to go out mostly empty. What's going wrong here?

Purely speculation, but I'd have to guess it's partially advertisement, and partially just how they're built. DCR had its gimmick seat heavily advertised, both when it opened and recently, whereas Sea World had the theming & 'precinct' as a whole to advertise for Levi, so it's gimmick was left relatively unknown. Also, due to DCR having it's basic station setup (like that of Steel Taipan's, which also had comparable gimmick seat advertisement), they're able to play ads for the ride/backwards experience on TV screens while people are queueing, as well as having an adjacent, separate queue for backwards riders, meaning guests in the main queue'll also see people using it. Levi, on the other hand, has neither, and in my experience riding it, most people either don't know the back row is backwards, or get to the station & don't know it's an upcharge.

Edited 1 hour ago by Tricoart