Raging Waters Sydney is unique as it is Sydney's only modern, major, ground-up theme park/water park that has been built on a greenfield site. Hypothetically, it should be a great success, as it appeals to a demographic who cannot easily access the beach. However, I find that RWS is kind of just... there. I mean, everyone knows about the park, but there is not a lot of advertising, and no one talks about it. And why would they? In the past decade, only one new slide has opened, which looks to be quite boring. This is not to say that the park does not have a good slide line up, it does, but I just worry it might go the same way as Wonderland, and shut down. What is the future of this park?

I don't believe you'll find the property shutting down anytime soon. There would also be some complications (not impossible to navigate however) about the lease use of the land to which the site sits on. 

You can't forget that Palace purchased the park for a bargain. Even better so than their original offer the year prior. 

Following the acquisition and change over period they drastically right sized their shared service side of the business and slimed down their P&L making it a profitable 'regional water park' in the eyes of its owners. 

With that being said its likely to continue that way, a regional/seasonal style water park that continues to plot along with occasional commercial capex that has guaranteed ROI. But id be shocked if we saw any sort of significant new investment anytime soon unfortunately.  

The thing that bugs me about RWS is that the layout is too spread out, and presumably all that space has to be cleaned and maintained (And heck built in the first place)

It's literally a 500m walk between the raft slides and the racers

 

 

But you go to WnW and its "full" and doesnt have these massive areas of empty paving and flat grass or bark chips.

 

Living in Canberra we get advertisements for Jamberoo and the Gold Coast parks (When it existed also Wonderland).

I have never seen an advertisement for WnW/Raging Waters since it commenced operations, it's an easy day trip from Canberra so it does make me wonder why they don't bother advertising.

I live 25 minutes down the road and have never seen ads. Even when much of my FB marketing is LPS and MW.

I'm not sure they need to advertise, given they frequently hit capacity during the season...

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1cGnVggUvfPKoZew/

 

I believe you'll find a lot of their marketing is purely via social mediums and BVOD. Which likely works for them as a seasonal operator. Season passes would contribute to a significant amount of their ticketing revenue/visitation so the need to do broader interstate or intrastate advertising is likely not worth the cost.