Both Movie World and Sea World have reduced operating hours during the next off peak season

Movie World:

Sea World:

Interesting... At least tickets are only $99 for those days.

Edited June 28Jun 28 by TV15

Our parks have embraced the rollback theme: shorter hours, cutbacks, and taking the easy option.

Don't forget WnW. It's almost as if the shorter operating hours in off peak is a smart business decision when there are less people coming.

5 hours ago, DaptoFunlandGuy said:

smart business decision when there are less people coming.

Them staying open during the winter definitely seems to be a crowd pleaser

@themagician People on every slide in winter, that's great, but why are we talking about Wet'n'Wild? Their winter operating hours haven't changed.

Edited June 29Jun 29 by New display name

3 hours ago, themagician said:

Them staying open during the winter definitely seems to be a crowd pleaser

Guarantee those 5 minute waits are an overstatement.

3 hours ago, New display name said:

@themagician People on every slide in winter, that's great, but why are we talking about Wet'n'Wild? Their winter operating hours haven't changed.

Because it's a village theme park that has off peak trading hours you unpeeled turnip. It just aligns all three parks to the same shorter hours, staff cutback mentality.

Ngl $99 for 5 and a bit hours of park that is best case scenario 75% open is a really bad value proposition compared to other entertainment options around the area.

It's obvious PE cost cutting that we should expect from village but I hope that people who arent annual pass holders dont fall for that pricing.

Edited June 29Jun 29 by Baconjack

One thing's certain, every hour those gates stay shut is money Village isn't earning.

Why not keep the gates open and stagger ride operations, shops, and food outlets to match demand? You still reduce staffing costs, guest get value, guests can spend money in the park, and Village actually has a chance to make some revenue. One thing is certain: locked gates don't earn a single dollar.

What's next, MW going to open up a Night Market?

MW has routinely missed a great opportunities to do things that could pull a crowd after-hours. Village are a film distributor and operate movie theatres, but they don't have a proper movie theatre in the park - including one that could be hosting film festivals or red carpet premieres. They operate a dinner-show with Outback, but don't have a proper theatre restaurant in the park to do dinner shows or cabaret style shows - or even comedy shows. WnW used to have dive-in movies and they seemed popular, but SW and MW never really had an equivalent.

The park could have had a number of adult-oriented (or even family oriented) after hours spaces to keep people around or bring in new people on minimal staff, but they've never really done it.

Hours have been updated again for Movie World

Someone forgot to add full operating hours for the school holidays.

My biggest issue with the reduction in operating hours is that it doesn't go back to normal hours on Fridays/Weekend like Dreamworld. Also the way Movie World handles queues at closing is poor, Dreamworld is more lenient when it comes to this however it's probably due to lower visitation some days. Not good for the consumer. My annual pass has dropped 21% in value now, paying more for less.

13 hours ago, New display name said:

One thing's certain, every hour those gates stay shut is money Village isn't earning.

Why not keep the gates open and stagger ride operations, shops, and food outlets to match demand? You still reduce staffing costs, guest get value, guests can spend money in the park, and Village actually has a chance to make some revenue. One thing is certain: locked gates don't earn a single dollar.

What's next, MW going to open up a Night Market?

11 hours ago, wikiverse said:

MW has routinely missed a great opportunities to do things that could pull a crowd after-hours. Village are a film distributor and operate movie theatres, but they don't have a proper movie theatre in the park - including one that could be hosting film festivals or red carpet premieres. They operate a dinner-show with Outback, but don't have a proper theatre restaurant in the park to do dinner shows or cabaret style shows - or even comedy shows. WnW used to have dive-in movies and they seemed popular, but SW and MW never really had an equivalent.

The park could have had a number of adult-oriented (or even family oriented) after hours spaces to keep people around or bring in new people on minimal staff, but they've never really done it.

I don't think a theme park should be having multiple screening spaces for film festivals, but I like the way of thinking. I would like to see them utilise their venues more 'after hours' but honestly i'd just prefer they traded longer during busier periods.

10 hours ago, TV15 said:

My annual pass has dropped 21% in value now, paying more for less.

Well - they can up the prices or lower the offering. Clearly the price-cuts we saw earlier in the year showed that they started to see lower sales at the higher price points, so now instead of dropping the price too much, they're playing with the offering - can they boost the value by adding more inclusions? can they cut costs by opening less hours?

Honestly - if WNW is showing virtually no wait for any attraction at 1pm, maybe they should just close it entirely in the winter.

16 minutes ago, DaptoFunlandGuy said:

Honestly - if WNW is showing virtually no wait for any attraction at 1pm, maybe they should just close it entirely in the winter.

but where will @New display name go to meet their winter water park needs!

@wikiverse Village once had plans to build up the nightlife side of the parks, but apart from Topgolf, nothing ever really came of it. They've mentioned wanting the tram line extended to the parks on numerous occasions, but that's a pipe dream.

MW could easily run its own shuttle bus service from Helensvale Station at night, just like DW ran its own buses from Brisbane and Surfers before public transport reached Coomera. Plenty of theme parks around the world do the same thing, so it's hardly a new concept and would be a simple way to improve access.

@TV15 It hasn't really lost value if you're still getting the same number of rides in a day because fewer people are choosing to visit MW. When the park was busy, Rivals regularly had 2 hour queues, but now you're lucky to see it hit an hour. I haven't waited more than 30 minutes on it in quite a while. There are probably a lot of people who share your mindset and feel like they're getting less, and even if that isn't the reality, that perception could still hurt future pass sales. The only thing that's happened is that staff, who are already on terrible wages, have had their hours cut, while the parks have reduced their own opportunities to generate revenue.

Edited June 29Jun 29 by New display name

1 hour ago, New display name said:

@TV15 It hasn't really lost value if you're still getting the same number of rides in a day because fewer people are choosing to visit MW. When the park was busy, Rivals regularly had 2 hour queues, but now you're lucky to see it hit an hour. I haven't waited more than 30 minutes on it in quite a while. There are probably a lot of people who share your mindset and feel like they're getting less, and even if that isn't the reality, that perception could still hurt future pass sales. The only thing that's happened is that staff, who are already on terrible wages, have had their hours cut, while the parks have reduced their own opportunities to generate revenue.

See I think that's a flawed outlook. "The park doesn't have two hour queues, so we don't need as much time to do everything - so instead of letting you experience your favourite things more than once in the off peak period, let's close early \ open late."

You're still getting less. You're getting less time.

As for staff, yeah sure, it sucks. but the staff who have lost hours are casuals, and that is the nature of casual employment.

Only Village can determine whether the cost is worth the saving.

It isn’t a surprising move while I am mostly surprised about the lack of Friday to Sunday continuing to operate at normal hours, I am not surprised by the reduced overall hours as we have seen a pattern emerge over the past few weeks in the entertainment industry scaling down (countless musicals cutting their tours short) along with increased competition (Area 51, Dreamworld etc) in combination with this time of year generally being the least popular I think it was about time that we saw Village take this route.

I’m however curious as to if this will continue to happen every off peak time or if maybe we see this be mostly a winter time occurrence and similarly curious as to how Dreamworld will respond, could we see them reduce weekend hours as well? Maybe pause night markets during winter?

1 hour ago, Themepark Enthusist said:

Curious as to how Dreamworld will respond, could we see them reduce weekend hours as well? Maybe pause night markets during winter?

I doubt Dreamworld will do anything, they consistently get big crowds these days. When I was there during the line dancing recently, a staff member said it was the busiest night they’d ever had for Night Markets.