Wet 'n' Wild Sydney Construction

[Keegs]

I headed down this evening. Didn't get in until 8 pm and stayed til 11.

The lines at this point were still huge on all attractions, and disappointingly Boomerang Bay was closed. I bought a locker, no issues there, headed to the Riptide since the line was moving pretty fast. Afterwards decided we'd try the H2Go Racers thinking the line would move quick, but noticed that only 4 of the 8 lanes were operating. No idea why. Ended up waiting a while for this because of that. The 2 aqualoops on the far side weren't operating either, but the line for 360 Rush didn't seem too long.

Was probably around 9 by the time we went to line up for the T5. Got on it just before 10. It's so much more intense at night, loved it.

Went to have a rest and at about 10:15 we decided to check out the Whitewater West tower, and was very surprised to see there were next to no lines on any attractions. Between then and just before 11 when they closed, we got in every slide but The Breakers. I was told they were closed due to lack of lifeguards.

Half Pipe: Loved this one, definitely lives up to the hype. Insane speed.

Tropical Cyclone: I found this to be more exciting than its Gold Coast counterpart. Nothing amazing but a solid slide.

Aqua Tube: Was really surprised with this. Picked up some nice speed around the turns.

Typhoon: This one was actually much better than I expected. We were the last ones on it all night, all the slides had been closed. Pretty fast and the rattles are nice too.

Went to check our on-ride photos before leaving to find the Riptide had taken a photo of the group that rode it before us. Probably swiped the band too early.

They've made some attempts at correcting the utter confusion on the towers. The Whitewater West tower had stickers with ride names with their respective colours on most of the individual stairs pointing you in the right direction. The Proslide towers had posters at the bottom saying "T5 (green and yellow) and an arrow pointing to the left, and so on.

I'll most likely not head back until February when school starts, hopefully they fix all the minor issues by then.

[DaptoFunlandGuy]

155k passes at ~$110 each (rough average of Gold & Silver price) equals $17m in annual pass revenue. Not bad for a park that only cost $120m. And that's before daily tickets, food, parking, fastpass sales, merch etc. They are raking it in!

Remember to allow for the "buy 3, get one free promotion" which they introduced and made retrospective.

Not everyone who bought one would have bought as part of a group of 4 (we buy ours as a couple so we don't benefit from those kinds of offers) but while it may not be 25% of the passes are freebies, I daresay around 10% would be.

Still - around 15 million is still pretty good.

I couldn't be bothered going back to check the proposed cost of the park, however with pass sales like this, return on investment won't take long and we should start to see expansions in 3-5 years.

[Dave the Rave]

Ok so we went on the 17th with 20 kids yes 20 kids we hired a 12 seater bus and borrowed a 8 seater soccer mum van and used my wifes car as well.

after waiting in line for quite some time for our bands we were told that we could get our bands later and just show our print outs to the girl at the gate.

would have been nice if they let us know that earlier, but anyway we were in Yah.

Lockers we had to use a credit card the young girls in our sons year didnt have one so we had to put it on our account. we went off to ride, where did those 20 kids go, they are 13 to 14 years old they should be ok. 12:30pm we had been in the park for around 2 hours and meet up with some of the kids and they explained they had been in the line to get a band for 2 hrs so they could load money onto band to get a locker seems silly no cash for lockers.

we were there for about 11 hours and i got on 10 rides and had alot of fun on the h2go racers were weight is your best advantage, lines were quick also.

things that need improvement are maybe a little more shade and who decided that 5 rides can use the same staircase crazy, if you said who is lining up for the aqua tube and realized that no one was you could get straight up and ride it, all those other people were waiting for other slides.

we are going again on the 27th and now know the deal.

band swipe went down around the afternoon and we had our ice creams for free cool. parking lot had nasty ashfelt that burnt and stuck to our shoes for those that shoes.

the staff were friendly and helpful the lines a little long but what can you expect on opening, anyway thats may rant after a few beers on the central coast on a heat wave day

[jjuttp]

Despite my procrastination in uploading things, i went again on Wednesday; and i must say that i prefer the entire Curler tower when the raft elevators broken. There's a lot more speed in the doubles than the rafts.

[GoGoBoy]

They've made some attempts at correcting the utter confusion on the towers. The Whitewater West tower had stickers with ride names with their respective colours on most of the individual stairs pointing you in the right direction. The Proslide towers had posters at the bottom saying "T5 (green and yellow) and an arrow pointing to the left, and so on.

Posters? That's never good. I hate it when parks stick up homemade laminated signage - so unprofessional! They really, really need proper signs... and soon.

I'm also wondering whether it was just a stupid idea to stick so many slides onto each tower. I saw a video of the WnW Syd CEO discussing the fact that they had decided to incorporate lots of slides onto each tower rather than having multiple towers, thereby helping with staffing efficiencies etc. He seemed pretty pleased with himself. But when you see how it's working you gotta wonder whether it was worth it. Surely having an extra tower isn't that much more expensive. Plus it would help make the park look larger too; Wnw Syd looks surprisingly small when you see it in person, despite the reasonable number of rides.

It also seems pointless having rides not being used because they aren't as popular (which in the case of Aqua Tube is not justified; it's great). If people know there is a slide not being used, and the park is packed, they will more than likely want to ride - but they need to be able to get to it!

Edited December 20, 2013 by GoGoBoy

[jjuttp]

Sister went today, and apparently the AT actually had a decent sized line, and wasn't just a walk-on.

[themeparkgc]

I'm also wondering whether it was just a stupid idea to stick so many slides onto each tower. I saw a video of the WnW Syd CEO discussing the fact that they had decided to incorporate lots of slides onto each tower rather than having multiple towers, thereby helping with staffing efficiencies etc. He seemed pretty pleased with himself. But when you see how it's working you gotta wonder whether it was worth it. Surely having an extra tower isn't that much more expensive. Plus it would help make the park look larger too; Wnw Syd looks surprisingly small when you see it in person, despite the reasonable number of rides.

I think there is no problem with having so many slides on the one tower. If the park does decide to open on limited operations throughout a winter season sometime in the future, the tower structure as it is would be great.

The problem sounds to be the queue structure. Now I haven't been to the park, but it appears there is one staircase per tower. With proper organisation this could work, but it doesn't sound like it does. I remember hearing an interview with Lo-Q a little while back saying they'd love to be able to design all of the water slide queues in the world because, in their experience, if they can get everyone to queue at the bottom of the towers and have a minimal amount of people on the stairs, it would result in smoother operations.

Because there aren't any rafts, a tower like the ProSlide T5 one could share stairs quite simply by using the method WWW uses as someone else mentioned previously. The WhiteWater raft tower has five different slides (counting the four Breakers as one). No matter how you look at it, a single staircase doesn't suffice. You probably need a minimum of two sets, possibly more considering you are going up with your rafts.

[jjuttp]

Because there aren't any rafts, a tower like the ProSlide T5 one could share stairs quite simply by using the method WWW uses as someone else mentioned previously. The WhiteWater raft tower has five different slides (counting the four Breakers as one). No matter how you look at it, a single staircase doesn't suffice. You probably need a minimum of two sets, possibly more considering you are going up with your rafts.

The Breakers tower also happens to be one of the fastest.

Also, here are the photos i took on the opening night.

[GoGoBoy]

I No matter how you look at it, a single staircase doesn't suffice. You probably need a minimum of two sets, possibly more considering you are going up with your rafts.

That's a good point. The buddy I visited the park with kept commenting how annoying it was carrying the rafts on the WhiteWater tower as the stairs & queuing were so tight and there wasn't enough room. On another note - WnW made an an announcement on their FB page that due to technical probs (currently being worked on) all slides on the family raft tower, and WnW Junior, are closed. They are offering 50% on one-day admission tickets

[Julys Aquila]

just received this email from Wet'n'Wild Sydney....

THANK YOU SYDNEY! Each and every member of our team are truly thrilled by your response to Wet'n'Wild Sydney during the first few weeks of our season. We were excited to have opened just in time for school holidays, as a result we are experiencing higher than normal visitation to the park. Due to this extraordinary demand some guests have been disappointed on the few days the park has reached capacity. In recent days we have seen that the park demand has begun to normalize, but we wanted to provide you with some additional information: • Wet'n'Wild Sydney has recently announced the expansion of our operating hours until 11:00pm on most days in January and will continue to review the operating calendar based on guest comments. Visit our Operating Calendar, available on our website under Plan MyDay. • The free Parra-to-Park shuttle service has been expanded to daily operations in January. We encourage all guest to use public transportation and take advantage of this free shuttle whenever possible. Additional detail regarding the Parra-to-Park shuttle is available on our website. • An additional off-site car park is available during peak days. When in use our Team Members will direct you to this lot and a free shuttle is provided to and from our front gate. • Should you have any question regarding the status of the park, please visit wetnwildsydney.com.au. Should the park become full, information will be posted to the park's homepage. Additional questions about Wet'n'Wild Sydney? Please visit our Frequently Asked Questions

PASS HOLDER PHOTOS Each pass holder will be identified by a photo at the front gate entry. To speed up your entry into the park on your next visit please login to your MyAccount and upload a photo for each pass holder. Once the photo has been uploaded it cannot be modified within the online account and can only be updated or changed by a Guest Services team member at the park. If you are unable to upload your photo for any reason, our front gate staff will take your photo upon your next visit to the park. Here are some guidelines to assist in uploading an appropriate photo.

The season pass photo:

• should be a recent colour photograph of the head and shoulders similar to a passport or drivers licence photo; • cannot have any obstructions that cover the face including hats, hair, or sunglasses; • should not be blurry, too dark, taken from a distance or contain a busy background; • file size should be no larger than 1MB; and •

that do not comply with the above guidelines or deemed inappropriate will need to be adjusted prior to entry and may cause a delay to your entry into the park.

ADVISORY Wet'n'Wild Sydney sold out of 2013/2014 Season Passes in December. We are aware that some MyBands/Season Passes are being sold on third party websites and we strongly discourage the purchase through these sites. MyBands/Season Passes are non-transferable and in most cases we are unable to admit guests who make purchases through these third party sites. Similarly sharing of MyBands/Season Passes at the front gate is a violation of the terms & conditions of purchase and may result in the MyBand/Season Pass to be confiscated and blocked without refund.

"Ok, it looks like Wet'n'Wild Sydney is full steam ahead in advising us of what we should know, or maybe keeping in contact with us in a friendly vrtp way so we can forget about all the Problems that's been happening at Wet'n'Wild Sydney"....

"Oh and one more thing, here is a survey about the rides/slides that was given to someone ?(name can not be mentioned) and was sent to me via email, a conversation between 2 parties in Australia and abroad in deciding about this survey was included in the email but it cannot be shown here.. anyway i thought i might give you members a look at the survey, check it out"..... https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/phx2013

Edited January 9, 2014 by Julys Aquila

[GoGoBoy]

Something seriously dodgy going on at WnW. Heads need to roll. Latest story: http://m.smh.com.au/nsw/security-alarm-went-off-before-wetnwild-nye-party-20140111-30nmh.html

[Reanimated35]

Interesting to think that with how well they've done on the coast that they'd be so dodgy and mis-managed down in Sydney.

[Bussy]

Something seriously dodgy going on at WnW. Heads need to roll. Latest story: http://m.smh.com.au/nsw/security-alarm-went-off-before-wetnwild-nye-party-20140111-30nmh.html

Very interesting read. Bianca Sammut the Operations Manager used to work at Wonderland for those playing along at home. I know people in the security industry who have a very low opinion of Mr Kisbee. "The Bus is now leaving for Security Dam, South Australia"

[DaptoFunlandGuy]

Tender processes for private entities aren't always the best approach... In many cases, friends of the panel, or the lowest bidder gets the gig - and it isn't always best to go with the lowest bidder... i've seen many events fail because of inexperienced and poorly resourced organisations that were punching well above their weight.

What everyone in Sydney needs to realise right now is that many park operators are watching with interest at what goes on down there in prospect, and the more they critique the park, and pour shit on it, the less likely they are to get another.

If Sydney starts rolling downhill fast, I could see VRTP going up-stumps and moving all their world class attractions to the gold coast and abandoning the property... its extremely unlikely, and they'd take a terrible loss - but it could happen.

[rappa]

Think that's a bit extreme

[Flea]

Yep I really don't think they're going to abandon a $120m investment because of a few issues. The park is in for a long successful future. In other news a friend of mine visited the park and they're now offering all day fast passes for (apparently) $50.

[Jobe]

I agree- they will make it work despite these issues. To talk about them pulling up stumps is a massive overreaction , to say the least.

[Gazza]

WnW Sydney have adjusted their opening hours in Feb. http://wetnwildsydney.com.au/plan-my-day.aspx#!

All Weekends are 10-8pm

Weekdays 3rd-14th are 12-8pm

Weekdays 17th-28th are 3-8pm

Good if you are planning on visiting after school or work.

[ncrofty101]

I just found this video and its so bizarre.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cLSW-QVvfo

At first I thought it was a preview of what they were going to do during the winter months of this year but then I realised that was impossible due to how off the placement is of all the rides. Its interesting to note that this WAS playing at the front gates of park and is a preview that has not been released as of yet. Perhaps its just an old plan or maybe they are totally re-jigging everything before the next season opens. My guess is that its something in between.

[Gazza]

That looks like a video promoting the previous iteration of the design (It seems as if the park has gone through 3 full redesigns through the whole process).

In previous versions, it seemed as if only Whitewater West were doing the slides, so it had a Ratter instead of a Tornado for instance.

[Keegs]

WnW Sydney have adjusted their opening hours in Feb. http://wetnwildsydney.com.au/plan-my-day.aspx#!

All Weekends are 10-8pm

Weekdays 3rd-14th are 12-8pm

Weekdays 17th-28th are 3-8pm

Good if you are planning on visiting after school or work.

And pretty shit if you were planning on going during the day.

3pm???

[Flea]

Not sure how they'll be able to justify $70 for 5 hours? Reduced single day entry surely?

[rac2703]

WnW Sydney have adjusted their opening hours in Feb. http://wetnwildsydney.com.au/plan-my-day.aspx#!

All Weekends are 10-8pm

Weekdays 3rd-14th are 12-8pm

Weekdays 17th-28th are 3-8pm

Good if you are planning on visiting after school or work.

It does make sense in that School holidays will be over by then, and the week of the 17th-28th is when the University semester begins further reducing the need for longer park hours.

[GoGoBoy]

3-8pm is just weird for a theme park. It's not some amateur operation. It should be open the whole day; it's still summer, and they're closed for the rest of the year anyway

[Alex Berriman]

It does make sense in that School holidays will be over by then, and the week of the 17th-28th is when the University semester begins further reducing the need for longer park hours.

My uni semester doesn't start until first week of March. I was thinking of going during the week after I got back from America but with it opening at 3pm I probably won't now. Not worth the drive from newcastle, especially if they keep admission prices the same.