Adventure World 2015 - 'Mi2' Kraken Tornado slide

[iwerks]

On the whole, they've been pretty specific about that procedure.

[Oak]

On 08/12/2015 at 3:37 PM, Mark Shaw said:

. That is partly a design restriction because neither ride has a single rider queue race. the only way around that is to allow single riders into the Fast pass queue? 

That's actually how Universal Studios do it - they hand out 'single rider' passes to people who ask (there's maybe 10 of them), which are collected back when they hop on the ride - people with single rider passes then go in the Fast pass queue.

[grrofunger]

sooooo many schoolkids there today

so much happiness

[iwerks]

Busy day in the park, today. Freefall is not functioning and it looks like the chairlift is only starting now. Got a cabana and fast passes. The fast pass queue on the Kraken is very efficient, less so for the mat rides and the tunnel of terror. The white paint on the hill isn't that good at keeping feet cool, but it looks like they're putting up some netting, so that might help. Wait time for Abyss is about 5-10 minutes in the normal queue.

[grrofunger]

i will probably head down around 3 or 4pm when hopefully a lot of people have had enough and leave

[iwerks]

Still pretty busy. Saw some of Mark's team members remove a snake from the pool. Freefall was testing later on.

[Tim Dasco]

Is free fall together now? On Sunday it was in peaches. I used the fast past and it was so much better than waiting. I will say  Kracken is amazing and so great. Went on it 15 times with the fast pass. Well done Mark and team on the slide.

[Reanimated35]

12 minutes ago, Tim Dasco said:

Is free fall together now? On Sunday it was in peaches. 

Can confirm - Freefall is still in peaches.

[iwerks]

*Canned laughter*

Thankfully Freefall is out of peaches now. There was a guy climbing it earlier and then it was testing. 

Couldn't believe how quickly they caught the snake.

https://www.facebook.com/1658316444399226/videos/1796426193921583/?theater

Great to see that Adventure World has made some efforts to help the climb up the hill with the paving, some shade and a water station.

[Adam C]

We also opted for the Cabana & Fastpass  today.  Fastpass was very worth it in light of the bumper crowd.  Re the Kraken, I noticed Mark was overseeing a new loading procedure today.  Namely two rafts in the loading pool.  While one was being pushed into the tunnel, the other was being loaded with riders. As a result, the line was the smallest I've seen it to date.

The snake incident was quite entertaining.  It drew quite a crowd.

[iwerks]

Must have been right next door to you, Adam.  Already had the cabana booked and decided on the Fastpass wristbands after seeing how crowded the car park was at 9am. 

Yeah, that snake in the pool video has notched up 80 000 hits so far. 

Also caught the kids' show.  The dragons now talk and sing (their part appears to be pre-recorded).  Their costumes have changed too.   

 

[grrofunger]

4 hours ago, Tim Dasco said:

 I will say  Kracken is amazing and so great. Went on it 15 times with the fast pass. 

That is epic !  that is a lot of hill climbing , good job !!

I didn't end up going , fell asleep on the couch, so the kids and wife settled for the pool in our backyard.  Looks like i missed some action with the snake !!

See if i can stay awake and try to make it tomorrow lol  

Kudos to Mark for listening to feedback and implementing some things to help with the feet burning and the drinking water up at the top of Kraken (please look at Dragon Kingdom's red path too, the little kids always complain about the hot path leading into the entrance and up to the safari cars etc- )

[iwerks]

Wow, that snake story has legs.  It's been picked up by WA Today, Perth Now and 9 News.

http://www.watoday.com.au/wa-news/snake-takes-unauthorised-dip-at-adventure-world-evacuates-pool-20151227-glvcq8.html

http://www.perthnow.com.au/news/western-australia/snake-goes-swimming-in-adventure-world-pool/news-story/92ecfdc6b83405b358a162352a44a845

https://www.facebook.com/9NewsPerth/?fref=ts

 

 

[Adam C]

19 hours ago, iwerks said:

19 hours ago, iwerks said:

Must have been right next door to you, Adam.  Already had the cabana booked and decided on the Fastpass wristbands after seeing how crowded the car park was at 9am. 

Yeah, that snake in the pool video has notched up 80 000 hits so far. 

Also caught the kids' show.  The dragons now talk and sing (their part appears to be pre-recorded).  Their costumes have changed too.   

 

Must have been right next door to you, Adam.  Already had the cabana booked and decided on the Fastpass wristbands after seeing how crowded the car park was at 9am. 

Yeah, that snake in the pool video has notched up 80 000 hits so far. 

Also caught the kids' show.  The dragons now talk and sing (their part appears to be pre-recorded).  Their costumes have changed too.   

 

If I may say, buying a fast pass with teenagers in tow can be a strenuous experience.  We did 4 goes  on the Kraken in the first 30 minutes which sounds great but by the 4th go, My hill climb was down to a walk.  Also, 4 goes on Abyss in 20 minutes and the G-Force gets to you.  But my kids were like Duracell batteries and were riding non stop.  The Missus really enjoyed the cabana. Her only issue was the permanent shade when she wanted some sunlight.  She did move her armchair outside however.

[iwerks]

Okay, I can confirm that I was in the cabana next to you. 

Just saw my snake footage on Seven news.

[grrofunger]

The snake didn't keep the people away today, i have never seen so many people there, was packed !!

[Adam C]

Hi Iwerks, if I'd know it was you, I'd have said hello.  Perhaps us Perthians can arrange a day in the summer to meet up and talk parks & ideas.

[iwerks]

Certainly Adam, next Boxing Day or before, perhaps.

I'm glad the snake didn't keep people away. Poor Mark must be busy.

Edited December 27, 2015 by iwerks

[iwerks]

The Kraken appeared on Totally Wild, this

morning.

http://tenplay.com.au/channel-eleven/totally-wild/season-23/episode-82

[Mark Shaw]

Hi everyone. Yes, I am a little busy and sorry I haven't chatted for a while. Hopefully everyone had a great xmas.

Kraken is extremely popular at the moment and we are doing as much as we can to keep throughput high, provide water for guests and deal with any outstanding shade issues. Today we added three additional pop up shade tents to address any gaps in the queue race. these are temporary as we will be getting some themed ones installed around end of January. The netting on the hill has reduced the heat on the feet by about 40% (I personally tested it!).  We changed the DK costumes to add some "awkward" clothes (Dragons aren't really very good at dressing themselves!) to make them seem more friendly and human like. the show is far more interactive and the kids are responding well. Bumper crowds today, came very close to actually stopping ticket sales but then quite a few season pass holders left and we didn't quite hit capacity.

The team did well with the snake incident. We do provide them with Govt approved snake capture and relocation training.

Trading s way up on last year. Over 30% up. I cannot give exact numbers but bodes well for the future.  Need more car parking!

Talk soon.

 

Mark

 

 

[grrofunger]

So many complaints on Facebook

[DaptoFunlandGuy]

^I always use the 1% rule - for every complaint posted on social media, there are 99 other people who had a great time.

However there is also the bandwagon formula which says:

...for every standalone complaint posted on social media, a further 10 people will claim to have had the exact same experience, despite never raising a complaint previously.

[grrofunger]

I agree and its generally the lowest of low when dealing with social media comments.

I just don't recall seeing so much negative feedback about AW , maybe i didn't look as much before? Some of the complaints are valid , a lot just whinging though.

In a way Kraken has broken the park a little bit, a lot of complaints about 2 hour + waiting times, lack of shade at the top and the hot surfaces.  

Kraken has drawn a lot of people to AW and the place is busting at the seams,busier than i ever recall, but then what is the park to do .. not install big new attractions? then people whinge about that too.

Valid complaints IMO would be about the surfaces and the temps on the feet but AW are trying to rectify that so you have to give them credit. I think the red bitumen surface was a mistake.

More shade is needed in lines but again Mark has said that is coming and some temp shade has been installed so again credit to AW.

Only other thing they could do is maybe have a staff member halfway up the hill or at the bottom telling people how long the wait at the top is and that might stop some people from walking up and getting pissed off when they get up there?

We walked up the other day (much cooler in the new shade bit) burnt our feet at the top, saw the line, said no way, had a drink of the free water and caught the chair lift down - no real harm we will ride Kraken another day but others aren't as forgiving. 

AW have two different wrist band colours each day - 1 for season members and another for day passes. The majority of guests i have noticed recently are day pass members which would have less affinity and understanding of the park, understandable for this time of year, but these are the people coming in expecting a good day out and the ones walking away disgruntled, whinging to others and never coming back.

I still love the place but if the other day was my first experience at the park i probably wouldn't rush back either.

 

[Mark Shaw]

Further to my comments yesterday, we have provided further shade at Kraken queue race overnight and positioned a team member with a bucket to douse the bitumen. The hill to freefall was black bitumen last year and we chose to refresh it with red on the understanding that it was cooler than black. We never receive complaints on the Freefall hill section before Kraken so this issue was hard to predict. The netting sections are being increased as and when the team can install.  Complaints always increase when temps soar, that's human nature. We are still trending the highest rated Theme park, water park or amusement park in Australia on Trip Advisor for December to date, thanks to our teams dedication and hard work.

We have also set a capacity limit on the park at 5500 guests. when making a call to bring this into effect we apply an average season pass attendance based on previous days so that  Season pass members can still be accommodated. The period 26th Dec to 4th Jan is always our peak peak period so we expect numbers to return to more comfortable levels next week. Attendances in actual fact for this week are only 4% up on same days last year.

PS. . the capacity limit has been brought into effect today.

[themagician]

It sounds like they are doing the best they can in the mean time to fix the hot surface and shade issues. People will always complain about things, even if they are just stupid things. Some people just like to pick at things for the fun of it. If people are complaining about walking up the hill and getting annoyed because the queue is long. Maybe just have a sign with the wait time on it. Have one at the bottom of the hill and one at the top. And if they want to spend a little more, but makes things easier, install electronic wait times signs.