Parkz News Dreamworld CEO talks current challenges, improvements and resurrecting the Mine Ride

[Parkz News]

Dreamworld CEO talks current challenges, improvements and resurrecting the Mine Ride

Craig Davidson talks to Parkz about Dreamworld's current situation and their ambitious plans to breathe life into several classic attractions.

Click here to continue reading

[New display name]

Why suddenly cameras are not good enough for the LogRide?  Every other flume ride in the world can sort it out and not have a problem, why can’t DW? 

Even though the tunnels have been a dog’s breakfast for a long time, DW has once again gone the cheapest option.  This is not the DW people want!  Spend some bloody money and sort out the mess you have created.  You cannot fix this with a bandaid.

Edited November 12, 2017 by Skeeta

[themagician]

That was a great read, and glad to see Craig was willing to be open about these things and the state of the park. Once all those things have been executed that area of park will look a lot better, and should create some new opportunities for them. 

Im very happy to hear that they will enclose the mine ride again, if the track gets the all clear (which I really hope it does). And about bloody time they remove the chair lift completely, and fix the awful craziness of that area of path.

This may all take a couple of years, but I look forward to seeing what the park does, and how it will all come together once completed.

I get your point Skeeta, but that tunnel was pretty awful, and I’m glad to see it go. And surely, the time and effort to remove it would cost more than to install a camera?

[webslave]

Spoke to Craig last Thursday?  Approximately how many minutes elapsed between hitting the 'publish' button on the (spot-on) article and the phone ringing?

One might think you struck a nerve.

[New display name]

You’re missing the point @themagician.  The ride has been down for a year and DW has had a great opportunity to totally revamp the ride.  Instead of spending any money on the ride all DW has achieved is making the experience more shit.   

This is Ardent management all over.  “Let’s stick the Vintage cars in the middle of nowhere with nothing to look out”.    

“Let’s reduce the hours of the Vintage because nobody rides it now”.

“We have received all these koalas from the new Coomera Town Centre, I know let’s stick them in the Vintage Cars and call it a new experience”.

As for the Mine Ride.  Total waste of funds and will not achieve any growth in people coming to DW.

[webslave]

So, having read this now there's a couple of observations on my part;

• If the conscious decision has been to take a hit on the presentation of the park while attendance is down; what would the conscious decision have been had the events at TRR not transpired?
• Many restuarants when trade is down go into what I would term a 'death spiral' whereby they cut back on staff numbers and/or food quality to reduce operating costs until trade improves, but that trade never improves because poor service and food exacerbate the operating conditions.  I would wonder whether Dreamworld is in the same condition - trade is down because of consumer confidence; so the strategy is to present a park that looks tired and unpolished?  Yeah, I'm confused.
• The Mine Ride is something that has been talked about in earnest since 2015 - but somehow we don't yet know the state of the structure of the ride, nor what sort of lifespan or ROI it might offer?  Sorry, that just doesn't sound reasonable.
• I keep hearing all of this "part of our history" talk at Dreamworld and am starting to wonder what the heck is going on.  So far we have talked about the Mine Ride (1988), Log Ride (1981), Wipeout (1993) explicitly.  Are we operating a museum or a theme park here?  The 'Big 9' are now HWSW (1995), Buzzsaw (2011), MDMC (2007), Pandamonium (2012), Tail Spin (2014), The Claw (2004), The Giant Drop (1998), TOTII (1997), Wipeout (1993).  Average year? 2003.  How about we stop worrying about the history for just a moment and wonder about the future?  What do we want it to look like?  I doubt five years from now anybody is going to be heralding the resurrection of the Mine Ride (and little else since that time) as what's set the park up for success for the next decade.
• It's great that they will be looking at fixing up a mess of pathways and removing SBNO infrastructure - but what good is that when areas of the park are crying out for basics like lightbulbs and paint?

 

[New display name]

@Minions! If you have an opinion on something why not say something instead of hiding in a dark ally?

 

Haha, looks like I've upset a couple of DW sheep.

Edited November 13, 2017 by Skeeta