XXI Commonwealth Games: Gold Coast 2018

[Jamberoo Fan]

Given the XXI Commonwealth Games: Gold Coast 2018 begin on Wednesday night, here are some broadcast details of interest to theme park enthusiasts (Bold dot points are televised nationally, the rest only in QLD):

• 1/04/2018: 2:45pm - Queen's Baton Relay: Arrives at Upper Coomera Centre (1km away from Dreamworld)
• 1/04/2018: 3:40pm to 4:30pm - Queen's Baton Relay: Travels south through Helensvale (1km away from Village Roadshow's Oxenford Property)
• 2/04/2018: 10:45am to 11:10am - Queen's Baton Relay: Travels south through Labrador/Southport (1.5km away from Sea World)
• 3/04/2018: 8:50am to 9am - Queen's Baton Relay: Travelling along The Esplanade (150 metres away from Adrenalin/Funtime Park)
• 3/04/2018: 11:55am to 12:10pm - Queen's Baton Relay: From the northern end of The Spit, travels south along the Broadwater to Main Beach (250 metres away from Sea World)
• 5/04/2018: 9:30am to no later than 4:30pm - Triathlon (1.5km away from Sea World)
• 5/04/2018 to 11/04/2018: 12pm to no later than 9:45pm - Boxing (Held at Village Roadshow Studios)
• 5/04/2018 to 15/04/2018: 9:30am to no later than 9:15pm - Table Tennis (Held at Village Roadshow Studios)
• 7/04/2018: 9:30am to no later than 4:30pm - Triathlon (1.5km away from Sea World)
• 13/04/2018 to 14/04/2018: 12pm to no later than 10pm - Boxing (Held at Village Roadshow Studios)
• 15/04/2018: 6:10am to 12:10pm - Marathon (150 metres away from Adrenalin/Funtime Park at around the 15 and 35 kilometre mark & 1.5km away from Sea World at the finish & the start to just past the 10km mark)

Netball finals & Gymnastics are held immediately behind Dreamworld but due to them being indoors & not located on DW's property, they are not listed. Aquatics (that is, Swimming & Diving) are held 1.5km away from Sea World in an outdoor venue but due to the nature of the event using no helicopter camera angles, those events are not listed above too.

Check local guides for which particular Network 7 channel to tune into. It may also be seen through Network 7's official application/website for the XXI Commonwealth Games: Gold Coast 2018. Times above are all Australian Eastern Standard Time.

Hoping the theme parks can be seen in the coverage of the events listed above (mainly through helicopter camera angles in the non-Village Roadshow Studios events). Does anyone think the theme parks will feature/be represented in the Opening or Closing Ceremony? And how much coverage, in the Commonwealth, do you think the theme parks will get out of the Commonwealth Games? (This is excluding any news coverage of the Thunder River Rapids Incident Coronial Inquest which begins on the 03/04/2018)

Edited March 31, 2018 by Jamberoo Fan

[New display name]

 

 

[westical]

4 hours ago, Jamberoo Fan said:

Does anyone think the theme parks will feature/be represented in the Opening or Closing Ceremony?

Yes. 

[jjuttp]

Where is Matilda now?

[westical]

22 minutes ago, jjuttp said:

Where is Matilda now?

Gympie Puma

[Jamberoo Fan]

On 3/31/2018 at 9:00 PM, Jamberoo Fan said:

Does anyone think the theme parks will feature/be represented in the Opening or Closing Ceremony?

23 hours ago, westical said:

Yes. 

A better question would be how do you (and anyone else) think they will be featured/represented?

[westical]

9 hours ago, Jamberoo Fan said:

A better question would be how do you (and anyone else) think they will be featured/represented?

You will go through a roller coaster of emotions watching the Opening Ceremony. 

[Jamberoo Fan]

Just some corrections/additions to the broadcast details I listed at the start of the topic (changes/additions are in red):

On 3/31/2018 at 9:00 PM, Jamberoo Fan said:

• 1/04/2018: 2:45pm - Queen's Baton Relay: Arrives at Upper Coomera Centre (1km away from Dreamworld)
• 1/04/2018: 3:40pm to 4:30pm - Queen's Baton Relay: Travels south through Helensvale (1km away from Village Roadshow's Oxenford Property)
• 2/04/2018: 10:45am to 11:10am - Queen's Baton Relay: Travels south through Labrador/Southport (1.5km away from Sea World)
• 04/04/2018: 11:55am to 12:10pm - Queen's Baton Relay: From the northern end of The Spit, travels south along the Broadwater to Main Beach (250 metres away from Sea World)
• 5/04/2018: 9:30am to no later than 4:30pm - Triathlon (1.5km away from Sea World)
• 5/04/2018 to 11/04/2018: 12pm to no later than 9:45pm - Boxing (Held at Village Roadshow Studios)
• 5/04/2018 to 15/04/2018: 9:30am to no later than 9:15pm - Table Tennis (Held at Village Roadshow Studios)
• 5/04/2018 to 15/04/2018: No earlier than 10am to no later than 9:30pm - Squash (Held at Village Roadshow Studios)
• 7/04/2018: 9:30am to no later than 4:30pm - Triathlon (1.5km away from Sea World)
• 13/04/2018 to 14/04/2018: 12pm to no later than 10pm - Boxing (Held at Village Roadshow Studios)
• 15/04/2018: 6:10am to 12:10pm - Marathon (150 metres away from Adrenalin/Funtime Park at around the 15 and 35 kilometre mark & 1.5km away from Sea World at the finish & the start to just past the 10km mark)

1 dot point was deleted as it is not being broadcast.

Edited April 3, 2018 by Jamberoo Fan

[themagician]

All VRTP’s have signs up similar to this throughout their carparks

[Jamberoo Fan]

On 3/31/2018 at 9:00 PM, Jamberoo Fan said:

• 3/04/2018: 8:50am to 9am - Queen's Baton Relay: Travelling along The Esplanade (150 metres away from Adrenalin/Funtime Park)

On 4/3/2018 at 11:50 AM, Jamberoo Fan said:

1 dot point was deleted as it is not being broadcast.

This dot point was actually broadcast and was incorrect - it was today (04/04/2018) but around 9:50am to 10am AEST. I have also gotten all the Queen's Baton Relay broadcasting times incorrect by forgetting to take into account the 1 hour difference in time zones (QLD time vs. AEDT) so add an extra hour to the times above in regards to the Queen's Baton Relay only. Sorry for any inconvenience.

Also, you might have also realised the Queen's Baton Relay was delayed going past Sea World by roughly an hour or two today due to a protest on Sea World Drive.

[westical]

Daylight savings finished on Sunday anyway. 

And there’s your theme park representation. 

[rac2703]

Theme parks, made a small feature in the opening ceremony - with a small segment creating a “picture postcode” of the Queens Baton “riding the rollercoaster”, they could’t mention any of the parks by name obviously as the ceremony has to remain non-commercialised. 

It also eluded to other attractions on the coast - including currumbim wildlife sanctuary with the “feeding of the lorikeets” and the Mt Tamborine Skywalk. 

Edited April 4, 2018 by rac2703

[Brad2912]

Random whale that happens to swim past Australia once a year has no idea how friggin famous he is... just going about his whale business and gets a whole segment in the ceremony... 

[Jamberoo Fan]

3 hours ago, westical said:

Daylight savings finished on Sunday anyway. 

Yeah, I know but it still would have been an inconvenience for someone if they used those broadcast details at the time.

2 hours ago, rac2703 said:

Theme parks, made a small feature in the opening ceremony - with a small segment creating a “picture postcode” of the Queens Baton “riding the rollercoaster”, they could’t mention any of the parks by name obviously as the ceremony has to remain non-commercialised. 

3 hours ago, westical said:

And there’s your theme park representation. 

Yep!  (Photographs below from the official XXI Commonwealth Games: Gold Coast 2018 website) Ironically, the Queen's Baton never rode a rollercoaster while on it's Gold Coast legs of it's journey. The rollercoaster depicted looked like it was based on HotWheels SideWinder (but a way better version & with plain red carriages).

Now, it just depends if they do anything different in the Closing Ceremony regarding theme parks.

All ceremonies of these sort are non-commercialised but I believe there was a rare 'advertisement' done really subtly at the ceremony's conclusion when a fireworks display begun (and continued after the ceremony's conclusion) around The Star casino, who are a sponsor of the Games. Unlike the other representations of tourist attractions in the ceremony, the casino's logo was visible in the TV coverage. Outside of the Olympics, seeing sponsor's logos isn't unusual but in a ceremony it is. The casino isn't that iconic globally so I can't think of any other reason of why they chose that spot for the only non-stadium portion of the concluding fireworks display. It would've been better to just leave it out or do the same fireworks display near the Festival 2018 site on Surfers Paradise Beach near Cavill Avenue (That's a globally iconic area!). Carrara Stadium's fireworks were sufficient for the occasion though. Apart from Carrara Stadium, if they are going to put fireworks on top of iconic Gold Coast buildings, utilising Q1 or a couple of the tallest buildings would've been better than a single barge on the Nerang River with a few fireworks on the casino. Melbourne in 2006 did it right (below from 26:01) but at the end of tonight's one, adding The Star casino-portion of the concluding fireworks was just tacky and worse, that addition was done tacky and possibly just for free 'advertisement' due to their sponsorship.

Anyway, that's going 'off-topic' from theme parks. For the Gold Coast members of this forum, well done on the ceremony. Compared to Commonwealth Games opening ceremonies since 2002, in my opinion, it probably is in the top 2 in regards to presentation & technical aspects (That last opinion isn't judging the content of the ceremony).

Edited April 4, 2018 by Jamberoo Fan

[MickeyD]

Was down the Coast yesterday on Business. Frankly I have not seen the place so quiet in living memory. It was like Xmas Day quiet. Totally surreal. Even the m1 was dead.

They seem to have done a fantastic job of frightening everyone to stay the hell away from the place and with all the hype leading up to it, reality is that business's everywhere are now suffering. It's a pretty sad sight.

Q the blame game..

[DaptoFunlandGuy]

Many business owners complaining over the weekend about how dead it was. Its quite laughable.

I remember being in Sydney during the 2000 Olympics - and everywhere you went there was some sort of event or community activity going on.

I worked for Penrith Council at the time, and they turned their Council chambers into a theatrette, showing the games on a big screen and promotional videos they had put together to market the business potential of the city. they also had free internet kiosks (which back then was huge - mobile data was virtually non existent then), and many tourists, and even athletes wanting to come in and check their emails!

I get that comms games isn't the same party as Olympics are... but even so, for all the hype, its rather disappointing.

[webslave]

When you've got hotels charging upwards of $1k a night, constant media about how travel around the entire area is going to be very painful and very expensive flights I think it's little wonder.  What's there to compel even a domestic tourist to go?

[New display name]

51 minutes ago, webslave said:

constant media about how travel around the entire area is going to be very painful

Media? 

Try the organisers scaring everybody away and pissing the locals off.   The Commonwealth Games did an awful job of making the locals feel included in the games.   

Edited April 9, 2018 by Skeeta

[webslave]

12 minutes ago, Skeeta said:

Media? 

Try the organisers scaring everybody away and pissing the locals off.   The Commonwealth Games did an awful job of making the locals feel included in the games.   

Sorry, for the purposes of media I was also including advertising.

[Jamberoo Fan]

Prepare for a long post...

I've always felt the hype of multi-sport events causing chaos in the host city during the event is not just exaggerated but overly exaggerated. Personally, I believe a simple way to tell how chaotic a multi-sport event will be in a host city would be if airlines/the local airport couldn't cope with the extra demand as then the rest of the city probably wouldn't either. Mind you, that's not based on scientific evidence...yet.

I'm just using the logic, in the case of the Gold Coast, that if there aren't enough flights to the city then there is likely not enough public transport out of the city's airport and around the city with not enough accommodation in the city either. I haven't heard any complaints about Gold Coast Airport yet, Gold Coast's public transport has been running at 99% efficiency (Mind you, this could be because the locals have left) & there is plenty of accommodation still available.

Accommodation on the Gold Coast can take a maximum of around 43,000 people at any point in time. If the Gold Coast couldn't handle that during a Commonwealth Games, there is no point in bidding for these events unless they built new accommodation. The normal occupancy rate in the Gold Coast in April is 53% (so about 23,000 people - and I'm not using the room occupancy rate here by the way). If the Gold Coast couldn't cope with a 100% occupancy rate, why build so much accommodation in the first place? (The highest it gets is around 66% in January) The athletes/officials stay in a new purpose-built village and they only number about 7000 people (about 5000 athletes). Add the athletes' families (say, 3 people each?) as spectators, that's roughly 15,000 people in Gold Coast accommodation (about 35% occupancy rate). Then add the amount of general interstate/international visitors to that figure. This is where it gets difficult. According to XX Commonwealth Games: Glasgow 2014’s Chief Communications Officer in the official report of the XX Commonwealth Games - Glasgow 2014:

Quote

Typically for a Commonwealth Games, ticketholders come from within a three-hour drive time of the Host City.

So essentially, locals make up the majority of ticketholders (How many of you have ever said to yourself "I'm going to <insert multi-sport event here> for a holiday" when it's not held in your city?) thus making most of the remaining accommodation likely vacant meaning the occupancy rate could be around the same as it usually is or even less than usual. For Glasgow, the 3-hour driving radius was a 200km radius which included everywhere within that radius except Northern Ireland & the Isle Of Man (as travelling between there & Glasgow takes more than 3 hours). For the Gold Coast, the same radius applies still so that would include everyone between Gympie & Grafton and out west to Warwick. Glasgow's population catchment in that 200km radius should be around 7 million people while the Gold Coast has a catchment of around 3 million people. However, that quote above was immediately followed by:

Quote

We had around a million tickets to sell, but didn’t have enough people within a three-hour radius to sell them to. So we had to take a different view...

Well, if the Gold Coast has significantly less people to sell tickets to than Glasgow did, that's a problem surely? So what did Glasgow do in 2014? That should work, right? Well according to Glasgow 2014's Head of Marketing & Advertising in the same report:

Quote

...we promoted ourselves differently. The message was that everyone must go to the Games.

And as it turned out, the Gold Coast did the complete opposite by encouraging the local population to leave the city for 11 days when, in fact, they would be the main purchaser of tickets. Glasgow 2014 managed to sell 96% of their tickets and the Gold Coast, as of April 3, had sold 88% of their tickets, which is a paradox - how can they sell nearly all their tickets despite their main audience leaving in droves? This could be because 'tickets purchased' doesn't equate to 'number of Commonwealth Games visitors'. You can have people purchase tickets to several events over all 11 days of the Games after all. Earlier on in the Glasgow 2014 report, it mentions:

Quote

Target audiences were based on initial research which showed that the majority of people intending to buy Games tickets – 35 per cent of those in the area – lived in greater Glasgow. This decreased in line with distance from Glasgow...

Greater Glasgow, in categorizing statistically, is the same as Gold Coast-Tweed Heads. With the Greater Glasgow population about 1.2 million, that would mean 400,000 Greater Glasgow residents were initially interested in purchasing tickets. If each person bought 1 ticket per day of the Games, they would sell triple the amount of tickets on offer! Gold Coast-Tweed Heads' population is about 700,000 and based on Glasgow's research, should mean 200,000 Gold Coast-Tweed Heads residents were initially interested in purchasing tickets. If each of those 200,000 people bought 1 ticket per day of the Games, they would sell double the amount of tickets on offer! So if there are 1.2 million tickets on offer, you only need 100,000 interested residents & 1 ticket per day from all of them to see all tickets being sold. As pointed out in the quote above, there are people not from the host city but located within the 200km radius that are interested in buying tickets. Adding these would include a total of about 1.6 million interested ticket purchasers for Glasgow (This would mean about half a million would have to attend one of the free sporting events or sadly, miss out on being at the sport all together) while for the Gold Coast, taking into account the rest of the 200km radius would see a total of around 900,000 interested ticket purchasers - meaning around 200,000 tickets would still be available, which on April 3 was pretty much the case.

It doesn't help encouraging the host city's residents to leave for 11 days as due to the lack of general interstate/international visitors, there is no difference in accommodation occupancy rates and combined with the locals leaving, in turn, results in a temporary population decline of -65% for the Gold Coast-Tweed Heads region! So more than half of the host city has left due to the encouragement...leaving the city with no 'buzz' except around Games venues. And no doubt, this means the Gold Coast-Tweed Heads economy hasn't improved (which it did pre-Games & could post-Games. Well, actually it will improve post-Games as the locals will return ) or stayed the same (which is what should have happened during the Games due to population levels remaining roughly the same) but in fact, declined...massively. Thankfully, the Games only go for 11 days. Regardless, GOLDOC should explain how they got it so wrong.

No doubt people would have used the Games as an opportunity to go on holiday anyway so there would have been a small decline anyway but nowhere near as noticeable. I understand traffic is pretty terrible nowadays on the Gold Coast so if there is 1 lesson the Gold Coast could learn from these Games, it is to fix up your transport network. The city wouldn't be in the position it is now otherwise as multi-sport events probably don't affect the host city as much as it is made out. It is just the pressure these events come with to showcase a functional city that results in politicians & the like trying to remove all of a city's logistical problems for just about 2 weeks. If there is a logistic problem with the host city during the Games, it's likely because the city already has that problem. No doubt, had locals stayed for these Games, the M1 traffic jams would have continued anyway. If politicians & the like want a 'functional city' for just about 2 weeks & no other time, are they really catering to their electors in the first place?

They may harp on about 'legacy' but the legacy just doesn't happen except in the form of memories - no massive economic boost, sporting venues become unused etc. (due to those sports not being part of that area's culture - thankfully, the Gold Coast only built 1 completely new venue). Gold Coast 2018's 'legacy' will just be Coomera Indoor Sports Centre, the Athletes Village, the numerous sporting venue upgrades/reconstructions & maybe a small tourism boost post-Games (maybe in 9 months to a year) but as with all multi-sport events, the hype over the 'legacy' they leave are overly exaggerated resulting, in the future, the host city asking itself the question (which the Gold Coast may already be asking) - was it all worth it?

The answer: Probably not.

On 3/31/2018 at 9:00 PM, Jamberoo Fan said:

And how much coverage, in the Commonwealth, do you think the theme parks will get out of the Commonwealth Games?

After viewing the Network 7's TV coverage over the past few days, the theme parks have received zero promotion during their coverage so far. The most that counts is a few moments of SW's monorail & Storm Coaster seen operating in the distance during triathlon events. There is even no TV commercials from the theme parks either. I don't know if international broadcasters have been visiting the parks to promote the theme parks internationally but either way, based on Network 7's TV coverage alone, there won't be a post-Games increase in interstate visitors to the theme parks as non-Queenslanders could be forgiven for forgetting there were major theme parks on the Gold Coast as Network 7 hasn't shown them. Just skyscrapers - nothing else.

Anyway, after this long post, here is a theme park question - how are the theme parks coping with this temporary downturn?

Edited April 11, 2018 by Jamberoo Fan

[webslave]

So there's a good question; have the parks made the most of the opportunity on the table?

[liz.wis]

This is the first year in about 10 years I haven't stayed down the coast for Easter.  As we tend to stay in Broadbeach and get around by foot, the crows weren't the concern, it was the prohibitive cost of accommodation.  I know plenty of families that got tickets for events, but none actually chose to stay down there because of the cost - the park and ride being the most popular form of travel, followed by various combinations of train/bus/shuttle, of which I've heard mixed reviews.  

If we're staying down the coast, we typically would go a cheapish takeaway option for lunch, and also buy incidentals like ice-cream, etc for snacks throughout the day.  We tend to splash out on nice dinners, think seafood platters and the like.  If we're doing a day trip, we'll bring food from home, maybe buy cheap snacks, and head home for dinner.   With people choosing not to stay down there, it's a considerable amount of business that both accommodation and restaurants have missed out on.

[joz]

What oppitunity? The Coast is deserted. I think by opening the doors to athletes and Volunteers the answer would be 'Yes'. Have they taken advantage of the unique marketing oppitunity? No, of course they haven't but when was the last time you saw any creative marketing effort from the parks?

 

FWIW I still think they need to get a group of 8 silver medalists together and race them down the aquaracer.

[liz.wis]

10 minutes ago, webslave said:

So there's a good question; have the parks made the most of the opportunity on the table?

The only park publicity I can recall seeing in the last week is the Dreamworld tiger cubs, and bus and moving billboard ads built on a campaign that had something to do with emojis.

[webslave]

7 minutes ago, joz said:

What oppitunity? The Coast is deserted. I think by opening the doors to athletes and Volunteers the answer would be 'Yes'. Have they taken advantage of the unique marketing oppitunity? No, of course they haven't but when was the last time you saw any creative marketing effort from the parks?

 

FWIW I still think they need to get a group of 8 silver medalists together and race them down the aquaracer.

The opportunity afforded by full-day television coverage showcasing the area your theme parks exist in.