Parkz News New share price lows as Village Roadshow blames poor theme park performance on Commonwealth Games and wet weather

[Parkz News]

New share price lows as Village Roadshow blames poor theme park performance on Commonwealth Games and wet weather

Share prices have dropped to near 8-year lows off the back of yesterday's announcement of poorer-than-expected performance of Village Roadshow's Gold Coast theme parks as well as their cinema division.

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[bladex]

see what happens when you scrap the $99 passes Larry?!

[DaptoFunlandGuy]

Whoa there, hold on - for almost ten years we've decried them giving away the gate. Everyone has said they needed to increase prices - and at the first sign of bad news, youre going to point the finger at the pass changes as if they shouldn't have occurred?

The games were a shit time. Weather hasnt helped, and sure, Ma and Pa Bogan couldn't get the kids their $99 annual babysitter this year... so decided a good ol aussie boycott *(with associated badmouthing all over social media) was just the ticket.

Unfortunately, with both major properties increasing their prices (well - sort of) there isn't much of an option, and those regular visitors will probably take a year off, before they start drifting back for their fix. Young teen thrill seekers of today have never known a world without the $99 annual pass. Give it a little while and ma and pa will realise its worth the extra cash to get junior out of their hair again.

 

The price will normalise, the people will return. Dont panic and give away the gate like you so often have before - hold firm to your pricing model and they will come. 

[bladex]

$139 for a pass is highway robbery. people with families like 4 or 5 kids can't afford that when they have to buy 5 passes. and they wonder why they are losing $

[themagician]

But paying at least $100 a pass per park per year wasn't a rip off before the VIP Pass times? That pricing is still quite generous 

[Whombex]

14 minutes ago, bladex said:

$139 for a pass is highway robbery. people with families like 4 or 5 kids can't afford that when they have to buy 5 passes. and they wonder why they are losing $

That's less than two full-price visits a year. It's certainly cheap.

I just priced a visit to Event Cinemas tonight to see Avengers in VMax (2 Adults, 2 Kids), with two 'popcorn & 2 drinks' combos. Price?

$143.40

So, 4 cinema visits a year for a family = 4 annual passes at adult prices.

 

[westical]

Bit deceptive including food & drink for one but not the other. 

Edited April 28, 2018 by westical

[Brad2912]

$139 is a bargain. $199 would even be value for a local. 

Yes it’s a heap up front for a family - and maybe they’ll introduce monthly payments again on day - but it’s still terrific value 

[Whombex]

3 minutes ago, westical said:

Bit deceptive including food & drink for one but not the other. 

Fair point.

Alright, two adults and 3 kids (as per the post I responded to) in VMax: $109.25

...not far off one Annual Pass.

[Brad2912]

1 minute ago, Glubbo said:

Fair point.

Alright, two adults and 3 kids (as per the post I responded to) in VMax: $109.25

...not far off one Annual Pass.

And that’s for 2.5 hours of entertainment vs a year... 

[westical]

Bit deceptive selecting VMax and not the standard option. 

Plus discounts are quite common for cinema tickets, Telstra will get you five tickets for $60. 

[iwerks]

17 minutes ago, westical said:

Bit deceptive selecting VMax and not the standard option. 

Plus discounts are quite common for cinema tickets, Telstra will get you five tickets for $60. 

You’re joking about the highway robbery bit, right? Remember when it was $350 for a season pass 10-15 years ago? Imagine if they’d gone up with the price of inflation.

We pay $150 minimum for a season pass to Adventure World for a 7 month season. If you go 3 times you’ve already saved on the price of gate entry. If you go once a week, it’s cheaper than visiting your local pool.

If you want to see what a real season pass costs, research Disney and Universal.

Edited April 28, 2018 by iwerks

[westical]

1 minute ago, iwerks said:

You’re joking about the highway robbery bit, right? Remember when it was $350 for a season pass 10-15 years ago? Imagine if they’d gone up with the price of inflation.

We pay $150 minimum for a season pass to Adventure World for a 7 month season. If you go 3 times you’ve already saved on the price of 3 visits. If you go once a week, it’s cheaper than visiting your local pool.

If you want to see what a real season pass costs, research Disney and Universal.

I’ve been to Disney and Universal parks, but thanks. Not sure why you replied to me though. 

[GoGoBoy]

$139 for 3 great parks for a year? Incredible value. It’s just been too low for too long and it’ll probably take people a while to adjust.

[bladex]

4 hours ago, iwerks said:

You’re joking about the highway robbery bit, right? Remember when it was $350 for a season pass 10-15 years ago?

no i wasn't living here than

and it used to be $99 for all three parks

Edited April 28, 2018 by bladex

[Brad2912]

You used to be able to buy a decent bag of mixed lollies at the corner store for $1 too, but I don’t see you berating the manager at Coles for charging you $3.50 for a half filled bag of Allen’s snakes. 

Prices go up... 

$139 for 4 parks = under $35 per park for a year of access. Visit each park 4 times a year (or as an average - could be 8 times each to MW & SW) and that’s under $9 a visit. 

Parks are open 7 hours a day - so you are paying $1.20 an hour for entertainment. 

If that’s “highway robbery” then I’m Elmur Fudd... 

 

[AllegroCrab]

I'm a poor uni student and I'm definitely not turned away by that pricing. It's like 1.5 shifts of my casual job for a year of theme parks. Of course I'm only paying for myself, but if you've got kids you're paying crazy money for things all the time, I'll only have to cross that bridge when I come to it .

[pin142]

Bring back the $200-300 for one park passes! Let's see all the compulsive whingers come out of the woodwork then. $140 is cheap. If you can't afford that then maybe pass ownership isn't for you.

[pushbutton]

23 hours ago, bladex said:

$139 for a pass is highway robbery. people with families like 4 or 5 kids can't afford that when they have to buy 5 passes. and they wonder why they are losing $

Try living anywhere else in Australia, and possibly the world. See what fraction of the fun you can get for  $139.

I've lived in lots of places and trust me it's incredibly good value! 

[DaptoFunlandGuy]

On 28/04/2018 at 5:19 PM, bladex said:

$139 for a pass is highway robbery. people with families like 4 or 5 kids can't afford that when they have to buy 5 passes. and they wonder why they are losing $

So the $40 increase in price per pass is going to cost Ma and Pa Bogan an extra carton of ciggies for an entire year's worth of entertainment.

I remember when 3 large pizzas could be delivered for $21 - and these days you're lucky to get 3 of just the BASIC value range pizzas delivered for around $30... thats a 50% increase! Prices go up. Honestly we're just lucky they stayed as low as they did for so long.

It's also bogus to decry the increase for a 'family of 5' - regardless of how many in your family, the price increase is the same - we've got a uni student saying the price is ok for him - but somehow having kids means that it isn't fair?

Whichever way you slice it, the price is reasonable, and long overdue. The increase has culture shocked those who were comfortable in their $99 corner, and its scared a few off for a while... they will return - i assure you.

[RossL]

13 hours ago, AlexB said:

Whichever way you slice it, the price is reasonable, and long overdue. The increase has culture shocked those who were comfortable in their $99 corner, and its scared a few off for a while... they will return - i assure you.

Maybe.  I don't think $139 is unreasonable for locals, especially for what one pass includes and that it is 12 months rather than locking until June 30...but this is how they could end up with less revenue. Pretty sure most locals could happily take a 6 month break, no need to directly continue your pass.  So they're getting $139/18 months rather than $99/12 months.

The kicker here though is about holiday makers.  Pretty easy to buy the VIP pass for $99 and then let the kids go to the parks 5 out of the 7 days on the Gold Coast.

Now, you buy a two day pass for $119-stuff paying the extra $80 to make it $199.

What have the parks lost?  3 days of revenue, probably $40 a day for $120.  They gained $20 at the gate, to lose a heap through F&B...less food sold, makes the food operation way more marginal.  Where they used to spend $300, they spend $200 and then spend $100 elsewhere.  No shortage of other activities that will happily take your $$$ on the Gold Coast.

Or you buy the 12 month pass and visit a week earlier next year, so they get $199x1 as opposed to $99x2 at the gate.

Less visitors, means less need to spend a lot of time in the park-low ride wait times, also meaning no need for anyone to buy fastpasses.  There's plenty of potential pitfalls in their new pricing strategy and I'm guessing they've fallen into a few-it doesn't appear to be a slam dunk move to be profit accretive.

Most of the 'consumer surplus' is captured in the first visit to a park.  I'll pay insanely more to visit a park for the first time, than to repeat visit.

[Redboost]

9 hours ago, RossL said:

Maybe.  I don't think $139 is unreasonable for locals, especially for what one pass includes and that it is 12 months rather than locking until June 30...but this is how they could end up with less revenue. Pretty sure most locals could happily take a 6 month break, no need to directly continue your pass.  So they're getting $139/18 months rather than $99/12 months.

The kicker here though is about holiday makers.  Pretty easy to buy the VIP pass for $99 and then let the kids go to the parks 5 out of the 7 days on the Gold Coast.

Now, you buy a two day pass for $119-stuff paying the extra $80 to make it $199.

What have the parks lost?  3 days of revenue, probably $40 a day for $120.  They gained $20 at the gate, to lose a heap through F&B...less food sold, makes the food operation way more marginal.  Where they used to spend $300, they spend $200 and then spend $100 elsewhere.  No shortage of other activities that will happily take your $$$ on the Gold Coast.

Or you buy the 12 month pass and visit a week earlier next year, so they get $199x1 as opposed to $99x2 at the gate.

Less visitors, means less need to spend a lot of time in the park-low ride wait times, also meaning no need for anyone to buy fastpasses.  There's plenty of potential pitfalls in their new pricing strategy and I'm guessing they've fallen into a few-it doesn't appear to be a slam dunk move to be profit accretive.

Most of the 'consumer surplus' is captured in the first visit to a park.  I'll pay insanely more to visit a park for the first time, than to repeat visit.

Being an interstate traveller and having just returned with the family from the GC, a lot of this I can relate to. For the last 10 years, we have always bought the VIP passes and spent 3 - 4 days at VR parks but this year, with SW not really having much to offer, we opted for the 2 day pass and visited MW on both days. In the past, with the VIP pass, I'd use it twice in a year, one for the annual family trip, then again later in the year as a stop over weekend returning from QLD for work. But the positive side to this is that it did allow us to try other attractions on the GC we'd never tried before so that was a good thing. That being said, I don't think $139 is too unreasonable - but that's a local price which I can't access. And after coming to the GC for the last 10 years, the wife wants a change and wants to go OS next trip so chances are we won't be returning to the GC for another 2 to 3 years. 

[Jamberoo Fan]

On 5/1/2018 at 12:22 AM, RossL said:

Now, you buy a two day pass...

Do they still have a 2 day pass? There isn't a mention of it on their websites.

[RossL]

13 hours ago, Jamberoo Fan said:

Do they still have a 2 day pass? There isn't a mention of it on their websites.

No, because they scrubbed it for 3 days at $119 but it was only 2 days until recently.  Further 10% off that price with Groupon is also new.

Why the change?   Because they want people to visit for more days.

[pin142]

Three parks, three days, it's a no brainer!