18 hours ago, Slick said:

It doesn’t. Dreamworld stopped being the Dreamworld everyone knew not by one big cut, but by a thousand small cuts. Yesterday it was no steam train, tomorrow it’s confusing pathways, continue ad neaseum until you have a park where six attractions close in a space of a few years. 
 

Nothing you are saying is ringing true with me because DW was making mega profits with the zombie ride next to a Flowrider next to a V8 simulator next to a car exhibit in an area called Ocean Parade. 

Yes, DW suck at being a theme park but even with DW sucking at it, people happily handed over their money.

Maybe DW isn’t a theme park anymore but is happy being a fair and we might just have to come to terms with it.

DW’s demise is 101% percent because Ardent spent DW’s profit on Main Event instead of keeping DW’s rides in a tip top shape.  Hence the reason DW killed 4 people.

The fallout out has been DW has closed many rides, which in the past would have kept operating.

I hope the new management, has a plan to take DW back to a theme park.

Look one thing I'll say in defense of current management is they were handed a poisoned chalice. Like the park was an absolute mess in 2019 and the last few years have been an inevitable clear out. There's no money in demolishing old crap but it has to be done. The rides that they've closed also were legit end of life and it was pretty predictable that it was going to be contraction before any growth was possible. On that hand, I get it.

 

On the other hand, blind Freddy could see all the rides that have closed in the past few years were going to close and the line up was going to be thread bare by now. So they deserve critisim for not replacing Wipeout with another flat ride when the opportunity was there, or not spending a few million on getting another decade out of the Log Ride. Everything they've done suggests the vision is for a smaller, worse park.

 

The difference between that and say SW, is you get the feeling that they had a vision for SW that it's exclusively for families with small kids. Their vision wasn't to shrink it or make it worse, or cut it back, but just to have it appeal to a narrower group of people. I'd argue passionately that nearly every decision they made in the past decade did make it worse, but it did seem to have a vision to it. Even Liviathan supports that thinking.

 

DW from the outside the vision look like it's just straight up 'Make the place physically smaller, have fewer rides, put a hotel in'. It's just a question of if that's a permanent vision. Rerouting the train suggests to me it is, and I think that's a shame. Part of the reason DW is in the state it's in is 20 years of small thinking.

3 hours ago, New display name said:

Nothing you are saying is ringing true with me because DW was making mega profits with the zombie ride next to a Flowrider next to a V8 simulator next to a car exhibit in an area called Ocean Parade. 

Which is exactly why none of those up-charges exist anymore, right? 🤦🏼‍♂️ Dreamworld was making okay money (not great by comparison to Village nor other global benchmarks) and were were doing pretty poorly when you consider the lack of maintenance and reinvestment they were doing (not to mention having a bad year or two roughly around 2011), a point that you also conceit.

At this point everything i'll say to counter your point is going to be a regurgitation of what @joz said. Vision is needed, and vision starts with getting the basics right, like understanding how your guests thinks, what they want to do and where they want to go, and building them paths to get them there.

6 hours ago, themagician said:

When is it getting removed. I know there was talk years ago about it, but I thought that had been scrapped 

I've heard four CEO's talk about getting rid of it and 0/5 have. It's the yeti of Dreamworld projects; everyone talks about it but no one can actually get a hold of it.

Edited August 3, 20214 yr by Slick

It's perplexing that they went from advertising Australia's Biggest Park to 'lol actually never mind' in the span of 18 months. My hope is that it's not to permanently be a smaller park, but to consolidate what they've got in the pursuit of a better theme park experience. 

Nobody can argue that during 2017-2018 when the removals were limited with most everything open it was still a lesser experience then Movie World due to that park simply having the better attractions.

It's not about the size, it's about how you use it. 

9 minutes ago, Slick said:

At this point everything i'll say to counter your point is going to be a regurgitation of what @joz said. Vision is needed, and vision starts with getting the basics right, like understanding how your guests thinks, what they want to do and where they want to go, and building them paths to get them there.

I don't disagree with you, but have you considered Ardent don't want DW to be a true theme park and are happy for DW to wear a mask of a theme park, but underneath be an amusement park?

That's why I say, at some point we might have to come to terms, DW is no longer a theme park.  Maybe DW is Aussie World on steroids.  

2 minutes ago, New display name said:

Ardent don't want DW to be a true theme park

So long as that mob in perth keep suggesting there's an actual theme park over there, Dreamworld will remain a 'theme park' even if only in the loosest sense of the word.

I don't think it's about the theme park v amusement park argument. It's about putting effort in v not putting effort in.

32 minutes ago, DaptoFunlandGuy said:

loosest

I have a good joke for that, but I won't say it because I'll probably get in trouble again.  😂 

 

32 minutes ago, DaptoFunlandGuy said:

So long as that mob in perth keep suggesting there's an actual theme park over there,

Adventure World definitely sees themselves as a theme park. 

 "We’re Perth’s only Theme Park................................"

Maybe it's time for a new poll.😬

 

 

 

 

7 minutes ago, joz said:

I don't think it's about the theme park v amusement park argument. It's about putting effort in v not putting effort in.

Doesn't theme park v amusement park dictate what you should do?

I don't think it was lack of effort DW destroyed the theme of main street with SV.  I think DW didn’t care about keeping it a single theme.  The same amount of effort went in.

Edited August 3, 20214 yr by New display name

38 minutes ago, New display name said:

I don't disagree with you, but have you considered Ardent don't want DW to be a true theme park and are happy for DW to wear a mask of a theme park, but underneath be an amusement park?

Internationally I think all of our parks fall under this. This opened in 1998 at SeaWorld Orlando as 'Journey to Atlantis'.

And this is the concept art for what will open in 2021 at Sea World as 'New Atlantis'.

Edited August 3, 20214 yr by Dom

The “new” tag is their ticket to theme it however they want. One could say it’s a complete cop out…

 

@Domyour examples are more of a cost thing if anything.     We can’t get confused with how much money was spent on an attraction and how much theming was added to an attraction, otherwise nothing would be worthy of theme park status except for Disney & Universal.    

 

The things that are not “theme park like” is what Slick was alluding to earlier.  Placing a car racing simulator in the middle of an Ocean theme is not theme park like.

29 minutes ago, New display name said:

We can’t get confused with how much money was spent on an attraction and how much theming was added to an attraction, otherwise nothing would be worthy of theme park status except for Disney & Universal.  

<insert quote about Disney executives in shock about how much it cost to build Bermuda>

44 minutes ago, Dom said:

And this is the concept art for what will open in 2021 at Sea World as 'New Atlantis'.

I see Sea World have sneakily rolled back the elaborate artworks they paraded about a few years ago into something more accurately resembling the expected finished product.

(you know, if they hadn't put a cloud behind Trident, it would have made it easier to photoshop the fork out when they inevitably cut that themeing from the budget).

31 minutes ago, New display name said:

 

@Domyour examples are more of a cost thing if anything.     We can’t get confused with how much money was spent on an attraction and how much theming was added to an attraction, otherwise nothing would be worthy of theme park status except for Disney & Universal.    

Disney and Universal charge a premium price for a premium product, but it's disingenuous to imply that they are the only ones capable of recieving a good product for the price especially with how much more expensive their stuff always ends up. Something like Symbolica at Efteling cost around 1/4 of what it's costing Disney to build a clone of Ratatouille at Epcot, does this make the Rat ride 4 times better? Look at what Phantasialand is doing with similar attendance numbers to Movie World.

To give SeaWorld a knock because of that sorry excuse for theming isn't because anyone expected it to be Disney calibre, it's been they advertised it so much, hyped it up so much and will continue to do so as long as everyones opinion is "Ehh it's an Aussie park we expect them to be rubbish so we're willing to accept rubbish".

2 minutes ago, New display name said:

Doesn't theme park v amusement park dictate what you should do?

Not really. In Australia, theme park pretty much means 'Big Amusement park where parts of the park have a different vibe to other parts'. The only park that doesn't fit that is WWW and I think that checks out. WnW sees itself as a water theme park, and by my own loose definition it works, and puts the WWW = water park V wnw = theme park thing into explainable context.

 

The point is that its an arbitrary definition, and by international standards, an amusement park is a theme park here. Always has been, probably always will be. Given that you can do almost whatever in Australia and it counts as a theme park. Just do a quality job and at scale and you're doing great.

7 minutes ago, joz said:

Not really. In Australia, theme park pretty much means 'Big Amusement park where parts of the park have a different vibe to other parts'.

Edited August 3, 20214 yr by Dom

34 minutes ago, joz said:

Not really. In Australia, theme park pretty much means 'Big Amusement park

I'll take that as your thoughts and not something written in stone.  

Edited August 3, 20214 yr by New display name

37 minutes ago, New display name said:

I'll take that as your thoughts and not something written in stone.  

They don't write unimportant things like the definition of a theme park v an amusement park in stone.

Just now, joz said:

They don't write unimportant things like the definition of a theme park v an amusement park in stone.

I know and that's why I indicated,  “l take it as your thoughts”.  We will never get a consensus on the matter.  

I do like how SW provided amazing visuals in the promo material of a fully themed/landscaped area when that was never the plan. At least they are finally accepting it's not happening and have redone the promo images

21 minutes ago, New display name said:

We will never get a consensus on the matter.  

For an insight into 'as close as we ever got to a consensus' - see the following for a great in depth conversation about what a theme park might be...

 

The concept art also has the default no limits station in it and had the ride rotated 180degrees and the scale of lots of things seems out. It's also totally different from the model that was released at the same time so it's clearly 'concept art' not 'artists impression' if that makes sense. To me, it kind of looks like the original concept art was designed to be experienced at altitude from the outside, where as what they're actually doing is to be seen from ground level inside the area. I think the real proof of the pudding though will be how much landscaping they can get in, if it's green enough with a few little bits and pieces around the place then I'd say it's faithful enough. "You would say that Joz OMG so biased!"

 

I stand by my view at the start of all this that you can't do an immersive themed land in that area since the view across the water is the back of the Ski Lake/entrance building. Best off just having it be generally pleasant with a style tying it together. The 'Atlantis' stuff is actually the weakest element IMHO.

Maybe next time SW will put in more effort.😀

Maybe!

4 hours ago, Slick said:

[snip]

I've heard four CEO's talk about getting rid of it and 0/5 have. It's the yeti of Dreamworld projects; everyone talks about it but no one can actually get a hold of it.

Nobody has seen the Yeti since Avalanche was removed... 😛 

I believe it has been packed away with DW's mushrooms.