Movie World – History, development, business etc (Wikipedia)

[joz]

I think moving the studios wouldn't happen unless someone else paid for it. I think studios admins is a prime candidate to be moved, as are sound stages 1 & 2 (again presuming someone else pays for it).

 

Also just throwing it out there, Movie World was pure rubbish until Scooby was built, and still througherly shit until Superman was built. I'm old enough that I grew up with SW and DW at their peak, so when Movie World opened I was super excited that there was another theme park! Truthfully I was so dissapointed with how lifeless and boring the place was. Zero kinetic energy, bland everything, small, no big rides and absolutely zero charm. It felt fake, whereas DW and SW were somehow real. SW and DW were both built with passion too, that somehow flowed into the parks. I didn't know what soulless corporate theme park was at the time but MW introduced me to it.

 

 

Even a few years later when they did get a big ride, it felt really removed from the everything. Lethal Weapon when it opebed added nothing to the excitement of the rest of the park as you couldn't see it from anywhere, and to get too it you had to do a long walk up the alley which was brilliantly themed to a place you wouldn't want to spend time. In the middle of the day there was no shade and I have vivid memories of air conditioning units. The preshow also destroyed any rerideability it may have had and just killed the excitement. Loved the ride as a kid, but the experience was pretty poor.

 

Anyone who wants the good old days to come back at MW seriously was either not born yet and thinks the park was cool because of how different it was, or are looking at it through nostalgia goggles. Most likely they worked there. The MW with Rivals in it is by far the best MW, even when you take into account all the stuff in MW where the replacement was a downgrade.

 

Oh by the way, the complete list of things that were better than their replacements is as follows:

 

Police Academy

Batman Adventure

River Ride

Western Action Stunt show/Maverick.

 

Everything else that closed at MW, the thing that replaced it is a step up. The only thing from the past I'd support is I would totally support them figuring out a way to do a studio tour as a broad appeal, realtively low cost addition to the park in the future. Might need a lot of privacy walls and props on the side of the tram facing away from the studios for when something is filming but reckon it could be done.

[DaptoFunlandGuy]

14 hours ago, Prequel said:

Do you think they will ever move the movie studio to somewhere else in order to give Movie World extra land? Just a thought.

Like i'm talking in the future, but with Village trying to sell the park, that might not work out.

They'll build out the carpark before they move the studios. they've proposed it several times before already.

[Naazon]

If they really wanted to maximise their space without "moving" they can try and turn the car park into a 3-5 story car park creating a lot more space + they could build and "office tower" of how ever many levels they are allowed / need to move offices into a centeral location and reclaim building space from those areas.

Finally, not sure how possible this would be also but they could expand backwards towards Paradise Country, albeit with a bit of a redesign such as knocking down Wild West, and moving the car park. Pretty sure they Lease that bush area.

[DaptoFunlandGuy]

52 minutes ago, Naazon said:

they could build and "office tower" of how ever many levels they are allowed / need to move offices into a centeral location

Honestly - building an office tower on property has a lot of issues - they'd be better off determining what functions need to be onsite, and moving the rest into a generic office building in a neighboring business park - Back in the day of envelopes of cash on pay day, your pay office had to be where the workers were - now everything is EFT, your payroll team can be offsite. You can move marketing offsite, human resources and recruitment could be offsite if you needed to use the spaces that they're currently using...

As for a multideck carpark - I think they'd planned to do something like that, but they needed their overflow carpark up and running for extra capacity while they did it - and we all know what happened to that plan...

1 hour ago, Naazon said:

Pretty sure they Lease that bush area.

The entire Oxenford site is one lot.

The issue expanding back towards paradise country is that directly behind WWF you have the water reservoirs mentioned earlier. Apparently West uses one of them for overflow, so moving it isn't really an option, and then you have the studio and support buildings to the side to think about too.

If they're not going to use showstage AS a showstage, I think it would be best to remove it and develop that into the next expansion plot, which would tie in well with the fright night maze sheds, and potentially have them used at other times of the year for various things.

[Naazon]

2 minutes ago, AlexB said:

The issue expanding back towards paradise country is that directly behind WWF you have the water reservoirs mentioned earlier. Apparently West uses one of them for overflow, so moving it isn't really an option, and then you have the studio and support buildings to the side to think about too.

If they're not going to use showstage AS a showstage, I think it would be best to remove it and develop that into the next expansion plot, which would tie in well with the fright night maze sheds, and potentially have them used at other times of the year for various things.

In my example, expanding towards paradise country would be when WWF is knocked down so they could fill in, or develop the water reservoir. Ideally in that example they would do something similar to whats happening at SW where they drop large expenditure and do a whole area. 

[DaptoFunlandGuy]

let's hope that that day is a loooooong way off. Demolishing wild west would be a big loss for the park, even though it isn't popular in winter, its the one family level attraction enjoyable for all, with mild thrill and an ability to cool off in summer.

[CR4ZE]

Appreciate the dialogue but folks, respectfully, there is a Movie World general discussion thread still on page 1:

https://www.parkz.com.au/forums/topic/8872-what’s-next-for-movie-world/

On 25/05/2020 at 7:37 AM, AlexB said:

I had a few moments spare, so I drew it up. The back end of WWF and Arkham is a bit of a mess as some studio buildings and park buildings are mixed in, but this is pretty much the park perimeter including all BOH areas.

And for those who don't speak in Hectares...

To the topic at hand, still can't state this as fact on a wiki article, much as I wish we could. 🤔 Even so, this looks pretty accurate size-wise. It's very interesting to see this mark-up and clearly the park's footprint hasn't changed very much since 1991.

 

[DaptoFunlandGuy]

11 minutes ago, CR4ZE said:

Appreciate the dialogue but folks, respectfully, there is a Movie World general discussion thread still on page 1:

https://www.parkz.com.au/forums/topic/8872-what’s-next-for-movie-world/

To the topic at hand, still can't state this as fact on a wiki article, much as I wish we could. 🤔 Even so, this looks pretty accurate size-wise. It's very interesting to see this mark-up and clearly the park's footprint hasn't changed very much since 1991.

 

Welcome to Parkz my friend. Respectfully Thread derailment is par for the course. Don't be too precious about it... And as you're in the back seat with the rest of us, perhaps leave the moderating up to the mods - since they've commented in this thread in a similar vein to the rest of us, its fairly tacit approval that they're ok with it for now.

As for the measurement, unless you want to get a trundlewheel out, you're probably not going to find a more accurate measurement. The park probably won't care to measure it in any more official factual capacity than I have, simply because all the surrounding land is theirs too.

I've found Nearmap to be quite accurate pound for pound. You're welcome to use the image as a citation if you wish.

Edited May 28, 2020 by AlexB
added respectfully so i could say it nicely

[CR4ZE]

6 minutes ago, AlexB said:

Welcome to Parkz my friend. Thread derailment is par for the course. Don't be too precious about it... And as you're in the back seat with the rest of us, perhaps leave the moderating up to the mods - since they've commented in this thread in a similar vein to the rest of us, its fairly tacit approval that they're ok with it for now.

As for the measurement, unless you want to get a trundlewheel out, you're probably not going to find a more accurate measurement. The park probably won't care to measure it in any more official factual capacity than I have, simply because all the surrounding land is theirs too.

I've found Nearmap to be quite accurate pound for pound. You're welcome to use the image as a citation if you wish.

Not a problem, I did say I appreciate it. 😋

Must say though, I'm surprised my initial enquiry about vintage MW news/stories hasn't turned up anything yet. Wouldn't this be something veteran members would hold onto? All of the information in our ride/park database entries would have had to come from somewhere, right?

ie how is it known that the Roxy was renovated for Shrek 4-D or that WWF was originally going to be a loose film tie-in?

[DaptoFunlandGuy]

6 minutes ago, CR4ZE said:

how is it known that the Roxy was renovated for Shrek 4-D or that WWF was originally going to be a loose film tie-in?

Shrek 4-d required a renovation as a minimum because the entire pre-show animatronic elements were installed, as was the finale animatronic in the speaker near the exit on conclusion of the film (i think it was a tinkerbell style fairy stuck in the speaker) - so it stands to reason that a "renovation" occurred by that logic alone. whether the seats, carpet, or anything else was changed, i couldn't tell you, but the pre and post show elements are proof enough.

As for WWF - the 'Rio Bravo' mountain theme is nowhere to be found in the storyline of the Wild West film. The 'old miner' "git out" scenes are likewise unrelated to the film. The pre-show (I never saw it) was reportedly film related but still otherwise unrelated to the ride, and likewise the ghost town, with the indian village, and 'ghost' action scenes have nothing to do with the film either.

Where you will find Rio Bravo is in Parque Warner Madrid - The Rio Bravo flume ride, which while it does have it's differences, shares pretty much the same overall layout (with the same scenes in the same order - reverse track turnaround, rail bridge, indian village, ghost town, back into the mountain) - http://www.thethemeparkguy.com/park/parque-warner-madrid/photos

(I'm pretty sure the town is even the same - "dodge city" with the same population gag)

It's clearly an identical ride in almost every way possible, except Madrid kept the originally intended name, given the film flopped and Madrid opened 3 years after it was released....

Although some theme elements have minor differences (no 'old faithful'... although these days MW's version doesn't have it either...) it is still very much the same ride.

I'm sure much of Wild West has been discussed here, but you'll probably find it's more LORE than LAW. Much of the info shared would come from former staff of the park, who were present at the time. It's highly unlikely it would be documented anywhere accessible to the public, and the park isn't likely to confirm it.

[CR4ZE]

For those who may be interested; I'm pleased to provide an update that Warner Bros. Movie World has just become Wikipedia's first ever Featured Article on a theme park! 😄🙌 🎢

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warner_Bros._Movie_World

I'm seeking to have it run on the main page as "Today's Featured Article" on 3 June 2021 (30th anniversary).

Click if you want to read through the relevant thread.