Theme Parks Reopening Post COVID-19

[StingRay]

Did you ever think tho not everyone is as well informed about such matters as yourself?. 

I think some are allowed to be confused or wonder. But thank you for the clarification.

[Tim Dasco]

3 hours ago, rappa said:

You can make a fair argument that its crap so many rides were closed. But I think the park gets a pass at a few extra days delay on getting a ride open thats been closed for such an extended period, something that's never happened ever before in Australia.

We do have a lot of seasonal parks that have this issue every year. See Adventure World, Funfields, Gumbya World, Adventure Park Geelong, Raging Waters Sydney. All these parks would have been due to open up in just over 4 weeks time. So will see what happens with them.

[DaptoFunlandGuy]

11 hours ago, rappa said:

If the ride was changed with another 2 weeks further downtime people would be 'up in arms' about the delay. If they only adjust by a day and don't make it people complain they can't give realistic dates.

Honestly, if we all try to put ourselves in the shoes of Joe Public, rather than Joe Enthusiast - consider this scenario:

You've planned a trip \ holiday. (less likely in current times, but QLD residents can still travel). You've got limited time and you're due to arrive on the coast on X date. You dutifully check the maintenance page, and see that Superman is due to open a day before you arrive. Hooray, we will get to ride it. You go the day after you arrive. You arrive at the park to find the fence is still up and the signs out front (if they're still there) tell you it's still closed. boo.

The alternative is - you arrive on the GC after checking and seeing that Superman won't be open the entire week you're there. Bummer, oh well, lets have fun - arrive at the park, and... what's this? its opened earlier than planned? WOOHOO!

It is far more disappointing to arrive, believing something will be open, and finding it closed, than the other way around.

I recall my last trip to Disneyland, hoping to take my wife on Space Mountain as it is my favourite ride in the world and she had never been on it. We'd checked all the maintenance pages and its scheduled maintenance wasn't for months. The day we arrive, we bee-line to the ride, and it's closed. Checking the discussion forums and news that night, we found out OSHA had shut down numerous sites in the park for safety violations (i think it was handrails around work areas) and the shutdown would take more than a week. We were bummed out. The reopening date meant we wouldn't get to ride it at all.

Except on our last day in the park - a little after lunchtime, a cast member told us it was currently testing and likely to open that evening. We spent the last 4 hours in the park that day riding it repeatedly.

The disappointment we felt when we found out it wouldn't be operating during our trip was huge. It was the 'main event' for us as far as we were concerned. But, knowing the date it was to reopen let us move on - we resigned ourselves to the fact that it wasn't going to happen, instead of repeating the disappointment each day when we arrived to find it was still closed.

The fact that it DID reopen before we left was a bonus, and a happy ending to the disappointment.

[red dragin]

Under promise and over deliver.

[rappa]

That would be all well and good but nobody is planning a trip to the Gold Coast right now for one. This has zero relation to your trip to Disneyland, it’s a terrible comparison. 
 

I must reference back to a couple months ago when apparently it wasn’t satisfactory to have ride closures on the maintenance page because “most people wouldn’t check that before planning a trip.” Which one is it?
 

And also all of this assumes the park expects it wont be open when in fact they do expect it will be open and just ‘shit happens.’

Under your theory how much extra time should they add on to the end of the expected closure to be safe? A week? Two weeks? Should it maybe be an extra 2 months just to be extra safe? Or just to ensure no one is ever possibly disappointed maybe they just add an extra 11 months on so it says it’s always closed... that would be safe right?

 

Its a silly argument to suggest the park should add extra closure time to allow for something they don’t expect to happen. 

[DaptoFunlandGuy]

29 minutes ago, rappa said:

This has zero relation to your trip to Disneyland, it’s a terrible comparison. 

Well, clearly then you have missed the point.

We found out it was unexpectedly closed, when we expected it to be open, and we were quite disappointed. The reopening date meant we would not get to ride it, but it reopened early so we were pleasantly surprised.

That one comparison shows both the disappointment of finding something closed when all signs said it would be open, as well as our delight when it reopened earlier than advertised. It goes directly to the point being made, but as usual, since it doesn't suit your narrative, it must be dismissed as irrelevant.

32 minutes ago, rappa said:

 

I must reference back to a couple months ago when apparently it wasn’t satisfactory to have ride closures on the maintenance page because “most people wouldn’t check that before planning a trip.” Which one is it?

I'm pretty sure that discussion was arguing that having the closures posted at the gate was desirable, not that the website was undesirable. Again, dismiss what doesn't suit your narrative.

34 minutes ago, rappa said:

Under your theory how much extra time should they add on to the end of the expected closure to be safe?

It depends on the reason for it. In the examples given earlier - they had to complete x cycles and didn't quite complete that many, sure - they expect to complete them the next day, give it a day. But if you then have something else go wrong - block it out for a week until you have a better idea of the issues. If you fix it earlier, great.

Repeatedly extending maintenance day by day offers guests no ability to plan ahead.

2 hours ago, red dragin said:

Under promise and over deliver.

This says it all.

37 minutes ago, rappa said:

That would be all well and good but nobody is planning a trip to the Gold Coast right now for one.

Finally, this comment is simply false. You have no basis for your assertions other than your own opinion, and I personally know of two families with plans to visit the gold coast in the next week.

I also checked my favourite van park on the coast on nearmap, with the latest pass on 1 August 2020 (almost two weeks after all July school holidays ended) and while there's clearly a number of vacancies - this is definitely not 'nobody' holidaying on the goldcoast (I know for a fact that these are not resident or permanent sites)

[StingRay]

3 minutes ago, AlexB said:

I also checked my favourite van park on the coast on nearmap, with the latest pass on 1 August 2020 (almost two weeks after all July school holidays ended) and while there's clearly a number of vacancies - this is definitely not 'nobody' holidaying on the goldcoast (I know for a fact that these are not resident or permanent sites)

So... People are visiting...?

[joz]

It's the old thing isn't it? Yes it sucks, but it sucks for the park too. They wanted it open, the guests wanted it open, they couldn't open it due to something that came up at the last min. No point being mad about it. You're saying they should have anticipated something going wrong, how do you know they didn't? How do you know that there wasn't some slack built into their reopening timetable but things came up and pushed it back?

 

Does it suck? Yes. Is it worth raging about? No.

[Pyro]

The local drive holiday makers are still coming to the Gold Coast (3hrs away or less) but don't make up for the interstate and international visitor loss. June, July, August is the Gold Coast busiest time with interstate visitors, always has been. Also the drive market tends to spend less on holidays as its a mini-break rather than a full holiday. What the hope is that, come end of September when its warmer, and with boarders closed, people will start to make plans to holiday in the state, and the Gc will pick up this. As long as covid dosn't fuck it up.

[rappa]

I'll correct myself because I wasn't very specific and then indeed sounded wrong.

Yes plenty of people are coming to the Gold Coast. But what I should have said is "nobody is planning a trip to the Gold Coast based on what rides are open at the parks."

They're coming to the Gold Coast in droves because they are desperate for a break and there is literally no where else they can go. That's not opinion, its not armchair expertise, its fact, backed up by actually speaking to visitors and accomodation providers here in town.

 

Joz is correct, you can't anticipate something you didn't anticipate. You'll also note yesterday they extended it out to the 28th rather than just one day so that's exactly what people asked for.

[DaptoFunlandGuy]

1 minute ago, rappa said:

"nobody is planning a trip to the Gold Coast based on what rides are open at the parks."

You are indeed correct, and I agree with you. Your point makes more sense, so thankyou for that.

I will add, just for context, my Disneyland situation wasn't a case of going just to ride Space. our plan was the park, as part of a 3+ week trip to Nevada and SoCal, and the fact space would be open was great... until it wasn't. My point was simply when planning a trip to the GC, if you intend to go to the parks, you may check what will be open, especially if its a favourite, or if you haven't been on it before, and arriving to find its closed when previously you'd checked and it said it would be open would lead to disappointment..

I hadn't noticed the two-day extension though (its hard keeping track of dates these days sometimes) and had thought it another one-day extension, so i'll stand justifiably corrected on that point and look forward to Superman reopening by the weekend then.

[Levithian]

If superman was closed longer due to staff training, the park was ready to open the ride on time and posted about it on their facebook page that morning. It didnt open and the post was removed. 

So it would suggest that they had it staffed and intended to open it on monday, but something went wrong. 

[Flynn_Smith]

3 minutes ago, Levithian said:

If superman was closed longer due to staff training, the park was ready to open the ride on time and posted about it on their facebook page that morning. It didnt open and the post was removed. 

So it would suggest that they had it staffed and intended to open it on monday, but something went wrong. 

Or the post was timed and was automatically posted on Monday.

[Levithian]

Even if it was timed, it was setup with the intention to open. So you had to be training staff already before the monday expecting it to go live soon. 

Its also had the dates changed 3 times over the week. I think youd know if you had trained staff or not, and not need to keep changing the date each day. Besides which, you only need the minimum staff (4?) to open it. Anyone else that needs training or a refresher could do it while open. 

Sounds like something technical keeping it from opening, or even a number of unrelated failures across a number of days that keeps missing the deadline. 

Edited August 27, 2020 by Levithian

[Rivals]

guessing it’s more of a technical issue then a staff training issue

[joz]

Gah well that sucks. Still not great reading that page, Superman will do a lot to make park seem less dead when they can get it going. You can forgive a lot more being closed in a park that has Rivals and Superman open.

Edited August 27, 2020 by joz

[Naazon]

Luckily crowd numbers are super low and every open ride is a walk on, midweek. I've not been there on a weekend recently.

 

Edit: And I used the Buy 1 get 1 free at Gotham and honestly was the best burger I've had from there in a long time. Super fresh and delicious.

Edited August 27, 2020 by Naazon

[westical]

1 hour ago, Naazon said:

Luckily crowd numbers are super low and every open ride is a walk on, midweek. 

Yes, which is super confusing when they push using the app to prebook your ride and it’s not even needed. 

[Naazon]

4 minutes ago, westical said:

Yes, which is super confusing when they push using the app to prebook your ride and it’s not even needed. 

Well their COVID Safe plan was built around that so they need to keep pushing it and also likely to create a habit for people when borders open and domestic travel is on the cards.

 

But I've not had a single Ride Op question or ask me to prebook. There is just the huge amounts of signage.

[red dragin]

Two cases on the Gold Coast (linked to the corrections outbreak) but they where out in public as they didn't know they where exposed.

[Levithian]

From pimpama. Now the gold coast comes under the same 10 people limits like the rest of the greater brisbane region. They cancelled schoolies for this year too which will probably hurt the coast a lot as it's usually a good lead in to the christmas holiday period for tourism and accommodation, etc. Having 2 weeks of high occupancy before the holidays would have been a nice lift I imagine, with events cancelled and restrictions on how many people can be out in public together, might turn people away from even going?

Edited August 28, 2020 by Levithian

[DaptoFunlandGuy]

I feel like many 'schoolies' will probably still attend as normal. The lack of organised events just means they'll probably wreak havoc elsewhere. Just my opinion.

[Smol bean]

9 minutes ago, AlexB said:

I feel like many 'schoolies' will probably still attend as normal. The lack of organised events just means they'll probably wreak havoc elsewhere. Just my opinion.

Ya they probably just go to the bar get drunk then go to a children’s playground and go nuts

[Levithian]

The free events and the area kinda being locked down to other people is the attraction though. Especially if you can't have more than 10 people in a public place together. Might as well stay somewhere closer to home and avoid the restrictions that don't apply to the rest of the state (if victoria and nsw can even enter qld by then anyway). 

[Jdude95]

15 minutes ago, AlexB said:

I feel like many 'schoolies' will probably still attend as normal. The lack of organised events just means they'll probably wreak havoc elsewhere. Just my opinion.

Imagine the money they are about to make off social distancing fines