Leviathan Construction Updates

[themagician]

[shailerparkshark]

So that 18'th of September opening date on Wikipeda is pretty much a pipe dream now, isn't iit

[Naazon]

2 minutes ago, shailerparkshark said:

So that 18'th of September opening date on Wikipeda is pretty much a pipe dream now, isn't iit

https://seaworld.com.au/attractions/rides-and-precincts/the-new-atlantis/leviathan

Quote

Conquer the all new Leviathan, coming this summer to Sea World.

 

 

 

So no. Since the park says December, January or February, or more commonly known as Summer.

Edited September 2, 2021 by Naazon
typo

[Brad2912]

1 hour ago, shailerparkshark said:

So that 18'th of September opening date on Wikipeda is pretty much a pipe dream now, isn't iit

Given Wikipedia is user input driven, its hardly reliable. I'd probably get info off the actual parks website, which has stated Summer for quite some time.

[LORD_Noodle]

Now that the ST is coming along quite fast.... any signs of the train for the leviathan?

 

[joz]

Leviathan has that unmistakable 'Extended delay in opening' whiff about it. When's Trident meant to open?

[LORD_Noodle]

Just now, joz said:

Leviathan has that unmistakable 'Extended delay in opening' whiff about it. When's Trident meant to open?

other than covid is there any other things that are setting the construction back?

is there a trident construction page?

 

[Gazza]

I thought Trident was meant to open in 2021.

Presuming they want it to at least soft open for the Christmas school holidays, that's really only just over 3 months. I was thinking we'd be seeing a slab and parts on site by now.

As for Leviathan, I was expecting construction to roughly be keeping pace with Steel Taipan, with similar milestones, so I am surprised it's not testing at this point, or having theming being built.

Now, i know the concept art had the coaster rotated, but I was hoping there would be those rock mountains and water falls taking shape, and more of the large statues. A fair bit to do for a summer school holidays opening.....

 

Edited September 6, 2021 by Gazza

[New display name]

Does anybody believe the 2 new rides will be open by Boxing day?

[MrLukeCarroll]

Trident and Leviathan are still meant to open "This Summer" according to their website.

I was honestly expecting VRTP to find out the date of Taipan's opening and go "OH by the way everyone, Leviathan and the rest of New Atlantis opens up the day before!" but a completion of the land (I'm not calling it a precinct!) before next year is looking more and more unlikely by the day.

[joz]

13 minutes ago, Gazza said:

Now, i know the concept art had the coaster rotated, but I was hoping there would be those rock mountains and water falls taking shape, and more of the large statues. A fair bit to do for a summer school holidays opening.....

 

The concept art also has the default station from No Limits 2. I don't know why people thought it was even remotely realistic 

[Gazza]

4 minutes ago, joz said:

The concept art also has the default station from No Limits 2. I don't know why people thought it was even remotely realistic 

Its not like the public knows thats NL2, and Im not saying it has to be 1 to 1, ( yes it cleary is shopped)

But the image shows it as an attraction with some form of theming. It can be different of course, but all I'm saying is SW built an expectation with the public that this is going to be a themed Atlantis themed precinct, so I guess I was expecting something to be popping up on site other than the coaster itself.

Edited September 6, 2021 by Gazza

[New display name]

@GazzaI don't even know what you could fit in the highlighted area.

 

[joz]

They said themed and fully immersive precinct. TBH I don't think those words have any meaning in Australia. You can't have a fully immersive land on the land they're using, with the rides they've chosen, so I think if you read this forum and you were expecting that, you don't know what those words mean either. It's a message for the general public, and I think the public have better things to do than think about if an area is immersively themed or well presented.

 

What I'm expecting is 3 rides all neatly presented in a unified style with some vauge Atlantis decorations scattered about, maybe a small bit of rock work. That's kind of all I've ever been expecting. I've said it before and I'll say it again.

[MrLukeCarroll]

16 minutes ago, joz said:

They said themed and fully immersive precinct. TBH I don't think those words have any meaning in Australia. You can't have a fully immersive land on the land they're using, with the rides they've chosen, so I think if you read this forum and you were expecting that, you don't know what those words mean either. It's a message for the general public, and I think the public have better things to do than think about if an area is immersively themed or well presented.

The attitude of "Well you should know what they said won't be real!" is the reason our Parks get away with promising the World and then never delivering on it.

To say the public don't care or think about whether an area is immersively themed is a huge assumption that I don't believe is true. When you talk to people who've been lucky enough to travel to some true immersively themed parks in the World you hear as much talk about the feel of being immersed in another place or location as you do about the rides themselves.

Shifting the goal posts for the Australian parks is what has let them get away with lacklustre additions/operations and more for years.

[Gazza]

And thats cool, and to be honest if its well landscaped and looks nice, Im happy too.

Like the WnW new slide zone, we know its just gonna be slides, so no incorrect expectations.

Though if it had some of the large scale rockwork depicted, it probably could have made it feel more enclosed and immersive, since by and large its a low to the ground coaster apart from the first drop.

But I mean its on a huge slab so all the planting shown within the ride itself probably wont happen either...

All Im saying is, why produce elaborate images and talk about this zone being about the myths and legends of Atlantis if it's not?

Edited September 6, 2021 by Gazza

[Guest 239]

I genuinely think they either don't care or hope that nobody is looking that closely. This trailer dropped super close to when Vortex was completed and shows two completely different versions of the attraction. The final shot shows the blue version we got, but the earlier version is the strange sandstone version we've seen a couple times. There is no consistency within any of the concepts and the only absolute is that we will get the rides. Everything else is just 🤷‍♂️

I agree with Gazza; why bother at this stage? If the general public doesn't care for theming then just show the attractions doing their thing and don't worry about showcasing themed elements. However I do think that there a lot of Australian theme park goers that do care for theming but don't really care for the Gold Coast parks so end up saving and going elsewhere. These marketing assets feel like they are trying to give off the vibe that their parks moving forward are going to be different to recapture that lost portion of the market, but I just don't think anybody is fooled at this stage.

My parents aren't theme park enthusiasts, but they enjoy going every now and then. We used to go to the Gold Coast parks a lot but then after they took us to Disney they suddenly stopped taking us to the Gold Coast. I figured out why later on when I was planning a trip in 2014 to the GC and they asked "Why bother going to the Gold Coast? Just save up and go overseas instead. You're going to be disappointed otherwise."

If the parks know they can't recapture these lost customers, why bother trying to pull the wool over their eyes with this sort of marketing? 

[themagician]

1 hour ago, Gazza said:

As for Leviathan, I was expecting construction to roughly be keeping pace with Steel Taipan, with similar milestones, so I am surprised it's not testing at this point, or having theming being built.

They haven’t even built the station or maintenance building yet, so we won’t see testing for a while now.

Id say the reasons the construction was delayed from September to summer, haven’t been resolved. So I’m not expecting them to open until Easter at the earliest. I’m sure VRTP won’t mind anyways because of the border closures, etc 

[joz]

34 minutes ago, MrLukeCarroll said:

The attitude of "Well you should know what they said won't be real!" is the reason our Parks get away with promising the World and then never delivering on it.

To say the public don't care or think about whether an area is immersively themed is a huge assumption that I don't believe is true.

My opinions on this are rather complex, so I'll do my best to put it into some kind of order.

 

For start off, for the sake of this post, I think there are 3 types of Theme Park guests. You've got people who post on here or who lurk here. The Hyper nerds. The people who are into theme parks probably a bit more than is sensible. For reference I reckon collectively we make up about 0.05% of theme park attendance on a given day, (and 0.01% of revenue). Next you've got your casual fan. This is a group that has grown massively since cheap passes and facebook has been a thing. I think they always existed, but it's exploded recently. These are the people that are engaged on facebook about new additions to the park and ticketing options. These are the people who look at the concept art. Next is everyone else, the standard guest, the people who give zero fucks about theme parks, but take their kids there because it's a fun day out. They don't read the press releases, they don't know the names of the rides that have been added since they visited, nor do they care about marketing words. What they expect, is a good fun, quality full day out with their kids. Some of them may have passes too these days, but many still don't. 

 

My hunch is that your standard guest just won't care about words like 'Immersive' or 'Precinct'. They don't compare what they're experiencing at the park to concept art. Are they having fun? Are the kids having fun? Is it a cool place to be? That's all. They may compare to other parks and go 'This is a bit shit' but mostly they take it for what it is.

 

Related to that, if you're on here, you should be able to look at a concept art, read a press release, (and in the case of New Atlantis, look at a model) and say 'Clearly this is not a fully immersive themed land despite what marketing are saying. Also there's huge differences between the model and the concept art, probably nothing is set in stone yet'. I don't expect a casual to do this however, and I fully agree that over promising and under delivering is a real problem.

 

Having said that though, not everything needs to be an immersive themed land. It just needs to be good. I've said it before that I honestly think the weakest parts of New Atlantis, is the 'New Atlantis' concept. 'Modern theme less Sea World done in a quality way' would have been absolutely been enough. There's a reason why when I did a video years ago about what I think SW should do with the New Atlantis land, there was no immersive themed land. It was generic with a unifying idea. I don't think that's shifting the goal posts, and I don't think saying not everything has to be an immersive themed land is why the parks are lowering the quality. Hell I don't think anyone has made a genuine attempt at an immersive themed land in years.

 

To sum up, I think the marketing messaging is wrong, I think it uses words that don't resonate with normal people, and are incorrect to people who are casual fans. I think for a hyper fan, you should have been able to work this out and set your expectations accordingly.

[New display name]

I thought SW had grand plans but ended up cutting the budget or the final bill exceeded the budget.  Hence the reason they went for the cheaper Trident.

[DaptoFunlandGuy]

14 minutes ago, themagician said:

They haven’t even built the station or maintenance building yet, so we won’t see testing for a while now.

Interesting side point - I went onto Nearmap to see what the latest was for the station - and it seems (as usual) we're about a month behind. On August 4th - you can see the station structure is there, but not the roof, and the maintenance bay didn't even have track structure.

But what I found most interesting is this:

I guess I never really considered just how tight these corners were - and i've viewed these two curves from afar for a while, and just concluded they hadn't built track there yet, but now i'm looking at it closer, I can see just how high the bank angle is on these turns and they seem (near) vertical which looks pretty cool. 

 

I'm not too worried about opening dates yet. They've got around 3 months left, and all the bones are here (and this image is a month out of date). Let's see what the next updates look like.

(Also there's definitely a nice square slab inside those turns with the makings of something going in there - maybe this will be some of the theming elements? *shrug* who knows.

[Guest 239]

6 minutes ago, joz said:

I've said it before that I honestly think the weakest parts of New Atlantis, is the 'New Atlantis' concept.

This is what confuses me. Why bother half-assing a hard concept when you can full-ass an easy concept? I've seen the idea floating around for a long time of a boardwalk themed area for Sea World. You could literally do these same three rides with a boardwalk theme and it would be easy to unify it under a single theme. 

I don't know how the business can kid itself that what they're doing is fully-immersive when just a flight away you've got these elsewhere in the industry:

Etc.
 

[MrLukeCarroll]

I still feel if you got a wide range of guests to ride both of these on the exact same cycle and pick their favourite attraction of the two, the results wouldn't be close to 50/50. 

Just because someone doesn't scream to the rooftops about the quality of theming doesn't mean they don't at least subconciously appreciate it and leads to them having a better day/spending more money.

9 minutes ago, Dom said:

Let's also not forget these two are in a park that sees similar attendance figures a year to Movie World, it's not just the big boys doing incredible immersive experiences like this

[joz]

20 minutes ago, Dom said:

You could literally do these same three rides with a boardwalk theme and it would be easy to unify it under a single theme.

I think it would have been way more preferable. Question, what's something all those immersive areas have in common? Controlled sight lines. You can't do that where they're building Atlantis. I've got an idea for how you would do it in Corkscrew's old Footprint, and again low key designed the first step of that in the fan fiction back in the day. I don't think it needs to be immersive, it just needs to be quality and unified.

 

Related to that thought, of course the Pink Topspin looks like crap, it's not unified, nor does it look like it's quality. If it was decked out to be like a siege weapon or torture device with a higher back wall then you might have something. That type of ride doesn't 'Fit' with the fairy tale castle theme though, nor does it look like an it belongs with that theme.

[New display name]

43 minutes ago, MrLukeCarroll said:

Let's also not forget these two are in a park that sees similar attendance figures a year to Movie World, it's not just the big boys doing incredible immersive experiences like this

Gold Coast theme parks have thrown away the gate with annual passes and if something cost you approximately .76 cents in Australia, it cost you .65 cents in Germany according to the cost-of-living index.  (In short, it cost more for the same thing in Australia while the Gold Coast parks are taking in less money). 

The Gold Coast Parks have really painted themselves into a corner.   In the good old days, it was expensive to get a annual pass to DW.

 

The first annual pass to DW cost you 3.5 x a daily pass.   (from memory)

This is how the ticket board read out the front of DW.

 

Daily Pass Adult                 =               $49.99

Daily Pass Child                  =              $29.99

3 Day Pass                           =             2 x Daily pass.

Annual pass                        =               3.5 x Daily pass.