Happy Halloween 2021

[Im Hungry]

After counting all marked parking spaces (this excludes the gravel section of the Movie World carpark), there is approximately...

1,448 MARKED parking spaces, and 27 bus bays.

Not so keen on counting the unmarked gravel section and the overflow grass area, but I'm sure the total will be significantly less than 11,000 🤓

14 minutes ago, DaptoFunlandGuy said:

Here's a vertical view. Perhaps taking a known painted area and pasting it over the grassed area might give you an approximate?

Damn, I feel bothered to do it now 🤣

I will let you know the total of Dreamworld's carpark... in late-2021

Edited October 19, 2021 by Im Hungry

[Gazza]

A good grossing factor for parking is 30sqm per bay, but parking is less efficient in grass because people dont park neatly.

Basically a parking spot is 2.6*6. The aisle is 6m wide, so each bay needs half an aisle, so it becomes 2.6*9=23.4sqm per bay.

But then you have to add in landscaping, walkways, other circulation roads and it roughly works out that you can achieve 1 bay per 30sqm land you own.

Edited October 19, 2021 by Gazza

[fletch]

22 minutes ago, Gazza said:

A good grossing factor for parking is 30sqm per bay, but parking is less efficient in grass because people dont park neatly.

Basically a parking spot is 2.6*6. The aisle is 6m wide, so each bay needs half an aisle, so it becomes 2.6*9=23.4sqm per bay.

But then you have to add in landscaping, walkways, other circulation roads and it roughly works out that you can achieve 1 bay per 30sqm land you own.

Thanks for the maths lesson, but all these numbers are hurting my eyes 😵

[Im Hungry]

Dreamworld has:

2,087 MARKED parking spaces.

5 trailer parking spaces.

12 bus bays.

[themagician]

9,000 tickets

Round up to 2,100 car park spaces

9000/2100 = 4.29 people per car.

So their carpark only really works if there were 4-5 people per car. That ain’t going to happen. They probably needed 2,500 car spaces to make it work. But that still doesn’t fix all the issues with the surrounding roads. It doesn’t help that you have to pass the park entry to enter the car park rows, so that’s a lot of people crossing the road where people are wanting to turn to get to the carpark spaces. MW and SW don’t have that problem as their car parks direct traffic away from the park entry.
 

Hopefully DW have got a better plan and it works better for them this weekend.

[Guest 239]

20 minutes ago, themagician said:

But that still doesn’t fix all the issues with the surrounding roads.

Checking zoning maps it seems that anything beyond the entrance sign is outside of their control and would require the council stepping in. I can't imagine them doing anything if 90% of the time the roads are fine. 

[themagician]

I wasn’t suggesting DW do something to fix the surrounding roads, because as you say it’s out of their control. I was more getting at the council/government need to do something again.

[Im Hungry]

This might help...

[Brad2912]

5 hours ago, Dom said:

Uber/Taxi from here. Equally you've also the TX7 which leaves every 10-20 minutes.

I was next to the TX7, it took them the same 40mins from Coomera station to dreamworld. An Uber wouldn’t get you their any quicker. 

If the park had advised guests they had sold far more tickets than they ever had previously people may have made other arrangements.

at the end of the day their communication was horrendous and it upset/put off many people who may not be pass holders. I’m not overly fussed I didn’t get on a single ride, I can go back any day I want. But if I was a first time visitor to the park who paid for tickets for a family, I’d be pissed.

 

even more so by them walking the near 1km long entry line trying to upsell a way to skip the queue for $89 a pop

 

 

[Im Hungry]

1 hour ago, themagician said:

9,000 tickets

Round up to 2,100 car park spaces

9000/2100 = 4.29 people per car.

So their carpark only really works if there were 4-5 people per car. That ain’t going to happen. They probably needed 2,500 car spaces to make it work. But that still doesn’t fix all the issues with the surrounding roads. It doesn’t help that you have to pass the park entry to enter the car park rows, so that’s a lot of people crossing the road where people are wanting to turn to get to the carpark spaces. MW and SW don’t have that problem as their car parks direct traffic away from the park entry.
 

Hopefully DW have got a better plan and it works better for them this weekend.

Unless Dreamworld decide to pull a Movie World and direct their traffic like this:

Green arrow: Bus follows normal route. Coaches pull into their bays as per normal and exit all the same.

Blue arrow: Staff and rideshare vehicles follow route. Guests doing drop-off/pick up allowed through. (EDIT: Should the green arrow become unavailable at some point, buses can follow the blue arrow).

Red arrow: All guests must follow this route, unless otherwise specified.

Black island: Helping to direct traffic and separate staff and rideshare vehicles to guest parking.

From the centre two lanes cutting across the parking lot, (both red-arrowed lanes) each have the option to turn into any of the parking rows.

In order for this to work, Dreamworld will need to widen some parts of their road and remove small sections of island.

The centre two lanes will act as the spine of the parking lot, with each row of parking branching off. If exiting the parking rows and you're on the WhiteWater World side, follow the road to the end, turn left, then follow the road all the way around until you reach the spur or main exit.

Edited October 19, 2021 by Im Hungry

[Brad2912]

7 minutes ago, Im Hungry said:

Unless Dreamworld decide to pull a Movie World and direct their traffic like this:

Green arrow: Bus follows normal route.

Blue arrow: Staff and rideshare vehicles follow route.

Red arrow: All guests must follow this route.

Black island: Helping to direct traffic and separate staff and rideshare vehicles to general.

From the centre two lanes cutting across the parking lot (both red-arrowed lanes) have the option to turn into any of the parking rows.

Bus parking bays are all closed for site offices for ST and with BS coming down at some point soon they’ll be there still for quite some time.

 

bus stop is currently outside WWW entry 

[Im Hungry]

Ah yes. Was meant to clarify that this too will only work when the bus and coach bays become available again.

If the above proposal was to be implemented tho, buses can just follow the blue arrow...

Edited October 19, 2021 by Im Hungry

[themagician]

That would work to an extent, but because the parking lanes are one way, that red arrow misses quite a lot of parking. Everything I’ve highlighted in blue can only be accessed when you take the outer road 

 

[Slick]

Was there staff in the car park managing traffic flow?

[xRazzBerryx]

15 minutes ago, Slick said:

Was there staff in the car park managing traffic flow?

Not when we arrived at 5pm, however there was “lollipop ladies” directing guests at the crossing. This didn’t help as the cars then had to stop as more people crossed.
 

Movieworld’s vehicle entrance flows nicely as the cars enter the car park without having to stop at a crossing, allowing guests leaving/entering the park to cross freely. The only vehicles that would have to stop would be buses & drop off’s. 
 

Below is Movieworld’s car park entrance, also a picture highlighting dreamworlds crossings.

Edited October 19, 2021 by xRazzBerryx

[Im Hungry]

23 minutes ago, themagician said:

That would work to an extent, but because the parking lanes are one way, that red arrow misses quite a lot of parking. Everything I’ve highlighted in blue can only be accessed when you take the outer road 

 

I think I should use the whole map and draw in my intentions for the blue side of the car park that I had in mind (but failed to communicate).

Plus, it would suck to be the team hired to do this:

- On the blue side of the car park, flip the angled parking so you now drive in the opposite way (as if coming in from the red route)

[Brad2912]

2 hours ago, Slick said:

Was there staff in the car park managing traffic flow?

Nope just people at a couple of the pedestrian crossings 

[DaptoFunlandGuy]

14 hours ago, Im Hungry said:

Dreamworld has:

2,087 MARKED parking spaces.

5 trailer parking spaces.

12 bus bays.

Someone give this guy a medal!

[Slick]

8 hours ago, Brad2912 said:

Nope just people at a couple of the pedestrian crossings 

Yeah true. Here's hoping Dreamworld takes onboard the feedback they got and puts a few more folks in to better direct traffic flow e.g. having someone direct cars into car park lanes, having another wanding them down into the car park itself etc. etc.

Might also be a good idea to add in larger on-demand signage from the roundabout onwards (car-park right lane, drop-off left lane kinda stuff) and to even limit use of the two-way access road that parallels the entry road such that the few cars that try to use it to cut in don't impede flow completely.

[Guest 239]

12 hours ago, Brad2912 said:

at the end of the day their communication was horrendous and it upset/put off many people who may not be pass holders. I’m not overly fussed I didn’t get on a single ride, I can go back any day I want. But if I was a first time visitor to the park who paid for tickets for a family, I’d be pissed.

even more so by them walking the near 1km long entry line trying to upsell a way to skip the queue for $89 a pop

I agree. That sounds horrendous and really poor form. Can't argue that. A simple email saying 'Heads up!' would avoid a lot of problems.

[DaptoFunlandGuy]

ETA: I think its pretty clear that MW's carpark design is much better for flow and pedestrians. 

Dreamworld's current arrangements are poor for handling peak ingress (and due to the one-way arrangements, if you pick a lane, and it's full, its a long way to come back and try the next one without going against one-way rules).

The ideal would be for Dreamworld to completely re-design the carpark to improve traffic flow and reduce pedestrian interactions. The ideas expressed above have merit, but my thinking is to put the 'red arrows' (the inbound lanes) right next to the current outbound lane (you will need to expand the current exit lane which will lose 1-2 edge carparks on each row). Turn all traffic right at the first point of entry and only allow buses and other drop off services to proceed further. Re-mark the entire carpark either with the angled parking facing the opposite way, or make them 90 degree parking (the angle parking is the one good thing here as it permits really fast entry to the space), then have all traffic exit to the Parkway adjacent to White Waterworld. Either circle them back to the current exit path (which prevents cars from crossing paths) or install a new crossover onto the road - perhaps somewhere near the billboard, and put in traffic lights to control exit.

If I have time later i'll do a diagram if this doesn't make sense...

[New display name]

@DaptoFunlandGuy It could probably be solved if DW exploited the access road that runs around WWW.  DW also has another exit road at the bottom of the car park that nobody likes to take advantage of.

 

Edited October 20, 2021 by New display name

[DaptoFunlandGuy]

I honestly didn't know that second exit existed and now i'm even more convinced that what I wrote above should be put into action. 

The only thing I don't like is that the old paint lines have to be covered up to remark the parking lot, and whichever way you do it looks like shit unless you repave the entire surface - which is an expensive exercise.

[Im Hungry]

Here's a quick draft:

Pink route: All vehicles.

Green route: Bus and coaches.

Blue route: Staff,rideshare and long vehicles.

Blue double dots: Direction of traffic entering parking rows. Staff parking.

Red route: General.

Red double dots: Direction of traffic entering parking rows. Note the double dots facing the direction of WhiteWater World require remarked parking spaces.

Yellow double dots: Long vehicles / vehicles with trailers.

 

Keeping note the only way for the above map to come effective, certain areas of the carpark need redesigning (like exiting the parking row facing WhiteWater World and taking a sharp right turn).

Agree with @DaptoFunlandGuy, the current carpark needs a redesign.

Edited October 20, 2021 by Im Hungry

[Slick]

I think it's being overthought now.

The carpark works great 99% of the time. It's clear there's some bottlenecking that occurs during sold-out night events that could most likely be addressed by having a team of staff direct traffic flow of cars into parks.

Two staff are out on the road signalling traffic into a row. When the row is full, it's roped off. Use of the two-way roads are restricted to minimise flow obstructions. Signage is placed in the entry roadway to pre-empt people on where they need to go to prevent un-necessary lane changes that would further obstruct flow. Add additional signage and barriers to ensure as many people as possible wait and cross on the crossings.

I think you'd get 90% of the way there by doing the above instead of spending millions on infrastructure changes.