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Village Roadshow expands into Sydney market

Wet'n'Wild Sydney will feature Australia's largest wave pool. Photo: Wet'n'Wild Sydney.
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By Richard Wilson
September 13, 2010

The Sydney area looks set to receive its first new theme park by way of a Wet'n'Wild water park due to open in 2013. It will be the first major park in Sydney since Wonderland Sydney's closure in 2004.

The park follows on from the Wet'n'Wild brand's expansion into the US market and the failed Wet'n'Wild Sunshine Coast plans. It is expected that Village Roadshow, owners of the Gold Coast's Sea World, Warner Bros. Movie World and Wet'n'Wild Water World will invest around $80 million in the park that they dub as world-class.

The last new water park in Australia, Ardent Leisure's WhiteWater World that opened adjacent to Dreamworld in 2006, was built at a cost of $56 million on land that was already owned by the theme park operator. That park features a modest arrangement of water attractions. Wet'n'Wild Sydney looks to include a range of modern attractions seen in many water parks including WhiteWater World and the Gold Coast's Wet'n'Wild.

Among the attractions are a wave pool dubbed Australia's largest, racing Master Blaster water coasters, AquaLoop slides, a Tornado, lazy river, octopus racer and plenty of more traditional body, tube and raft slides.

Village Roadshow Theme Parks have high hopes for the park; with CEO Tim Fisher boasting that the park will be one of the top ten water parks in the world. The park is aiming for 900,000 visitors per year initially, with roughly 20 per cent comprised of domestic and international tourists.

"Wet ‘n’ Wild Sydney is a sign of our confidence in Sydney and will be a significant boost for the NSW tourism
industry," Mr Fisher said.

Village Roadshows have tried numerous times to expand in Australia outside of the Gold Coast. Most notably was the planned Wet'n'Wild park for the Sunshine Coast, and the highly publicised African Safari World near Melbourne. Neither of these parks proceeded beyond the planning stages.

The Sydney park will be seasonal, operating in the cooler Sydney environment, with a season expected to run from September through April.  This puts the park's expected attendance roughly on par with the Gold Coast's WhiteWater World, albeit with a season that is four months shorter.

The park will be found on a 25 hectare site in Prospect, Western Sydney.

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Forum Comments

Posted by Brendan at 2:44am, 13 Sep 10
Third time lucky !

Great to see Village Roadshow expanding the Wet'n'Wild brand in the domestic market and USA.

What city will get the next Wet'n'Wild ?

I hope they will also purchase Rainbows End in Auckland, New Zealand or build a Wet'n'Wild here as we only have 1 theme park in the whole country and a smart operator like Village Roadshow would make some serious money.
Posted by raverguy1000 at 2:51pm, 13 Sep 10
I am very excited and happy that Village Roadshow will be building a Wet 'n' Wild park at Prospect. I have been pushing various companies to build such a park in this particular area for a while now.

This is fantastic news ! We need this type of entertainment in our area especially since Wonderland and the Waterworks closed down.

Thank you Premier Keneally, you are doing really well on this fun park idea and other things and you will get my vote and she's cute, if I was a bit older and she was single, but anyway..

I can't wait for the Wet 'n' Wild in Prospect, please start building it ASAP. Hopefully it might even have a rollercoaster or two.

Thumbs Up!
Posted by Bogong at 1:40pm, 30 Oct 10
From Village Roadshow Limited annual report 2010. p. 3.

In September 2010 VRL also announced it had signed a conditional agreement with the New South Wales Government to build and operate VRL's fourth West 'n Wild water park at Prospect in Western Sydney. Subject to finance and various planning approvals, Wet 'n Wild Sydney is expected to open during the summer of 2013/14, with VRL investing approximately $80 million in this world class venue.

Catering for all ages the park will include Australia's largest man-made beach and wave pool, duelling water coasters, a variety of both teen and family oriented water slides and a toddler pool with interactive water play zone. ...
(then a bit of stuff on water management to placate the greenies).

The key here are the words "conditional agreement" and "subject to... various planning approvals". After the disaster of the aborted VRL theme park at Werribee in Victoria, VRL has been scared off dealings with state governments in Australia who are prone to changing their minds depending on how aggressive lobby groups and greenies are, even after a contract has been signed. Sorry to disappoint RaverGuy, but the NSW government were about as ditsy on this issue as the Victorians were. Keneally certainly didn't lure Wet and Wild to NSW, rather VRL had to push very hard to be allowed to build it by reminding her that it would be about the only big construction project in the basket case economy that is Sydney's west.

VRL already operate a few tourist attractions in NSW, namely Sydney and Manly Aquariums, Sydney Wildlife World, Sydney Tower Observatory and Skywalk.

They are already in NZ too Brendan. A couple of years ago their aquariums division bought Kelly Tarlton's Antarctic Encounter and Underwater World in Auckland.
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