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I feel like a themed shopping experience with a couple rides could happen maybe as a new park. Have like a Venice area and a few other areas. All open (very popular in malls atm) and a small vekoma thrill coaster and a small family coaster. A flat or two. as it's mostly a shopping venue with a few rides too. Could also host shows and have room to expand the rides in the future. Not sure where it could go. Sydney's land is probably too expensive now. Maybe Brisbane could pull it off.

I think some people have suggested Merlin buy Dreamworld and do an Elitch Gardens style conversion into "Legoland Australia"? Only problem is Legoland parks aren't very thrill-heavy unlike Dreamworld, but I'm sure they could somehow do it.

Agree. Would love some display pieces. You know those led lamps with the plastic cut out that lights up? I know they are cheesy and kinda ugly but they could do some cool stuff with them. Joker face for example And stickers! We need some stickers. They have come back in trend lately with teenagers . Especially the 90s skater style stickers.

Finally some sense!

I think a Legoland could happen someday, as they seem to be popping up everywhere. Merlin does indeed have a presence down under already with a few attractions. Universal has more of a chance than Disney for sure

I wonder how Melbourne's Legoland Discovery Centre operates, because I have always felt a small Legoland park could do really well.

Outside of shirts, collectables/statues are something id like to see. Look at disney with Holocrons, Holochess and every single ride having a collectable vehicle you can buy. Australian parks have taken more of the Universal pre Harry Potter approach and done the bare minimum. We need park exclusive things to buy, in universe things to buy, and cool shit to buy. They could do small replicas of WWF mountain or the Scoody facade, or at the very minimum, do snow globes of them. Hell, make the side of JrDS look like a comedically huge ACME factory and stick a really cool shop in it with hidden cool shit like portholes or something.

I spy a turret and bridge just north of the plane. It would be great if some sort of walkthrough can be intergrated into the area ala the Deep in Africa Trail in Phantasialand

Verry happy with MW doing this. I hope this is where they really start fixing up the park. My fingers are crossed that Wild West Falls has its effects working again once it reopens it hasnt been good since 2022 as most of my favourite effects were broken.

A great move. The ride line up is looking a lot healthier than it was on the page a week ago. Marvin the Martian reopens next week too.

Great work MW.

Rivals has reopened today (which is a month earlier than planned)

Dreamworld have shared their first construction updates for Jungle Rush. They shared a reel and some photos

Literally during the school holidays prior to closure DCR was running two trains. It’s not a rare occurrence. SDSC’s major works were anticipated/planned. However unforeseen issues cropped up that brought the closure forward. Hence why work has not really taken place with the ride yet. If such a popular ride can only operate with significantly less cars than usual for whatever reason it makes sense to close it imho, doesn’t mean it was unsafe.

That is true. Often times the drive tires are taken off and the rubber is replaced

Ok. That was my favourite then

You are dismissing about every other mechanical part on the track they inspect, disassemble, replace & reassemble durring the downtime.

The first HSD

I have a feeling because the rides closure was so sudden it probably wasn’t planned to close that early and because nothing has happened their timeline to receiving the replacement tracks, etc was/is a while away. In its last few months of operating there were hardly any cars on track and there doing nearly a full track replacement, which gives me the impression the ride was in such a bad state and became unsafe that it was too risky to keep open

I didn't want to comment here at all because this post is stupid, the Australian theme park industry is stupid, and Australian's are stupid. The fact we've gone, 20 fucking years since the Australian theme park heyday and we have LESS theme parks and less iconic roller coasters on the whole means theme parks will NEVER be an influential thing in this country. I don't know why; I don't know why America and even Europe and some Asian countries (specifically Japan and China) have great theme park offerings from both the big companies and the small ones while Australia just shrugs them off is the norm. For whatever reason theme parks mean less to Australians on the whole and I stand by this because if they DID mean anything we'd have the populous clamoring for parks in the states where thrill parks have no presence despite millions of population like NSW. I'm a Melbourne guy since 2011, but I grew up in Queensland and I've yet to care for any theme park addition since moving to VIC. Wonderland was genuinely great but does anyone in that state care that all they have is a dinky amusement park by the bay? Doesn't seem like it. I don't know what point I'm ultimately trying to make because I'm drunk right now but whatever all I know is we'll never get a Disney, we'll never get a Universal park, we'll never get a Six Flags park, honestly we'll be lucky if we ever get another theme park that ever even cares to push a boundary beyond a roller coaster that's the first, biggest, roller coaster within the footprint of a another roller coaster that's painted a specific colour.

Last September they were running two on the weekend but only one during the week. Wait times were longer on the weekday 😕 Scooby closed in a hurry. I'd say whatever needs fabricating wasn't planned. Mack seem to be doing a lot of coasters at the moment so I can see why this is taking so long. I too am disappointed however looking forward to what's to come.

I feel like the chance of Universal making a ground-up park/experience here is leagues more likely than Disney doing it. Uni could make something as small as their Las Vegas horror experience, a mid-sized park like their family-oriented ones, or a larger-scale, all-encompassing ‘resort’ (if the tourism market is large enough). Also, with Movie World maybe going up for sale/undergoing ‘management changes’ relatively soon, Universal could swoop in like they did PortAventura, spruce the park up a bit & replace the DC IP with their own.

Happy to be corrected - I haven't been there in ages - but only ever seen 2 trains in the first year (with one sitting on the holding brake for a few mins).. anyway Fabrication can happen with the ride still open

Ground-up, no. The only way we could see one is if Village lost the WB license and signed a deal with Universal to use their properties, and that would be unlikely because Universal would demand certain quality standards that Village wouldn't be able to afford to meet.

I feel we're hanging on to this statement a bit much. Last 9-10 times I have been there's been 2 trains operating. I think it was over a year ago since I only saw 1 train operate. I don't go heaps so I am sure they have run it with one train since then. But it's not like they never run 2 Nothing on site. Doesn't mean fabrication on bits of new track haven't begun