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How long are they going to blame their failures on TRR, instead of the fact that they are a poorly planned and poorly run park with boring and unreliable rides? There are better parks with better rides, better water slides, better animals, and better experiences. Dreamworld's unwavering commitment to relics TOT, Wipeout, RHLR and HWSW seem more like a desperate attempt to cling to the nostalgia of when the park was in its prime and wasn't a confused mess of cheap, mediocre 'thrill' rides dumped into any available piece of land. People don't hold that nostalgia. Dreamworld is not Disney and anyone under the age of 30 is too young to remember any of those rides being new and exciting at an age when they would have been able to ride them. Young people - the people that you want coming to your park - don't care about how 'classic' RHLR is, they only know that WWF is better. They don't care about how 'iconic' Wipeout is, they care if it is open and can actually make it through a complete cycle instead of just rocking them side to side for a few minutes. They don't care that TOT2 launches you backward, if you can get a faster and better launch on SE. And the sure as hell don't care about a rickety and painful old steel coaster made by a company that went bankrupt in 2001 - when they can ride a brand new Hypercoaster, and a rickety old Inverted coaster at a different park for the same price. The TRR incident is not the reason people aren't returning to Dreamworld. In my opinion, when they closed for several months, people (like me) realised that we didn't really miss it when it was closed, and when it reopened there really wasn't anything interesting or exciting worth going back for. There still isn't. And that's the problem.

Whilst Kevill Hill was never of interest to me (I’ve literally never been inside in its current iteration - went in there once when it was AvP), the fact the social media team at DW have basically said “we’ll we've replaced the laser skirmish/zombie walkthrough with a temporary toddler/kids area” is absolutely laughable. It’s like closing TOT and saying “but we do have this great shop that sells Fairy shit”..

I reckon both @wikiverse & @Skeeta are correct in their own way. Simply put - Dreamworld has way more on offer for young families than Village's whole offering and it's why it's been able to hang on for as long as it has. On the other hand, Movie World's teen/adult offering is an order of magnitude better than Dreamworld's. Dreamworld became the country's best tourist attraction because for the first ten years of its life John Longhurst paid extraordinary attention to detail and quality and the place had pride in delivering once in a lifetime memories. The next ten years my generation thought it was the place to be because the thrill rides were actually world class. Skip forward twenty years, John's legacy has been literally bulldozed to bits and the ageing thrill rides that were built in the 90's are still mainly the poster child for competing with things like the Hypercoaster.

Merlin entertainment.

If Ardent don't do something with Dreamworld quickly enough, I can see the park closing its doors by the end of the decade. Even with the Flying Theatre to open later this year, the problem with Dreamworld is its dependence on old thrill rides to bring the crowds in, and the "Nostalgia" brought with these rides, which is practically nonexistent. Dreamworld isn't Disney or LPS. They've rebranded Tower of Terror as some sort of "space simulator" now which I don't get. This complacency has been a problem for at least the last 7-8 years. As they say, 'complacency is a disease'. Rebuilding from an accident that has diminished your reputation is best responded to by making capex spending, not literally sitting there and doing absolutely nothing as they have done in the last 18 months. It's been nearly two years since the TRRR incident happened. You can't blame that for low crowd numbers anymore. What you can blame is inept management that have struggled to bring guests back to the park, particularly in the teen market where Dreamworld are vast outmatched by all the other parks. MW has three great coasters. Dreamworld have none, Tower of Terror could have been one but the park in true Ardent fashion decided to cheap out on maintenance. It's an absolute shame that Ardent is only waking up to the signs now by building the Flying Theatre and promising a dark ride that I'm not even sure will be even built. But the damage has already been done. The fissures are starting to show now. The only way that Dreamworld can ever possibly bounce back is if Ardent sell it.

It's worth keeping in mind that this is no longer the Ardent Leisure that was but rather a long play by Gary Weiss to fix and flip what was a troubled business and that it's exactly what he's known for doing in the first place. If I was Weiss and I had sunk a lot of cash into Ardent then my obvious aim is to maximise my return, and in his case, you don't get to be a multi-millionaire without being ruthless and cunning. That means maintaining a low profile and letting the news cycle wash over your investment, that means being reactive and not proactive with the way things play out and ultimately that means being frugal with expenditure on making the individual parts of the company looking as attractive as possible to potential buyers to maximise the return. I think that there's plenty of people who sit in the "well it happened to Wonderland so it can happen here" camp that get ahead of themselves - the council's never going to let such a crucial part of the economy be bought up and then approve land rezoning for Dreamworld to become residential. The only way that'll ever happen is through Weiss - if he figures he can't make a return on his investment (read: no one wants to buy it in the next 18-24 months) he Ardent will tell investors it won't ever recover and then if the market actually buys that crap then the council will be backed into a no-win corner.

Looks like movieworlds fountain has now been dyed blue, i think it could be for the new event they have been teasing lately?

@Gold Coast Amusement Force I appreciate the effort it is better than nothing. Thanks roachie for helping bring stuff out of the shadows. Are still expecting for this to open this year?

Dreamworld posts losses and writes off $75 million in value, Ardent Leisure safety chairman resigns Preliminary results for the 2018 yesterday are out and Dreamworld flounders for the second year in a row, with owners Ardent Leisure wiping $75 million from the theme park's value. Click here to continue reading

The 'Cloor' doesn't need a new gondola as far as i'm aware?! They don't have enough money to simply close for 3-5 months. It's not as simple as you may think it is. They also don't have enough money to repaint the entire HWSW*, while also adding a new 'ride or two'. What is the point of changing the Giant Drop gondolas*?

I feel like they need to close for 3-5months, to clean everything up, fix all the rides and replace parts that need replacing, give the park some TLC so like repainting HSWS and maybe a new ride or two, then open the doors back up and all the rides will be running better then ever and the park will look better then ever they could also give some of the rides a refurbishment, like replacing the gondala on the cloor to the same gondala Goliath has at adventure world and maybe even giving the giant drop a new station and new gondalas similar to Lex Luther Drop Of Doom and those rides will be better then ever is well

Lot 2 & Lot 3 Dreamworld Parkway are land valued by the State Government at $10,500,000 each. They are two blocks ~27,000 square meters near the roundabout on the way into the Dreamworld carpark. Lot 103 Whitewater way, which covers WhitewaterWorld, Dreamworld, the gum tree leaf farm and a bit up near the Foxwell Rd/Whitewater Way roundabout, plus the creek, is 510,000 square meters. It has no land value listed. Ballpark it off the above and it is worth $195,000,000. It would be more as the percentage of creek is much lower. So at least $210 million, unimproved (ie nothing on it) land value. This link might work to show you what I mean. http://cityplanmaps.goldcoast.qld.gov.au/CityPlan/index.html?search=124887 The three Lot's combined, sold for $108 mill in 1998 to Ardent. That price would include the rides and structures. It was 72 hectares then. It has been since been subdivided (the bit on Foxwell Rd at the railway side) and is now 55 hectares in size.

Until it's not true anymore. So, your saying when the mine ride final fell nobody cared because I remember an outcry that DW didn't keep it going. TRR is the reason numbers down. If what you are saying is true, then all the people who have stopped going to DW because it's a mouldy old rag would now be at MW and SW which both have flashy new rides.

There used to be a policeman that entertained people in the vintage cars (when it was where MDMC is today). In addition to @Roachie posting about a themed final room in GD, there was a movie about the disaster on the Oil Rig that played before you went to the ride room. Tower of Terror had an elevator system to get you to the ride (and better immersive queue theming) before the stairs were put in, back when the ride entry was on the western side of the building. Remote controlled boats.

The value of the park, if they went to sell it now compared to a year ago has dropped ~75 million. Kind of like you buy a house for $500,000, then a sewerage treatment plant gets built next door. You try to sell, but can now only get $250,000 for it. Though in this case it is the culture and perception of the park that stinks, not what's over the fence.

Nice simile. So true and thanks for the visuals.

^Thanks Roachie - if people focused on good content instead of a desire to boost their YT views, we'd have been able to see that the first time!

Yesterday's articles reported Ardent writing Dreamworld down another $75 million - that puts us seriously close (if not already) to the park being virtually worthless beyond the value of the land it sits on. Until the corporate culture, the leadership and the vision that exists for Dreamworld changes (the one that's still prevalent in the park today, that's existed for twenty years and is solely to blame for the incident and Dreamworld being led to this point), nothing will actually change for the better and empty gestures like a name change will be seen as an obvious ruse.

I can’t ever see that happening. It’s name is a parts of its history (and not just the bad history). And if they changed the name, it would still be the same place, nothing changes that. And I can’t imagine changing its name would be cheap either

It would be much shorter to just post a list of positive things management have done for the park in the last 15 years...

Fans of Coca-Cola freestyle may be interested in this... Currently at the Australian International Movie Convention, Coke are showing off “MIXD” which is basically the frozen coke mini version of Freestyle. This is the first machine in Australia. Base flavour of frozen sprite with the option to mix in Mango, Vanilla Lime and Raspberry

Ani-Mayhem sounds great. https://www.themeparkinsider.com/flume/201807/6202/

If the past is anything to go by it will be "Empty Space - The Ride"

Flogged overnight... off to Bargain Mania

hmm.. it looks to me as if Bargain Mania has flogged these from Movie World! 😂