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Yeah..... No. Don't get it confused with the position Ardent was in. Village roadshow had money in capital but were also able to refinance loans if need be, they just said it would be irresponsible (to investors) to take on more debt at this time and were going to run as thin as possible to see out the covid downturn/closures. Ardent were told they have no options available to them, they had nothing to borrow against as they had sold off pretty much everything of value and nobody would issue them any credit. That's two vastly different positions. Remember theme parks are just a division for village roadshow, they are also one of their businesses that actually makes a profit every year. You aren't going to sacrifice a core of your business when you have the potential to sell off other parts which aren't as/profitable, or borrow more and refinance existing debt. They had to take on more debt following the dreamworld accident and the huge downturn the industry experienced, this included their big spend items at movieworld and seaworld. In effect, what happened in 18-19 financial year is they sold off wet n wild sydney, they sold out of their cinema partnership in singapore and they sold the land movie world and wet n wild are built upon. Not only did they sell off properties costing them money, they received over 250 million from the sale of the above. This meant they reduced their liabilities over 90 million dollars, knocked 120 million out of their loans, earnings within the theme parks division doubled to 76 million (big recovery following the accident), the equity in the company actually went up 50 million, while the debt went down. The plans over 2018-2019 also allowed them to refinance their loans which provided them with over 100 million to draw down on over the immediate future if need be. The end result for VRL was a net loss of 6.6 million, but if you dig further you'll see that cash flows increased by nearly 4 times to over 80 million, cash flows used for investments and to manage debt went up nearly 30 million, while repayment on their loans dropped over 100 million dollars. So you had a company that sold off underperforming assets, reduced not only their debt, but also their repayments, but were still investing money back into the company. They were in an excellent position prior to covid, recovery was in full swing, revenues were well up, the equity in the company alone was valued at over half a billion dollars. Why do you think they attracted multiple buyout offers approaching 1 billion dollars if the company was so close to collapse? At the end of the 2020 financial year it showed covid cost them an additional 70 million dollars. Remember that 100 million they could draw down upon? This is where the covid cost comes from, they drew down 70 million dollars on what is basically a line of credit to cover operational costs with multiple businesses shut and provide them funds to trade through into the next financial year when revenue was basically wiped out. They had more immediately available to them if needed, and that was before looking at refinancing on existing loans they had previous worked to pay down. All this was all before the government reached out with an offer of support too. Since the take over, the continued impact of covid and the fact that their cinema division was still basically shuttered, it cost another 38 million across the 2021 financial year. They weren't even close to being on their last legs, they were still in a better financial position with lower amounts of debt and lower repayments to their loans even after covid came along and wiped out their revenue streams and generated additional debt due to running costs/overheads. Have a look at the covid 19 report Mittleman Brothers released and why they were unhappy with how much the company was actually undervalued during takeover offers. If that's all too much to read; have a look at net debt totals across the last 7 years. 2020-2021 - 228.5 million 2019-2020 - 278.3 million 2018-2019 - 219.6 million 2017-2018 - 338.5 million 2016-2017 - 527.1 million 2015-2016 - 534.7 million 2014-2015 - 402.2 million 2013-2014 - 305.5 million For reference, net debt is essentially gross (all) debt, minus available cash balances.

I find that seriously doubtful. Western Sydney misses wonderland, but their economy didn't rely on it. Queensland Tourism and the Gold Coast leans hard on theme parks as part of any marketing campaign. Unless you get a boiled frog scenario, I can't see them disappearing entirely.

I do hope they have actually enhanced it, and aren't calling a return (or substitution) of opening day effects an 'enhancement'. It is wonderful to see the fog\mist\smoke effect return and I hope the water and steam is back - look forward to hearing of what enhancements they've made!

Can anyone confirm what these enhancements are inside

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I mean, not sure if the park is really busy or if they've just neutered a ride with great capacity by eliminating the continuous load station and introducing individual lapbars. Like sure - health and safety reasons are fine, but the capacity loss is still a loss. (It also doesn't help to have an entire boat cycling the ride completely tagged out. I heard a boat sank in the trough the other day too.)

OK, I wouldn't have bothered except for this line, but I've reread the whole conversation, and @New display name "won" the discussion with the very sensible comment [quote]It's not outside the possibility the street food venders where already booked for next week subject to this week going wellIt's not outside the possibility the street food venders where already booked for next week subject to this week going well. The word on the street is the hotels didn’t start booking out until last week.[/quote]. After that, @DaptoFunlandGuy is kind of talking to himself. At the end of the day, it's all speculation anyway, and the weird dedication to one line of speculation is just bizarre when there are other lines that seem more plausible. Unless there's something else to be shared with the class? You may all be in peace now, the great Joz has spoken 🙂 Also unrelated to talking about the conversation, I think if they forgot interstate holidays were a thing, they should take all the money they made from selling Main Event, buy a tank and a half worth of petrol, and just burn the place down. Somehow I just find it really unlikely that they would be that incompetent.

with the possible sale of dw and the decline and terrible state mw is currently in the way things are going we aren't going to have any theme parks soon.

Most/all of this spend was committed to before covid (and is being funded by huge debt). At its worst point, the joint had a couple of weeks left to run before it was lights out. It’s going to take many years before this is a healthy business, and right now there are much bigger priorities. There are about 20 people on the planet that notice the trivial issues being discussed here and they’re all on this thread.