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What a great day! The positives: DW passed the vibe check. Good solid crowds but not insane. When it's difficult to find seating at lunch with all the additional seating atm for the food festival that's gotts be a good sign. Park very clean and DW should be proud as punch. So much easier not to have to check in anymore and perhaps why the park was busier today then I've seen it the last few times I've been (about weekly for a while now) Crocodile feed was awesome. Didn't realise DW did like a proper educational talk and stuff prior and during so that was cool. Noticed the speakers have been turned off at the memorial... Broken or actually taking on board suggestion I made a couple weeks ago. Either way, much better. Saw some roaming entertainment into the street stall section... But it was a bit random... Like an escaped old school prisoner like you use to see on the Paddle steamer .. it was a choice but good to see some roaming street performers out and about. Needs improvement: Slow ops on most rides... Really just no urgency at all in pushing people through. Old passage between WWW and DW should reopen for guests to pass between the both freely. (Yes I smoke) and the few times I was there today I saw quite a few people walk towards the old entrance thinking it would be open and turning around upon seeing the locked gate. Having to leave the park and reenter at front gate for WWW is a bit silly. The rides Giant Drop needs some music in the queue line. Kinda awkward not having some background stuff going on in that indoor queue. Sky Voyager still my number one ride on the GC. next time you're on take a quick glimpse at the faces around you. Kids beaming... Parents loving it... It truly is the best family attraction if not the best attraction full stop anywhere on the GC. Steel Taipan. Rode spinning seat for the first time with a friend and nope nope nope. Ride it solo... You get a much better spin. Saw most trains going with people using spinning seat so price point must be pretty enticing. Two trains operations all day. Panda ... While waiting in the longgggest queue of the day.. saw quite a few full figured guests be turned away from riding. I'm not sure if that ride has a test seat but if it dosnt it desperately needs one. Verdict Go. Yes a lot has changed and been removed. Some rides are sorely missed but with a visit from 10am-4 today we still felt like we hadn't done everything we wanted to do. A mixture of wait times contributed to that but honestly... enjoying the atmosphere and the really solid vibes going on there ATM is well worth it.. so if you havnt been in a while - give it a shot.

Parkz Forums whenever PR does anything that isn't slagging off the company they work for

Considering WWW closes for the winter next week, I don’t think we will see that gate open until the next season

The claim isn't 8 min cycle, (dispatch to dispatch is how I think of a cycle), but rather 8 mins from unload to dispatch. It doesn't really surprise me that on a given day it would be sub 150. I mean it takes 7 min cycles to get up to 200 an hour which would take a bit of doing with how that ride is set up. Most major flat rides are going to do something in the range of high 100s to about 350. Pandamonium has always been at the lower end of that number (Tailspin even lower than the bottom), whereas something like Claw can operate at the higher end. The one you need to watch is capacity v popularity. Pandamonium (despite being a ride I have zero interest in) does seem to come out on the wrong side of that equation.

It’s never been the fastest cycle but 8mins seems above average for dispatch times. It typically runs around 5mins from what I’ve seen.

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.