Oh so many reasons why Steel Taipan hasn't been the success they wished it was. Firstly, in answer to your question - the general sentiment shared seems to be that it's not as scary as Giant Drop or Rivals (height plays a factor psychologically for most people, which checks out) and most people don't have a fine-tuned awareness on where everything is in a park (especially when there are no indicators in that area to suggest that's where the ride or incident was) so you can logically conclude it's not intensity or placement.
I've openly shared in previous posts that had the pandemic not happened the park would've returned to profitability in 2020 (the 2020 HY release hints at this). It's because strategically the only way is up - if you close attractions and don't replace or expand, austerity will inevitably kill any amusement park. Ergo, constant capex is the only strategy to maintain profitability and why 18 months of nothing post-incident did no favours for Dreamworld's return to profitability efforts. Dreamworld's marketing & strategic efforts understood the grim reality the organisation faced and knew it had to double down, or else the gap between Ardent and Village market share would continue to increase, hence the "Biggest Pass" campaign and the 50M spend.
Then the pandemic happened and the park changed strategy and comms. Ignoring the inevitable long-term macro-economic forces at play and Village's tripling down on capital expenditure, the new park strategy was about contraction both physically and fiscally in a new play to remain viable post-pandemic. Does a 30M+ capital project still make sense with a park that's trying to count pennies? Absolutely not, but at that point with all the hype garnered and pieces on site it would've been worse to not build than to simply crack on.
So we've got a park with a coaster that doesn't make sense with it's current strategy that hopes to capitalise off the same magic Rivals had in bumping Movie World's attendance, revenue and reputation, but without the marketing budget, notable IP attachment or landmark differentiation that were major antecedents in accelerating Rivals' flywheel to success. Then the park has it's 40th, and instead of spending every penny on getting Steel Taipan out there, it splits the budget on marketing both it's birthday and the park's biggest ever investment, during a time where every dollar is being scraped. This is also at a park that has (at least in the general public's mind) a reputation for closing many beloved thrill rides and has nothing fresh beyond what people already know from their last visit, which is important when you considered the following:
Iif you're an interstate nuclear family itching to travel to the Gold Coast for a holiday after the pandemic and you want to have the best theme park experience possible, do you risk your 5-10k holiday on saving a few hundred bucks on theme park passes and go with the smaller, contracted, shell of its former self Dreamworld that has one new ride, or just get the more expensive passes that appear to have "heaps of parks" and "stuff to do?" Well, the proof is in the pudding, and people voted with their wallets on whether or not Dreamworld Light was a good idea or not, which is why the park is now course-correcting again with announcements on similar sized projects to Steel Taipan.
Really the question is if Sky Voyager landed with a thud, and Steel Taipan didn't generate the revenue they were after, is three times a charm?
Also, not sure where you got that the park is shifting towards a family-oriented experience. You could at best assume that's the case given their recent announcements, but as always, correlation does not equal causation. They've clearly identified that their attractions mix is still severely lacking and this is their best attempt at fixing that. But make no mistake, hyper-regional parks like Dreamworld languish when they hyper-focus on one market segment and ignore all others. You can do that for a marketing campaign, but not at the strategic level. Sea World is a great example of how it plays out - when you don't give everyone in a family group something fun to do, they go somewhere else, which is precisely why they built Atlantis.