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As everyone's saying, VRTP are turning the area into a resort. So look at it like its the Florida parks. You have Universals plot of land that encases 2 theme parks, a water park across the road, several hotels, countless restaurants, pubs and clubs AND a cinema. Meanwhile down at Disney: 2 water parks, 3 or 4 theme parks, as many hotels as DW has Turbines, Disney Springs and whatever isn't accessible by Monorail, you can get to by boat. So instead of looking at it like a random item between 2 parks and a movie studio, look at it like Stage 3 in a 5 stage master plan, cause that's probably what it is.

Excuse my late entry to the conversation, but may I congratulate you guys on a solid piece of journalistic writing, calling it like it is, telling the facts and speaking the truth, without glossing over anything or viewing it through rose coloured glasses.

Hey all, Not sure if anyone has seen this Youtube Channel but its called Defunctland and it has some excellent videos on past attractions at Disney, Universal and Cedar Point. They are not overly long but are jam packed with great history and info. Thought you guys would be appreciative of the viewing. The below one is excellent and is on that infamous water park Action Park. Check it out: Also the videos about Disney's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea attraction is recommended- I have always been interested in this ride and these videos do a fabulous job of explaining the history and the ultimate reasons for its eventual removal. Happy viewing- Enjoy!!

Defunctland is definitely a channel i would recommend with my favourite part not being his main history series but rather his podcast series where does interviews. Also his recommended channels list also features some other good theme park channels such as yesterworld.

I think that planter used to be outside Vikings. They've moved the planter, but couldn't be bothered to remove the sign.

Today’s update

I think Top Golf will be fun, I have no interest in normal golf but Top Golf looks entertaining. I'm not complaining about more attractions in any case, the more the merrier!

I should mention when they offer the fast track pass it’s for any ride of your choice, not just for JL. We honestly didn’t care that much were just curious about what happened, the ride op told us if we went to Guest services we could get a fast pass, so thought we might as well - we got it for Scooby and saved over 1 hour in line.

Gremlins was a dark ride in the current SDSC building. I think you are referring to the old studio tour *jinx*

Gremlins was a dark ride and not a show though. Think you're thinking of the Studio Tour where you went to different sound stages and shown how things are done.

Most people in Australia rate it an eleven out of 10

If we see anything, I agree it'll be a revamp of their stunt show. IMO the next big thing that they need is a revamp of their LT area.

DREAMWORLD’S parent company Ardent has lost its second CEO in six months, with Simon Kelly resigning suddenly just days after the first anniversary of the tragedy on the Thunder River Rapids. Mr Kelly, who was also the group’s Managing Director, announced his resignation in a statement to the ASX this morning. Rest of the article here.. http://www.goldcoastbulletin.com.au/business/dreamworlds-parent-company-ardent-leisure-ceo-simon-kelly-has-resigned-suddenly-after-a-year/news-story/f8cb2a40801e6a81c2fa1b055d810e86

It certainly seems like he resigned on his own accord, which is indeed troubling. For those of you that decried @Richard when he wrote a very critical piece of the park earlier in the week and threw reason, fact & logic to the wind, now you know better. I acknowledge I walk a very fine line writing things about Ardent & Dreamworld - I constantly have to juggle my passion for seeing the park do its best with the fact that indeed Ardent does pay me to do commercial work for them - so with that in mind, let me just simply say that I do hope both Ardent & Dreamworld (& indeed specifically the Ardent board) move at great haste now to putting additional energy in to the park because ultimately I would very much like to continue to work for the park for years to come, and i'm personally worried this news couldn't have come a at a worse time.

I think we can all agree that Movie World don't need a new ride, they just need to get rid of the sour garbage smell near the drink re-fill station at the front of the park.

Dreamworld sits in a state of limbo following its toughest year ever Dreamworld's ongoing state of disarray continues as the park pushes forward with a number of ongoing projects and initiatives while attendance continues to noticeably struggle. Click here to continue reading

Although, in reality we are talking about a ride that is very low-thrills and limited in re-ride value. Rode it once about a year ago with zero line. Didn't bother doing it again.

All the comments of 'its so far away from things' or 'who would visit it' - captive market on VRTP property is the primary audience - Day at MW? hey let's party on at top golf! Day at WnW? Hey let's party on at TopGolf! Trip to AOS? Hey let's party on at TopGolf (or go beforehand if we're early), Paradise Country FarmStay? Hey let's party on at TopGolf! Shooting a big movie? That's a wrap folks, let's party on at Top Golf!

In truth - he's three; he wouldn't even know that there's parks there if I didn't tell him. Trouble is at Movie World there's not a heck of a lot for him to do. The one saving grace is last time we were there we came onto Main Street to find Batman kicking some bad guys - he thought that was pretty great and is now obsessed with Batman. So there's that, I guess.

There are plenty of works happening throughout SW too And it seems like an all new attraction is coming to the entrance pathway outside SW And an update on the Sea Lion Theatre

Maybe you have to pay extra to get a set of augmented reality goggles to see the whole tree.

I'd really like to see Sea World get new rides for the next few years. If Movie World doesn't get new rides for a few years as a result that's ok. Sea World is in dire need of major investment.

MW sold half the tree to help pay for Rivals.

The DC partially complete Christmas experience?

What you said is nonsense though. Even if you care to believe it. It literally doesn't make sense. If I wanted to be insulting, I would have used something other than nonsense. If you were to simply forget about dreamworld as a business, saying it's practically worthless, what it sits on isn't. So if you float the notion of a buy out, ardent isn't going to go bankrupt and have someone swoop in during a fire sale. Additionally, what is left of dreamworld that makes it a historic landmark? yeah, the park itself has been there a long time, but it has gone through so many changes that there is very little left of the original development. Rides have gone, park layout has changed, buildings have been removed/and or re purposed and developed. It's quite a bit different now than it was in the 90's, let alone the 80's. Aside from the park as a whole being a tourist destination, I don't think it really has historic value that would make it onto a heritage register. Back to reality though, just focus on the land mass. If the park shut tomorrow and was turned into a housing estate, given its location basically next to railway hubs and a MAJOR shopping center in development, combined with the fact that Coomera on the northern end of the coast is going through MASSIVE growth; the land is worth a fortune by itself. Even if you use the ultra generous 1/3rd rule to develop the land into housing, that provides for over $100,000,000 just in land development value alone. In reality there is probably more potential than that, given the actual cost of housing in the area, along with how many lots you can actually build given the area; then combined with the fact there are 4 major developers all fighting for space along the corridor between foxwell and yawalpah roads. As it stands, there is probably more value in potential development contributing to the value of dreamworld than there is as a theme park. The local council may only be able to tie it up during development application process, but given the area has thousands of lots going in and/or in development nearby, along with the infrastructure to support a major suburb; if they were to object any application the matter would surely end up in court where it might be tough to build a case against this small parcel of land when the rest of the area is booming having already been approved. Aside from that, along with development comes more revenue for the council. All the money tied up in development applications aside, the rates alone could be into the millions. So im not so sure if they would rush to stop any development going on if a worst case scenario happened. Given the park isn't the one actually doing the works, they would have contracts in hand with companies to perform the job that would usually see them lose money if they back out on the agreement; so you could lose a few million dollars just by putting them off until a later date as the companies would suffer a loss of income. Anyway, when would you rather the works are completed? If you talk about capital works, one side of the park in particular is closed off providing an excellent opportunity to make use of the quiet period between holidays. You could argue that rocky hollow is closed due to addressing existing issues of safety, so what is the issue? Aside from that anyway, it's not like their own workers would be taken off existing development works going on, halting any other progress in the park. I don't think any of the parks have a work force big enough to take on large scale developments without help from outside works. It's the same across any park you visit, they try to limit the disruptions for building and repair works to periods where attendance is lowest. See, this is the nonsense I am pointing to. That is exactly what liability insurance is for. It even covers loss of business. You can be found completely at fault, your staff members were negligent and caused the death of patrons; yet your business is covered. All those millions being wiped away would have been underwritten by an insurance company. The only question is how much coverage did they actually have and how accurate their estimates would have been when factoring into loss of business. If you think loss of life isn't one of the factors calculated when acquiring insurance coverage, then you don't really understand risk analysis. Besides which, the changes you speak of, you know they were the cause of the deaths? under what circumstances any modifications might have been performed? who performed them? when they performed them? were they inspected and audited following their modifications and years following to maintain their accreditation with the state government? That's a whole lot of assumptions unless you have inside knowledge of what the investigation found. Then you come back to the simple notion of insurance. You run a theme park based on the assumption that at some point you may seriously injure or kill a guest or guests. It's basically the same for any business dealing with members of the public. You couldn't operate such a large scale entertainment complex without having a policy that protects your business from financial ruin following lawsuits if something terrible happened. No matter how good your intentions are, how good your training is, or how much faith you put in your employees, there are far too many variables to run the risk. Insurance companies have entire departments that operate to calculate these risks. It's very much part and parcel with doing business. The problem lies in what happens after everything settles down and if your business is strong enough to recover following an incident. Im very much in the camp that dreamworld is, and that some people are seriously out of touch for expecting everything to be back to normal, or even improving 12 months on. 12 months is still short term. 5 years, 10 years, thats the sort of projections you'd have to start talking. Especially with village reporting that their numbers are way down too, revenue having dropped, so it's not like the industry is in a great place even with exciting new rides being used to stem the tide and turn it around instantly. It will be interesting to see what impact rivals has had on it's attendance figures each quarter. See if it's a short term bump or a long term increase; and if figures continue to rise steadily, how do they compare to the same time prior to the dreamworld accident. It was pretty quiet around Christmas time at movie world last year, nowhere near the sustained busy period it normally endures. If you hedged everything on one attraction turning your fortunes around instantly and returning everything back to normal, we might be in for a rough couple of years for both parks.

Spot on read there. Thanks Parkz Crew for delivering the hard facts of our beloved DW as it continues to struggle. It's difficult to watch as the progress of development inside is running so slow that the ageing line up of attractions appears to be falling further and further behind. It is becoming sadly obvious that Ardent are deliberately dragging their feet until the Coronial inquest is finalised. I believe this is somewhat of a guise to Shareholders etc that Ardent remain committed to a future DW. Carrying out work on revitalizing Mine ride , Log ride, WipeOut etc but doing it all at such a Glacial pace that the rest of the Park is falling apart around them - all with little to know contingency. Hmm.. My fearful prediction is this is all intentional stalling. A muti-gazillion dollar court ruling would lead to inevitable closing the gates once more by mid 2018 - Only this time for good (at least as we know it today anyway). I hope I am wrong. The only good thing I can see coming out of all this is Ardent is found negligent and charged. They sell off the DW asset and bow out of Theme Parks all together. GC City Council steps in to preserve DW as a sort of Heritage listing, preventing it from ever being anything other than a Theme Park. New Owners buy it for a song, commit sizeable Capital into new Attractions and remove all the old dated crap. The Park closes for an extended time (say a year) reopens all shiny and new.. Guess we will have to wait and see? I sincerely feel for the Staff that have been part of the DW family for a longtime. No matter what the future holds, I hope their loyalty can somehow be salvaged.