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Village Roadshow preparing to reopen more Gold Coast theme parks, Vortex ride ‘almost ready’ as part of Atlantis precinct The finishing touches are being put on Sea World’s latest attraction as the park celebrates bumper crowds on its return to business. But there’s one more thing that must happen before it opens. A NEW thrill ride is almost ready at Sea World as more Gold Coast theme parks prepare to swing open their gates once the border opens to interstate visitors. Village Roadshow is putting the finishing touches on the Vortex, part of the new $50 million Atlantis precinct ahead of the border restrictions easing on Friday. The company has welcomed back up to 3000 of more than 4000 workers before Movie World and Wet’n’Wild reopen on July 15. Sea World is open and limited to 6000 guests, which it has not yet hit. Outback Spectacular, Paradise Country and Top Golf are already open. Village Roadshow Theme Parks chief operating officer Bikash Randhawa said it has been a big job readying to reopen, particularly at Wet’n’Wild. “In terms of Wet’n’Wild there’s a lot of water quality issues we need to address. We need to refill the pools, we need to have the water running through the rides and we need to make sure the chemicals and quality are to standard. Once it has stabilised we are in a position to open rides,” he said. “We’ve been doing necessary maintenance, critical maintenance.” Mr Randhawa said work on the Atlantis precinct, which will include a huge wooden rollercoaster called the Leviathan, was their “main focus” and the Vortex was “almost ready”. “We’re just waiting on engineers being allowed to come to Australia from Germany,” he said. “Once they arrive they’ll commission the ride. It takes between 4-6 weeks and the ride should be ready. “I can tell you that ride looks absolutely amazing. We’ll be only place that has an attraction opening during this time. Getting the Vortex going will be a big tick for tourism. “And we’re working through the wooden coaster to see when that will happen. The ground works are completed, now it’s a matter of getting the Americans down to install the ride.” Mr Randhawa said Sea World “has gotten fairly close” to 6000 guests some days. “The borders haven’t opened, we have zero interstate visitation and zero international. When you look at that, we feel like the domestic market has embraced Sea World well,” he said. Village Roadshow typically hosts about six million guests per year. “It’s evidently clear that theme parks play a critical and crucial part in driving attendance and driving visitation to the Gold Coast,” Mr Randhawa said. “It will a big blessing in many ways to have all the parks open and operating at a reasonable level to start with and then the hope is it ramps up towards September. “We should see a reasonable attendance. It will be quite interesting to see what happens on open day.” Dreamworld, operated by Ardent Leisure, has announced a staged reopening of the park and WhiteWater World “in time for the September holiday period”. Specific dates have not yet been announced. https://www..com.au/news/gold-coast/village-roadshow-preparing-to-reopen-more-gold-coast-theme-parks-vortex-ride-almost-ready-as-part-of-atlantis-precinct/news-story/714ae4165a3a8babbff72a5dfe34f34a So nothing new really. still months away from Vortex opening, and with news that we need Americans to arrive to build Leviathan then that will be a LONG way off

ALL HAIL THE WEB STUDIO GODS!!

To that person, thank you

LPS have been looking to get rid of Ranger for at least the last three years so its removal doesnt surprise me at all. Matter of fact, a couple of years ago they nearly sold it to a showman until the deal fell through at the 11th hour. Tumble Bug is the real surprise here as I thought it would be the last of the Huss flats to be pulled. Nonetheless, both rides are showing their age now having operated nearly continuously for 30+ years originally coming from expo, and 25 years of sea air hasn't treated them nicely. I enjoyed these rides growing up too and have ridden them hundreds of times each, but it is a positive sign that the Park is removing these rides because this is part of their long term plan to update the park - LPS have been trying to get rid of their old Huss flats for the better part of a decade at this point.

HSD has also been testing at MW as the fire ball recently went off. It also seems Rivals has been testing all day

Wet’n’wild would be a difficult one to start over. As I work at an aquatic facility over the period we had to dump all of our water. When we had a date pools were then refilled with fresh water. However the pumps have to run for at least 8-10 hours a day and then it takes about 2-3 weeks to get the water stable. It is a very fine art to get the water levels stable from scratch.

There's ways to do both that and commission Vortex. Its down to who is willing to pay for it.

DC Rivals is currently undergoing testing

Maybe unpopular opinion? not sure but I don't think the Castle does anything for SeaWorld and personally isn't nostalgic. Vikings was also pretty lame. Even as a kid I remembered I liked Dreamworlds better. I have no issue with them flattening the whole area and starting from scratch.

One thing that used to happen to me is when ever I got to a place like movie world if my little brother saw some overpriced bugs bunny plush he like he cry and cry about it until we had to leave the park early this was around 2015 when I last remember something like this happening