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^A long rant but very worthwhile of a read - especially for Village exec. Well said. In particular: You're god-damn right about that. And in my opinion I feel it comes across as contempt for the park-guest. Top-Golf has to deliver a certain standard, and it does (mostly). AOS is dinner and a show for ~$100 and you don't want Mr Dad coming out at the end of the show demanding a refund as that can be very bad for business. But somewhere along the line, it became acceptable to do that in the parks. Ride down? don't blame us, government safety regulations. Check the T&Cs, we're allowed to do this and you can't say shit about it. Come back next time. I've deleted number 3 because I think everyone has coasted about as far as they can on that excuse. If you're still blaming covid because your 2019-era business model hasn't been updated to account for covid, and the different strategies required to operate a business in this time, that's on you for not pivoting, and is no longer something that can be gotten away with with a "but covid". As mentioned, staffing issues are a possibility - but things like weeds, gardens, broken speakers... this isn't high-tech shit that requires much effort. A little weed spray here and there, generous application of rake and a few bags of woodchip et al... Heck, Wonderland ran a 7 zone audio system out of one room and the speakers and speaker housings were built IN HOUSE when they couldn't get the genuine dino's from the US by a total of 4 guys. It takes a level of knowledge, sure, but ultimately its about priority or giving a shit. If they can staff S&E with FOH operators, camera operators, etc - they could divert someone to work on these speakers for a few days - in the off season - mid-week - for a few days and you wouldn't notice. Don't run your camera down main street for a day. A lot of this comes down to caring and attention to detail. 'Reining in the spending' doesn't mean the 'weed killer' budget got cut. It just means nobody is paying enough attention to detail anymore, because they don't care as long as the one-shots, fast tracks, and all the other upcharges keep rolling in. I just had to repost this again - one, to say I agree with it - and two, because it needs to be noticed.

https://instagram.com/stories/tainan.martins/2803429599869370766?utm_source=ig_story_item_share&utm_medium=copy_link new station update provided via instagram (if it is unavailable, i’ll post it) it appears the building itself is done and it looks like rocks and some blue rock work is going up now, looks like the station might actually be themed.

I stopped in recently and... yeah. Not a great vibe there at all. I'm sure there's a million excuses ("the Covid"), but there weren't any excuses made for still charging the prices they do. For reference my wife (who does not at all stay up to date with the parks and isn't interested in doing so) came away saying the place "is looking very sad". Interestingly we went to Top Golf afterward and the bay attendant asked how the park was and when my wife said it was pretty sad she agreed and noted that several others had said the same thing this week. Justice League was a complete and utter shambles. There's no point operating the ride in that type of condition, except if you're trying to cover up for a lot of your other rides being down (which, really, isn't actually making that situation any better). The guns had a life of their own and bore no resemblance to what you did with them. A significant proportion of the usually-lit set pieces were not lit. The projection elements (where visible) were out of sync, non-interactive, and of very poor visual quality. Elements like the mist screen didn't have a hope in hell of working. Photo screens at the exit mostly did not work, and for those that did the quality of the photograph was abysmal. Superman was down, which is a lost drawcard. Batwing was down, which created a zone of the park right as you enter where your view is dominated right away by rides you can't ride (Batwing, Superman, Arkham). West was down, which creates an entire dead wing of the park, especially given Doomsday does not announce its presence well to passers-by, and frankly is pretty sucky and unpopular. The kids area is probably around two flat rides (and dare I say a play structure) short of being good. If you have a young kid you will probably miss the height for Speedy so you're going to be restricted solely to the carousel, JDS, Sylvester and Tweety Cages (if your kid is okay to ride alone), and railroad. Railroad is mighty uncomfortable for an adult and the rope-based restraint system ensures capacity is very low, so you're probably not going to want to do that many times. Not having more characters doing walk-arounds of this zone is a missed opportunity. I appreciate that they will do photos at times throughout the day at the entrance to the area (the backdrop to the photos is an odd-choice though), but it's not the same as a chance encounter with a character as you explore the area for the kids. I'm not sure if it's a new thing but it's a shame that staff won't also take a photo with your phone in addition to their professional one so that more families can get photos together. I'm sure there's a Covid excuse brewing there, but that doesn't feel like the motivation when you're in the park. On the topic of characters and photos though; setting Batman up with Robin and the batmobile at the head of the main drag behind a red rope next to a sandwich board that spruiks $80/photo with them is fucking gross. I lost count of how many kids I heard on the way past say they wanted to go and say hi to Batman only for them not to be able to. Fantastic guest experience. On the plus side the folks appearing as Shaggy/Scooby were really fantastic with the guests whenever we saw them, and I sincerely hope the park looks after them. I'm not sure what's so hard about getting wait time signs semi-accurate out the front of major rides (especially given there's far less to keep up to date with half the park seemingly down), but we never saw one that was even within a multiple of accuracy. It was frustrating watching Rivals advertise a 10 minute wait when it was a 45 minute wait, and all the more frustrating watching the load attendant on several occasions accidentally mis-count riders to be admitted and then rather than correcting the mistake when it was found instead just dispatching with empty seats. That type of thing is hard to hide from guests when they have 45 minutes to watch it happen over and over and think "that could have been me on there". The parade seems worse every time I see it. Now we are down to the point of the floats never stopping and characters staying on them which doesn't make it very interactive or memorable. Again, I'm sure excuses re: Covid, but jesus, fleeting contact and outside area. Doesn't even need to be contact, really. I also would avoid having the characters on the floats ignore the customers at either side of the road and play to the crewmember with the un-whitebalanced handycam for the big screens (that near-nobody is watching). The stunt show was also worse than I remembered. No fireball, no car jumping, little comedy, laughably poor quality LED screen. I'm not sure who it's aimed at entertaining, but I'm guessing it's Showtime FMX. Food and beverage is slightly better at Movie World, but generally abysmal across the VRTP parks. Rivals is still good once you get on it. Didn't bother with GL. Scooby still had broken and crappy effects in the first half, but the disco room was quite passable. Clearly the maintenance-related items are issues the park is choosing to have, because a short walk away at AOS they aren't choosing to have the same problems.

Come back to us when they've missed their originally scheduled date by 20+ months.

I didn't realise places charged to enter food truck markets, I've only been to one and it was free to get in, but then again it was in Frankston (it's like the Nerang of the Mornington Peninsula for reference).

Agreed, it's actually a very small show building. I believe it's one of the reasons they couldn't have vehicles with freedom of movement to rotate etc. - there's simply not enough room in there for the required clearance. Sally managed to squeeze the ride into a small space. But even with the vehicles they used there are issues where they back up due to the small unload/load area and the ride then gets out of sync.

If this ends up being a success I don't think it would be a totally silly idea to look in to doing a 'permanent' trendy food market on the old amphitheatre site and uncouple it from DW. Night Quarter proved there's an appetite for it on the Northern GC, and best case that land won't be doing anything for a few years anyway.

Scooby is still an enjoyable ride, it’s just disappointing when we know what it once was. They just need to spend some serious money again on it

The gardens have really started to grow and fill the area. I haven’t checked in a while, so not sure how long it’s been like this, but additional signage has been installed and the wait time is shown. Unfortunately they have laminated signs stuck to the wall in the photos areas The fence out the front of the park is complete

You need to convert that to Australian currency. 1200 × a whole lot of crap = 127.

Are they using Dreamworld’s train?

Hi all, long time reader, first time poster here. I’ve always loved Movie World and feel very lucky that we have it here in Australia. But I have to say, I’m really disappointed in the current state of the park and the absolute nosedive the overall presentation and upkeep of the place has taken recently. I’ve noticed this for a while now, but it really hit home during my visit yesterday and wanted to share my thoughts here. The park was the worst I’ve ever seen it, so bad it was embarrassing. The place just feels so tired with overgrown gardens full of weeds, cracked buildings and cement, faded signs and cobwebs at every turn. While these things could be easily overlooked, they are so consistent throughout the park that it is extremely noticeable and it doesn’t get much better when you look at the attractions themselves. As many on here have already discussed, Justice league is in an appalling state right now with countless issues throughout the attraction. Every time I ride it, it just gets worse and worse. Some of the “highlights” include “No Signal” and “Check Input” notifications being displayed on the pre-show screens, the Cyborg animatronic being way off-sync with his audio, the majority of other animatronic characters throughout the ride not moving at all, multiple audio/lighting cues not triggering, frozen/out of sync screens and perhaps worst of all, non-working laser guns (has happened on all of my recent ride throughs no matter what vehicle I was in). There was also plenty of damaged/worn scenery that hasn’t been mended. Scooby Doo is also in very poor condition with many of the new “upgraded” effects either not working at all or terribly out of sync. Other areas such as the weird “mirror smash” section in the disco room was covered in dust and cobwebs and looked terrible. None of the interactive effects in the Doomsday precinct were working either. There are so many things that the park used to do well that have now been neglected. One of these areas is atmosphere. Movie World used to be full of energy at every turn with music accompanying you wherever you went. Today, as soon as you leave main street, there is barely any background music being played, with some areas in complete silence. The worst offender for this is the Looney Tunes Kids area, which has absolutely no background music playing at all and has been sitting in silence for months now. Many of the speakers in the area are broken (and very noticeable to the public) and this (along with the overgrown gardens, damaged theming etc.) has made the land feel bland, boring and more or less a dead space, when it should be the exact opposite. There are so many other things I could harp on about, but I think you’ve heard enough of my ranting. I understand I may sound a little nit-picky and am sorry to be so negative (especially on my first post). But this disappointment stems from my love for the park. Movie World and VRTP can do so much better, they have in the past and can in the future. This is arguably one of the only fully fledged theme parks we have in Australia that is capable of competing on an international level. It’s so close to being an amazing park or even a world class park in today’s market. The foundations are there, but there are currently so many little things that prevent that from being the case and that’s the most heartbreaking part. Simple things like attending to the gardens, repainting/repairing signs and architecture and just turning on background music will make a huge difference. While these are admittedly minor things, they make a huge difference to the overall quality of the experience and the guests will notice. But unfortunately, VRTP don’t seem to be interested in any of that right now. It seems their number one goal at the moment is to cut costs and squeeze every last dollar out of the park. Here’s hoping things will change.