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Insightful, intelligent, and brave. Thank you for your time. In saying that, add to the discussion, or move on.

No, sorry, they aren't. They have access to more information than we do, and I'm sure they saw a massive uptick in ticket sales before the holidays, yet provided little information about best practice when it comes to crowds. Then once people arrived and it was crowded, they told people not to come which is hilarious considering this is the same business that jumped on national news and criticized the border closures because the Gold Coast needs tourists to survive, but are now telling people to go away? If they genuinely thought this was an important message than I'd expect to see warnings when purchasing my tickets, a notice on the website about crowds and how you can best enjoy your day in such conditions, etc. But no, they told people who already paid to be there not to have come in the first place. They may as well say "Screw you, got mine." Similarly, what communication did they provide regarding Leviathan changing from Easter holidays? The enthusiast community broke that news because they simply changed the dates. The same thing has happened with the new opening hours, changes to fast track, virtual queue, and the rest? None of this has been announced by the park for the general population to consume, it's just information deduced by this community. Village does their best to ensure that bad news is delivered AFTER you purchase your ticket. They're reactive in nature, and perhaps that makes them responsive, but they're nowhere near as proactive with communications as they need to be to mitigate guest frustration. I have said my piece on this already, and broken stuff is expected for theme parks, but at some point people are going to stop betting on your horse if it continues to race with a broken leg. The park should be able to operate comfortably with a couple broken things, but as we've seen over the past few weeks, a couple broken things is detrimental for wait times and attraction throughput. Nobody is arguing that Movie World being popular is a bad thing, but you can argue that the parks response to this popularity is a bad thing. Again, I've said my piece on this. Don't rest on demand falling either. International tourism demand is rising for Australians, but the supply of flights and other amenities is not yet there to handle millions of Australian's sitting on huge piles of savings. These people still need things to do if they can't get overseas, and the Gold Coast looks like a pretty tempting holiday destination for those who have been cooped up. We don't know what their measurement of success is. If it's financial then I sure as hell guarantee that their team is cheering. But again, they have access to metrics and insight that we don't. Somehow they knew it was busy enough to staff every store, restaurant, kitchen, and game, to the point that they even outsourced some of that demand to external vendors like Boost and that Licorice Lolly Company. Heading to Sea World and standing out the front briefly a vast majority of guests were taking the right hand entrance compared to the ticket gates, which suggests that they have bought their tickets online. Their teams would have seen this, and if they didn't then I wonder what they are monitoring. I agree, but they're not mutually exclusive. The problems regarding Movie World were drastically inflated with the crowds and I think that should send alarm bells to anybody in charge. If those people are happy to sit on their hands and hope that things will just improve by themselves, then I wish them all the best in that endeavor and hope that it goes their way! But for the love of god, if they ever tell their paying guests not to come again then I hope they get all the criticism they deserve for such an stupid action. I don't want Movie World to fail. I'm passionate because I care about this park and I hold it in high regard which is why I want to see improvements. I'm not jumping on here and trolling with some low brow 'movie world sucks lol', I'm providing my critical thoughts on the subject in the aim that hopefully somebody can address the parks shortcomings that I've noticed. Will that happen? I have no idea, but I hope it does because doing the same thing and expecting different outcomes is simply insanity.

I'd already given you the information you asked for. You just flat out refused to let it in. I can't be bothered wasting my time with you when the first sentence in your former post confirms you were never really engaged in a discussion. The irony is my first post wasn't even in response to you, but you've come in and done exactly what I was saying other people are doing. Thank you for making my point for me far better than I ever could. Have a wonderful day!

These kinds of things. I think I'm leaning slightly more towards heavy duty sock.

Yeah facebook is a toxic sesspool where you complain to make noise. In person or over the phone is how you complain to actually get your issue resolved.

It seems Aussie World have taken a very direct approach in their new marketing to make an advertised ‘unlimited rides’ stance clear. I think this on top of the response I got is enough to suggest that the customer complaints were largely exaggerated or it was a couple of isolated incidents by casual staff members who didn’t understand the directive. I hate to suggest this but its also possible that a particular ride operator was on a bit of a power trip that day. Either way I plan on visiting AW soon to see for myself how operations are going on quieter times.

I had this conversation the other day with somebody. Why should management shoot themselves in the foot for the entertainment of their guests? There is little incentive for a park like Movie World to reduce capacity or control the crowds when they've got guests flooding in. Disney understands this and it's why before recent years they've been incredibly careful about their public image. I can't remember the numbers exactly, but in their early days they found that people were more willing to discuss a bad trip then a good trip, and that bad news spread quickly. This negativity bias is hard to control and once it grows its own legs it snowballs to rather outlandish proportions. I genuinely think that Village have gotten incredibly lucky to avoid negative press in the past 12 months and, to a degree, I think it's why we are seeing such an apathetic response to guest experience. Dreamworld was changed by their incident, but also the immense pressure that came post-incident from the public, press and officials. Despite Village failing to deliver on their new additions at Sea World several times, providing an exceptionally poor guest experience at Movie World which has been reciprocated by both enthusiasts and the public, having multiple SBNO attractions within their parks including Arkham and Sea World's Log Flume, announcing a hotel before their replacement attractions for Arkham, removing hosts from shows like Affinity and reverting Seal Guardians to it's preview format, bringing third-party vendors into their parks outside of special events with the intention of raising revenue, and the rest, we have really only seen positive articles come out of Parkz towards Village, and I'm not trying to throw the Parkz team under the bus here, but it takes a lot of pressure off the company when they know they're not under the magnifying glass. These threads and discussions are exactly what is needed to try and kickstart change because it shows that people are taking notice of the problem, and they're only going to continue to get worse for Village as the year goes on. Come September there are going to be a lot more season passes purchased to experience Sea World's new hotness, and Movie World needs to be ready for that influx... But I genuinely don't see how it can.

Honestly just be sensible and discreet about it. I pack a little lunch box with sandwiches, a couple of pieces of fruit and a little packet of chips for my kids almost every time I visit the park and I have never once ran into trouble with it. Sure if you bring in a freaking bucket of chicken from KFC for a large group they will probably tell you to take it outside. But I have never had a problem.

If you lay with an arched back and have sunscreen on you rocket down.

Just on the subject of ticket sales and expected attendance, they really don't have a guaranteed way of knowing this based only on ticket sales alone. When I bought tickets, I was not expected to tell them what day(s) I was planning on attending, I just had 12 months to use them. My tickets were originally purchased as a Christmas gift for 2021. We ended up getting a credit and re-buying them shortly before our Easter trip. Now, we would be on the 'expected attendance' list with our purchase, but there would have been a cohort of people with passes purchased sometime in the last 12 months that were waiting for their right time to attend, along with people like me that bought them just before, or at the gate.

With little word from the park beyond some social replies, of course people are going to come to their own conclusion. What one may see as proactive solutions to resolve park issues, others could interpret as knee jerk reactions to poor critical response. Either way, it's impossible to know what the park is actually doing if we don't hear from them regarding the matter, and sadly their only public response has been "Don't come on school holidays" which is hardly a sympathetic response to disgruntled guests. Nobody is asking for what they're providing to be perfect, but I think it should still be serviceable. Two to three hour waits is acceptable for parks like Disney where you've got plenty to do and can miss the new hotness whilst still having a great day, but for a theme park that only has under ten major attractions with one major show and a simple parade, you should NOT be required to go for more than one day to experience all of it. For comparison sake, Animal Kingdom at Walt Disney World opened with a comparable number of attractions in 1998 and that was considered a half-day park. It was and still is a gigantic park, had more shows, larger-scale attractions, and a whole bunch of zoo elements, so what's Movie World's excuse for making people come back for several days during the school holidays so that they can experience everything at least once? Remember, not everybody out there is an informed theme park insider or has a season pass. If you're going to the Gold Coast for a holiday, you're probably dedicating a single day for Movie World with your three day pass, and they don't have the luxury of going "Oh dang, it's busy. I'll come back when it's quieter." The public response has been lukewarm at best, which is less than ideal for Australia's premier theme park. Despite all the money they've sunk into the park in recent years which has improved their demand, their attraction throughput and capacity has dropped to woefully low levels compared to yesteryear. Yes, these things do cycle, but the problems they have are not simple things to fix. You can't simply revert Wild West Falls to the crowd gobbler it was before, you can't speed up Superman Escape any further before it's aging systems hit problems, you can't add more trains to Rivals or Scooby, you can't reopen Arkham, you can't reduce ride outages on unpredictable systems with notoriously bad track records, and you simply can't add more attractions to pick up the slack when these attractions go down. Movie World over the school holidays is theoretically at it's peak capacity give or take Doomsday being open and Rivals having an additional train, and both of those things are NOT going to reduce the crowds by any measurable amount. The fact that changing ride down time, removing virtual queue and fast track barely made a dint should be terrifying for the operational team. Also Hooray for Hollywood is just around the corner, and with New Atlantis expected to open in September, I won't be surprised if we see this event slated for the September school holidays to pick up some slack for Sea World. The increased demand for Village properties plus a special event at an already very popular theme park is going to draw some crazy crowds, and I'll be surprised if an additional hour of operational time will compensate for this. The park desperately needs at least two high capacity attractions, and from what we've seen this is not on the cards for their next expansion. If they decide to go ahead with those plans, than it'll be 5-7 years at best before the park has the CapEx for future endeavors, or they can scrap their current plans but that still leaves us several years off as they go through the process of finding vendors, getting approval, and all the other fun stuff that comes with building attractions. This is not Movie World having a bad couple weeks; this is Movie World for the foreseeable future thanks to pent-up post-COVID demand. Take this with a grain salt because I'm one person, but as somebody who has tried to engage with the business directly, I've had a historically difficult time opening up any sort of communication channels with them. In fairness I have been publicly critical of the business since their reopening in mid-2020 so I don't expect a red carpet, but if you're only willing to engage with individuals and groups that toot your horn then you're never going to get the feedback you need to hear, just the feedback you want to hear. Also in my day job I'm required to monitor socials and reviews, and I can tell you that the eventual vocal bad review isn't surprising. I've had people complain and leave bad reviews about things that are ridiculous and you can spot these idiots from a mile away, but you can also identify when you're doing stuff wrong. We're a smaller business, so reviews matter for us, and when you start to notice an influx of bad reviews than its a clear indication that you're doing something wrong. And the reviews aren't just bad on Facebook, but also Google and Trip Advisor. Yes, they are known cesspits for common whiners, but historically it's never been this bad and you can't ignore that. Below are reviews from 2019 and they're glowing. People love the place and there is the eventual bad review, but if you scroll through the reviews in either direction you see nothing but praise towards the park. https://www.tripadvisor.com.au/Attraction_Review-g658988-d273704-Reviews-or590-Warner_Bros_Movie_World-Oxenford_Gold_Coast_Queensland.html Compare that to the most recent reviews where it's pages upon pages of negative reviews. https://www.tripadvisor.com.au/Attraction_Review-g658988-d273704-Reviews-Warner_Bros_Movie_World-Oxenford_Gold_Coast_Queensland.html Could it just be a cesspool of whiners? Possibly. But scroll all the way back to page 30 and you'll notice that the sentiment towards the park only becomes majority positive pre-COVID. You can palm off these reviews, but you can't argue that peoples opinions were far more favorable before the pandemic and whatever they're doing after reopening just must not be working. People haven't changed that dramatically in their views and opinions over the past 2 years despite the media cycle making us believe that every other person is an insane lunatic with outlandish views. If anything you'd think that people would be more forgiving considering that they've been waiting this long for some entertainment, but if we continue to just regard any bad feedback as whiners then you'll only pay attention to what you want to hear, not what you need to hear.

So like this but upside down..

I think it’s a pretty common trend in many (please note I did not say all so there is no need for a response with graphs and statistics to show otherwise) businesses to pretty much ignore general ranting on Facebook and no engage publicly. It’s a no win situation. The comments you want to engage with and take seriously are those that take the time to properly engage with the business directly with concerns. I’ve found this time and time again to be true. The thing with Facebook is you will always have a vocal minority running their keyboards, and it’s just not worth it. And as for managers not getting out there and walking the park, we constantly see them all the time. So thats an incorrect assumption. Disney is actually probably the worst at this as its been demonstrated their senior management just get VIP treatment when they show up.

What about a small circular "umbrella" at the top of the pole that both prevents standing and is wide enough to cover the hole when in the high position?

What's interesting is people just come up with a narrative that they don't care about the guest experience and run with it despite evidence. There's really not much they can do to fix things like crowding, but they have done things; changing downtime to get rides open, plan to extend trade in future holidays and stopped selling fast track to make it a bit less unbearable. The idea they don't care or are unresponsive to problems is demonstrably not true. I'm not going to piss in their pocket and say how wonderful they are, because clearly they could be doing shit better, but that has ALWAYS been the case. There has NEVER been a time in all my years going to the park when everything has been running perfectly. It's not new or exclusive. They'll fix some of this shit at some point, and new shit will break. That's the cycle of things. It'll happen at all the parks forever. I think pointing to today's things in isolation and saying 'decline! Grrr MW!' is kinda dumb.

You don't need to open your eyes and ears if you can just turn off the ability for your guests to leave a comment or review!

Blah.. call me a fanboy idc 😂 Yes, Dreamworld has a lot of work to do to rebuild the public's faith but I think the word of mouth after this recent holiday debacle will be helping. In my few visits over the holidays I saw nothing but smiles and happy familys.... An electric atmosphere only made better by the smaller crowds. I think we will see a much more competitive Dreamworld come September. Thank god the general public don't realise just how close Movieworld came to a catastrophic disaster with Green Lantern or the past few years would tell a very different story.

Yeah well that’s a piss poor, privileged attitude if ever I’ve seen one. A theme park isn’t a restaurant, nor do you spend 7 hours at a restaurant. Anyone with enough money to blow $6 for a packet of chips that costs $1.20 at Coles - they can spend their money on it - but most people can’t. tbh you sound like an entitled moron with that comment. So people that don’t have much expendable money are cheapskates? You got kids? A family? Mortgage? Or do you just sit in your one bedroom apartment on your high horse looking down on people?

See above.