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Disagree. Dreamworld is already pretty damn big. there is plenty of space inside the current park envelope for them to expand without needing more. Thunderbolt. Troll's Village & FlowRider. Rocky Hollow. There's also opportunity to do something with the Murrisippi and the island as long as they preserve the waterway. As time goes on you start to see other attractions due for refurb or retirement - Motocoaster is 18 this year - maybe they invest in a retheme and refresh to give it another decade or maybe they decide to pull it in favour of developing the plot into something else? (lord knows the dead zone between Giant Drop and Main Street Station could use something to liven it up). There's also potential to slip something inside of Taipan's footprint, or Buzzsaw's plot, and cyclone\gold coaster can't have much more life left in it, surely? I'd love to see them take the convention centre building and turn it into an indoor attraction complex with an ocean-related theme to tie-in to Ocean Parade.

Ok well I was waiting to have a minute to post but I will chime in here. I finally got to visit Rivertown last week… To say I was impressed would be an understatement. Easily best thing, or certainly most complete thing any park has built in a very long time. The entire area is immersive and detailed and just so on point. The detail in the theming and hidden touches just top it all off. Retheme of Vintage cars - amazing! Jungle Rush Coaster - what a perfect choice for the family demographic, and genius use of a relatively small footprint. Fun and thrills for all ages. As for the comments above, so off the mark. Yes I definitely feel the money must have run out in the turntable chamber, and it’s what turns this possible 10 into a 9. But is 10 year old me gonna notice? No As for the interior queue, it’s almost Disney level, there is nothing that anyone visiting a regional park in Australia should be complaining about in here. …and this is from the most critical old bastard that has never been backward about criticizing Dreamworld. Oh and for bonus points, all the staff were smiling!

We went to Movieworld yesterday and frankly it is embarrassing. Our passes due to expire next week so we thought we would take a look one last time before they expire. the park was frankly an embarrassment, operations are still dreadfully slow, staging out the wait times unnecessarily. Most rides are shut, running a dualling coaster with one train is an embarrassment and even rides like Road Runner now run on shortened times (12-4). With rubbish food at midday we left and went and ate at Jane’s, then did Jungle Rush, Taipan and Sky Voyager and the conparison between the two parks is as clear as it can be. It’s paying off for Dreamworld too, as the park was clearly busier than Movieworld.

More stuff like this would seem to be a good fit in the dark ride sections. From what I've seen so far the indoor sections and the promised 'show scene' seem pretty underwhelming. Still a great ride and well presented, but I was hoping for a bit more from the indoor parts

Very pleased to report that during today's showings the emergency signs behind the screen are interlocked with the front barrier lighting and as a result now extinguish before the barriers lower and illuminate after they re-raised.

Newgen Rocky Hollow Log Ride should be the next big attraction push, they need a quality water ride, with a good across-age range appeal.

There are a couple of environmental requirements/issues council did seek further information on. (council being council) Interesting new site layout.

Here's an Update of this Spot from My Trip Today.

I would love to see what risks they did identify, because someone standing up on a character seems like an obvious one to me?

the thing with only opening Friday-Sunday, we will end up with the shit show that is Movieworld and their operations, which imo would happen because they would be relying on younger staff/new causal hire to only work the 3 days instead of having staff that have been there many years working a full weekly shift. Just my opinion

Another sure way of not making money is to open a park that nobody attends.... If WWW was even close to profitable during winter it would be open

Rivals is getting the rest of its track repainted during this maintenance period, with the main road going into the park closed off with new access to the main car park open, with big cranes are also on site.

Faulty 6 🤙

As part of their increased focus on making Jane's Rivertown Restaurant a dining destination for locals on Friday and Saturday nights - starting tomorrow night they'll be launching a Friday night Trivia Night. Hope people get along and have some fun with family & friends. It's been a pleasure working with the team at Dreamworld to get this off the ground 🙂 https://www.facebook.com/share/p/19NTJW7aT5/

The supports are now in the carpark

I visited MW yesterday morning before DW and can echo these comments, SE was only running one train and with the same staff member moving between sort/unload. FOTWW went down as I was about to board and general slow operations across the entire park.

The latest Theme Park Ogre video on YouTube, batwing was down, fotww was down only 1 train operating on Kansas Twister. A lot of the comments are stating the same thing, Movieworld have lost the plot. I won’t be renewing my families 5 passes until something major happens in regards to management. The park is terrible. The IP choice was wrong imo also, executed terribly. Night and day difference to Dreamworld.

I'm going to buck the trend here and welcome the addition of some new, modern body slides. Too many slides in previous years have relied upon a gimmick, or a raft, and lately more attractions have specific group and rider requirements making a waterslide a much more cumbersome experience than the old days of WhiteWaterMountain - especially for single riders who can't experience some of these without partnering up with some random. Sure these ones have the new translucent sections which make the body slide more of an experience than it used to be - these sorts of slides have existed at van parks and resorts up and down the gold coast for more than a decade so it's great to see WNW finally entering the new Milennium.

In such a free democracy you can bet the people would be loudly shouting in the street if there were...

Just in case anyone missed the entire site plan posted back in October Both entry and exit pathways are ramped up from street level, while the RideExpress lane does have a short set of stairs up to the grouping area.

100% was not suggesting your prior callouts were undeserved - though in some cases I would hold a different opinion!

Saw this today. It’s new and I thought it was pretty cool. It’s in the gem room in the queue

I've seen the same thing at many parks that open midweek in the off season. He frequently doesn't. The point about the attendance is that it increased on the prior year - by more than the amount you saw in the park no less. I'm quite sure someone said recently 'a water park is not a theme park'. It makes less sense to open it in winter. you're competing with a small enough crowd as it is. Dry park on the other hand, if you're open, you're forcing customers to choose between you and a competitor. If you close, you're giving the game away. As for the insurance payout, i'm sure it was absorbed into the capex for rivertown, so in a way, they did rebuild it - just elsewhere. (and even if it didn't technically get absorbed into the rivertown budget, it's all CE's money so it really doesn't matter. they got paid by insurance to rebuild vintage cars, and they rebuild vintage cars. end of. First of all, they're not sacked. Let's not start using emotive and inflammatory language to get people upset about a normal thing that happens every year. They're hired on contracts and the contracts have a fixed end date. As I understand it Raging Waters in Sydney has a similar issue with retaining staff over seasons, but its just the nature of a seasonal business and the workers go into that eyes open. I think more than a few waterpark folk double as Ski Resort workers in the winter, and many come back year on year. But that isn't a good enough reason to open the waterpark in winter. It is however a good enough reason to keep your dry park open.

You can apply that same theory to sacking all the WWW staff each year. WWW operated for months this year on a 3 day roster.

@DaptoFunlandGuyIf you went to DW today you would be lucky if there is 300 guest in the park. Should DW close today? DW'S latest marketing angle is you can ride 7 rides in an hour. If guest can fit in 7 rides in an hour, the park isn't making any money.

That is very cool. They are such an archetypical death machine, they need to continue lol. Hopefully they don't amp down the intensity.

If Merlin wanted a legoland, they'd 100% build a greenfields park. You wouldn't buy dreamworld and then knock everything down to build a legoland park. legoland typically shoots toward a younger demographic so you'd have millions of dollars of thrill-rides that wouldn't suit the park style. Merlin also owns Alton Towers, Thorpe Park, Chessington and Gardaland, and none of those became Legolands. If Merlin bought dreamworld I could see them putting in a third gate style park, or redeveloping space inside the park into a mini legoland, but Dreamworld would stay.

I remember hearing that Merlin were interested in potentially buying Dreamworld a few years ago (around 2018/19) but I doubt that’s still on the cards considering the financial difficulty the company is currently facing and the significant cutbacks they’re making at their existing parks. I really hope Coast hang on to Dreamworld as long as they can as they’re doing such a great job under the current leadership.

I waited to after the holidays to take flight because when I went during the holidays the queue exceeded 1 hour. The quality of the image on the screen has improved but there is a but. You can see light boxes behind the image. The reflection onto the screen of emergency exit signs is annoying but I do not know how you fix the reflection because you can’t position the signage anywhere you want. The film was immersive, and it has a couple of moments where the audience gasps. The film felt short but I’m not sure if it was short compared to the other productions because I didn’t time it or felt short because I was immersed in it and lost track of time. It is a defendant must see and DW are doing an excellent job mixing up films.

Not caring about the guest experience means crowd levels have reduced, which means they have less profit. I don’t know how to run a business, but surely that’s pretty obvious right?

I don't see why not. like whitewater mountain you only need one attendant at the top and one at the bottom. set up your traffic lights and people tend to self-load without an issue. I thought you were joking but they actually wrote that. Shit - why not go all in and say 'the southern hemisphere's biggest almost 20 metre slide tower!' Also (and it's their typo), a metre is a length of measurement - a meter is a device that measures. In the US they use METER for both - but that isn't a standard to aspire to, especially right now.

Yeah - I understand it's a night event but the train rebuilds have to happen at some point and this is off season for them. Outside school holidays and heading into winter is when you can afford to drop some of your capacity to get things done. Clearly taipan was popular which is good (especially since tailwhip is getting so much patronage - looks like charging less for a seat actually DOES work! (cough, village, cough))

I think that's extraordinarily unlikely at this stage. Dreamworld's flag is on the rise and the valuation right now wouldn't be the bargain that those sorts of investors like to take on.

@Coasterjoe I believe the second train is out of action for maintenance at the moment

Movie World really need to sort their shit out… Having half of the park closed for maintenance isn’t acceptable. I understand some of the above closed rides aren’t scheduled to be closed and might be having some teething issues, but having 6 rides closed and having just permanently removed one shouldn’t be acceptable. They seriously need to rethink their maintenance schedule so there’s not this mass downtime, especially when they charging day guests $109 (for perspective I paid that to visit DisneySea).

It’s definitely not a bad addition. I enjoy these high throughput speed slides. But I feel the disappointment with this being one pf very few additions to wet n wild. I would love to see a large scale raft ride with a raft lift personally. The huge lack of slides with raft lifts at wnw is wild. Call me lazy but I think they’re necessary.

“Soaring 17.6 meters (that's almost 18!) above the park” Apparently 18 metres is the benchmark for exciting waterslides.

+1 for new slides. But nothing great.

My wife and I have. There are a lot of areas of the Middle East that I wouldn’t say are safe, but we travelled to Dubai and Abu Dhabi a couple years ago for half a week to explore the cities and attractions and at no point did either of us feel unsafe. The customs process was basically no different to Australia and once your in the country, just obey the local laws and you’re fine (we didn’t change anything we would normally do when travelling). I also know several other people that have visited these cities (men and women) and they had no issues either. I’m hearing a lot more stories of people travelling to America being obtained in comparison to Dubai/Abu Dhabi. From basic research, the parent company Miral that’s building this park has never had any allegations of slavery or mistreatment. Yes, but every Disney park around the world offers different attractions (even if there are some replicas). And this is a brand new modern day park so I’d say a lot of it will be brand new attraction (like at Shanghai for example)

First look at the new tower slide for Wet n Wild, photo from the GC. Bulletin

Isn't the weather in the UAE likely to mean that it's indoors? Coupled with them talking about new technologies and immersion, that immediately sets off alarm bells for me. Also, the UAE isn't particularly well known for its human rights and equality stances. I'm not sure a country that can't give a full release to Strange World (not the best movie, I know) due to homosexuality should be hosting a theme park of the company that produced it.

If they are building resorts, who says they won't build a new park? it does seem like they are locking themselves in. But I still see a few areas that can be expanded into like behind WWW, the island in the middle, motocoaster and old LHLR site. Also we have seen parks get more creative withy how they use space (see phantasialand) they only have 50acres all up. So its not the end of the world as long as they can keep up with the new theming they have going and continue using the (frankly limited) land for new unique experiences.

Gotta say I'm disappointed with what I'm seeing. For all the improvements they've been making inside the park, they're limiting their ability expand in the future by developing these empty areas around the park with precincts that are frankly a dime-a-dozen these days. If they're trying to poise Dreamworld as a 'staycation' destination, the park itself needs to be bigger to justify it.

Somebody need to do a before & after car park count.

Adventure World has submitted an application for a new ride for 2025, with the removal of Rampage plus Inferno and Black widow getting much older (Black Widow was closed this entire season) I personally recon we might see a new dry ride rather than water. My pick would be a Gerslaur sky roller, I guess time will tell.

A good reminder how bad the sign was @themagician hopefully, never to be repeated.

We’ve known this for a month, but MW shared this

Block walls are being built to create the ‘pit’ for the ride floor to drop down into. This means that there will likely be a ramp/stairs in the queue to get you up to the ride. Also, the form work for the ride structures footings are in ready for the concrete pour Photos by Theme Park Ogre

Greg young was just interviewed on Danes Theme Park Life once again, they are wanting a non thrill ride for White water world, good podcast, imo sounding like the lazy river as he mentioned through put etc

Zipper rides in Australia: Bad Ass Zipper (Shorts) - Retired but apparently sold and is being refurbished? - Ferrari Model Mean Mother Zipper (Castle / Ex Watkins) - Retired - Ferrari Model Zipper (Davis Amusements / Ex Wittingslow) - Retired - Ferrari Model Zipper (Zacchini Amusements) - Retired - Ferrari Model Zipper (West Coast Event Hire - Ex UK model) - Apparently still operating - Chance Model So looks like we only have the one currently travelling but possibly a second model coming back out of retirement.