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Good news!

Taken today 😊

Well I mean as recently as six years ago Dreamworld was a dump, losing shitloads of money and could have easily been sold off and pulled down for housing. Needless to say they’ve come a long way since 2016 we all knew it would take a long time for Dreamworld to win back the trust of the public, even nine years later it’s still not fully there. Take the little wins i am happy there are still 4 parks on the coast.

Noticed a couple things at the park today. First of all, the roof looks so much better now that the painting is complete. I also happened to notice that the park have finally replaced a lot of the old standard rubbish bins with these new proper theme park style ones, similar in design to what you see in many big parks around the world. They look great and are even colour matched to fit the theming in certain areas too. Some of the bins have been placed in front of the Remota Boats and the pool has been drained. I hope this is just a temporary thing during maintenance and they’re not retiring them. They’ve also changed the background music in Kenny and Belinda’s Dreamland. Instead of playing generic pop music, they’re now playing whimsical/old timey music which is a really big improvement and fits the atmosphere a lot better IMHO.

Seeing the photo of just the light post reminds me, those light post are the cream of the crop in what a theme park should aim for with light post.

Maybe night market should be pared back to once a month, and run in such a way that dreamworld doesn't have to cancel it every other month for special event nights. So - make it the first friday and saturday of every month, so they've got the remaining weekends for their own events. This also frees up those friday \ saturdays outside of halloween, winter, christmas, country fair etc to run special one-off events for passholders, or special ticketed events for private hire, fundraisers and the like. This would concentrate those that want to visit the night markets into one night a month too, so potentially attendance at a monthly night market would increase. just spitballing, i'm sure there's other problems with that too.

This evening. Sadly got switched off right as it got dark...

They realised that it would improve the guest experience and they didn't want to break their current streak of "that will do".

MW isn't the standard DW should be setting.

Except, of course, as we all know, the decision to switch doomsday to neutered B-mode was entirely and exclusively due to guest feedback. /s

I’d assume it will be a new arena stunt show (at least that’s what I hope it is because HSD2 sucks)

@DaptoFunlandGuy I agree, but that still doesn’t give them a pass on painting large walls a solid green or making your queue area an unshaded cattle pen. It just demonstrates a lack of care or effort.

No it didn’t. It closed because the Gold Coast City Council is turning the track into a tip. They didn’t renew the lease.

I don’t live on the coast but I can tell you right now that people living in Coomera are nowhere near the same level of entitled NIMBY as people in lavender bay so the Luna park comparison is silly. Who is living in a multimillion dollar apartment in an inland suburb on the Gold Coast?

The sad part is that Showtime have enough talented performers (bikes, cars, etc.) that they could put on a good 'action' show with a proper concept/script/direction, but they just don't. I don't really understand why there is a truck on a lake at Sea World with BMX riders, when those same BMX riders could be contributing to a better action/stunt show at MW. It's one thing to need to cut costs, or reduce risk, but a good concept and script only needs to be written once and then it costs nothing. Same with allocating performers to the right park and the right show. It would probably be more cost effective for Sea world to just invest in a really impressive fountain show, and put all the money for performers into MW, and both shows would be better than they currently are.

This was in the GC Bulletin today (there is a digital version, but it’s behind a paywall).

Something to do with Village Key?

Doesn't that rely in it's entirely on DW announcing KC's opening though?

They’re now painting the front of the castle. I was able to get a little glimpse inside while they were working near the entrance. I’m not sure if this is directly related to the Scooby refurb, but I noticed the speakers that were located on this lamppost (that used to play the Scooby music) have been removed. The ones on top of the castle are still there though.

Yeah that's fair. It's clear the park is slowly modernising \ refurbishing every section of the park but it does take time... and unlike other parks nearby - I can see that they're actively working on stuff so i'm prepared to give them the benefit of the doubt that something that looks a bit shitty is going to be temporary, and eventually rectified.

Doctor who did it first

They’re making a lot of progress on the track, there were a bunch of people working on it today. If they can keep up this pace, I think they could potentially be on track (no pun intended) to open it for the September school holidays. I noticed they’ve resurfaced the crossing near Main Street station too.

I did always think it was going to cause potential issues and would potentially become a deterrent to food truck owners long term if they felt that Jane’s was taking away their customers. I think it was great to have Jane’s open at night for those first few months because it was new and exciting and was a way to show off the new venue and land. And maybe during school holidays/night events hosted by the park it would be great to have open, but on a weekly basis with the night markets probably isn’t necessary.

This isn't the same show as 20 years ago. Back then they were still recording to tape. Now everything is just data that gets uploaded to post houses almost immediately. The show is much easier to produce now. It's mostly PTZ (security style) cameras, and one person can operate 10+ cameras from a single desk, depending on how spread out everyone is. It's not the big infrastructure-heavy show it used to be, which is why the 'house' is just a Set in a shed. It's designed to be temporary, and it's unlikely that the show will ever have a permanent structure again because it's expensive, unnecessary for production, and no broadcaster will be willing to pay for it given the relatively low viewership the show now has. The final series on 7 was only pulling an average 140,000 viewers per night and was cancelled as a result. The previous series only pulled 340,000. Compare that to the 1M-1.7M that ten was pulling in across its first seven series - cancelling it in Series 8 when they only pulled 860,000. They're hoping that the DW nostalgia and live eviction shows will spur some renewed interest in the show, and it might for one series, but that is not sustainable and people will lose interest pretty quickly. The show is only ever going to be as interesting as the cast, and unfortunately, genuinely interesting people (compared to charismatic people) are not usually the extroverted narcissists that are willing to sacrifice their privacy to go on a reality TV show where they're filmed showering naked and taking a crap. But if you're thinking that the scale of the production will be the same as it used to be, you're in for disappointment. It doesn't need to be, and the live shows and the production will be much smaller overall to align with the revenue that the much smaller audience generates. But the show will bring some national exposure for Dreamworld, which it still really needs.

Great we are finally getting a new ride but kind of disappointed if it's just the Bountys Revenge again. They already have Goliath which is a swinging type of ride. Wondering if Black Widow will go soon as well

Yeah sure - and let Kristoff direct from the guest bedroom of Truman's house too, right? Production needs a separate space. End of.

Haha, it’s the same every time. Selected “micro-influencers” audited by recruitment agencies and talent management companies

Kinda weird that Sea World’s wild expansion ended up at a different park 10 years after it was meant to open!

2020.

Their website lists projects from both Universal and Disney (Waterworld + Lion King) so I have hope in them, from the sounds of things it should be better than what Showtime FMX have done as they're more specified toward theme park specific shows rather than just stunt shows. Just hope Village give them a large enough budget rather than cheapening out (which, unfortunately, would be expected nowdays). Please please please be a Mad Max show, not "Hollywood Stunt Driver 3" although from the description it sounds like that might be the case. At least there is a varied amount of stunts it seems (it mentions multiple things such as highfalls and motorbike riding ) rather than just cars drifting around the whole show and nothing else.

@Baconjack the existing Gold Coast Kart Club closed in Coomera because the NEW residents didn't like the noise.

Well I guess we know where the canceled light rail funding is going.....

"After conducting guest feedback, we have determined that guests prefer Superman to be closed rather than open"

I very much doubt that Movie World would work with S+S again given all the issues they have had with Green Lantern over the years, and some of the issues originally with Batwing. I really hope they can keep Superman running in its current state, but I give it 5 years or so until they really should start looking at a replacement. As much as I'd like to see a LSM conversion when this time comes, I kind of think after 25 years something new would also (hopefully) be as good or iconic as Superman. That ride IMO really put Movie World on the map.

GL valleyed on the 20th of July and maintenance schedule was due to start on the 23rd of July. MW has shown us before they can maintain a ride a lot quicker then MW currently do and why I believe, maintenance is dragged out to reduce ruining cost.

I'm leaning towards a new show in the stunt arena, but with the overblown puffery we've had from the park in the past 'new entertainment offering' could easily just be a new character appearance with a new background...

Credit to MovieWorld for actually acknowledging and explaining the situation, they very rarely do that. Hopefully they don’t pull a Six Flags KingDa Ka moment on us though.

Tiger Island is a shadow of its former self. Every time I walk through it, there is one tiger pacing at the back gate.

It was an example of projection mapping done properly though. The river scene projected on the sand was magic.

It's 100% how village like it. They basically set the price for how much they are willing to spend and showtime went away to develop a show for it. They were absolutely bleeding money with the first incarnation of HSD. The vehicles alone cost eye watering amounts to modify/maintain/keep running for the show, so when someone came along and struck a deal to take all that off their hands, they saw it as a blessing. It's just another example of their priorities changing during the late early teens. Within reason, when previously continuing to run police academy even after the guest numbers dropped off, then with HSD which replaced it, the main emphasis was on the show quality with running costs being more a secondary consideration. IE, they didn't want to see the guest experience suffer because they didn't provide enough $$$$$ to put on a decent show. Now? I don't think you could say that guest experience is the leading consideration in anything village do.

Seems to me that VRTP seem to give them a bit of a free hand, because their stuff is so samey across multiple shows. Want a laugh? From their website: Lordy, lordy. Have mercy.

Is it called that because people puke on it?

Looks more like something is definitely down. Anyhow - this doesn't point to anything sinister - regular maintenance on the launch system can include de-tensioning the cables.

Take one stroll around movieworld at night and then tell me there is anything worth complaining about in rivertown when it comes to lighting

A couple of photos from today (I didn’t get too close, as there were a lot of workers on site).

The lights are gone now.

DCeased is the worst maze I have ever walked through, and I'm not just counting MW mazes. I would rather Dapto kick me in the jiggly gems, then experience that maze again.

I had a similar experience recently... yours actually sounds worse, which is surprising! It's such a shame seeing the ride in that state. I don't think so, as the geyser is still on which is probably the wettest effect on the ride

Had a chance to ride WWF for the first time in a while and my God is it in bad shape. Basically none of the effects worked (apart from the geyser and the swinging saloon doors/balcony breaking away in the ghost town). There was no audio around the ride at all, no video in the turntable room and even the water tower before the final lift hill (one of the most consistent effects in my opinion) failed to activate. To add insult to injury, parked directly behind said water tower in plain view was a parade float, completely breaking all immersion. It’s honestly embarrassing that the ride is operating in its current condition.