Richard

These plates indicate a mirror image of the structure. We're looking at the back centre (left) and front centre (right) support beams here. @joel, that's definitely not the layout.

That's not even close to being an option, or in any way practical or beneficial. The effect needs a large screen.

Don't the brackets indicate there's going to be another "stack" next to this one which gets us our 60 seats?

Pedalling back from what exactly? From the moment this article went live it included among other things: the main image and caption, the mention of those three film titles and the inherently ridiculous segue from LA porn star to LA theme park. If you can't decipher the tone from those then I guess I can see how you think this is Very Serious Business® from the esteemed Parkz Newz Bureau.

Except no one added the word "porn" to any search? It's the bizarre spelling of sky ryder which landed us here and nothing else. But to your point... if you're going to purposely misspell a word to be unique and edgy (#parkz), maybe checking for page-one-of-Google porn connections isn't the worst idea in the world? To be clear, the whole thing is simply amusing to us, no more no less. There's no lambasting and no one is outraged or offended. If this article upsets anyone then they're taking theme parks a lot more seriously than we do.

I mean I could have faked this screen capture in the last couple of minutes too... 7CDE788B-75C1-4A19-AE0C-D7F461AD6226.MP4

Yeah some real manipulation of searches for it to appear right up top for a search for "sky ryder". Like all things Google it'll vary user to user but it was the first thing that came up for me and I figured it was funny enough point to write a few words about.

What? ABC reached out for comment from a credible/respected academic in this field and he gave his expert opinion. Nothing he said is even remotely controversial. The whole 7:30 piece to me seemed fairly safe and bland. Lacking in depth, sure, but I'm not getting overtones of agenda or bias.

I'd argue that Sea World caters for ~4-8 very well between Nickelodeon Land, Castaway Bay/Reef and the animal exhibits/shows. Of course then there's many other shortcomings there. And their IP isn't as, ahem, "hip". I'd also argue that $10 million spent at Movie World shoring up the 4-8 gap would be the best money they could spent. Had Doomsday been a few good family flat rides instead of one lacklustre thrill ride, this almost wouldn't be a discussion we'd be having. This is the inherent flaw in the annual pass model and why it's perhaps been so easy for Dreamworld to coast: they're never in danger of competing with themselves. Sea World focusing on younger kids and Movie World on teens has left both parks lacking. Even though "95 rides and attractions" is a solid selling point for annual passes, it doesn't translate as an experience for anyone other than tourists visiting all within a short period of time. It also highlights the dearth of family rides at all our parks. There's so little on offer anywhere that appeals to everyone.

I'll absolutely concede (and did in the article) that the sheer breadth of rides and hip IP in one place aimed at young children is unmatched. Quality and presentation is another matter, though hardly relevant to a four year old so long as they're on something that spins or hugging a character they recognise. When looked at through the prism of a two-park (DW/WWW) versus three/four-park (MW, SW, WNW + PC) annual pass I do firmly believe the offering for every age bracket doesn't stack up in quantity nor quality and at the end of the day, but of course there's a lot to be said for for the geographical/all-in-one convenience of Dreamworld. The main question is whether there's a sound business model for a theme park of the size of Dreamworld to only be pretty good with young kids' attractions. I think there's a misnomer that these are family attractions; in my view they appeal to young families and little else, and there's a reason you don't see Disney or other operators relying heavily on them... because they're not money spinners in the same way that true "3 to 93" family attractions are.

VRL was never $14.95... something's awry in those Google numbers. They were around $5 at the time of the incident. Ardent is a company that has sold every other asset and sunk everything into the high-growth Main Event. The market wrote off the entire value of Dreamworld when the incident occurred so there has been no need for the market to "punish" them every time they've released dismal trading updates. To put it another way, no one is invested in Ardent Leisure because they see Dreamworld in the company's future. Village on the other hand have their finger in many different under-baked pies and have a lot more opportunities to disappoint investors. They're hurting now because every division is struggling and they don't have the balance sheet to weather it.

If you want to go down this path of selling soundly performing parks then Sea World is far and away the better candidate for sale: it's in a bit of a predicament in terms of direction, faces something of a PR/image problem, it's geographically separated from the other parks and is surrounded by land that has been earmarked for development with no firm plan in place. Wet'n'Wild Gold Coast prints money. It's historically one of the best performing water parks in the world and seasonality aside it operates at a higher margin than any of the other Gold Coast parks. Certainly their stake in WnW Las Vegas will go given it's their lone USA park and their other remaining international operations are now essentially management deals without equity.

"You can't quote the post above" has never been a rule or convention we've encouraged. Quoting the post above is fine. Just use it selectively and don't quote excessively large blocks of text/images. In this case it's an entire topic devoted to random thoughts and there's hardly a flow of discussion. It makes logical sense in this context.

Good call... I dug through it all and $80 million was the estimate when it was announced, "125-130 million" was the expected cost in the FY2013 annual report. For what it's worth too, the first season had EBITDA of $14.5 million and profit before tax of $9.5 million. They sold $20-odd million worth of annual passes that first season, which was surely the biggest single mistake they made and a large piece of the puzzle for how we ended up with today's (rather predictable) announcement.

There is nothing fundamentally wrong with Wet'n'Wild Sydney. Village Roadshow simply aren't in a position to be able to invest the time, capital and corporate/cultural changes it requires. Across the board Village are in a dire situation and need to be shedding debt and loss-making ventures. For $40-odd million this is a fairly safe bet for any company with experience in the theme park industry. Parques Reunidos have expanded globally quite aggressively despite falling under the radar compared to say Merlin. It's really not as left-field as you'd think. And you'd have to imagine that they're one of a number of companies very closely watching Dreamworld and have been in discussion with Ardent at various times.