DaptoFunlandGuy

*Excuse me while I swallow my indignation. Not on you at all* Yeah I get what you're saying. I'm one of the people who has banged on in this thread about them providing more customer service - and despite my soapboxes, I do know a thing or two about customer service... I just see a system rife for abuse, and those abusers make the customer experience worse for everyone else... THE VIP GOLD EXPERIMENT - On the one hand, you put your finger to your lips and quietly let them in anyway. This is what happened with the VIP\VIP Gold (at least, after the first week of people complaining about the blackout dates they obviously knew about when they purchased them). - System Failed. THE JOZ SUGGESTION - Or you give them a talking to, tell them not to let it happen again, and let them in - *every time* - word spreads of the workaround, abuse is rife - System failed. THE DAPTO KNEEJERK - Or you stand by your terms and conditions and refuse entry on the basis they actually agreed to at signup. - System success, piss off people who didn't read the T&Cs. THE MIDDLE GROUND - Or you give the system teeth - make it more than a paper tiger - actually record that they've been given their one free 'i didn't know about the dates I obviously agreed to at checkout' and don't ever let them do it again. This strikes a good balance between doing your guests a solid, and not just bending over every time someone tries to screw you. I acknowledge this has administration costs associated with it if the annual pass system doesn't have a method of recording notes that is visible at the gate, but assuming the ticketing system can maintain a register of blockout dates, it should be able to display a simple message about whether the guest has been warned or not - System success - guests given benefit of the doubt in good faith, but no second chances. I also still say they should offer an at-the-gate upgrade price if people legitimately don't want blockouts and are willing to pay for them but didn't realise what they signed up for.

Yep, you're absolutely right. I guess its prevention rather than cure. I think you'll find this will have the opposite effect. Despite the suggestions about the credibility of facebook posts in this thread, what happens is people say "we can't go, our passes are blocked out! :sadface:" and then helpful Karen says "nah, go anyway and they'll pull you aside and tell you you aren't allowed, but they'll make an exception and let you in anyway! We got in 5 times this week!" - and that word spreads. Everyone shares how to 'cheat' the system and the system becomes useless. If you're going to do blockout dates, you need to be brave, and refuse entry. Like I said - habits are hard to break, but if you make it clear the pass has a blockout. Get them to sign an acknowledgement that it has a blockout (online signature forms are really widely available now). Cop the initial backlash, perhaps offer people an afterpay style option to upgrade their blocked out pass to an unblocked pass if they want to come in on that day. Use that upgrade money to fund additional staffing on busy days to make life easier... ONE HUNDRED FUCKING PERCENT.

This is true. Truth be told - on my first overseas trip to a Disney park, my family vacated the park promptly at 5pm. We saw the fireworks from our hotel pool and asked the reception desk what the fireworks were for. But that doesn't mean it needs to stay that way. WnW used to open late in summer and show movies. Wonderland used to do $5 after 5pm on saturdays in summer. Habits are hard to break, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't try. I think the 'trials' the parks have done have not necessarily shown success because it's for too limited a period. You need an abacus and a slide rule to work out the park's opening hours are 10-5 m-f except when its a full moon. 9-6 on saturday and 8-3:30 on sundays, but not that second sunday because its also a full moon and we'll do 12-2. I visited Dreamworld over the summer. They had extended trade, and ended with fireworks. There was quite the crowd in the Taipan viewing area to watch the fire works at the end of the night. Simply staying open, without any enticement to stay isn't enough. planned extended trade can be successful but you need to give people a reason to utilise those hours. FTFY. I agree, it isn't about 'they don't care, its money' - but what i've said a few times now is that somewhere in the park operations manual it says "this park can hold 10,000 people" and that manual is dated 1994. They need to update it to account for reduced capacity and reduced staffing (apparently). They could have absolutely shut the gates earlier and not had 4000 more people than the next busiest park. but they didnt. As for parks being set up for it - its a management decision and a 15 minute meeting with your guest relations staff on how to manage shit on the fly. Wonderland had a counter on every turnstile that reset every morning. Guest relations would come out several times a day and record the numbers on each turnstile and report to all departments what the current park attendance number was. They do it at football games, usually by half-time. Since they no longer use the turnstiles and just scan with portable barcode readers, it stands to reason that they would have a fairly accurate headcount in-park moments after the guests enter, and could easily have said "shit, it's busy today - what's our number, and how will we manage if we reach it?" At the risk of a cliche response - they tried blockout dates and all they did was immediately reverse their position on that once they had 100 angry people at the gate.

NEW RIDE ENHANCEMENTS But the park shouldn't think it is enhanced, if all they've done is restored it. My initial response to this post was simply to hope that they had 'plussed' the ride with something extra - as a person who has ridden Superman before would consider 'enhance' to be better than what they've seen previously.

I think the issue is that the park does so many things that folks say "why on earth would they do that" and there is no other reasonable, logical explanation forthcoming - so the conclusion is they must be doing it intentionally. Perhaps if they communicated openly to guests what their woes were, instead of saying "welcome back, we're ready to welcome everyone in!" then the public at large would at least know what they were getting themselves in for. As for Qantas and Airports - yes of course, let's listen to Alan Joyce blame the customers, and it has absolutely nothing to do with the large numbers of staff they sacked during the pandemic, as well as things like baggage handling that they outsourced to the lowest bidder - no, none of that cost cutting had anything to do with the airport delays, and it's all the customers fault, right? Yep. Everything on facebook is made up. Zero possibility of there being any truth to the matter. We should never believe anything we read, hear or see. Everything is a conspiracy these days. Hand me my foil hat! Yes they should have. As has already been said on this thread several times - the park capacity is not capable of as many people as it used to be. The park is the same physical size, but the number of rides, and the number of guests each ride can put through per hour is far lower than it was when the park's capacity was determined. 10,000 guests and 4 hour lines on a ride that has been open for 5 years now outside of the xmas-NYE hell week is beyond ridiculous. If they don't have staff to handle the max capacity. If they don't have the trains to handle the max capacity. if they don't have show crews to put on enough extra shows to handle the max capacity. Then. They. Shouldn't. Let. That. Many. People. In. The. Park. Disney has been routinely maxxing their parks out. They shut the gates. They offer appropriate alternatives to passholders and single-day ticket holders. They refund people who have no other option. Its the trolley problem. Are you gonna reject 3000 guests and upset them, offering refunds, complimentary passes, or some other form of customer service, or are you going to let that 3000 in, and in doing so, upset 10,000 who all have a miserable fucking day getting 1-2 rides while spending all the time in a queue? Closing the gates is a realistic solution. it doesn't require extra staff - there are already staff at the gate and ticket booths. And it doesn't create 'as much' negative backlash because the folks who did get in have a much better day and the folks who didn't have an opportunity to get compensated - a refund, or a return visit ticket, or some other thing that means they didn't waste $100 per person on one fucking ride. And not shutting the gates shows intentional contempt, or obliviousness to the fact that the park wasn't able to cope with it's former "max capacity" "because covid" doesn't wash when Dreamworld up the road was a pleasant day. "We're ready to welcome you back" is marketing, but its also total bullshit. I think your alternate reality is baffling everyone else here. This goes back to the fact that the park's theoretical maximum capacity was most likely determined when you had a studio tour, BATRide, PASS... etc etc. Even these numbers are very generous. Rivals dispatches when i've been in the queue, outside of peak times, with two trains or one are more realistically closer to 5 minutes. GL dispatch times assume the grouper isn't also the loader, which is very common, and like superman on the regular, they don't group people to the doors while the ride is running. Does west still dispatch every 30 seconds when it isn't continuous load? I think MW's current "comfort" capacity sits closer to the 5-6000 mark. 8k is an extreme and is going to start putting pressure on some rides (because the above numbers also ignore popularity and just consider bums on seats. I've never seen every seat in Roxy full, for example)

They used to open the park at 9. Even opened a ride or two early for VIP Gold pssholders. I know plenty of people that would like that option - you get a lot done without the crowds. I’d happily pay more for it too. as already mentioned, you can’t open the parks too late on the regular. And again, we’re not US parks. Some things will work here. Others won’t. Regular late trade in peaks would be awesome but too hit and miss for them to commit resources to, especially in a time where we’ve already heard they’re having issues with staffing.

It IS a smug-ass reply - Not what the social media team at any family focussed facility should be saying ever. There won't be anything on their website, and of course - why would they ever tell people to stay away (that worked well for the GC Comm Games). From what i've seen over the past couple weeks, they need to do a couple things: reconsider the park's capacity limit for peak operations, and reduce that capacity based on ride availability, staff availability and park capacity reductions since the capacity number was first introduced Have a 'live' crowd meter of sorts available on their app or website. Have their social team post if the park is seeing exceedingly long wait times. Anything over 2 hours should trigger them to post things like 'its a bit full today, try alternate property attraction?' or something rather than make people find out at the gate. Have the social team be empathetic to customers who are venting their frustrations. Sure, it's not the parks fault there's so many people, but these are YOUR guests and they've had a BAD experience I was told previously by guest relations that as long as you're in the queue before the park closes, you'll get a ride. I've heard queues for things like Rivals are being closed as early as 2pm. 3 Hours before close. And staff are still working an hour after the park closes. SOMEthing needs to happen. At the moment, NOTHING is visibly being done. And to have this kind of social response 'come back next week' is just insulting.

I mean, I realise this is a Village pile-on thread right now, but just in case it's been overlooked, the parks each have a theoretical safe capacity. It isn't necessarily because one park cares more than the other. Things like fire safety limits come in too - they have to be able to evacuate the park in a reasonable timeframe as well. WWW's was set low when it opened because it was small. The planned expansions never eventuated and the additional attractions haven't changed the size of the park, (although it has given them more to do), so WWW does have busier times, and low park capacity. Movie World on the other hand has a much larger capacity. The park can physically take far more guests in a day than WWW can. The difference here is - that many guests used to have plenty of capacity eating attractions to absorb them, and now they don't. Studio Tour, BATRide, PASS, LTRR, even Lethal\Arkham - all of these things used to eat insane numbers of people... and while they have added coasters like GL and DCR, the fact is GL has never been able to run well with more than a couple cars, and DCR currently has train issues. Experiences like Studio and PASS don't have the same downtime as coaster trains Gold Coast Parks are not Disney. They're not Universal. AND they're in Australia. I follow a page on facebook called Amusement Ride Accidents - they report on ride failures and injuries. This year alone, there have been 5 incidents in the USA. Zero for Australia. Just because America doesn't use a safety system, that is not proof or justification for our jurisdiction to not require them. We are a safer place because of it - even if the sometimes annoying safety features are perhaps a little too over the top - i'd prefer to know we're safe, because i've seen what the alternative landscape of 'yeehaa i'm a ride engineer' looks like - including at Dreamworld. Never gone to a park in a group of 3 or 5? On old school coasters like Arrow where you could ride an inversion with the harness up (i've seen it done) i'd agree with you. On newer models that rely on hydraulics to keep the harness closed, where the seat is on a platform and completely exposed, no, the seatbelt is more than that. The Mack trains certainly do lock. You can't undo it. I'm fairly certain Superman has a sensor attached to the seatbelt also, so you can undo it but it can also be detected at some points on-ride, but could be mistaken. Rides like Batwing I don't think have them. Seatbelts also have visual indications (a yellow line stitched into Superman's seatbelts for example) that show the operator visually that the harness is down far enough to be safely locked. Again, we're not Disney. It is very clearly not something the parks have chosen to do. It's either a manufacturer or jurisdictional requirement, neither of which are you going to change by whinging to the park.

It's admittedly been a while since I've done SW helicopters, but the last time I did, the briefing video was played in a shelter that did not have any sort of sound barrier to the helipad - so if choppers were arriving or departing, you couldn't hear the briefing information. This doesn't look the best, but if it means important safety information can be heard, then its needed.

Hey i'm just calling it like it is. Your bias is showing.

enhance intensify, increase, or further improve the quality, value, or extent of. restore return (someone or something) to a former condition, place, or position. repair or renovate (a building, work of art, etc.) so as to return it to its original condition. Yes, it's marketing. But it is still a shitty thing to claim you've enhanced something if all you've done is restore it to it's former glory.

Yeah way to edit the quote to suit.

I do hope they have actually enhanced it, and aren't calling a return (or substitution) of opening day effects an 'enhancement'. It is wonderful to see the fog\mist\smoke effect return and I hope the water and steam is back - look forward to hearing of what enhancements they've made!

Yes. it is possible. Is it possible they just didn't know NSW was a week later? I even asked Which in hindsight I can see you sort of mentioned at the top But it didn't directly challenge the school holiday issue (and I didn't understand your meaning) until THIS does make sense to me. I understand YOUR position now. It also addresses Dom's point if that was their intention. Yeah, Joz will probably yeet this, but hopefully i've explained where I was coming from - I can absolutely see the possibility you're referring to (now that I understand it) I just felt - by saying staggered holidays were forever - that you were ruling out the alternative presented by me and whoever started all this. Alls well that ends well, in any case. (And this is why I should have just used the quotes.) He's a Mod, not God. If we let him decide the winner in every and any discussion, you're not gonna be happy either. I'm sure, in a respectful debate, they're fine if things resolve on their own. Devolving into a dumpsterfyre from which there is no return is where they're needed.

I find that seriously doubtful. Western Sydney misses wonderland, but their economy didn't rely on it. Queensland Tourism and the Gold Coast leans hard on theme parks as part of any marketing campaign. Unless you get a boiled frog scenario, I can't see them disappearing entirely.

I mean, not sure if the park is really busy or if they've just neutered a ride with great capacity by eliminating the continuous load station and introducing individual lapbars. Like sure - health and safety reasons are fine, but the capacity loss is still a loss. (It also doesn't help to have an entire boat cycling the ride completely tagged out. I heard a boat sank in the trough the other day too.)

Yet everyone still insists that all their changed trading hours and event nights were part of the grand plan, and no 'whoopses' could possibly have occurred.

I'll spare everybody the numerous quotes, suffice to say its all there to see in the thread. So - just to repeat: A Claim that the park forgot Your reply the park has had holidays before (Implied: "they know what they are doing") Counter-Reply "other people didn't know, isn't it possible the park didn't either?" Your reply "who are these people, this has been this way forever!" Hey look! Last year was the same dates - its at least plausible some people would think this right? Your reply "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain! The great Oz has spoken!!!

So, just to be clear, we're categorically and emphatically ruling out that Dreamworld (from the people who brought you 'in the coming weeks' and 'chain link fence-gate') didn't realise NSW had an extra week of holidays, on the basis of 'it's always been done like that' despite evidence less than a year old that proves it absolutely hasn't always been done like that? No chance. Nada. Not possible? (Also, just to add further to the doubt here, Dreamworld | Plan Your Day (archive.org) shows that on the 16th of March, the Dreamworld Website had WWW closed from 19th April (end of QLD holidays), and it now shows WWW open until 24 April Dreamworld | Plan Your Day) how else do you explain that if you claim they knew about it all along? If you go back further, Dreamworld | Plan Your Day (archive.org) on February 26th didn't even have hours published beyond 18th April - so the decision to close WWW on April 19th was made after February 26th and before 16th March, and then somewhere in the past month they reversed that to include the NSW holidays.

Admittedly, several of them didn't have kids, but I know pre-having kids I always checked holiday dates before booking to ensure I avoided those peaks - apparently some people don't. According to this government website The Easter school holiday break for 2021 spanned the following: Friday 2 April - Sunday 18 April: ACT, NSW, QLD, TAS, VIC, WA (TAS Finishes 1 day earlier, returns 2 days later) Saturday 10 April - Sunday 18 April: NT Saturday 10 April - Monday 26 April: SA Literally zero staggering down the entire Eastern states and territories. So it isn't THAT unusual.

I know a lot of people in several states that didn't realise the QLD and NSW holiday dates differed. It's not outside the realm of possibility that they also didn't realise it.

Worse yet, during the double school holiday week.

It's unusual for the ride to be removed. Usually it's just shut down and taped off. RAS don't usually allow heavy vehicle movements on the grounds overnight without move orders and authorised escorts. I'd say it'll stay closed, and sit there. Yeah look, its unfortunate, but not really anything they could control. Practically the exact same event has happened at Disneyland and Wonderland to my knowledge and i'm sure a lot of other parks too (SFMM has metal detectors at the entrance and it's not to stop you bringing in more than 100mls of liquids!) On the back of the Ride Harness story its a bad run of news, but these are isolated and unrelated stories.

While there may only be about 20 people currently discussing it in this thread, rest assured, a lot of people are noticing it. Not necessarily consciously - until you mention it to them and they go 'oh yeah! i did notice that!'. It used to be - when you'd point out the horrible state of something in Dreamworld, you'd point to a similar 'thing' at Movie World and say 'see? that's how you do it'. While the tables certainly haven't turned (DW still has a long way to go) MW is racing to the bottom fast.

^100%. It feels like a canned response and while I didn't go and check it sounded word for word like some of the GC Park statements when a ride stoppage made the news..