DaptoFunlandGuy

There are pros and cons for staying open late on a regular basis, one problem being the neighbours. I'm not sure what kind of approval or consultation process the park has to go through for WC and HFN, but i'm sure its not just a matter of them deciding amongst themselves... Staffing is another big issue - one off events with plenty of notice means they can canvas for staff who are willing to work it, and work that in with their day rosters. if it were a regular event, chances are they'd have to employ more staff to ensure nobody exceeded fatigue limits... especially ride ops. Opening from 10-8 every day in busy periods also means you may even need two full sets of crew for each attraction - one to open and one to close - also depending on limits. Theres a lot of back of house detail which i'm not privy to - so i'm not suggesting what i've said above is a requirement, just a possibility. There'd be a lot of extra things the park would have to do on a regular basis. I'm not saying it isn't a great idea, but i think they're better off with 'themed' events every so often, (i'm on record saying one weekend a month actually) than doing it on a regular basis where theres nothing special in the park - just same old same old... as what will happen eventually is no 'new' people will come for the nighttime event, and you just end up serving your day guests for longer. Sure extra food and bev sales for dinner is a possibility - but then you need better food options to offer people dinner in the park - more 'sit-down' dining options, less 'burger joint' options. I'd love for our parks to open late on a regular basis, but i don't think it's viable. To answer your first question though - up the price of the VIP for next year, sell it early (like start advertising it NOW), and include Carnivale in the deal for Gold pass ie: "Upgrade your VIP pass to gold for the 2014-15 season for just $139.95, and get one night's free admission to White Christmas, Hallowe'en Fright Nights AND the all new Carnivale - coming to MovieWorld this JuneJuly." (I can't remember what I paid last year, because Gold was a free upgrade - but if it was around that - then add another $30 on to the pricetag. Pretty sure with three night-time events, everyone who has used the free FN or WC tickets in the past would see the value in an extra night for an extra $30 or so) Not only is it a good marketing hook, but it'll get more pass sales on the books before end of financial year (something Dreamworld has been pushing of late with their world pass - upgrade before June 30 and get THIRTEEN months instead of 12)

Circle of life - person makes re-creation, person posts recreation, readers interested in creation, person stops working on re-creation, computer has major hardware or software failure, person loses re-creation.... Dinosaurs eat man.... woman inherits the earth.

^yeah I get that, but quite often you get a bunch of muppets who drive up the lanes the wrong way because they've gone down an aisle, seen a park, and cut around quickly to get to it, rather than going 'full circle'... which of course then holds up traffic because the 45* angle isn't designed for people to drive into it from the opposite side, and they need to do a 16 point turn because the lane isn't as wide as a normal carpark. Dreamworld's layout would be incredibly effective if people didn't always try the first few aisles to try and get a spot closer... they need to monitor the aisle, and 'close' it once it's full. I don't think i've ever seen Dreamworld's carpark THAT full that the 45* angle would really make that much of a difference.

See that just pisses me off - firstly, it's taking up four car parks near the front gates (hence the plant medians), secondly, the park provides trailer parking (bottom corner of the lot next to WedgieGreen Room tower). But the other thing that gets me is the Dreamworld parking lot has 45* angle parking and i'm not keen on that layout. Sure it's convenient (provided you go down the lane the right way) to pull into it, but few people observe the one way signage... and if the parking was like MW SW parking (90*), the car would only have parked across 2 spots instead of 4. Re the car on bricks - Wonderland used to have carpark security towers... perhaps Movie World needs this too?

yeah - there are four different matches for Dreamworld as a property name, further matches come up as Ardent (one includes the skywalk), and by the looks of things, Dreamworld comes up as four separate lots - two under RP (registered plan) and two under SP (survey plan), but two come up on dreamworld parkway, and two come up on foxwell road.

So the branding is ok now? Because every bloody VIP pass holder had a free gold upgrade which gave them entry to WC and HFN... I doubt Carnivale will be as popular if it isn't included in the annual passes.. however - I do envisage a possible marketing campaign to encourage people to renew their VIP passes early and get a free entry to Carnivale... depending on how ticket sales have gone up until then. one thing I do like is that this is held in the middle of winter - when the sun sets earliest - unlike fright nights which are open for an hour or more before it is 'actually' dark (and therein spoils half the fun with scare actors clearly visible at that point.) The 9:30 closing time is a bit of a disappointment though - given some 2.5hour+ queues on SE, they'll be closing the queue not long after they open... I am very glad though that they're doing another night-time event. We've been pushing for years for the park to have more 'year round' nighttime events (even one a month would be awesome)... and given it's the first year, we'll see how things go - they may be inclined to open longer or run more events if this one proves popular - so even with the shorter opening slot, i'm inclined to go along, to check things out and show support for the event...

You are of course correct (My Wife has just taken many pains to explain the intricacies of BAs and DAs etc) - however we have on many occasions identified a ride or attraction coming to the parks before they arrived on site, and verified this info on one of the council development sites... that was all I meant...

i've never been employed as a ride op, but I have moonlighted a fair few times on quiet days in days gone by. For me it was quite fun - but i'm sure like any job, it would get hard to put on that smile day after day after day. The spiels become boring and repetitive, and you're constantly under pressure in peak periods not only to get as many people through the ride as possible, but also to do is ABSOLUTELY safely. No matter what role you're cast in - working for a theme park (well - at least one that upholds a little sense of magic and 'on show') is great at any level - from food to retail to rides, as well as park support services like maintenance or custodial.. it's certainly an experience i'll always remember... but it isn't for everyone. You do have to have a lot of passion for it - and depending on the management team, it can either be one big long party, or an absolute torture chamber. I'm interested to see Spotty's response to this though...

But thats just it - when it's busy, they have extra staff and that IN ITSELF speeds up operations. This 'rejigging' sounds like something that will take into account a skeleton crew. no. it's dreamworld still no. Zacspin - wash your mouth out. Stingray would be a fitting replacement for the... stingray. Although the park has shown a tendency to cram everything into that one corner, i think another coaster in that area would seriously overbalance the mixture. (Yes, i'm aware Thunderbolt and Cyclone existed well together there, but that was before 'adrenalin alley' and WWW. Extremely unlikely they'd get a coaster up by september unless it was a traveller - and even if they could, theres nothing on GCCC to suggest they've approved something of that nature... so since approvals haven't even started - what's coming isn't going to be too hard to knock together in a few months.

Well, for starters - load the gondola from the queue side, and unload on the op booth side. Who cares if people take 5 minutes to walk behind the wave, it's the time it takes to get everyone on board where the best time can be saved. Potentially - a grouper bringing the load into the queuehouse to drop their loose items whilst the ride is still cycling would probably help too.

The wonderland history site has some videos of snowy river rampage starting up from different points, and I myself have seen it start up many times. It's amazing to watch the first trickle come down the chute and in very short order the raging torrent that follows... Love watching flumes and rapids rides start up...

I follow several outlets to do with theme parks, international parks, roller coasters, and Disney. Pretty much every single one of those pages has been going mental for at least the last 5 months (some have been going nuts for a lot longer) over the 7 Dwarfs Mine Train ride. Granted, it's a disney ride - and its a very elaborate one that's been in development for some time - but I really think the parks should work with more of an 'anticipation' angle - like they did with Superman Escape. Although they were advertising Storm for some time, other than a billboard, they didn't really give anything else away. SE had the 0-100-02 promotion and a website JUST for the ride... a little more like they do on the international stage.

Yeah I kinda had that in mind - i guess to rephrase - without discussing ALL the cameras you have - what are some of the more 'interesting' angles (without being super specific) that catch people unawares? Or doing things they shouldn't? Does each lift cabin have one in Scooby? or are they fixed at the top and bottom only? With West - an E-stop causes water to drain in two places - the lake at splashdown, and the upper level behind the mountain - What is the water differential? As in - how high does it rise at both points? I recall hearing a story a while back about Pirates at Disneyland, where the ride was switched off for the night, before all boats had been cleared, and it resulted in some loaded gondolas floating outside their track...

THAT is the kind of info we need. Tell you what I am interested in - is a 'mud map' of West and Scoob's 'dark' areas - eg: you talk about seeing the asians whilst in the lift room inside the mountain before the reverse (so the first lift room) - are you physically in line of sight or just watching cameras? If it's just cameras, why can't the load station do the same job? is there another person watching the top hill? i'm keen to see a rough layout of the mountain scooby including observation points, exitevac points etc. I'd also be interested to get an idea of what the operator can see on the various 'camera views' - eg: it's unlikely you're going to have each car boat in sight 100% of the time, so where can you where can't you see? A lot of the cams 'outdoors' on West are easily identifiable, but obviously Scooby is less obvious... (but only if that information cannot be used to break rules or do unsafe things in blindspots etc...)

I must say - Dreamworld are doing a lot better in their PR - they're being a lot more open with their plans when they have info available... I do wish instead of saying 'come and ask us again later when we might have more info' they'd just post the info when they get it...

Don't forget - our first view of Green Lantern were surveyors pegs... and nobody (except those with inside knowledge) had any idea whether it was for an attraction, building, or just civil works...

What could it mean? It's scooby's disco room - it could mean A LOT of different things... Could have been a trial with the equipment on loan from a supplier hoping to sell some to the park... could have stolen them to mount on the carnivale floats... might not be able to see them now because the foggers are empty and therefore no beam? blew a fuse in show control? Dr Evil hatched another plan for world domination requiring another

Are you now free from the constraints of your contract? Is the park OK with you discussing it? (And will the Mods permit it if it's sensitive?)

sounds like they're struggling to get people through the door... opening until June not such a great idea?

I don't see anything newer than April 29 2013.

Well if it's a plane, it should get off the ground pretty easy... And I disagree - I don't think it's going to make it harder... On the flip side I don't think it'll make it easier... but healthy competition doesn't hurt theme parks - it encourages investment and development - Take movie world dreamworld, almost literally across the road from each other... and for years it's been a tit-for-tat development program (in more recent years one overtakes the other but thats besides the point) Good theme parks breed more good theme parks in my opinion... standalone parks without competition tend to stagnate.

I'm not saying it isn't true, but if I had to hazard a guess, someone associated with the park has probably been posed the question "after the success of WnWS, are you considering bringing down any other parks from the gold coast" and they probably responded with something 'MW-esque' being possible (mainly because SW in western sydney isn't really an option)... they've then taken that to be 'headline of the day' on a slow news day... and bob's your uncle. It could even be an old quote from December or January that they've rehashed. It wouldn't surprise me in the least though, if they were considering it.

Easily with the right kind of management team. There was a stage there where we thought Dreamworld could go that way - the town centre planning, the highway right next door - it'd be an ideal distro centre kind of 'halfway' between the two major cities... Dreamworld are investing in the park. They may not be as wow as VRTP's efforts, but they are putting money into it instead of letting it sit without effort for years. And yes we did miss it - Anzac day every year. This year was the ten year anniversary. The facebook page set up for the park had some really nice tribute videos and pics posted.

Nah - don't think so Gary - after many years of faithful service, i'm fairly certain the park will go for something different.

The Doomsday plan at MW was going to fit inside Superman - it'd be a decent fit around the reef diver area too... maybe DW are giving a little payback to VR for the Aqualoop coup? Or it could be they haven't had a new ride there for a few years because they want to keep the vacant land for other purposes?