DaptoFunlandGuy

Which is what the last few posts (from me and others) has been saying.

On my first USA trip, we stayed at Stovall's Best Western Pavillions - and had good access to almost everything. This time around, the 'Disney' part of our trip we stayed at the Worldmark on Anaheim as a family member is an owner there.

It was more a time thing. Knott's was our 8th day straight of 'on-the-go' from dawn to dusk (and in vegas - beyond that)... I think everything just caught up with us and we were wrecked. Our first 'rest day' of the trip was the day AFTER knott's, and i think that it was just a day too late.

I just found Silver Bullet to be extremely smooth, fast, with just the right balance of elements, interacted with the surrounds (like the lake) well... i rode it barefoot and the g-forces were quite heavy - felt the blood rush to my feet, but it didn't feel like it in the chair...Just ran out of time at the end of the day to make it on everything.

In all honesty, any accommodation around Disneyland will be ok if you're on a budget, but i'd recommend looking towards the higher end properties and trying to find a budget deal with them. We actually found one of the cheapest places (that wasn't just a motel) was Knott's BF hotel, which was a great place to stay and not far from most Anaheim attractions.If you're just looking for a bed, comfort inn's and the like are good too.I guess the biggest problem you're going to have is that you're going in their summer season - it will be great that a lot of their summer attractions will be open for you, but we've literally just returned, and the queues were quite busy.... Summer is just going to be murder.

Of course - it's 'goodwill' but it isn't a direct action taken by the park to increase revenue. Goodwill and reputation solidifies their position and encourages both repeat visit and word of mouth advertising and encouragement for new visitors... my point is that these actions taken by Disney cannot be said to be a direct (positive) impact on revenue. It is a directly NEGATIVE impact on revenue... as I said 'spend money to make money'. My point wasn't that Disney throws money away - they don't. My point was that our parks are shortsighted and have shown that their view on profits and operations is that in order to make money, they need to SAVE money, by cutting costs, rather than investing in the guest experience which in turn will see return custom, as well as word of mouth advertising and encouragement for new visitors.

I did Knotts and didn't ride accelerator.... Silver Bullet was AMAZING though.

Although that is the show that comes to mind with what I suggested, Tony isn't doing much in the way of illusion shows any more. He has found a vocation in Hypnotism (both comedy hypnotism as well as serious therapy for things like quit smoking or insomnia etc). Although Tony does still have pallet upon pallet of illusion props etc, I don't think we'll see him return to an illusion style show - he has a couple kids with his new wife and the hypnotism stuff sees him home every day to spend time with them. The illusion aspect took up way to much of his time which to a degree broke up his last relationship.

Of course they did - as one of the top two buyers for the AALARA market - they'd be sure to be well represented. doesn't mean they're buying anything decent... more likely they were digging through the discount bins for last season's seconds.

In my opinion, any 'in-house' developed show - like Whats Up Rock or even Bonny and Clawde are just too slapstick and corny, and I would not like to see one of these installed into showstage. Western stunt shows are great, but even universal has ditched theirs at the moment, whilst the special effects stage etc soldiers on. Either they bring back a special effects stage - and do it the way universal now do (ie: not one effect on each stage that you get up and move between, but all done on one stage) and bring the effects into the 21st century - doing things like motion capture (Mocap) and other modern effects, or alternatively, bring in a good illusionist magic act, that while not totally movie related, would draw a decent crowd and help soak up some capacity on busier days, rather than just the stroller brigade...

Well - they could really do with getting into bed with Mack - the whole place could do with a refurb... But why not? Disney is the first 'true' theme park - they set the standard that everyone tried to emulate... albeit on lower budgets. The contrast in those quotes is stark... put simply - our parks are reducing their costs to improve their bottom line by cutting hours, cutting facilities to find 'efficiencies'... they're not efficiencies - they're reductions to the previously offered guest experience... sure - certain rides, or shops don't get much patronage at certain times of the day... but thats not what is important - what's important is that one guest who might want to shop there, or ride that at that time now can't, because the company wants to save $20ish a day. In contrast, the final quote shows that they're increasing their costs, reducing their margins in order to increase guest offerings, which in turn increases volume of sales. The old adage 'you've got to spend money to make money' rings as true today as it ever did. Having just returned from a USA trip, seeing the little things that Disney does in park, without expectation of return is in fact what encourages you to spend more money. Two examples from my own experience: 1) when in a store, the cast members will engage with you - talk to you about your day and the reason for your visit etc. They try to find any opportunity to give you a badge ("button") for you to wear showing the reason for your visit (ie: anniversary, birthday, just married etc) and freely hand these out in almost every outlet and store in the park. They've already got your admission fee, and giving you a button isn't a pre-cursor to you making a purchase, or anything else for that matter... so why do they do it? For no other reason than to improve your guest experience. On top, most cast are eagle eyed enough to spot the buttons, and to give you their best wishes for your special day also... (ie "congratulations" or "happy birthday"). I challenge anyone to show me how these buttons (which are a cost, albeit a minor one) are associated in any way with making money... after our three days in the park, we had about 8 buttons between us (including two of the 'cars-land' buttons they were handing out in the area). now even if the button costs 25 cents in manufacture etc, thats $2 for us - or $1 per guest. Judging by the people in the park wearing a similar number of buttons - thats hundreds of dollars a day in buttons... and for what? Nothing but guest experience. 2) our other experience is a little more personal. After discovering on our first day that my favourite ride - Space Mountain had been shut down for unplanned issues, and that it wasn't expected to be open before we left LA, we discovered, at around 7pm on our last day that it was in fact open. Since we still had the fireworks and fantasmic to do, this altered our plans greatly as we most definitely had to ride this one as my Wife had never seen it before. After having spent more than 6 days straight at other parks, my wife had hurt her ankle, and spent our final day in disney in a wheelchair. Between 7pm and 11:30pm we managed to get 2 rides in. After visiting the photo booth and finding both photos were 'not the best' for various reasons, we were cut, but decided to buy the cheapest version of both photos - a digital download, which cost around $30 for the two. We got chatting with the cast member at the photo booth and explained that this was our honeymoon, that SM was our favourite ride, and that the closure had been the worst news of the trip, with the late reopening being the best news we'd received... but that the ankle injury had impacted on our enjoyment of the park. After also trading a pin or two with the cast member, she asked us if we'd like to ride it again to try for a better photo. We said we'd have liked to but the queue was too long for us to get through again before closure. She called one of the leads for SM, back-doored us into the Wheelchair car (i'll talk about this later but i have to say an amazingly efficient way of assisting disabled guests without disrupting the main queue), we were on in less than 5 minutes, and coming back out at 11:40, just in time to see the third of our photos spit out of the photo printer (with the first two behind it), which she promptly placed into separate photo wallets, took my digital download card to upload the third one onto it, and then refused to take my credit card, telling me that the photos, a space mountain t-shirt, and a Disneyland keyring that she'd placed into a carry bag were a belated wedding present, and their way of trying to make our day. So in short - our $29.90 digital photo download purchase turned into a free-front-row ride, $60 worth of photos, another $15 digital download, a $45 t-shirt and a $9 keyring. $130 RRP just to make our day finish on a good note... and at that time of the day, there was no chance the park would recoup that from us (we'd spent way more than that in the past 3 days but they weren't to know that)... but that experience left my wife with a great impression of Disney, and guaranteed that we would immediately begin planning our next visit... again - i challenge anyone to show me how this interaction was in any way about making money, instead of just improving the guest experience...

I've stated previously that my two year pass for DWWWW expires at the end of June this year, as does my VIP Gold. I intend on buying the new discovery pass for VRTP, and I don't intend on renewing my DW pass. FWIW - the two year platinum pass for DWWWW was my first DW annual pass... and will most likely be my last. Bit of a left of centre idea - but if the value of the park drops enough, wouldn't it be a bit of a wild thought that VRTP might step in to buy it? They're obviously interested in expansion, and with DW and WWW being their major (only?) competition, buying them out would see them wrap up the tourism dollars on the GC. They of course would close WWW - and move any of the top end slides over the WnW (they have the space) and then use that land to significantly expand DW with a large-scale coaster to begin returning the park to the quality it was a decade or more ago. This would enable them to focus their thrills in DW, their themes in MW, their animals in SW and their slides in WnW.... just a thought (pipedream... but still...)

...hence why it needs repairs?...

How about you identify who this person is on youtube. Many of us are familiar with the goings on at scenic world, and we have from time to time had some of the family members that own the park on these boards. I'm sure if you were to actually point out this 'ranger' we'd be able to confirm it pretty much straight away...

Having just been on Journey to Atlantis at Sea World San Diego, I can honestly say I am looking forward to this installation more than ever before. To be honest, Journey didn't have that much in the way of dark-ride theming, but managed to theme the outdoor areas quite well. Those moaning about the possibility of a lack of a good dark ride... it that is what happens... don't be too disappointed until you've given it a try... and to make things a little easier - don't compare it to bermuda - because the two are completely different attractions!

An interesting thought - need to test that me-thinks.

sorry to pull this back off-topic but I haven't been online in over a week... just a thought, but if Pushbutton's ignore list continues to grow, couldn't we all put HIM on ignore... and then noone would respond to him because noone would see him?

As has been confirmed, there are two working monorails with a third held for parts. as the parts unit isn't needed on the track, it's been taken out of the station house, and it currently resides behind the dolphin and seal enclosures behind Sea Viper (We got zipped down the back service road for our ride on Viper the day of our wedding)... they also have a few bermuda boats back there too.

^Yes... But shittyrail always like to get in on the ticket selling action - get a commission out of the park ticket that way

I think it's got a better chance as 'splash-link'

*cough* CONTRADICTION! *cough*

Interesting that it may be headed to a SECOND 'wonderland'

Maybe he could do a deal with Lindsay Fox and bulldoze Luna Park Melbourne and turn the site into Jurassic World?

Eyes peeled peeps....... let's see where this ends up...

...but as a gold coast lover, wouldn't you prefer it be built there?