webslave

If it's as unavoidable as claimed they don't have to keep admitting people to the park.

That looks bleak!

Yeah, just on the staff shortages thing "because Covid" or whatever. To the paying customer when they can seem to find plenty enough staff to wheel around popcorn or churro wagons or operate cheap upcharge carny games but can't adequately staff the attractions people have paid for you tend to feel pretty ripped off. I appreciate these are differing skillsets, but we are talking about by-and-large unskilled labour here for both, and Covid ain't new.

I stopped in recently and... yeah. Not a great vibe there at all. I'm sure there's a million excuses ("the Covid"), but there weren't any excuses made for still charging the prices they do. For reference my wife (who does not at all stay up to date with the parks and isn't interested in doing so) came away saying the place "is looking very sad". Interestingly we went to Top Golf afterward and the bay attendant asked how the park was and when my wife said it was pretty sad she agreed and noted that several others had said the same thing this week. Justice League was a complete and utter shambles. There's no point operating the ride in that type of condition, except if you're trying to cover up for a lot of your other rides being down (which, really, isn't actually making that situation any better). The guns had a life of their own and bore no resemblance to what you did with them. A significant proportion of the usually-lit set pieces were not lit. The projection elements (where visible) were out of sync, non-interactive, and of very poor visual quality. Elements like the mist screen didn't have a hope in hell of working. Photo screens at the exit mostly did not work, and for those that did the quality of the photograph was abysmal. Superman was down, which is a lost drawcard. Batwing was down, which created a zone of the park right as you enter where your view is dominated right away by rides you can't ride (Batwing, Superman, Arkham). West was down, which creates an entire dead wing of the park, especially given Doomsday does not announce its presence well to passers-by, and frankly is pretty sucky and unpopular. The kids area is probably around two flat rides (and dare I say a play structure) short of being good. If you have a young kid you will probably miss the height for Speedy so you're going to be restricted solely to the carousel, JDS, Sylvester and Tweety Cages (if your kid is okay to ride alone), and railroad. Railroad is mighty uncomfortable for an adult and the rope-based restraint system ensures capacity is very low, so you're probably not going to want to do that many times. Not having more characters doing walk-arounds of this zone is a missed opportunity. I appreciate that they will do photos at times throughout the day at the entrance to the area (the backdrop to the photos is an odd-choice though), but it's not the same as a chance encounter with a character as you explore the area for the kids. I'm not sure if it's a new thing but it's a shame that staff won't also take a photo with your phone in addition to their professional one so that more families can get photos together. I'm sure there's a Covid excuse brewing there, but that doesn't feel like the motivation when you're in the park. On the topic of characters and photos though; setting Batman up with Robin and the batmobile at the head of the main drag behind a red rope next to a sandwich board that spruiks $80/photo with them is fucking gross. I lost count of how many kids I heard on the way past say they wanted to go and say hi to Batman only for them not to be able to. Fantastic guest experience. On the plus side the folks appearing as Shaggy/Scooby were really fantastic with the guests whenever we saw them, and I sincerely hope the park looks after them. I'm not sure what's so hard about getting wait time signs semi-accurate out the front of major rides (especially given there's far less to keep up to date with half the park seemingly down), but we never saw one that was even within a multiple of accuracy. It was frustrating watching Rivals advertise a 10 minute wait when it was a 45 minute wait, and all the more frustrating watching the load attendant on several occasions accidentally mis-count riders to be admitted and then rather than correcting the mistake when it was found instead just dispatching with empty seats. That type of thing is hard to hide from guests when they have 45 minutes to watch it happen over and over and think "that could have been me on there". The parade seems worse every time I see it. Now we are down to the point of the floats never stopping and characters staying on them which doesn't make it very interactive or memorable. Again, I'm sure excuses re: Covid, but jesus, fleeting contact and outside area. Doesn't even need to be contact, really. I also would avoid having the characters on the floats ignore the customers at either side of the road and play to the crewmember with the un-whitebalanced handycam for the big screens (that near-nobody is watching). The stunt show was also worse than I remembered. No fireball, no car jumping, little comedy, laughably poor quality LED screen. I'm not sure who it's aimed at entertaining, but I'm guessing it's Showtime FMX. Food and beverage is slightly better at Movie World, but generally abysmal across the VRTP parks. Rivals is still good once you get on it. Didn't bother with GL. Scooby still had broken and crappy effects in the first half, but the disco room was quite passable. Clearly the maintenance-related items are issues the park is choosing to have, because a short walk away at AOS they aren't choosing to have the same problems.

Hahaha brilliant "It will reduce your wait time" !== "We shortened the ride".

It's good to hear from yourself and @Rivals that the reporting on it being rough was likely overstated and no longer current! For me, Scooby was always quite reliant on theme as without it it's just an uncomfortable, jerky coaster.

What's concerning to me (literally, me, because I'm in town then and weighing up where to take the family) is that come mid-March Movie World will have the following rides down (not accounting for unscheds): - Superman Escape - Batwing Spaceshot - Wild West Falls - Doomsday Destroyer Additionally, we know that Justice League is in very poor condition, and Scooby is similarly not in great nick and GL has hardly been a paragon of reliability of late. I think I remember reading here that Rivals is pretty rough at the moment and running at reduced capacity, too. Elsewhere a third of the kids area at Sea World will be out. Over at DW it looks like only the Motocoaster down during the same period. Makes it very hard to pick VRTP.

I checked into that for you, and it turns out nobody cares.

It really is. I think on most rides in general people note the positioning of the restraints on their first ride through and will adjust them the next time for a more comfortable ride (unless you get lucky the first time around). It's not to say that a stand-up is bad if you don't take care with the restraints, but your ride experience can be significantly enhanced if you do.

Did it, was uncomfortable the first time and it was still really good regardless. Second ride I knew how to position the restraint better, and it was great. Front row both times.

That should help the numbers a lot, because every time I've been I've found the staff to be MIA. Made me think the service culture in Australia would make the model difficult to be viable.

The location was only one of the problems. There were far more; Pricing was far too high for what any locals would consider paying. It was stationed in the middle of what is basically a future dead mall. Parking around it turned into reasonably expensive paid parking, and when that turned out to be a stupid idea nobody got the memo when it changed back. Full of pretension about doing "flights" on the wheel that didn't land as marketing. It did practically nothing to appeal to the locals. Beyond this, I considered that for travellers to Melbourne the wheel was the worst kind of false advertising. Seeing this thing lit up and flashing away on the skyline gave you the impression it was smack in the middle of party central - like an LA Live or even a Darling Habour type of setup. The reality was far removed from that.

I mean, you could go the route of truth and advertise "visit now, or miss out later!"

I found it interesting that they pick out that their major attraction count has been "right-sized for current demand" during a pandemic with international and domestic border restrictions, when we are talking about permanently closing attractions rather than mothballing them. I'd imagine some parks would enhance their major attraction count to generate demand (and, to be fair, they talk in those terms of Steel Taipan), but this just reads like Dreamworld-speak for "achieving the average by lowering the average". The document seems littered with examples of them talking out of both sides of their mouth.

The only one in a coin flip between the two portfolios? No, there's lots of people in that boat. For me, the tie-breaker was I had another reason to roll my eyes at Dreamworld this week which tipped it. Look around - lots of people visiting the GC ask which park they should visit. Who is the type of person in their social circle they usually ask? I'd suggest the type of person who frequents Parkz is often near the top of that list. How many people do you think will ask me which one they should go with, and which do you think I'll tell them? I'm sure you've been asked plenty of times by friends and family too. That's the trouble with stuff like this. When your business is on its knees it's usually best to try and make as many friends as possible, rather than actively looking for ways to piss off more people. What starts out as one person who looks at it and says "It's hardly the end of the world, but I'm already in a split decision so this may as well tip it", can then become four and potentially five figure revenue losses.

Doubt it, but when you're struggling for attendance as much as the parks are in general, and DW specifically you'd be a foolish businessperson to willingly forego any gate revenue. Often when making decisions like this as a business it's hard to quantify in dollars what your marketing decisions make or cost you at the gate. On my part it may only be ~$600 (which, technically is worse given that $600 not only doesn't go to you, but goes into your competition), but even if only one other family made the same decision as me you're already into a four-figure revenue loss for no benefit.

Well, allow me to send one of my own to Dreamworld. My family and I are attending the area reasonably soon. We have young children and have been trying to determine whether we give DW a run or go with VRTP. My message to Dreamworld; petty crap like this loses you revenue, and you can chalk mine up as a directly attributable loss. We're going to go with VRTP.

It's almost like chasing the international tourist dollar and forsaking your local market has a downside.

It also does not photograph spectacularly well these days...

I think he considers the treat to be the sum of the parts.

So you're saying Dreamworld should be looking for a concreting company that's also in the market for a slightly used thrill attraction?

Who gives a shit? You're not a party to either side of the NDA, so it's not up to you to enforce it. Kindly stfu and quit gate-keeping. If they want to talk and/or believe they can then that's on them and we are the beneficiaries.

"Due to Covid this", "Due to Covid that". I don't think the public is going to keep tolerating Covid being the excuse for providing a shit customer experience for too much longer. I especially think that Dreamworld telling guests about pushing back maintenance is not the smartest PR they could be doing.

Yeah, nah, sorry - if there's one thing these parks have taught us it's that you can't just give them benefit of the doubt that they will make an effort where that's all it takes. You also can't with a straight face justify such terrible customer experience as "claw back some profits after Covid" as if that's something people should just accept without scrutiny.