AllegroCrab

This popped up as an email notification on my phone and I thought it was real, only to click through to the website to see who posted it. The correction afterwards is a pathetic attemot to save your arse after the inevitable criticism you first got. Can we please just not?

I can't help but echo these sentiments. In terms of how well they have utilized the mediums, the 'next gen' screens and animations stand out as poorer quality than the original 3D set pieces and animatronics. The drop down monster actually gave me a jump scare as it has been so long since riding with effects that I forgot it was there, but that pitiful attempt at a scare at the end was just pathetic and out of place, I doubt it'd even scare small children that much. If you don't have the budget to get the new tech done properly, you could have better spent your money improving the original effects. I can imagine with the money wasted on the screens they could have added extra lighting to spice up the original set pieces and scares in the haunted house section. They could have improved the smoke and lasers in the wild mouse section, maybe even still adding the cool lighting effects that we now have in that section. I think going for a 'next generation' approach when in reality you only have the money for a bit of a refurbishment was a bad idea. It's not just smartarse enthusiasts who pick up on this stuff either. Most of the GP have an understanding of what makes good and bad animation quality through movies and video games. They also know a lot less about the challenges involved in making theme park attractions and won't take it into account when they evaluate their enjoyment of the experience. A friend of mine can attest to that, he was more disappointed with the screens than I was.

I appreciate the ambition with that part, but the distance to the monsters didnt feel right at all, and at one point they're just clipping through the car. Hopefully they can fix that part up.

Pretty big fan of making it more expensive on busy days. The value of the pass goes up when the queues are longer so you'll just see more people buying fast tracks, and this will make the queues even longer as fast trackers are cutting in front. You need to balance it out somehow so that you don't piss off the regular ticketholder too much.

I've heard the noise, it was more of a scrubbing noise than grinding.

The wait for Superman and Rivals is more likely to be a bit shorter at the night events because they're more likely to run 2 trains. Last Wednesday Superman was walk on all night as it wasnt that packed, but Rivals was only running 1 train so was still a 30-40 minute wait. Green Lantern was walk on every day I went last week.

I'm guessing they estimate how many people will redeem their free tickets for each night, and how many who go during the day will get tickets to extend their day into the night, then set the 'sold out' level accordingly. You don't want to piss off your passholders by not allowing them their free entry.

The video doesn't do it justice. It looks much worse in real life.

It may be in technical rehearsal, but can they really improve the screens that much? I just hope there'll be more effects in the disco room and the animatronics and lighting will be brought back to their original standard.

Screens and animations were cringeworthy. Lights werent working on most of the original animatronics. Pretty dissapointing.

Front gate told me its operating, hopefully its at least as good as the original effects.

Got stuck in Queensland for another day because of the storms, hoping this thing will open and make the flight cancellation less of a pain.

Had a walk through today and thought it was interesting not worth a second look though. Obviously I'm more of a fan of rides but if they refresh this space every year or so with a new exhibit from the studios it could keep me going back.

I agree but I really don't think I want the current Dreamworld to be building rides. The park's upper management and culture needs to be entirely changed and refreshed. Could this happen under Ardent? Probably not. Not sure if I'll ever visit the park until it happens.

But if you make it cheaper, you'll be rewarding the mediocre operations even more as fastpasses will sell like mad. You'll be sitting there in the regular queue watching entire trains of fastpassers go in front of you because the fastpass line keeps refilling, and they can't let it overflow. This makes a feedback loop where the regular queue becomes even longer, thus selling more fastpasses. Exact issue was happening at Alton Towers for my visit. The 'Bronze' is ~$35 AUD, Silver ~$70, and Gold ~$105. And this is in a park with 10 operating roller coasters, and a bunch of other rides, almost all are very high quality attractions. The park is basically relying on their fast tracks to sell, and they were selling, and it skyrocketed the queue times even more than they were already high. Couple that with the park's abysmally short opening hours and you're in for a stressful day as a credit whore. I actually ended up getting one for the Smiler (They had individual fasttracks as well) because it was the only way I was going to get a second ride on it in the two days I had for the park, and ultimately, it was a good value decision based on how long the queue was for that ride. I didn't ride anything more than twice, and most things I only rode once. I actually asked an op on Rita about why they were letting the shorter queue go through so much, and he was very honest with me, saying that they had been scolded for fast track queues getting too long, so they were letting almost entire trains of fastpassers through with only 2-4 people from the nearly 2 hour long main queue (signposted 70 minutes). I'm not completely against the concept of fastpass, but when your passes are so cheap that more people on each train are fastpass holders than not, you really need to up those prices for the sake of the park experience for normal ticketholders. tl;dr, Cheap fastpasses won't do anything to 'create a bit of goodwill' with your regular customers. You might sell a lot of fastpasses to customers who are sick of the queue times created by the cheap fastpass system, and you might make a lot of money from it, but ultimately I'd rather fastpasses were priced for only the biggest spenders to indulge.