themagician

Shockwave and Gold Coasters reopening have been delayed

The Play School Wheels reopening has been delayed to Boxing Day, which is when I’d suspect the Big Red Boat Coaster to open too

It’s like they actually considered the guest experience 🤯

And if we classify Castaway Bay as a kids area, that opened on 18/09/2010, so it's at 13.3 years. And while they added The Reef in 2017 (which was a great addition), the Sky Fortress hasn't been open since pre-covid (not sure on when it exactly stopped operating) and the rest of the land has seen better days, so they should invest in bringing the Battle Boats and Sky Fortress back to their opening day standard. When you break it down like this, that is a very good point. I was mostly looking at it from the attractions themselves, but thinking about the land overall, you are very much correct. Which is now just empty land thats 'hidden' by construction fencing and has weeds growing widly because management can't make their minds up for what they want to do with it. There was the rumour it was going to be an arcade, but that seems to be cancelled and now they're building a carnivale duck game on the former Pounce 'n' Bounce land.

And considering how long it was there, it definitley lasted well for most of it's life. And if they had extended the licensing contract, it definitley could have returned back to its opening day standard. Love a good chart, you're greatly appreciated for this. Consdidering it's age, it's definitley holding up well though and is just as popular as ever. Age why, absoltley and it would be great for the whole land to get some love. But honestly, for the most part, it still looks pretty good. Maybe outdated and needs more going for it, but in comparison to how Dreamworks was looking, it's doing alright. If it was up to me, I would complete a staged refurbishment of the whole land (except for Marvin as it's new and they gave RoadRunner some love a couple years ago). I would keep at least one of the driving attractions and despite being the oldest, I'd probably keep Speedy because the Drive School is such good real estate. They could create a whole new Looney Tunes indoor land and be inspired by what was done at Warner Bros World, Abu Dhabi.

Scooby has always had this If they’re keeping the seperate load/unload stations (I really hope they are), then storage boxes are unlikely. If there are lockers, that won’t make wait times or loading worse, if anything it might help a small amount

Bets on how long this will last?

All true, but as a themed land (particularly in its early years) I think it’s one of the better themed lands on the GC

What about Nickelodeon Land and Castaway Bay?

I don't think it's necessairly a bad thing though. I think Gumbuya did a great job with TNT. Theme, story and presentation has been executed very well. So it should make want VRTP to step things up a little and make their version 'world class'. But from Gumbuya's perspective, it should make them feel like they are able to compete with the Gold Coast parks despite them being a (regional?) theme park in Victoria. We see copies of attractions all of the world, there are small parks that will have the same/similar attractions as the big guys (Disney, Universal, etc), but the difference is they step it up and take theming and story to a whole new level, which is what makes it a better experience. Because it was a poor choice of ride and was originally picked without much thought, but was a way to boost attraction (and thrill ride) count up to compete with the guys down the road. Long term that thought process back fired and ended up costing the park way too much to operate/maintain, hence why they sold it off. And attraction like this is why the current management take a lot more care in selecting attractions and who is the manufacturer of that attraction. They did a lot of culling, which has hit hard on their overall attraction count. But eventually we should start to see that number increase to make the park feel more complete once again.

Signage and a few bits of theming were being finished off at the time of opening https://www.parkz.com.au/update/2012/04/03/294-April_2012.html I believe they are currently building a shade structure in front of the carousel/planes (which will be in front of the coaster entrance). And I think there are plans for some other shade structures throughout the land because they did have some decent shading near Pandemonium that parents would use a lot, but while the coaster is under construction that’s been removed

I'm in two minds about it and have thought about how else they could have done it. I think the placement of the splashzone and the retheme of the dodgems has been great and having it within close proximity of Dreamland was a smart move. And maybe they could have got away with them being part of Dreamland. However, with Serpent Slayer being kept in it's location, it wouldn't have made sense to make take that style of ride a part of Dreamland. It probably would have been good to relocate SS to be within the existing Ocean Parade area, and added a couple more kids rides into Dreamland but conteract the loss of the Teacups and Boat from ABC Kids World. However, relocating a ride within a park wouldn't be cheap and is it really worth it (Especially if they've got a masterplan for the pre-existing Ocean Parade). Because this extension of Ocean Parade is relativley narrow, the part I don't like is how you cross through OP to get to Tiger Island from Dreamland (or vice versa). It definitley feels like Dreamland should just border with Tiger Island, and that's probably why it's still represented that way on the map (or they just haven't gotten round to updating it on the map).

I’d assume he’s referring to this area that’s part of the Ocean Parade expansion, but the park map would suggest it’s part of Dreamland.

I've overlayed TNT from Gumbuya World onto the nearmap thanks to @DaptoFunlandGuy. @mattcrombie you were almost correct!

Which is what we've seen happy with Kenny's Forest Flyer. They wanted/needed to get the ride back open, even though a lot of the theming wasn't ready, we saw it and the ride signage added later. However the attraction is currently down again for a couple weeks, which (I'm speculating here) might be related to adding more theming to the ride as we saw in concept artworks.

Credit to Jaggs Journey

Do you mean we will start to see the track being installed for both rides? Because we have seen the track for most of this year alongside the road when heading to Paradise Country. Eitherway, I don't see any track being installed this year.

@DaptoFunlandGuy that's awesome, thanks for sharing. Something that they did announce a year ago, that we can see in these images they have also completed is the install of the solar panels. They have used the Exhibition Centre, maintence buildings and when they built the new roof over the dodgems and arcade they've also installed the solar panels on there.

So it was on this day a year ago that Dreamworld made its $60 million announcements of the Dreamland Parents Centre, Dreamworld Flyer, Kenny & Belinda’s Dreamland, Ocean Parade Expansion and Rivertown. I know we’re only halfway through the whole construction process, but with everything’s that’s already open, under construction and any new information we’ve found out over the past year, how does everyone know feel about these announcements now? There were a few people on here that had strong opinions about some of the announcements, but also a lot of people were very excited by it all. Personally at the time, I was unsure about the Dreamworld Flyer and Ocean Parade Expansion. But seeing them complete, I think the Dreamworld Flyer was a good decision as it’s transformed the front of the park for the better. And while I still have the opinion the splash pad should have gone in the existing Ocean Parade area, I do think it works better being close to Dreamland and it still leaves a large area of the park for future developments. I had already expected a Dreamworld redevelopment, but I think Dreamland has turned out to be a nice project, and has allowed the kids area to become more complete. The theming and immersion isn’t quite to the level of Dreamworks, but I still think it’s turned out well. And having seen the overall layout of Rivertown, that’s made me even more excited for its opening.

Jaggs had shared that photo on the weekend, so I assume @Rivals has since seen that the yellow track has been put back.

Hence why we also saw the changes and upgrades to The Dreamworld Express. The raising of the station platforms and carriages that allow for wheelchairs were all part of the overall park improvements to make sure every guests, no matter what the disability, can have a good day at the park..

No it doesn’t (unfortunately) and while I definitely think they should retheme it to be more fitting in its context, I don’t think they should necessarily make it part of Rivertown. Rivertown will be their brand new flashy land and I don’t think adding an almost 20 year old coaster to the land is the way to go. They could give it a colour scheme that’s more earthy and better suits the surrounding environment and even the store could be more generic and sell merch based around Rivertown. Because right now MDMC is the one attraction that doesn’t suit its area/land the most and it deserves better (including new trains that don’t hurt)

Under the accessibility page on their website, Dreamworld have created a document called ‘The Dreamworld Visual Story’. They describe it as carefully-curated guide for our guests from how to get here, where to park, right through to what to expect on our rides and who to ask for help if needed. They have two versions of the document, a full version and a more brief version. I have read through both versions of these documents and it’s fantastic to see the park invest time into creating these. On the scheme of things, it’s something small they have done, but I can see it making a massive difference for a lot of guests that need this kind of information. It’s been very well written and I congratulate the park on doing this. The Visual Story can be found here: https://www.dreamworld.com.au/park-information/accessibility-information

Mushrooms, dinosuars and turbines... those were the days!