joz

I think that is a particularly dark view of things. I get it, but I think if you look at the world through that lense all the time, it's going to be a rough life. Personally I'll hold off on proper judgement till I see it in person. Not sure what my opinion is of it just having seen photos. Is the whole thing a memorial or just the chairs, and if it's the whole thing what does it all mean? In photos it kind of looks more like a smoking area than a memorial garden.

I feel like when you get to that end of the real estate market, you can't really point to little things like that to say why something sold for more or less. Also the difference between what they paid for it and sold it for is 2.5%. I'm sorry, but that's nothing. A drop of $200,000 sounds huge, a drop of 2.5% is fucking nothing.

I think when the water is flowing you you don't really need to dye it. The surface gets broken up and stuff plus bubbles and whatnot. Plus to put it gently, clear water is safer. The water does look lovely, I wish people would stop pointing it out because everytime someone does, the first thing I do is look at the mountain.

It really does bring home how much charm DW had back in the day. The station and the brick fence thing oozes it. The whole park used to look like that pre 1997. I hope they're able to find a way to do charming shit again. I'm not awash with optimism, but maybe!

Cheers for that. Glad that they get what I assume would be pretty decent attendance numbers then. Again, I only ever end up there off peak during the week so it's hard to have any idea of what it's really like.

I've only ever been to LPS off peak. How busy does it get and what does that look like?

I also doubt it's the full issue, but it is an issue that has had an impact. I think it's fair to say there are things that were out of their control, which had a flow on of them fucking up bits they did have more control of. ST and Leviathan are also totally different projects, in the same way that Rivals and Sky Voyager were different projects. At the end of the day, the wash up will be something like 'they got hit by some totally fucked shit they couldn't do anything about, and then kicked a few own goals of their own'. You can't put that on social media, nor would you expect them to. You also can't say 'A contractor fucked something up which set the whole thing back a tonne and we fucked some other shit too', so just go to the next thing that HAS made an impact on the situation, which is covid. In previous years, managing the project the way they have, they would have made it for Easter at the very latest. That being the case, you probably can just say 'Covid' and call it a day.

We're going to insert park! ...ladies

I strongly suspect that saying it's for safety reasons is to be able to stand staff down without paying them. Just for inclement weather = pay your staff, closed for health and safety reasons = don't pay your staff. It is unfortunately a industry standard thing to do. WnW was open today, driving past I was surprised at how many people went. It wasn't busy obviously but the number of guests probably cracked a couple hundred which is crazy to me.

If you have to bag out something else to say why you like what you like, then what you like sucks.

Lol the email was a roaring success then

When was it meant to open v when is it opening?

I mean yeah don't open till you're ready that's fine but far out a year is a long time.

It's OK, apology accepted

Settle petal, it got moved to the site issues area so this thread which is quite useful doesn't get cluttered. It was also answered.

I mean I made the point that people justfy what they like by bagging out other stuff, and I thank you for backing me up on that by going off on Village's marketing. I hate Village's marketing too, I've been banging that drum for years, but DW (Australia's favourite theme park according to their home page) doesn't do it any better or even differently. They refer to their lands as precints too, they don't have events they have 'activations'(cringe), the article that spurred this whole thing mentioned their new attraction will be 'World Class', and don't get me started on WWW losing its identity all together. I'm not the one saying I dislike DW because of their marketing either, but to act like it's a point of difference on why DW is better is a bit odd. I think in the last 2 years their marketing has taken on a decidedly Village turn and I don't think it's a turn for the better. I mean this whole conversation started because I said they shouldn't do nostalgia, and the response was 'but Village are doing it in their marketing'. Also there is some common ground between us; Scenic World IS properly amazing. I haven't done any kind of collaboration with them, but I seriously rate that place, and everyone should go there. I think it's genuinely one of the best tourist attractions in the country, and a serious contender for THE best.

I mean you like what you like and that's up to you. The issue you probably ran into is people knew what your opinion was going to be before they opened the thread, so it's hard not to take it to task. That doesn't mean that everything was automatically invalid BTW, but there were multiple things in what you said where it read like you made your mind up on what your opinion was going to be before you'd set foot in the park. In to response to what I've said above, you'll say you didn't and I'll believe you, but just between us talking respectfully as grown ups, I think acting, totally above it and 'isn't it a shame that people are so fragmented' is a touch disingenuous. Full disclosure, I'm not a member of the DW fanclub on here, nor a member of the village fanclub. I think both have good things and both have bad things. I don't think the good and bad is distributed evenly so I'll call out as I see fit. I think there are people (on both 'sides', more so on one than the other) who justify liking something by bagging something else. I probably come across harsher on DW that my real life opinion because I think the pro DW camp have been talking absolute rubbish for a little while. That's my bias and I could objectively defend it, but honestly who cares? How people respond to all that is up to them. My gut tells me that people will try and use it as some sort of 'gotcha' moment or say 'Yeah you're right joz but parkz, drove me to it'. It'll be very interesting to me if people acknowledge even for a moment their own bias and how that guides them on here. Anyway, shoot the chutes!

I'm late to this, but I wanted to add a thing that I think got missed to the 'how many rides closed chat; Arkham still there affects how many rides they can have closed before it impacts guests. In the minds of guests if you close one ride at MW, they see two. That's probably not a huge problem with 1 closed ride, but when 3 are out at once that 4th closed ride is huge! Same thing at SW with Flume (SW is worse with the Monorail and Leviathan). The point is that even if everything on paper is open, that isn't what the guests experience.

I've been at pains to say that I give them a pass on things disagree with right now because I understand the broader context. You just don't get to do all the things and have them be amazing. There's always compromises to be made, and right now they have to make more than normal because; of course they do. I can also confirm that some of my thoughts on what they should do would have been almost totally wrong. Hindsight, it turns out, is quite a good thing to have on your side when making and evaluating decisions, and I'm blessed to have had that on my side when talking about what DW have been doing. I also tend to not have too much issue with what the park does, and I tend to spend more time taking issue with people who say how amazing mediocre stuff is rather than just going off on my own and talking about the park. For example, I wouldn't feel the need to comment on their busstop in Brisbane if people weren't carrying on about how great it was. ST shows little imagination, but I'm totally fine until there's pages dedicated to how amazing the area is. And again here, I didn't have anything to say about the nostalgia campaign until the comment was made about how smart it was. As for 'aren't they great for not selling', from the analysis I read that has more to do with not getting the price they wanted than it does about their resilience and dedication to the park.

Did you get he was talking about Space Mountain?

Which is open 3 days a week and doesn't even get advertised in its own right. I do accept that I am in a bit of a theme park bubble, but in my experience, talking to people outside the bubble is where the sentiment seems to be the most harsh. Personal testimony is the least compelling type of evidence to me, so I'm happy to write off the people I've interacted with as not indicative. Also when I do talk to people don't reveal my interest in theme parks, so when it does come up, they are more honest than they might be knowing parks is an interest. The trade off for that though is the conversation doesn't come up often so the sample size is much smaller for me, so that might be a part of it too. Pursuing that thought though, the next thing you ask 'well what about attendance over summer?'. DW threw a lot at this summer season, and it really didn't come off. I also say that in the context of knowing all the parks had a crappy summer, I know a big covid outbreak happened which prevented them hitting any particular heights. But with a new ride and how much effort they put in, DW more than any other surprised me with how poor attendance was. Either the marketing message was off, they have a poor reputation on account of how they have shrunk, or the past still lingers. Maybe it's none of those things, maybe it's a combination of all of those things. What I do know though is I wouldn't invite comparision to the past when the park was much better then, and the park's past also predominantly features *that*. Also all the other parks are doing it is not an argument for why you should. If anything it's an argument for why you should not. I mean it's the 3rd nostalgia based theme park campaign in 6 months. The other parks aaren't also trying to reinvent themselves at this exact moment and aren't launching one of the biggest roller coasters the Gold Coast has ever seen (one of them should be, but that's a whole other story). Again, that's not that I hate the whole campaign and everything they're doing, none of this is stuff I would have bothered to bring up on its own, except for in response to someone saying how gosh darn smart it was.

This is about the most backwards thing I have ever heard anyone say. 'Remember how good the place used to be' is a terrible strategy. I didn't like SW doing it this year, so it's not a village v ardent thing which people still can't get out of their heads, but DW's nostalgia campaign is a big 'miss' to me. DW trying to be nostalgic at a time when they're trying to launch the future is just a fatally flawed concept. If I ask 100 people what's the first thing you think about when you think about DW's history, I reckon roughly 100 people will say either something about the rapids ride, or how good it used to be and how shit it is now. Why in the hell would you want to put that thought in people's mind? They also brought back elements that while nostalgic, have no thematic link to the park. Barbershop quartet is great example of that. When they originally used to get around the park, main street was turn of the century themed, with horse drawn carriages and very few things to break that immersion. Now main street is a hodgepodge with SV, Claw and the foot court all breaking the turn of the century vibe. Putting a quartet into that is nostalgic, but thematically it makes no sense. Same thing is true of Bushrangers. There is no old world themeing at DW any more, Bushrangers have nothing to do with DW. It doesn't make sense having bushrangers. It would be like if SW had someone who was playing a character from Lassiter's Lost Mine. You'd see it and just go 'Errr what in the hell is that about?' I like Greg fine, and I think he has had some decent enough ideas. Getting ST was a great move at the time they did it, I think with what happened to the world since then it's probably not worked out how you would think, but you can't blame that on them. There are things I disagree with in a passionate way, and sometimes see them doing things and have to actively remind myself that some of the stupid crap they're doing is the theme park equivelant of amputating gangrenous limbs to keep the rest alive. As far as a family ride goes, yeah plus one to a shoot the chutes ride in Ocean Parade, ideally with the drop looking straight down the guts of the land as a big weenie. Nothing fancy, no elevator lifts, no attempt at a story, just a well presented tropical shoot the chutes with a proper big splash. A year or two after that a small but thrilling coaster to replace RHLR, throw in some sort of Bluey attraction and whatever other improvements you want to make along the way and you have a half decent park again.

The market is also different. In America, those early renderings/POVs are there to get you to renew your season pass as early as possible. The same isn't applicable in Australia in the same way. Back when it was VIP passes which all expired on June 30, it would have made sense to release an announcement/POV late May, early June for something opening in December to get renewals happening. In Australia, I don't think it makes much sense to announce something more than 1 holiday season out. I know the passes are still a big part of the ticketing mix, but marketing should be about why you should visit NOW, not why you should visit in 6 months.

I agree. I'm not sure the public would though

I think they've probably backed themselves into a corner committing to Easter. It's a shame the themeing isn't further along because it just doesn't have the 'it'll all be completed vibe'. Does make you wonder if there's a bit of major work to happen before some stuff goes in? It'll be a shame if it opens late, or it opens unfinished, but tbh as a betting man you'd think one of those two outcomes will be the way it goes.