Cactus_Matt

~who cares~

*dreams wistfully of the Police Academy Stunt Show for the last 20 fucking years*

On whatever topic we are, seems like foreign visitors (specifically in this one case US YouTuber 'AirtimeThrills' ranks Movieworld pretty high, mainly for Rivals, which he ranked as his 13th best coaster of all time, and he's ridden over 600 coasters around the world (for whatever that's worth). Otherwise he was pretty critical of the ride ops, both at Movieworld and especially SeaWorld. But yeah whoever the bean counters are behind the scenes at Village Roadshow need to get shown the door, just sell the parks to Six Flags or Cedar Fair (yes, I know, I know) or whoever has an actual interest in managing a THEME PARK and stop treating on otherwise "good" park as some sort of cash machine for people who think buying stocks in a movie studio-cum-theme park is a sound investment when everyone behind-the-scenes just wants to sell the land to property developers but is resisting the urge out of the desire to be inundated by bad press.

I kind of feel sorry for ANYONE running a social media page for ANY Australian theme park because it's like, what else are you going to talk about?! I looked it up and I haven't posted on this website in EXACTLY a whole year, like literally to the day and nothing has changed in the Australian theme park landscape. This isn't a post defending bad socials, it's a post decrying the sorry state of literally EVERY Australian theme park and their lack of forward progress in any swift or meaningful way, the lack of any additions actually being exciting, newsworthy or even worth mentioning frequently at all. Being a theme park fan SUCKS in this country...

Restaurant confirmed gone? Also big lol at how they drew Gold Coaster.

I've been to Japan three times (planning 4th trip for next year) and while my interests are more anime related than theme parks these days I still visited Tokyo Disneyland/Sea (multiple times) and Universal Studios (once). Even if you say you're not a Disney fan (I'm not, honestly have no interest in anything they make) the parks are an absolute must. Before I visited I thought there would be nothing to excite me about the parks but honestly they are an eye-opening experience, DisneySea especially, theming is unbelievable and a lot of the rides are bucket-list worthy. As for Universal Studios it was ok, honestly I'm still pissed about being denied the ride on the Hollywood Dream roller coaster because my thighs were too chunky to get the lap bars down on the test seat (I was 95kg at the time, down to 83kg now so fingers crossed for next trip). As for your other question regarding 'unsafe places' the only thing you have to worry about is touristy places like Shinjuku, Harajuku, Kabukicho and other areas with bars/clubs. There's a lot of dodgy establishments where they'll try and beckon you in by using English and then rip you off by overcharging for drinks or just plain rob you. It's never happened to me personally, but that's mostly because I'd only go to a place that actually appears on a Google review and not just wander into any random bar, club or restaurant. On our first trip we stayed in a business hotel (like APA) in the financial districts of the city away from all the glitz and nightlife and touristy spaces. It made what could have been an intimidating and overwhelming first trip overseas a lot more relaxed and safe feeling. Plus the public transport (trains) are so good within Tokyo that even if you're staying away from the tourist areas it doesn't take long (or cost much) to get back into it. Also the hotels are a lot cheaper in these districts too.

It's funny, I had to Google 'scooby doo spooky coaster entry' to realise what was wrong with this picture because upon first seeing this picture I was like "wtf have they done to the scooby building". Turns out having a couple trees framing your big ugly white sound stage building does wonders for selling an illusion because honestly this looks like shit.

I've read this thread twice and I still have no idea what you lot are talking about, but then again I am very drunk lol

Seems odd that they wouldn't wait 'til their new family coasters were open to close their most popular family coaster for an entire year but whatever...

Quoting myself from over 2 years ago because the last few posts seem to be echoing the sentiment. Dreamworld when Tower of Terror and WipeOut were in full operation made it feel like their was a World Class Theme Park right down the road (this was when I used to lived on the Gold Coast so it actually meant something not now living in Melbourne). I yearn for the days when anything in Australia feels truly world class and 'til we get a dumb coaster filled Six Flags parks of our own, or a record breaking Giga or a B&M (of any kind really) Australia is going to feel like a third world-coaster-country, which is a shame because we have the kind of money in this country to build something truly spectacular.

Booked flights for May to the Gold Coast so I could finally ride DC Rivals and now they do this shit. Guess I'm never going to get to ride the damn thing.

#nomoreparklinglotcoasters

Not to be rude because I haven't visited Dreamworld in nearly a decade, but since ~the incident~ has any ride in the park garnered anything of a queue to worry about capacity? From what I've seen on these forums, almost everything is always a walk-on except on the very busiest days. They might as well close whatever areas they want to refurb and just get on with it already.

I don't think there's anything wrong with calling it that. I'd call a roller coaster like Space Mountain at Disneyland the same.

Does that mean Leviathan is a female roller coaster? If so keen to ride her.

You should get that checked out by a doctor.

Or just throw the whole ride in the bin?

If it's anything like what happened with the Garfield ride at Kennywood in the US the company that holds the license for the characters might force them to destroy everything IP associated and even film them doing so to make sure they're not used/sold to anyone else.

Maybe I'm not the best judge on what the general public wants from a theme park but looking at this line-up this ain't it. I don't think there's anything wrong with any of these additions, I just don't think any of these things is going to help the park with their lagging attendance. The coaster seems reactionary to the Wizard of Oz precinct's coasters rather than evaluating what's missing in their park, "Movie World is getting a themed family coaster(s), well then we'll do that too but with better themeing!" Again, not saying I hate any of this I just don't think the choice of coaster in particular is the right move at this particular time.

I've said it before but this next announcement from Dreamworld regarding what new things are coming in the future needs to be impressive if the park wants to stay in any way competitive with Movie World. And not just from the perspective of competing with the upcoming Wizard of Oz precinct and those 2/3 coasters but just in terms of being a competitor based on the overall attraction line-up. Steel Taipan wasn't enough of a visually impressive/record breaking coaster to compete with Rivals, if they want to win back theme park clout (and most importantly the general public through the gates) they'll need an impressive water attraction in addition to some sort of unique, "record breaking" roller coaster. That's the thing that'd make Dreamworld a must do for visitors and locals alike. But I don't think they'd announce both a water ride and a roller coaster and the kids area retheme. My bet is just some themed water attraction and the aforementioned kids area upgrades. It'll be what the park needs at bare minimum but it won't be enough to immediately make the park true competition to what's down the road. Would love to be proven wrong though.

Not to be too cynical, but I feel like there's two major reasons that they've decided on $30 (which is insane if you ask me) and that's a) because VRTP think they can charge anything for anything and people will pay it because they have the market cornered or conversely, b) they *whisper* this price in an 'unofficial' announcement via a Facebook message, people (i.e. us) get annoyed by it and then they reveal the price is cheaper than $30 and everyone is happy.

If Dreamworld wanted a big kahuna roller coaster to save them from the riptide they are currently in they'd splash out and buy a B&M Surf Coaster for their park and call it 'Wipe Out' or 'The New WipeOut' or something along those lines it'd be sure to make a splash amongst the general public and aficionados alike.

Honestly I'd love if the upcoming Jungle Rush attraction was some kind of long water ride utilising the lake/river/water donut, but the fact that it's called 'Jungle Rush' and not 'Jungle Splash' means its going to be something decidedly not wet. Shame that.

I'm not really surprised at all, for me as an only partial roller coaster fan when I heard about the Steel Taipan announcement I was like, "huh, okay, I'm sure it'll be fun but whatever it's not enough to make me make a trip" compared to when Rivals was announced and I was like "now that's pretty cool, I have to ride that!" I imagine the general public would have reacted similar if not worse. With how clickbait-y and tik tok attention-y so many people are unless you can put "fastest" or "tallest" or "stand-up" or "flying" or "most inversions" or something like that in your description and instead just having a "really solid multi-launch, with backwards launch, with spinning back seat full circuit coaster" ain't going to cut it.

I think Dreamworld overestimated how much of an impact Steel Taipan would have on their attendance. Putting aside the effect of the incident (which is still a factor but not relevant to the point I'm making) just adding one new roller coaster that to the eyes of the general public isn't visually or 'record-breakingly' impressive was never going to cut it. Steel Taipan is the kind of ride you add when your park is already in good stead and just needs something different to an already existing line-up of crowd pleasers and record breakers. If the park still had any water ride and ToT2 in their line-up then Steel Taipan would have been a fine addition. But now the park needs to wow the general public to get attendance numbers up. Obviously this isn't going to happen and instead they're going to focus on refreshing their kids areas which, again, isn't going to drive gate. It's not that the kids areas aren't important - of course they are - but if that's all they're going to be doing for the next year or two then we can expect Dreamworld to be lagging behind in ticket sales until they start making the park a 'must visit' location.