Baconjack

^ also on this, dreamworld desperately needed to ditch the late 90's TOT era foam theming that was rotten and just outright ugly. Giant Drop will be getting another neighbour eventually so that whole corner of a park needed a fix up, glad to see it getting attention. I do think Dreamworld could have gone further and converted the tower to accommodate a falcon's fury gondola, but what we're getting I'm not complaining about.

4. Plenty of discussion has already been made on the comical loading procedures at movie world which I agree with. Other parks in Australia do this well enough - restraint checks happen immediately on Big Dipper once you’re seated - Village is just incompetent. Have never visited movie world or Dreamworld on a dead day so can’t speak from experience - but I know LPS definitely does this, you can stay on provided nobody is in the line. Insurance probably is the reason why loose article enforcement including sunnies is strict as it is… I disagree with the “nets on coasters look bad” take when parks as big as USJ literally does it over sections on their coasters which get high foot traffic. On a side note is there still a ban on gopro’s at Gold Coast parks? In this day and age it’s totally ridiculous, with a secure chest mount it isn’t going to do any harm. Plenty of parks allow it overseas and Adventure World does from memory provided there is a secure mount. That definitely needs changing. 5. When it comes time to replace Gold Coaster, dreamworld seriously needs to be looking at investing in a Raptor or a Hot Racer - a perfect ride for them imo.

This has been in the works for a long time. About 10 years ago I recall a yarn from management where the plan was to build a new ride every year to replace the old rides, Hair Raiser was meant to be the beginning of this process, a replacement of Flying Saucer would have been the second, with all the old rides replaced one by one and would have finished up with a new Big Dipper. This whole plan was from my understanding put on hold post Hair Raiser DA debacle, before the new tango train got built. All the building refurbishments were still done on schedule (such as the lighthouse, Big Dipper facade, etc). Only when the site development regulations were finalised a few years back did things restart.

Yes because Village converting a temporary closure into a permanent one certainly hasn't happened before.

If it’s well presented externally and integrated into the park then no it isn’t a waste. A friendly reminder this is the park that had Bermuda Triangle

Maybe you could do any of the following: 1) Base the day’s capacity on how many staff will be in on a certain day. These two things need to be in correlation with each other - basic HR 101. A park being packed with guests with limited staff to serve them makes the experience worse for both parties - the only ones who benefit are bean counters. 2) not run rides at a snail’s pace and actually have managers give a shit about capacity and getting people moving quickly through lines. Train staff to run rides using Universal/Disney practices as a reference. This culture has to start at the top. 3) Keep the park clean and not in an unkempt condition with weeds growing through signs and shit (unrelated to crowds, but that’s besides the point) 4) Reduce capacity and shut off the park when it gets full rather than keep letting guests in (for reference, 10k is near how many guests Hong Kong Disneyland would get a day on average pre Covid) 5) Design the park so guests will be more evenly spread out and not crammed into one area - something repeated sets of managers have consistently ignored for the last decade and a half when cramming rides into the DC corner. 6) Run the popular rides (Rivals, Scooby, WWF, Superman) at max capacity during every school holiday period - not just the Boxing Day- late January block This is world class theme park operations in action people!

Didn't MW get Superman's second train rebuilt relatively recently? I don't think this is a maintenance thing at all to be honest

Longest that I've ever waited for a ride here was Tower (peak summer holidays many years ago) and that was only about 2 and a half hours if I recall. I don't recall having to wait 4 hours for any of the attractions I rode at Universal Studios Japan, so why is this the same at MW which attracts only a fraction of the guests that Universal does, because of a mistake that can so easily be avoided. 1 train on a public holiday weekend is laughable, let alone during a school holiday period. What's gone on? Is the other train being done up or is it just sitting in the shed idle? Is there not enough staff to be running two trains? If it's being worked on, why wasn't the work timed with the two odd months the park has put Rivals under maintenance for in preparation for the June school holidays? For a park (and chain more broadly) that labels every addition under the sun as "world class" how they run the park day-to-day is as far from that as possible.

My out there but not totally implausible theory is a cypress gardens-style transformation into Legoland. Not a separate gate, just a complete re-do into Legoland. A decent way to introduce Legoland into the market using Dreamworld's existing infrastructure rather than doing a from scratch build, with a timeless IP that you can get a lot of leverage out of. Merlin already has heaps of smaller attractions around Australia so they're not a stranger to the industry and have been putting up Legolands pretty much everywhere.

Green track is on site (off Mitty Theme Parks on FB)

Nah they are still being built, still listed by Whitewater West and Intamin on their sites. Generally water rides (flumes etc) are being removed everywhere because they are a huge effort and cost so much to maintain as they age (such as WWF) and so many of them just don't have the ridership to make it worth operating as water parks usually exist as a separate gate. Though the dynamics here are slightly different, Rapids and Vikings always had a decent line back in the day and WWF usually gets a good line.

A shoot the chutes (such as this) is probably my first guess and is really the only water ride in that category which Dreamworld could build. A perfect way to one-up Movie World's plans would be to put something like this in, or building a decent spinning coaster.

Tbf, Village said nothing about Rivals layout wise until 3 months out from opening, and that wasn’t even a rendered POV, just an edited video. Until then we had people guessing off track, supports and footings (which were generally pretty accurate). But surely you’d have something up by now, especially when the layout is sitting there completed? Nearly every major coaster build in America gets an animated POV six months to even a year out from opening.

To be fair those who were following the park for a while knew that the reinvestment plan was supposed to start with Hair Raiser, and that a large roller coaster was in the works for the last 10 years, however interactions with stakeholders (read: neighbours) prevented that project from getting off the ground until last year.

Joypolis isn't directly owned by Sega anymore, it was sold to a Chinese company several years ago who to my knowledge are still eyeing off building them outside of Japan and China

Wasn't the SV project originally a Thomas thing? I think it's slightly unfair to blame current management on that building - though they aren't completely absolved of it either, given that board coup happened during early construction

Probably just another ride with a minimal theme (but 3 of them). Re-using elements from Arkham such as the courtyard and queue would be nice, but that's not going to happen, the entire area will likely end up getting razed and started over from scratch. I'd be happy with something on the level of Doomsday but my expectation is similar to Rivals. We are not going to get a ride themed on the scale of Batman Adventure or Justice League again. Given what the coasters are replacing, what they might be themed to and what's nearby, there may be some degree of integration into the DC Villains mini-area.

It's going to be DC. No if or buts about it. With Doomsday nearby it won't surprise me if they try to add onto DC Villains and expand it across that alleyway. I'd say Two Face for the dueller and Mr Freeze for the invert.

It's rare that I say Village should be taking notes from a certain park down the road on this, usually it's the other way around Also its peak Australia to not expect 2 train services as standard. The fact that Superman and Rivals are only running 1 train in peak season is an embarrassment. Superman I didn't even see 2 trains on it pre covid either. Any major attraction at a park with the patronage that MW gets needs to be capable of pumping through guests, full stop

I'm pretty mixed on what Village plans to build. The two family boomerangs are great additions, I really like the dueling layout and that Village hasn't just gone for 2 of the base model mirrored side to side. It's definitely something much needed in the DC corner given that all that families can ride in that area is Justice League, otherwise they have to go to Scooby/WWF/WB Kids. But a suspended family coaster rather than something like Hals Uber Kopf is quite lacklustre. MW missed the opportunity of building something that's right in between Green Lantern and Scooby/WWF (and can also be a decent AA replacement), and something that can be classed as above the family boomerangs, not on par with them. A custom inversionless STC on the scale of Arkham built on top of the family boomerangs would have been an easy slam dunk. Not something that in my opinion will draw comparisons to Madagascar.

I'll be disappointed if those Calibri letters are still there by the end of that 5 month block

Oh no I definitely don't have any qualms with using IP - given what MW is, it has to, and given that superheroes are a money printer as they are at the moment, it makes sense why nearly every MW addition in the last 10 years has used the license and I'm definitely more sympathetic to Village's use of DC than most for that reason. But you compare the likes of Doomsday to Batman Adventure, or Green Lantern to Superman - there's no point in arguing the difference in quality and standards between those attractions. If anything Village need to be using that IP to create something far more intricate than what they have done in the last 10 years, a lot of those fisher era rides share that lazy six flags grade presentation.

But isn't this the direction they have already gone in? When Fisher was around this is exactly what Village was doing at MW, milking the DC license to put in thrill rides with a minimal theme (Green Lantern, Doomsday and Rivals), and I'd be willing to bet that's what they will be doing when Arkham is replaced in a couple of years. The last true 'themed ride' they put in was Justice League and that was nearly 10 years ago. Village has positioned SW as a family park (which it always has been, of course, but it definitely is compared to what is up the road) while positioning MW as the park with all the big roller coasters. No point trying to mix both demographics in both parks when you can just sell them as separate ticketed experiences and make more money.

Thanks for the review mate! Night rides on BD are pretty good too can confirm, i think i had about 23 rides on it all up today lol, although there was a bit of a nasty rattle in the rows further back that might spoil the experience for some. Having never visited the park since it re-opened (or any time in the last 5 years for that matter), it was my first time on all the new rides today as well. Thought that Boomerang was a fun little family coaster. Unfortunately Sledgehammer's cycle I found to be very short and very disappointing with its ability to only go 240 degrees, and Maloney's Corner has a very strong "the park ran out of money" vibe.

Dispatches were pretty fast which I guess is needed given the low capacity of the ride, but one train would stack on the brake run for a little while. 2 trains were run for the first couple hours but one of them was pulled off for a wheel assembly problem so it’s been running on one train since then