Park Fan

The price tag I provided didnt factor in land costs and as far as labor goes I cant imagine singaporean labor being much cheaper than hong kong. You forget that Disneyland Hong Kong also opened with a lot of cheap small attractions like a carousel, tea cups and 2 spinner rides. Hong kong only had 2 major attractions at opening jungle cruise and space mountain. Whilst Universal Singapore had 5 major attractions Transformers, Battlestar Galactica, Mummy, Jurrasic Park and Madagascar. I cant imagine Universal capacity being much smaller than Disney.

I was just reading a 2005 article which stated that Hong Kong Disneyland cost $1.8 Billion USD to construct. To me this doesn't make sense given the park only had 7 rides on opening day and featured theming that isnt to much better than some Australian parks. Compare this to Universal Studios Singapore a park wich cost only a little over $1 Billion SGD (Far less in American dollars) and had far more opening day rides and far superior theming. This raises a serious question of why Hong Kong Disneyland Park cost so much money to build.

Any ideas of who would want to buy the park. Apart from property developers and Merlin I cant think of anyone who would be all that interested.

I wonder if in the event of the park being about to close whether the state government would bail it out or opt to let it close and instead try to attract a new park to the city instead.

Looking at Dreamworld now the park is clearly a shell of its former self with many classic attractions now closed, a DreamWorks licensing agreement fast approaching its expiration, a safety reputation that has been destroyed and attendance that has all but collapsed from its heights of over 2 million annual visitors. I worry that if steel taipan isnt the roaring success that Dreamworld needs it to be then the park may end up forced to sell off its land and shut its doors forever in a fashion similar to what happened at wonderland sydney.

I think a slide wheel would be a good choice. Its an attraction that is impressive looking, unique and has family appeal.

I know that when Legoland Malaysia opened Merlin said they were specifically looking at expanding more into both the Asian and Australian markets. In addition I know that Merlin stated publicly that they were happy with the initial success they saw at the Legoland Discovery Centre in Melbourne. So I think its a safe bet that they are looking at expanding into the Australian market with a full sized Legoland park. There are some benefits to buying Dreamworld and rebranding it as a Legoland since it has a good location, good land size, a waterpark that can easily be rethemed and a lego store that is all ready to go. However it is worth noting that there are some downsides to this approach most notably the fact that the main park would likely have to have its rides and structures completely torn down and replaced due to many of these not really fitting well into the theming of a Legoland park. Ultimately I think that whilst its possible that Merlin could buy and rebrand Dreamworld as a Legoland park similar to what happened in florida I think they would ultimately prefer to start from scratch. I dont see this being renewed for 3 main reasons firstly dreamworks is now owned by Universal Studios who I feel would prefer to keep these IP's exclusive to their parks, secondly I think their was some bad blood between dreamworld and dreamworks when they delayed the trolls land opening and finally I dont think dreamworks is comfortable being associated with the TRRR accident and a park that is in overall decline. Ultimately I see dreamworld trying and failing to negotiate a contract renewal before rebranding dreamworks to a generic family area which would see the madagascar section rethemed to a generic african section, shrek rethemed to a generic medieval section and kung-fu panda rethemed to a generic chinese section.