Hi. The purpose of this post is to hopefully bring to people's attention the attitude that staff members at Jamberoo displayed on our first and last visit to Jamberoo Action Park and also to urge visitors to be very vigilant of how the cashiers at the gate process your tickets.
We arrived shortly after lunch-time. Stood in line for a quick 5 mins, and proceeded to inform the young lady in the cashier's booth that we, a family of 5, consisting of 2 adults and 3 children, would like tickets. We made sure to mention that we had three kids, out of which one was under the age of 4.
She nodded and proceeded to charge us the amount of $161. She informed us that even our 3-year-old would be issued a ticket, a no-charge ticket. We understood and paid.
At the gate, to enter the park, the young man took our tickets (handed over in a bundle) and ripped them. Then proceeded to scan each ticket using his portable scanning tool. He paused briefly with a puzzled look on his face... but then dismissed silently what he had found odd, and continued his procedure. He then motioned to us to enter the park.
Ok... so here we are all ready to get wet and wild...
We do the wave pool. We then do the kiddie areas.
That's when my wife, who's sitting in a chair by the side, notices something wrong with the tickets. The girl in the cashier's booth had charged us for 4 children!
We took the tickets back to the lad at the gate. He shrugged his shoulders saying he didn't have knowledge of anything other than how to scan tickets.
We went inside the souvenir shop and spoke to young girl there. She instantly became defensive and claimed to have no ability to help. We'd need to speak to a manager. So we requested that she call such a person. We were told to wait.
The supervisor arrived and asked what the problem was. We explained. She took the tickets and reviewed them, all the whilst making every possible attempt to remain poker-faced. In fact, every single member of staff we spoke to in regards to this mix-up failed to show an ounce of courtesy. Its as if they're all trained not to smile and instead adopt a hostile body language whilst on duty.
The supervisor proceeded to defend her staff members actions by saying the fault lay with us for entering the park when we knew we'd been overcharged. We told her that we simply trusted her staff members and did not realise we'd been overcharged. We're intelligent people and assumed her staff we equally intelligent. I'm a fluent English speaker and I didn't realise or assume that there'd been a break-down in communication between myself and the cashier. Hence, I simply took the tickets and entered the park. Yes, the price did seem a bit high, I must admit... $161 for 2 adults and 2 kids did seem a bit off, but that's the going price these days. It was cheaper than Wet'n'Wild in Brissy anyway.
We told her that when we presented our tickets to the lad at the gate he had looked puzzled... now we know why: he had 6 tickets in his and but could only count 5 people in front of him, yet he didn't question anything either. We asked the supervisor if it maybe should've been him that double-checked everything. She insisted that he staff were free of blame and didn't want to entertain any notion that her staff should've been checking their work.
After 10 mins of arguing with us she then proceeded to inform us that all Jamberoo tickets are in fact non-refundable and that she was powerless to help us. We wouldn't be getting any money back, at least not today. All our breath had basically been wasted. She did, however, offer an admin phone number for us to call the next day. We took the number as it was the only recourse we had at that time.
We have spoken to the admin staff, and sadly we got a lecture from them as well. The conversation took almost 30 mins on the phone. My wife did the talking since she's far more level headed than I am in such situations. At the end of the conversation my wife looked drained but did have good news. They're sending us one free ticket.
Now, about the park. I'd avoid the place on a public holiday, which is when we went.
The place is filled to the rim with loud and rowdy kids. The wave pool had so many people in it that from afar it didn't seem there was any water in the pool. Obviously this was just an illusion. I found it appalling, however, that the water was quite dirty looking in the pool.
We didn't stay there long and found our way over to the kiddies area. We spent over an hour at the kiddies pool at which time I decided I wanted to have some of my own fun. I headed for the Tai Pan slide. Didn't get very far... the queue was a mile long! I then headed for one of the other "grown up" slides... mile-long queue there too. Tried the river thing (where you float on a ring inside a river that moves along at quite a fun-looking pace)... alas, no luck there either as the queue was quite long there as well.
In the end I returned disappointed back to the wife and kids in the kiddie area, where I found my wife having an argument with one of the staff members. Apparently my wife, who had taken our 3 year old many times up to the top of the slide was now being told that the little girl would need to go up there herself unassisted. The slide starts at the top of a large platform that is quite tricky for an unstable 3-year-old to climb up. The stairs provided aren't designed for kids and are very much for adults. The platform is also quite high up. Yes, we understood that we couldn't ride the slide down with our kids, and we were in compliance with that rule. However, we simply wanted to escort our littlest one up to the top.
As I said above, my wife had already taken our girl up to the top of the platform a number of times. All of a sudden there was a change of staff manning the platform, and the new crew had different rules. Now, it suddenly wasn't ok for parents to take their kids up. All kids needed to walk up unaided. My wife had told our girl to try going up herself, but she refused and started crying. When my wife tried to assist, she got into trouble and hence the argument.
So, it seems from all of the above incidents, that the staff at Jamberoo really don't want to provide any form of courtesy or service. It appears that they all resented being at work that particular day and we, the unfortunate ones, who travelled for two hours to get there and three hours to get back (due to long traffice queues near the "Gong") and spent a sizable amount of cash to treat the kids to a day of fun, ended up taking the brunt.
I don't think I'm brave enough to return. Not any time soon.
The idea of Jamberoo is quite solid, however the people running the place just don't seem to know how to execute on the idea properly.
Good luck to everyone considering a trip down to Jamberoo.
