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Slick

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Everything posted by Slick

  1. What's the minimum amount of days that are okay for you?
  2. @Flea c'mon you're better then that. The nostalgia bit of me says those skinny few months where Thunderbolt and Cyclone were both open was peak Dreamworld. Still had steam trains, chairlift, IMAX, Mine Ride, River Rapids, Australian Wildlife Experience, Tiger Island with the cougars and still plenty of remnants of old school Dreamworld. Adult Slick agrees with @joz - having seen a ton of old school pictures of the park over the years it's clear to see what we're missing out on today.
  3. Bermuda Triangle kicked ass - it’s kind of crazy we were able to pull something like that off (and in-house!) that had that many animatronics and special effects (the pepper’s ghost UFO was stunning as a nine year old). Storm’s good, but it’s not better. Naturally Tower of Terror is an obvious nod - it’s the thing that put Dreamworld on the thrillseeker’s map globally, particularly at a time where we were all jumping online for the first time. It was the thing we were all proud of and it had some crazy cool technology to boot. Also the skull and the original pod design was badass. F*cking t-bar restraints 100m+ in the air? Yes please. I was lucky to do a few cycles where I was the only one in the pod and getting just that little bit closer to the top of the tower made it feel unsettlingly bonkers. Shoutout to Wipeout which is still one of the best themed flat rides ever. Never should’ve been replaced with nothing. I can appreciate a Dreamworld without Tower of Terror because it regularly ruined the ambience of the park and aged poorly, but Wipeout? It’s still not Dreamworld without Wipeout. It’s the ride that literally saved the park. It's iconic. When they said it was going to close and the Ardent price dipped lower to a market cap that was far lower than the cost of a replacement thrill ride, they should've course corrected instead of doubling down on shaded seating. Special mention to the IMAX theatre and the steam trains. The majesty of the IMAX theatre was how unassuming and how well integrated it was into the Central Plaza. It also was a stunning experience that folks couldn’t get anywhere else. It was so good it was the lynch pin in having the park achieve 10,000 pax days in its first years. Imagine that, a Dreamworld with less rides but with the same pax as Movie World on a busy day? Mental. Sky Voyager is good, and has the potential to be great, but that facade is tragic and did incredible damage to the success of the ride and the immersion of the greater area, as will the Zierer Swinger when they knock out the fountain. Real shame that. As for steam trains, the topic’s been done to death. They’re iconic, and leaving one out the front is a bit average, imo. EDIT: new adds Batman: The ride - like Tower of Terror, aged horribly. But again, as a nine-year-old, it was spectacular. As a young kid, I had just come back from Disneyland and it genuinely felt more iconic than Star Tours. From the massive cavernous library into the tiny little caves back open into Batman's lair and the animatronic that you could never quite tell was real or not. Suffice to say, whilst I am nostalgic for it, I do think Justice League just eeks out as being slightly better. Also, Police Academy. Everything from the gags (including pre-show) to the stunts was as captivating for kids as they were for adults. There's a special magic to getting something like that so spot on - I think it's why Bluey and Pixar films have had so much success. Funnily enough, I still haven't ever seen a single Police Academy movie and I dare say I never will. And that's the beauty of that show, you really didn't need to. I'll be bold and say that Movie World's single biggest mistake in its history was axing that show. EDIT: Interesting to see that I've already posted in this thread, and even after two years the under-currents of Police Academy, Bermuda Triangle and Wipeout still ring true.
  4. If you’re still calling it X and not X2 maybe you need to go back and give it a go with the newer trains.
  5. These organisations profit not from the quality of their content (and by extension, how accurate or factual it is) but rather from how well it engages with their audience. And to be clear, it's about engagement of any kind, good, bad, whatever (there's a whole bit there about evolutionary negative bias, but let's not go there). So when you've got both the people defending the parks and the people lambasting them both engaging in equal measure, it's clear to see why they'd keep copying and pasting the same dribble. The best thing to do is to not share the content around and have independent conversations with the people you know.
  6. Yes and no. Let me explain. Firstly, what you're asking is essentially about Intellectual Property Licensing Agreements and all of those contracts are commercial in confidence - and there'd be a lot of contracts, causes and stipulations. So instead of putting numbers to these things, i'll put it another way. Say a park wants to have cartoon characters that kids see on TV in their park because the research tells the park that it'll bump revenue by at least 20% if they pick the right characters. So the park looks around and talks to a well-known cartoon character owner. Now, this cartoon character owner is a business a hundred times the size of the park and thus, has the controlling power in any deal made. So eventually the character owner says if you want a bunch of characters to walk around the park, it'll cost you X amount per year in licensing fees. Want toys made of those characters? Then pay the character owner a royalty % of the toy's profit. Want to name a ride after a character? That'll cost the park another licensing fee. Want to name the park after the character owner's brand? That's another fee. So on and so forth for everything the park and the character owner does together in partnership. And the best bit is that in order to ensure the park is upholding a reasonable standard of quality and doesn't tarnish the reputation of the cartoon characters, the cartoon character owners get the final say on everything. Now, like everything in life, none of this is black and white. My own experiences have been that some brands really keep tight leashes on the final product (I remember Dreamworks having creative guidelines for how costume characters should be photographed) whilst others less so (Dreamworld itself couldn't really ever figure out if it was Wipeout or WipeOut internally). You can also imagine that if an "IP Holder" representative came town, anything that was non-compliant or unapproved gets hidden and almost every single physical asset, right down to the stitching on costumes gets a once over. No.
  7. If I were to expand my vision for Movie World right out there long term - I'd refurb the Roxy with stadium seating and all the latest bells and whistles to become Village's go-to theatre for movie launches and whatnot. From there, I'd redevelop the WB Showcase building to either what @jozsaid or a flying theatre variant, and connect that building's entrance/exit into the aforementioned new Half Pipe Coaster area just to the left of Wild West Falls. Add in a nice dining/events space and a small family flat ride and you've got yourself a hell of a western-themed area that obliterates Dreamworld's offering for the next five years. The Capex-friendly version is to pop it next to Jet Rescue or where the old Viking's Station was at Sea World and call it a day. No repaint or real theming needed.
  8. This is 100% not the reason why Buzzsaw was sold and there’s no rule as such as @Gazzaexplained. Ifffff it had to go to Movie World, why not up near Wild West Fall’s drop area? You could finally expand the west area and make use of what is a strange dead end path, and you could easily theme it to a whacky blacksmith perpetual energy device or something. Honestly, the DC fatigue is real, I just don’t think we need anymore DC anything for a hot minute.
  9. I think we'll disagree on this one. To those who think it'll end up at Movie World, sure, maybe, but I also wouldn't take something unofficial on Facebook as gospel. For what it's worth (and @joz sorry but not sorry) but its home was and should've always been at Sea World. That park is screaming for the last little bits it needs to have the perfect attraction mix, and I reckon that gets it nearly there.
  10. It’s 2023 and so this bad boy is closed. 🍻
  11. Flowrider was already closed pre-COVID because it needed parts and wasn't generating the revenue needed to keep it running. Anyone could see it was doomed to fail because it was ultimately wedged in between a sea of nothingness that forced casual users into walking 200m in the opposite direction just to buy tickets. Also worth noting Dreamworld staff ran the ride and that Waveloch/WhiteWater West has a local presence in the country - availability of parts and support weren't the issue.
  12. It’s been posted elsewhere that other parks did nothing and saw a larger % increase in attendance than Dreamworld. Roller-coasters are supposed to drive attendance, no ifs ands or buts, so with that context in mind, it’s tough to justify the ROI of the project, let alone confusing it with an EBITDA profit over an actual profit.
  13. For something that wasn't a big deal on a website no one cares about, they sure move quickly when they see something on Parkz.
  14. Eh, others have already debunked the logic of this. Billboards don't go down at night when shops close just in case people get misled. People just aren't that dumb that you need to coddle them that much. Billboards drive awareness, not conversion, therefore literally no one makes major purchase decisions based on a billboard alone.
  15. This is super easy to fix. We just de-regulate working conditions to be like America, bringing down the price of labour to a point of parity, thereby reducing the single largest cost-base for the company which they can then reflect in their pricing. Also, the majority of Disney's guests aren't annual pass-holders, whereas it's the opposite in SEQ. Therefore, most single-day admissions are artificially inflated to make the cheaper-than-industry-average annual passes look far more lucrative. Changing gears, are people just mad there's not an A-frame out the front communicating it's a new ride and to be patient?
  16. They can put up as many signs as they like but it doesn't change the law. Drones these days exist in a grey area of diminishing common sense. The more bad apples that pick them up, the more CASA will have to continue to create new sub-sets of regulation and training to ensure someone throws common sense to the wind and either ignores the rules or does something clearly dumb (like flying it too close to a coaster).
  17. I'd agree with this - for the first time we've got really interesting stuff happening all over the country which is historically unprecedented, it's a really good time to be an Aussie enthusiast for sure. I'm sure management have got plenty of ideas that weren't in the announcement, and that still doesn't change the fundamental reality that when these projects are done, we'll still have the same haphazard Dreamworld master-planning that's been at play for the last two decades. This isn't about creating some unrealistic Disney-level of park because right now even industry substitutes (casinos, shopping centres, smaller play centres, local council parks etc.) are nipping at Dreamworld's feet in regards to immersion, and so the bar of "she'll be right, they're trying as hard as they can, give 'em a break" is not conducive to Dreamworld actually being profitable in the long term. Simply put - I don't think I'm being unreasonable in expecting Dreamworld to be more considered in their master-planning - if they can do it for Tiger Island (which is easily one of the best themed areas in the country) and if they could do it in the 80's, and if their competitors can do it, they can too. Speaking of the 80's, you're right, John's park is long dead and that horse continues to be beaten. For me I acknowledged that when they got rid of the facades for Sky Voyager John's park died (and died again when they knocked over Hollywood Cottage for Steel Taipan) - realistically if any management doesn't understand the significance or doesn't ask why the way things are before gutting them, then the hope for clinging to any other aspect of John's original park and what made it so great compared to now should be well and truly abandoned. And yet, the double-speak is at play, because the whole reason it's called Rivertown is because of its adjacency to the Murrissippi River. Both it and Rivertown are nods to John's Dreamworld. So which is it? We want to acknowledge the history and heritage whilst simultaneously not respecting it? I'll try and speak to this briefly because I acknowledge this isn't everyone's cup of tea. But, the tricky thing with theme park leadership is that unlike other businesses, any capital expenditure decisions, even at the sub-million mark, are going to have wild impact on other projects/amenities/facilities/attractions/etc. for two to three decades. So if you're not insanely considered in thinking about how your decision is going to look in three decades' time in the most holistic way possible, it's super easy to end up having V8 Redline in Ocean Parade, or worse yet Troll's, especially when there's a mountain of other stakeholders involved who don't respect or get how theme parks (and theme park design and its impact on revenue) work. Worse yet, if those stakeholders don't understand the rationale behind retheming something for the sake of it, why would any board approve major capex spend when it doesn't move the needle during a time when the business is still skating on thin ice? By extension, if you can't roll in a few million to include the park's most popular ride into the new precinct that's happening metres away, will it ever happen? I could go on about this forever but it'd probably bore 99% of enthusiasts here because it's not about the fun stuff we all enjoy talking about - point is, measure twice cut once, and I don't personally see a lot of that in some of these new announcements.
  18. The large fundamental issue with this entire vision outlay is the lack of consideration to the greater area these ideas reside in, which has been an Ardent bug feature for the last two decades. Consider that whilst Rivertown will be absolutely solid if not great, it completely ignores any consideration for Motocoaster. As such, guests will literally see green modern theming juxtaposed against jungle. The same goes for this Ocean Parade splash pad stuff - guests will see, in essence, Tiger Island, ABC Kids & Ocean Parade all butting up against each other. This isn't being OCD about Disneyland sightlines, this is literally like having Troll's in Ocean Parade all over again. Then there's the Dreamworld Flyer - take everything that makes what they're copying from Phantasialand good (the colouring, the fountains, the integration into the greater village space) and strip it down to a concrete pad that visually competes for kinetic and physical presence next to the landmark people see as they walk in. This is juxtaposed again by the Abu Dhabi Airport facade that calls Main Street home. From a revenue-raising perspective, they've got their last three new attractions all within a few seconds walking distance of the entrance, thereby creating multiple choke points early on in the experience and also greatly limiting the opportunity for pass holder revenue to be made during repeat visitation. And let's not talk about how much it'll impact private events, how it'll make any parade or any special show (think Fire Machine) beyond impossible... I could go on.
  19. Speaking of, what's happening there? Is that being amalgamated into Rivertown proper or is that just being left as is?
  20. Rocky Hollow Log Ride Trolls Mick Doohan's Motocoaster Tiger Island
  21. To be clear, the ride vehicles moved to Corroboree, so pretty easy to say the ride moved. The only thing that’s moving is the spirit of the ride. By that logic, if I buy a new road car somehow it’s the same car as the one I had before because they have the same spirit.
  22. This is the bit of the announcement that did look good. I have no idea how they're going to fit this in, and my concern is that the size of this coaster is not going to allow for anything else in there (F&B, retail etc.). Another concern is the price-tag, at $35M, that's more than Steel Taipan, a ride which has largely failed to drive gate to the level they had hoped for. Will lightning strike twice? I dunno, it's another large bet on a coaster - hopefully this time it pays off. I quite like the old school nods, the theming looks solid, again, do we need "storytelling" or do we need solid presentation like what Leviathan is getting? Keen to hear everyone's thoughts. Might be the park’s best new area since Dreamworks in 2012.
  23. Let's be really clear here - there's a lot of fluff there because the reality is you can't realistically reduce the operating or maintenance costs on what is essentially a dropped-in four-stroke petrol engine. The cost to run and maintain that ride is next to nothing, and the amortisation on the parts that do need replacing make the whole ride very affordable from a cash flows perspective. Totally happy to hear that for the reasons Ardent have told @themagician on why they're buying new cars is to keep people more secure and to make some or all of them more accessible. That's fine and worth looking at. But Dreamworld shouldn't also be saying that they're moving the ride, because unless they're digging the concrete out of the ground there's nothing being moved and it's all going to the scrap heap. Which is a shame, because the parts, as mentioned, on those things are genuine, real, brass and steel Model-T Ford parts that have been with the park since the day it opened, and John Longhurst went through a lot of pain and effort to source those parts to create an experience for kids that felt real. And here we are, yet again, with another set of details being lost to time because it's cheaper and easier to chuck it in the bin than preserve what's there. Absolutely agreed here. Being able to push a pedal and pretend to steer is why every young boy at one point or another (myself included) wants to go on these things. Not having that makes it a dud.
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