Slick

Exactly - the LED lights on the top of the tower, as in, the top few metres. If the intent is to light up the tower to be visible at night from far away then you just need to light up the top. Problem solved. If the solution is to have your brand (or word) visible in its entirety to the most amount of people for the longest duration possible, it's the west side of the tower (which is why it's been that way for decades). Because it was going to cost a fair bit of money to remove. Also, artworks are always subjective and public art generally always has detractors. Having said that, I think there's a pretty unanimous opinion out there that this piece of art is poorly executed.

Isn't the whole purpose to build awareness to folks driving by? And by popping it on the south-side of the tower, only 50% of their audience see it. (And in before anyone says "everyone driving by knows what Dreamworld is" - if that were the case then Apple, Samsung, Nike, Microsoft etc. etc. wouldn't spend a dollar on advertising.)

Define FIRM - is that when the project's earned value exceeds a particular milestone? Or is it when every single risk is eliminated? Or is it just some risks that can be easily mitigated? (And in the case of Aussie World, is WorkSafe requests defined as an unforeseen risk? Or should they have budgeted those delays into the slack of their project and have a FIRM date built upon that?) What if a shipping container goes missing that was 100% FIRM to arrive six months in in to the project and would take 18 months to re-deliver because of global supply shortages? Do you account for that potential risk? What if that shipping container had arrived and it had the train in it, and because every single part was here and looked to be in order you felt as though it was FIRM enough in the project timeline to announce a date, but then there was an unforeseen issue with the train and it would take six months to remedy because of the speed of shipping from the US to AU? I think what i'm trying to demonstrate is that there's no such thing as FIRM for any engineering project, especially with our current mix of global influences constraining supply as @Naazon touched on.

Cheers for the post - had no idea he had a second long-form channel.

I've been thinking about this a bit this morning - let's say you wanted to design a queue that did away with the need for a sorter/loader like Rivals/Taipan. How would you incorporate a fastpass ticket into that flow automatically? The only way I can think of doing it is to have the fast-pass tickets come in a dedicated queue and have a station operator stop several air-gates from opening to allow the FastPass people into those seats (not ideal).

Cheers. 🍻 What side do we think the new "DREAMWORLD" letters will go on the tower?

I can appreciate the want for it to be a black and white issue, and I think from a comms background perspective the reality is the situation is much more nuanced/shades of grey. Hypothetically, let's say the Easter to September delay was caused by shipping. When looking at the project's new timeline, how much slack in the timeline do you decide is enough slack to negate the potential fallout risk from the date being pushed back further by the potential of further shipping delays? At what % of risk do you maybe consider that the likelihood of further delays means you keep the updated communications to a minimum to avoid continued brand damage because perceptually it might look like your brand is incompetent? And adding to that, what's the actual objective from a comms perspective - is it to be as honest and transparent as possible because on a personal level that's the moral thing to do, or is it actually to sell tickets? And if the latter is the guiding star, doesn't being honest above all else become misaligned with the group's greater goals if there are unavoidable, external factors you can't mitigate that are causing brand damage?

Not if they're only allowed to run them from dawn to dusk. (Perhaps they meant from dusk to dawn aka night time?)

I totally missed that, good catch. Considering the investment costs to make it work I think you'd just be better off painting the letters white and calling it a day. For 90% the visual impact and at 10% the cost, you could light it from the bottom of the tower with proper fixtures and probably be able to run the lights at night, too. Also, from all directions of the Gold Coast? It's on one side of the tower, there's at least 180 degrees of direction that isn't visible. 😆

It's not an ideal situation to be in - on one hand, folks might be more understandable if there was a degree of transparency whenever they push the date back. On the other hand, you might frustrate more people by bringing the topic up at this point. It's a bit of a PR catch 22. The enthusiast part of me says to bench on a summer opening.

Not sure why they spent resources on developing a new logo for a refurbishment when the previous logo was far, far better. 🤷🏼‍♂️ The glowing logo is a nice touch - might’ve made more sense to illuminate the engine room too given that it’s the thing you can see from furtherest away (maybe they’ll do both?) PS: Dreamworld Marketing team, the link doesn’t work. You're welcome.

FYI, Dreamworld’s site has changed after @Retardentmade their post. This morning This arvo

What is that based upon? 🤔

You'd hope not, it's a got giant rip down the side.

Good to see both sides of the highway making good use of these forums to leverage their fan’s insights to improve their parks. 🍻

"BP Coomera Refurbishment 2022" Thread: - "Preparations are underway at BP for the refurb of the petrol pumps. Machinery has started to arrive and they have poured an extra slab to assist with the works." - "This is why plain white concrete has no place at a BP. Stencil it. colour it. Paint it. Do exposed aggregate wash. Or use bitumen... ugh." - "Some snaps of BP today!" Riveting. 😄

Haha, perhaps for clarity, I think enjoying a fresh paint job is up there with many classic “manly” stereotypes (like enjoying a freshly mowed lawn or looking at pressure washing porn) but then there’s also travelling out of my way to the local BP, taking photos of the daily progress, and posting the content online to “petrol stationz”. 😄 In that regard theme parks are quite unique.

Often I kind of think that tracking paint-jobs is a bit whacky, partly because it'd be seen as mental if anyone had that same level of enthusiasm for their local Bunnings getting a paint-job. That said, I must admit this will be really interesting from an execution standpoint. Sounds like they're making a custom rig to get around the entire circumference of the tower which will be cool to see play out. Doubly so for how they actually get the track off the tower and if it's using the same custom rig. This is also worth a mention, came up in another thread but it's worth mentioning here too: This is Steel Taipan's current operating hours. With that in mind, will be interesting to see how much these works impact the pathway to Giant Drop that neighbours Steel Taipan. Does that also mean work will only happen in the mornings? (Might explain the extended period it's down for). I'm also placing some bets that the "TOWER OF TERROR" letters will be painted over - pretty sure they're welded in place from the factory.

Apologies mate, made some additions to my post while you were writing that post. To be fair, they're a publicly listed company with a leadership board well known to their most fanatic customers so it wouldn’t be unusual to use names within certain contexts. Speaking in broad strokes, leadership (specifically C-suite) have legal responsibilities here in Australia to ensure stakeholder interests are upheld. To that end, furthering my Facebook analogy from above, i'd be posting the same thoughts about a marketing company that refused to put ads on Facebook because a leader got their knickers in a knot over a negative post on Facebook. In any case - I think it's fair to talk about any theme park that reduces their hours of their flagship ride in its first year of operation.

Are you suggesting that you know that Richard's editorials have personally burnt Dreamworld's current leadership? News to me if so. The alternative is that you're assuming Dreamworld's management aren't tech-savvy enough to distinguish Parkz from the forums' members, which is akin to thinking that Facebook's members represent Facebook the company (which is pretty mental).

Why?

Dreamworld's whole vibe these days seems to be "Parkz: can't live with them, can't live without them!"

And people were rightfully critical of Movie World for it, as folks should be equally critical/curious about why this is the case.

I wonder if we'll see Sea World's trains make an appearance? https://www.9news.com.au/national/iconic-big-banana-train-and-gold-coasts-monorail-to-be-sold-at-auction/

Cheers for the update. I wonder what those new cables are for?