Slick

I'd actually really love to see something like this happen. It'd beat Dreamworld to the punch with any potential Giant Drop refurb plans. The only concern there would be capacity - losing those four seats might be enough to kill the idea before it gets off the ground. Just going to rant for a second - Arkham's closed. It's 100% confirmed by park social media teams. Can they hurry up and rip the signs down and put a presser out to make it ultra clear to guests? It's so contemptuous to expect paying customers to invest heavily into their comms strategy (social media posts, newsletter and their app), but on the other hand are making permanently shuttered attractions look "closed for maintenance." If they want customer buy-in, some respect across the board for guests is in order.

Let's all remember that guest services are generally the last folks to know what's going on. Capex speculation is also just that, speculation, and it'd be crazy to use the four most turbulent years in industry history as a benchmark for spending. BGH Capital have openly stated their focus is investing in the parks so it wouldn't surprise me to see a major cash injection at all parks in the coming few years.

Park Life goes alright - Michael Croaker's a great interviewer but it's still a bit too safe. I'd kill to hear what a day in life of Shane Philips or Bikash is like on top of their path to their current role. Do these managers and execs get up at 5am? What's their routine like most days? What's the biggest obstacle they've had to overcome? What's been their darkest day? What did they learn from that? What do most days look like? What's the best part and most trying part of that day? etc. etc.

My understanding is that there was a proof of concept version made quite a few years back which had a Time Traveller style carriage attached to an existing Blue Fire train: And then Mack made the first production model and attached it again to their Blue Fire train for testing before sending it to Dreamworld:

One hopes the train station is being replaced and they're not planning on just parking the tractor in the station full-time when it re-opens.

Looks bloody great. Is Jamberoo the country's best looking water park?

Not to completely derail the topic, but this 32m model seems to be their biggest. Is this what we're getting?

Digging up an old thread to bring you all this: https://www.realestatesource.com.au/qic-sells-northern-gold-coast-town-centre-site/ "Queensland Investment Corporation has sold the balance of the Coomera Town Centre site to a partnership comprising Keylin Group and Kinstone Developments. The 47.73 hectare tract, 64 Foxwell Road, will exchange for c$30 million."

I'm keen to try them out (like you said, at least once). Smart move on Dreamworld to include them not only as a point of difference but as a nice little revenue raiser. Having said that, i'd be keen to see how Rivals' backwards seats have faired in terms of meeting expectations with revenue. Methinks some off-peak/peak pricing for these kind of novelty seats will do well.

Leviathan for sure. The view of Sea World from across the broad-water is genuinely exciting again, and I think it'll be both a real fun ride while also being incredibly unique. Big Dipper is also going to be exciting in it's own way. So many folks (myself included) have suggested for years that something like a Raptor-style coaster would absolutely kill it at LPS, so to have that dream turn into reality is pretty awesome too. Steel Taipan... there's so many pros and cons to this project that I feel like Homer with the Frogurt... Dreamworld finally getting it's first genuinely great full circuit coaster! Yay! But it replaces an entire themed land with (based off the tender files on Parkz) arguably meh theming and no real concious long-term view of how that will integrate into the rest of the park's flow management (let alone how it integrates with Buzzsaw). Yikes! But, people say these Blue Fire clones kick arse! Yay! But, with the triple launch feature, they're not shortening the now un-necessarily long launch section, which really mucks up the pacing of the ride as a whole. Yikes! But, we're finally getting something comparable to Rivals! Yay! But, will it be too similar in the public's eyes? And is it too little too late, and has there been to much closed and SBNO that the penny may drop come December that the coaster is simply not enough to turn Ardent's fortunes around and have they finally burnt out the last remaining goodwill they had with the public? Yikes!

Something Queensland Rail and Movie World have in common.

Agreed. Back when Rivals was overdue to be announced (that was sub-3 months prior to opening, yikes) I did some research on what the general trend was for announcing a ride of similar size: Valravn - 8 months Mako - 14 months Karnan - 18 months Cannibal - 10 months Fury 325 - 7 months Skyrush - 9 months Shambhala - 7 months Leviathan - 10 months Wild Eagle - 7 months Intimidator 305 - 8 months Intimidator - 7 months Diamondback - 8 month Putting all that together, that means most coasters are announced officially 9.4 months (mean average) or 8 months (median) prior to opening. When you compare that to construction timelines it's easy enough then to apply this rule for announcements - unless you've got shit in the ground it's not worth mentioning. Conversely, if you don't have anyone covering construction, like enthusiasts in-house content creators or PR, you're throwing away millions of dollars in potential free marketing. Food for thought.

2010 called - they want their meme back.

Dreamworld's Annual Pass in 2004 was roughly $160 and adjusting for inflation that's $227 in today's money. And yet, the most expensive annual pass to Dreamworld in 2021 is $179. Now that's ignoring a myriad of variables that contribute to the reasoning of that price, all of which i'll ignore because this is a thread about the app, but tldr; the price GC parks charge is definitely not right and is a big contributor to why things everything theme parks continue to be so "meh". Well that's a little wee oxymoron isn't it? Jokes aside, the bit you're referencing is really more UI (design) and less UX (experience) - geofencing park information so you can't see what rides are down like what @cthulhus_lawyer said is super, super user hostile and i'm sure would tick off many folks trying to plan a family day out - that's terrible UX.

@Brad2912 chill bro. 🍻 Welcome to the forums @cthulhus_lawyer - I think @webslave perfectly encapsulated what I wanted to say - so many UX choices at every level aren’t made with the guest in mind - both company’s maps are a perfect example of it. Village would benefit from two things - a culture change and more money. The fact that Adventure World, a single Perth theme park sells season passes that are more expensive then Village’s passes to four parks says a lot. In regards to culture, where Disney has the “you can never say no” rule for cast members, it feels as though Village has a “try and find a way to say no” rule for its team. Better, clearer processes for staff that aren’t guest antagonistic (thus not making employees’ lives dreadful to enforce) would be a good start.

Absolutely not. People have been made redundant, attraction pipelines have been delayed for three of the country's biggest parks and there's still been massive revenue issues given the lack of international & interstate tourism. To say anything else is just trying to make a causation from correlation, which is the equivalent of suggesting that vaccines cause autism.

As @joz mentioned it was a footbridge that started just before Hollywood House, went over the railway, turned right, and went down into Rocky Hollow. It was superseded when Giant Drop opened because it wasn’t wheelchair friendly and The Sanderson Group thought they could do a better job. 😂 I don’t have enough fingers and toes to count the amount of times I’ve heard someone say they’ll eventually fix spaghetti junction. 🤷🏼‍♂️

Yikes.

Yeah I didn't get that. Why use the billboard to advertise something people can see almost at the same angle from the highway which was purpose built to be seen from the highway to begin with?

That's a good call. Dreamworld's doing the right thing and managing guest expectations there to make sure they're not turning away hundreds of kids a day who waited in line for a chance to see Bluey. I'm hoping they still keep a few slots open each day (like Apple do) to make sure some walk-ins and unexpected booking mis-haps and whatnot can still be accommodated.

It'd be better if it wasn't.

Presuming they're going to avoid cutting off road access to back of house, in which case, i'd bet money guests will enter the space between "the roller-coaster" and "the concrete that was flowrider".

The very reason why I have a career is founded on the fact that I create content for audiences. If you don't understand what your audience wants, you fail. 🤷🏻‍♂️ LPS recently announced a coaster. It got global attention because they dropped the POV. The most successful coaster videos online are POV's. The data is irrefutable. It's not just enthusiasts. Real world people don't care about "x-brand's journey", they care about how it matters to their "journey." LPS got more attention with a smaller budget and with less glitz and glam simply by being more transparent and more authentic in their comms. They didn't say "it'll be the world's super duper mega best ever precinct" they just let the product do the talking, and it worked. Fundamentally, this is why this video didn't work. It focusses far too much on the Atlantis brand and not enough on why it matters to their guests. This'd totally work if it was an IP that people already resonated with, like anything DC or WB, but it doesn't work for fresh brands unless you throw wads of cash at it. That's Vimeo today. Short, inconsistently posted videos kill a channel's chances at ever getting love by YouTube's algorithm. This is why both Dreamworld and VRTP have bugger all subs. If you want to build an audience that is invested in what you do and share what you do, you need to first give them a reason to be invested, and being a big brand isn't a good enough reason anymore and hasn't been for five years now. Again, if you don't make stuff that matters to that channel's audience, it won't succeed. Even video ratios, video lengths, etc. etc. all matter. All good, some people love it and that's great. The criticism isn't to deride Village - there's some brilliant people at both Village at Dreamworld. Like any discussion here we all ultimately want the same thing - for our parks to be their best. As I mentioned, Village are definitely improving, other bits of content they've done recently have been bloody bang on, and overall it's been an order of magnitude better than the Rivals campaign.

How am I off the mark?

If that’s not a euphemism I dunno what is. 🤷🏼‍♂️