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Slick

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Everything posted by Slick

  1. Given the media's fascination with ride maintenance, when you go that route you end up with stuff like this: Better to not give folks a chance to make a meal out of whatever widget it is, and infer to a degree. Intelligent folks will get it anyway.
  2. The key difference is that Disney is large enough to self-insure their parks division. Therefore, the company can make different decisions on their appetite for risk compared to almost the entire industry which relies on a third party for insurance. There are also other factors - Walt Disney World's local government is essentially operated entirely by The Walt Disney Company (definitely helps with litigation and regulation hurdles). Also, many if not all of their rides are designed to avoid huge pops of airtime and extreme, sudden changes of motion, which results in loose articles staying within ride vehicles. Even the Disney coasters I have been on that go inverted still didn't have enough negative g-force to pull my bag away from the train. Only Jet Rescue and Superman have this issue and with the latter, there are huge components of the ride where the train comes within centimetres of guests' heads outside. Whilst sitting in a hot queue for half an hour and being forced to talk to people you're riding with kind of sucks, it's not the worst thing ever. Could be easily improved with something more interesting on the tellies.
  3. Ahhh, so the time a loader should be spent loading? What if someone queues, assumes it's free and doesn't have any cash or card on them because they left it with a friend? Do they leave the queue and queue twice? What if someone is unsure of the transaction process or what they're buying and want to know more information? Does the loader tell them to just leave the queue because they only have 20 seconds? What happens if there's a situation that requires more care from the loader pre-boarding like someone with additional needs or a height issue? Do you sacrifice takt time for an entire load of guests to process those transactions or do you forfeit the revenue for that cycle because it'll create a ripple effect to the overall hourly capacity demands? From an operations design perspective, there are way too many points of potential friction to even consider the idea.
  4. There's a bit of irony in bemoaning everything Australian parks do that inhibit efficiency and then suggesting that ride-ops should also handle payment processing during a load. 🥴
  5. I'll go a little bit off-topic here for just a smidge more. It's less about having a dual approach and more about having a clear strategy with a prominent hook for news and media to pick up and a well-executed customer journey/funnel that understands the audience and the platform they're communicating in. TLDR; you can walk and chew gum.
  6. Yeah agreed. Then you throw some record-breaking attendance and it's a recipe for disappointment for sure. Full disclosure - I get marketing/comms is not everyone's cup of tea so feel free to skip reading the next bit. Yeah, that's an interesting case for sure. I think their last big announcement was a little bit too much information - there was a fair few different art styles shown and it all felt a bit too hodge podge for my liking. Cool for enthusiasts to nerd over, but not clear and succinct enough for the mass market to ultimately adopt the message Dreamworld is wanting folks to adopt. I think I've been barking on about comms since at least 2015, maybe earlier, and how Disney and others have pivoted from a "smoke and mirrors" approach to a wholly transparent approach. @Naazon touched on this as I was writing this post - I look at all of this through a weird hybrid lens of hospitality and storytelling. Whatever's communicated should be engaging, clear and have a degree of certainty, all of which leaves readers/guests with a sense of excitement and anticipation for what they'll get to experience. Perhaps most importantly though is that when communicating anything, be it any kind of storytelling content, is that you treat the audience with respect. When you do that and something goes wrong, folks are generally far more accepting when you treat them as though they're the intelligent, reasonable people they are. If you look at everything the parks do through that lens, then date changes on a website with no more information (Leviathan) could be perceived as feeling a bit contemptuous. In regards to Scooby, the date change happened in the middle of the night so will be keen to see if anything more is said to soften the blow. "Ruh-roh! We've had to extend Scooby Doo's closure by a few more months. Here's why. It goes without saying that safety is our highest priority. Our intention is to offer the kind of iconic, world-class experiences guests know, love and come to expect from our park, and Scooby Doo: Spooky Coaster is no exception. We understand that people love this ride, and we do too! We also don't close rides unless we absolutely have to, and in the case of Scooby Doo, we made the hard decision to close this beloved ride earlier than expected to allow us more time for us and our international partners to do the work it needs to live on for decades to come. And whilst we do everything we can to get attractions out from maintenance and down-time as quick as possible, the reality is that supply chain shortages caused by the COVID-19 pandemic still impact the speed in which our guests expect us to re-open rides. The up-shot of this is that we will have the time needed to properly refurbish Scooby Doo back to a standard better than when it first opened - with newer special effects and storytelling that will leave you wanting to re-ride over, and over, and over again. It's all part of our masterplan to continue to make Warner Bros. Movie World the country's #1 theme park - in the coming months, we'll continue to show you some of the behind the scenes that will make Scooby Doo even more incredible, plus exciting information on new attractions that will give guests even more to do while we refurbish the rides you love." Yeah, something like that.
  7. I've maintained that throwing Surf Rider in there would cap off a perfect attraction mix for a nuclear family. The kid's stuff is covered, the family group stuff is covered and with Leviathan and Vortex, they've got some great teen thrill rides to complement Storm and Jet Rescue. But is it enough to get a teenager enthused about going for a full day with their family? My gut says maybe juuuuust, but the second one of those rides goes down for maintenance it's not enough. with Surf Rider, that mix is basically up there with the likes of Dreamworld and Movie World. In any case, the stark reality is that demand is at an all-time high at Movie World, and any way to give people more to do and eat up pax without going through the same supply chain delays everything else is suffering is a major win, so I totally get the move.
  8. It's been "rumoured to get moved" for longer than the ride's been open to be fair - so much so that the official unofficial word is that it was always destined to go to Sea World, but there was a last-minute plan change. Internally the joke was always "I'll believe it when I see it." Could you speak further on the considerable loss of capacity? For whatever reason, it's really unfortunate. My gut says it was going to be a mid to late 2024 opening and they're being cautious because they've already chewed up the slack in the project timeline. Would love to see some more transparency about this from the park in the form of a blog post or something - people are far more reasonable when you can communicate the reasoning instead of defaulting to smoke and mirrors.
  9. I too often thought that the biggest let down to Superman Escape as a ride is that both the helix area and the courtyard are incredibly visually unappealing. I'm totally okay with white sheds (it's a movie park, totally buy that) but to go from Main Street with its beautiful fountain area that's adorned with immaculate garden-beds and manicured landscaping to a drab smoker's area and a few basic pathways left me feeling wanting more. The pathway to Lethal Weapon back in its day from Main Street had some real charm, Wild West Falls still has a great deal of charm, Superman Escape though has always had real Six Flags vibes from the outside. If finally putting the ride in this area gives the park the justification to beautify both rides in one hit and make this a pleasant area to be in then i'm super all for it.
  10. FYI a zero car is only a zero car if it has a wheel assembly underneath.
  11. If you continue down that rabbit hole, fundamentally all flat rides are just differently shaped spinny things.
  12. I never made that connection until today - is it a weird subtle dig at Leviathan you reckon?
  13. 100% - can't argue with that. It would be weird not to theme it DC at that point. And if it ends up going down that way, here's hoping the colours remain bright and bold and a stark contrast to Superman so that it's visually distinguishable in spite of the similar track design. Still think it should go to Sea World though, it would compliment the existing attraction mix perfectly.
  14. Place your bets now - numbers 1 to 4 is Movie World, 5 to 7 is Sea World. I'm hoping it'll end up at Vikings (7) or Wild West Falls (4).
  15. I'm just begging it won't be another DC-themed something or rather crammed in at the front of the park.
  16. Context is key. I didn't say they don't care about thrill rides, which is what @New display name is inferring. In fact I've said the opposite - when replying to @Guest 239 I mentioned that parks like Dreamworld need a mix of attractions, because if they don't attendance dips, and pointed out that Sea World did exactly this. What I said was that post-incident public sentiment was risk-averse about the park, and rightfully so, but it isn't the sole factor, which is what old mate is trying imbue on my end. In fact, as myself and others have pointed out, Buzzsaw in particular was sold when the 10-year mandatory major rehab came due. I'm absolutely sure someone did the maths and decided that a bunch of factors (including ridership and ongoing costs) didn't stack up under the current strategy. Meanwhile, with Giant Drop, could you imagine if they closed that too? It'd be the final straw for many, and so in spite of present low ridership, I'm sure they realised it's worth the long-term effort. That strikes me as a sound call as well if the intention is to eventually sell the park. Also doesn't hurt that the depreciation rates the ATO provides specifically for The Giant Drop are pretty great and would do a lot more to help cashflow than doubling down on a 10-year rehab.
  17. As someone who was on the coal face for a long time and was a part of the team that saw guest feedback first hand I can sleep soundly knowing you’re wrong on this one. Even despite that fact, how is it nonsense? Would rather you articulate a post of value instead of flinging mud.
  18. General public sentiment was unequivocally "if they died on the mild ride, I'm 100% not going on the much scarier rides which look and feel far more dangerous."
  19. Yeah it's definitely shuffling deck chairs around and thus not worthy of praise, but it's still a nice area nonetheless that really didn't need much change to begin with.
  20. Oh so many reasons why Steel Taipan hasn't been the success they wished it was. Firstly, in answer to your question - the general sentiment shared seems to be that it's not as scary as Giant Drop or Rivals (height plays a factor psychologically for most people, which checks out) and most people don't have a fine-tuned awareness on where everything is in a park (especially when there are no indicators in that area to suggest that's where the ride or incident was) so you can logically conclude it's not intensity or placement. I've openly shared in previous posts that had the pandemic not happened the park would've returned to profitability in 2020 (the 2020 HY release hints at this). It's because strategically the only way is up - if you close attractions and don't replace or expand, austerity will inevitably kill any amusement park. Ergo, constant capex is the only strategy to maintain profitability and why 18 months of nothing post-incident did no favours for Dreamworld's return to profitability efforts. Dreamworld's marketing & strategic efforts understood the grim reality the organisation faced and knew it had to double down, or else the gap between Ardent and Village market share would continue to increase, hence the "Biggest Pass" campaign and the 50M spend. Then the pandemic happened and the park changed strategy and comms. Ignoring the inevitable long-term macro-economic forces at play and Village's tripling down on capital expenditure, the new park strategy was about contraction both physically and fiscally in a new play to remain viable post-pandemic. Does a 30M+ capital project still make sense with a park that's trying to count pennies? Absolutely not, but at that point with all the hype garnered and pieces on site it would've been worse to not build than to simply crack on. So we've got a park with a coaster that doesn't make sense with it's current strategy that hopes to capitalise off the same magic Rivals had in bumping Movie World's attendance, revenue and reputation, but without the marketing budget, notable IP attachment or landmark differentiation that were major antecedents in accelerating Rivals' flywheel to success. Then the park has it's 40th, and instead of spending every penny on getting Steel Taipan out there, it splits the budget on marketing both it's birthday and the park's biggest ever investment, during a time where every dollar is being scraped. This is also at a park that has (at least in the general public's mind) a reputation for closing many beloved thrill rides and has nothing fresh beyond what people already know from their last visit, which is important when you considered the following: Iif you're an interstate nuclear family itching to travel to the Gold Coast for a holiday after the pandemic and you want to have the best theme park experience possible, do you risk your 5-10k holiday on saving a few hundred bucks on theme park passes and go with the smaller, contracted, shell of its former self Dreamworld that has one new ride, or just get the more expensive passes that appear to have "heaps of parks" and "stuff to do?" Well, the proof is in the pudding, and people voted with their wallets on whether or not Dreamworld Light was a good idea or not, which is why the park is now course-correcting again with announcements on similar sized projects to Steel Taipan. Really the question is if Sky Voyager landed with a thud, and Steel Taipan didn't generate the revenue they were after, is three times a charm? Also, not sure where you got that the park is shifting towards a family-oriented experience. You could at best assume that's the case given their recent announcements, but as always, correlation does not equal causation. They've clearly identified that their attractions mix is still severely lacking and this is their best attempt at fixing that. But make no mistake, hyper-regional parks like Dreamworld languish when they hyper-focus on one market segment and ignore all others. You can do that for a marketing campaign, but not at the strategic level. Sea World is a great example of how it plays out - when you don't give everyone in a family group something fun to do, they go somewhere else, which is precisely why they built Atlantis.
  21. Here's the reality - there was nothing wrong with the coaster. Because if there was, it would've been scrapped instead of sold, and instead of thriving with very minimal downtime, it would've had the same kind of opening that Leviathan had. Buzzsaw's issue was that people didn't want to do thrill rides that seemed psychologically scary right after the incident. This continues to be the park's problem and why Giant Drop has had minimal ridership post-incident. It also doesn't help that Buzzsaw's position was essentially metres from the incident. The nail in the coffin was that the ride needed some ten-year maintenance (read: major work) at a time when the park's management thought that the only way out of their pandemic-exasperated fiscal woes was to contract the park's cost-base by any means necessary. Was it necessary? Prior to the government intervention/funding, maybe. But the on-flow effect of transforming the park from "The Biggest in Australia" to the opposite of that in 2023 is that demand for the Village offering has soared while Dreamworld's demand hasn't kept pace with general market demand.
  22. You're right, doing so would be hiss-terical. Luckily they've never made a mistake like this before.
  23. Yiiiiiiiiiiikes. Trademarking a porn star's name was one thing, and then naming your kid's land after an abandoned Disney knock-off theme park is another, but now we've got snake killer the ride. With Dreamworld's history (not to mention it's also part zoo with a strong conservation message attached to it), I wouldn't touch any word or theme remotely close to the idea of death or killing animals/people/things with a 395-foot freshly painted steel pole. Looking forward to all the stans who will inevitably try and justify such an obviously bad name.
  24. So why do you reckon they did it if there wasn't a real reason?
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