Slick

What this should all tell folks, inclusive of those at Ardent, is that the way forward is to just take the risk and invest appropriately on locations where people want to spend time at and they will come. Suffice to say, this isn't at all rocket science - consumer tastes are evolving and entertainment & leisure is a booming industry right now - if major shopping centres all have quality, diverse multi-million dollar food & bev precincts, then simply not matching that product (which is now the standard) is why an entertainment business won't succeed today, and nothing else. TLDR: Don't be cheap and look at your customers as dollar figures, people see it for it is. Spend the money, invest in your customers and they'll come.

Also, this news is nearly a year old.

The premise for the third movie in a nutshell.

This.

Here's a video I shot earlier in the year that'll give you a glimpse into what a daily routine is like at Tiger Island - Here's the thing - i'd put my name behind Tiger Island - the team there live & breathe those cats, and i've spent enough time back of house there doing film work and whatnot to really vouch for the quality of care they all receive. And that's backed by the fact that they're also the biggest contributor to conserving wild tigers anywhere in the world - seriously, no one gives more shits than the team there. The problem here, at least in my mind, is the same thing that happens when people are faced with the harsh reality of where their meat products come from - turning livestock into tasty steaks has a few real world realities people forget about, just like how there's real world realities in keeping endangered, wild apex animals in captivity for the purposes of conservation, breeding & education. The only way you keep a species that's typically not a pack animal in captivity is by spending a lot of time and attention on ensuring boundaries and checks are established with those animals, and this video that's gone viral is the reality of what happens when large predators want to test those boundaries and checks. Let's be also really clear, there's no punching here, and it's absolutely not like pulling your cat's tail, but people are clearly imposing those ideas onto this situation because the reality is these tigers look just as cute and cuddly as the domesticated counterparts, despite the fact that they'd rip each other and the handlers into shreds given half the chance. The simple reality is, their tails are far, far stronger than your everyday cat, and the studied & documented way to re-enforce large cat behaviour (that's sanctioned by both RSCPA and many zoo-oligical societies) is 100% what these handlers did. Again, saying you can't hit your kids and thus they shouldn't hit the tigers is ludicrous. They're not hitting or punching the tigers for one, they're tapping them on the nose (as do other cats), and let's not forget that unlike your kid, big predators don't understand logic and reason or cause and effect, so the kind of rationale that you can somehow talk to wild animals and they'll listen like your just like your kids is bafflingly out of touch with reality. Guys, they're wild animals, and they are treated as such. You'd make Dreamworld wrong if they didn't and they hurt someone or hurt another tiger. People freaked when a tiger in a Chinese zoo mauled a live animal, something that happens in the wild. Where's the line? You want tigers in the wild but somehow you want the problem of them being poached to magically solve itself? Lemme guess, you want no tigers at all in captivity but don't have an alternative to preserving numbers? This is the best solution we've got, and thanks to Dreamworld & Tiger Island, it bloody works, and their efforts should be applauded, not condemned.

Yeah, let’s put our logic hats on for a second and simply ponder this thought... “how many several hundred kilo wild apex predators respond appropriately or positively to the same behaviour re-inforcers as our domesticated animals?” Itd be a concern if they were punching them all day every day, but that’s not what’s happening here, it’s at best a solid tap on the nose to re-inforce good and bad behaviours. Just because they’re cute and cuddly doesn’t mean they’d have a crack at you given half a chance, and I guarantee you had this person asked instead of trying to create a viral piece, the handlers would share what’s going on (like they do every, single, day.)

It certainly seems like he resigned on his own accord, which is indeed troubling. For those of you that decried @Richard when he wrote a very critical piece of the park earlier in the week and threw reason, fact & logic to the wind, now you know better. I acknowledge I walk a very fine line writing things about Ardent & Dreamworld - I constantly have to juggle my passion for seeing the park do its best with the fact that indeed Ardent does pay me to do commercial work for them - so with that in mind, let me just simply say that I do hope both Ardent & Dreamworld (& indeed specifically the Ardent board) move at great haste now to putting additional energy in to the park because ultimately I would very much like to continue to work for the park for years to come, and i'm personally worried this news couldn't have come a at a worse time.

I think I may have suggested this before, but more communications would be key here. The whole "ohhhh theme park secrets and what's coming soon, ooh ahhh stay tuned ohhhh" was abandoned by most theme parks including Disneyland decades ago. So instead of both the board and the park going "we've got plans and it's all very hush hush", I think given the current state of the park, being super transparent and just being open about safety, current facets of the park and the future in an ongoing conversation with the public is where they should be at.

The placement of this gives me extreme OCD freakout ala Motocoaster. Couldn't whatever they're building be integrated into the Thunderbolt building, giving them more space to do something else without messing up the whole area?

Such a strange placement. :/

The fact of the matter is, we're well over a month into operation and the park still hasn't shot any non-CGI photography to show off their incredible new roller-coaster. My European counterpart takes incredible photos like this when rides open: Yeah, so if those images don't demonstrate how out of touch their marketing strategy in a world of social influencers and digital advertising, I don't know what does. They have one super photoshopped hero image that tells audiences nothing other then "here's how good our art department is at putting faces in a fake train." But I digress... in regards to this train... "GREATEST THEME PARK ATTRACTION" - like, huh, what? How are you conveying anything more then a dreary PR by-line that no one will actually connect with? It's a fucking massive roller-coaster, just call it for what it is and get people's attention already. "Australia's biggest & best roller-coaster" is a basic start & far more interesting as a simple by-line then something over-workshopped like "greatest theme park attraction in Australia." Furthering this, beyond the dregs of radio hosts with little to no actual online following, where's the social engagement? The best has been a dreary vibrating clip of V8 drivers on it that had criminally bad audio and rigging. Like honestly, why is Clark Kirby letting such out of touch and outdated advertising in a totally evolved landscape is kind of beyond me - having white outlines of the roller-coaster on print artwork in a train does nothing for the general public to convey how shit hot this ride is and to me it's just there to service who-ever's job it was to create the graphics in the first place and nothing more. They should take a leaf out of literally any other park globally. They were nine months behind the global industry median average for marketing an attraction of this magnitude. There should've been construction updates, hype videos, public events, competitions, social influence engagement, ERTs - it makes me so resigned and cynical that they botched it so badly that i'd almost draft up a creative brief just to illustrate the point for those who aren't in the industry to understand just how much potential money they've lost. It's no coincidence brands like Kmart have made such a resurgence into Australian culture and consumer mindsets over the last few years, they turfed their marketing departments and ad agencies for teams of folks who get how to engage with their loyalist followings - going so far as to fly admins of Mum-friendly facebook groups to influence hundreds of thousands of other mums. In 2017, that's where you should be starting your efforts as a head of a brand's marketing efforts, not by slapping stickers on freaking trains that have literally no substance or no actual graphics that show how impressive the ride's sheer size is in the flesh. It's just really simple at the end of the day - TVC's by themselves do not work, and resisting digital does and will hurt your brand, and it's hurting all of Village's brands right now. Their main piece of advertising has maybe five seconds of non-CGI vision, so it's no wonder when I travel to Sydney literally no one has any idea of DC Rivals HyperCoaster. None of this shit connects with real people because none of it is even real to start with. It's a waste of space and money, and to be really blunt, the cost to make, print and run that ad-spot on the train could've paid for a creative like myself to shoot that ride for three days and deliver digital content that would be seen by 40x more people.

I'm going to optimistically put it down to just poor timing. It's not like they just hire random engineers for a brief busy period - the combination of quite a number of active new projects that would require differing levels of input from that department (Wipeout, Log Ride, Mine Ride are the key three here) combined with ongoing annual maintenance schedules, combined with a few unknowns they're probably still dealing with from earlier in the year (like Tower of Terror's issues) means those guys probably have more than enough to do now to get the park ready before the busiest time of the year hits. In saying that.... all things considered - this is kind of the perfect time where the park should be offsetting any possible or potential negativity from having five plus rides closed with some real quality communications about ride safety and maintenance programs. Because let's face it, the hard and real truth is that anyone would come off as a real bastard, whether that's mainstream news or folks on social media, if they're openly complaining about rides closed and the response from the park is simply "here's 3 videos that are super transparent and great to watch about just how serious we take your family's safety in 2017 and we're totally not sorry about how anal we are right now about it."

Mate if history serves us well it'll be gaffa-taped poorly to the pumpkin and vibrate through the entire video.

You know what'd be nice? If they put as much effort into promoting a 30+ million dollar roller-coaster as they do two carved pumpkins.

Props to Natalie Wolfe there, that was the least garbagey & unbiased piece i've ever read from NewsCorp - there was some actual journalism and dare I say, research, written into that piece.

Very, very likely the old triple vortex funnels disassembled.

Since this is going to eventually turn into a political conversation anyway, i'm just going to go there now and not in two pages time - right now politically we're very fiscally austere, which is honestly pretty damn foolish given our current foot-hole in the global economy should be more than enough incentive for us to invest in our country's future while the dollar is in a good place. Here's a good starter article on why this kind of fiscal policy is generally frowned upon - we did the polar opposite when the GFC hit and we were one of the least impacted major economies as a result. With this in mind, our government, just like a lot of their constituents, aren't in a place to be forward thinking right now. Instead of embracing public transport, investing in major new industries like renewable energies or enabling rural communities to have the same competitive advantages as their city counterparts through lasting technology like Fibre To The Premises, we're doubling down on building coal mines, trying to retain outdated jobs and industries instead of investing in retraining, and we're cutting corners every where we can to save a buck. With all this said and done, right now we can't even get a tram line through Burleigh Heads without conservative opposition, I doubt any member in parliament is willing to put their name behind what would like "giving land away" unless interested parties come begging and it's a signed, sealed & delivered idea.

Dimmers are pretty cheap.

I'm just amazed this is someone's all time favourite theme park video/photo/article.

I mean, they could just put a few overhead lights in, they're pretty cheap. Also, some theming in the ride. Where's that at?

Yeah so it's either: the subs that are next to the track the joins where the transfer track is.

Old website with old photos of the former park map triggered a rant, tldr.

Just look at the pathway @Reanimated35 mentioned from the fountain to Superman - being photorealistic means it's the colour of the path and thus, very low contrast against the grass. Now that's fine on our bright screens, but in the glary daylight with sunnies on? That's not a useful map. Trying to navigate your way through the exit area of Arkham? Not a useful map there either. Now look at the pathway from Doomsday to Falls, if I was a first timer and I wanted to ride Falls, i'd be looking at the easiest access-way, which looks like the white pathways in the Studios and not the super-hidden path that is actually there from Doomsday to Falls. Not a useful map there. Trying to find the entrance to Green Lantern just by using the map? Not a useful map. Arkham entrance location? Not a useful map. What about defining what's a guest path and what's a back of house path so guests don't get confused or find the easiest route and avoid hitting dead ends? Not a useful map. This goes beyond "well we could just change the sunlight conditions" - it strikes me as a good idea in theory, then someone green-lighted a good idea in theory, and then instead of stopping when it became apparent it wasn't useful, they doubled down and finished it, probably because of the time and resources invested in finishing off something so detailed & visually lush. The reality is, as a map it totally misses the mark. A map should clearly guide people to entrances of attractions and show clear pathways to get to points of interests, and it fails more then it succeeds in both regards. As a pretty thing to look at, it's really great, but that's it. In a web development sense, this is a pretty clear case of being UI-focussed with no consideration for UX. Also, speaking of web development, these kinds of inconsistencies shouldn't exist, especially on your front page. Let's not even start on the fact that their site isn't mobile friendly or disabilities friendly. In 2017, that's about as big of a website faux-pas as it gets - their organic Google rankings would be taking a huge dive because of it, and it's been over a year now since their algorithm was adjusted down rank non-mobile friendly sites and yet these sites still exist, and they'd missing out on millions of views annually as a result. And i wholly expect the park to be really salty about all this being pointed out ala Scooby Doo instead of taking it as constructive feedback from the park's most educated and passionate guests who just want to support the parks in being the best they can be.

Indeed, bless.