OK well I probably won't write a review quite as big as that because it has all the spoilers for the ride. I rode the ride on December 26 (Boxing Day) and was within the first handful of rides for the public. I also rode it today (December 28). I will list the things which I thought were positives and negatives:
Positives:
The ride is a lot of fun and is terrific in comparison to other rides available in Australia.
Once you have removed all of your loose articles, it makes the ride cycle time so much quicker.
The area outside is a nice area for people to sit and watch the ride while they wait for children/friends etc to ride.
There was an enormous amount of staff. If anything, I thought the ride was over staffed because some were standing there with nothing really to do. There was 2 people at the door, 2 people inside loading people to the doors, 4 inside the load, and I think there was between 2-4 at the unload, with less being there today.
Negatives:
As said in the above review, the theming is very good, however the roof really needed to be closed in at least, with some fans or air conditioners. Not only were the public hot but the staff were saturated in sweat, and this really is untidy and unappealing to the public. In an attraction of this nature, surely that could've been addressed a little better.
No queue line entertainment - OK so I am being a bit picky here, but when the ride breaks down, or on busy days, Movie World is generally pretty good in this field, but they have missed this area.
140cm minimum height to ride is of course all they can handle, but I know there will be lots of families turning up with children between 120-140cm who are unable to ride. Not a problem of mine, but I can see it causing problems.
OK I will stop nit picking and really get to my biggest disappointment. On arrival, the staff made sure that everybodies loose articles went into the lockers. The lockers require a payment of $1 and this entitles you to 1 hour of storage. After this one hour expires, you are charged a $6 fee to unlock your items. This is in place to ensure that people don't use this as an all day locker hire thing. That is fine, the main concerns for me with this sytem (although it does reduce load/unload time) are:
1. If the queue is long, or the ride breaks down, there is a strong possibility that your ride will cost you an additional $6, on top of the theoretical $62 you pay to enter the park.
2. (And this is what happened to me) On the first 'public' breakdown of the ride, the staff were encountered with a serious problem which will need some tweaking and re-evaluation. Because I have worked in theme parks in the past, I could give my opinion on other strategies which have worked at other parks. After purchasing a locker and waiting for the ride, it broke down at the launch and we were manually released from the harnesses and exited. At this point in time, the ride operators told us 'you need to line up again at the back of the line because that is the parks' policy." - Bad move.. In any other scenario, I may have accepted that, but if you pay to enter the park and line up, you SHOULD be next in line if the ride breaks down because that isn't counted as a turn, particularly in busy periods. Anyway, what then happened was people complained because in this event, being the first morning of it open, the queue was rather long and there was a strong possibility that after the ride was 'fixed' and operational again, AND after queueing up like we were told to, that our 1hr would expire and we would be required to pay more money just because we were 'unlucky' enough to be on it when it broke down. At this stage I was understanding of the dillemma and could sympathise with the staff because it was teething problems, and they could only do what they were instructed to do, but still, I think this potentially could be a major problem that they could frequently encounter during these holidays and in the future.
Perhaps some of the people who work at Movie World could provide some input on this issue because it is difficult on the operators who are 1. Working in a sweatshop with no fans and 2. Only doing what they are instructed to do.
