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If it's got a number on it, we can pretend it's themed! Like honestly - did Disney not teach everyone about studio parks in Paris?

Village will keep pushing the envelope until they hit a tipping point as people have observed previously in the thread. Speaking purely as a customer, I'm really not seeing value this year, and would have given Fright Nights a miss it if I hadn't made plans with other people prior to knowing the offerings for this year. I'm going to Halloween Horror Nights Hollywood and Knott's Scary Farm the week before, ignoring the exchange rate, they are much better value and have unlimited express. What's interesting about Universal in Orlando, is that two parks combined have less capacity than any one of the Disney parks yet they are doing comparable attendance numbers to 3 of their parks if you believe TEA. It's quite striking - Islands of Adventure has 29K capacity and Studios 27K. Disney on the other hand Animal Kingdom and their Studios are 60K a piece, and Epcot is 110K and Magic Kingdom 100K. I guess time will tell with Village. I also see anecdotally on every village post on facebook an avalanche of complaints. And I think a lot of parents just want to keep their kids amused so why not head up the road to a better value option.

I think it is a similar version down here to Universal vs. Disney, only with Dreamworld as Universal and Village as Disney. Universal is trying to create many new rides and improve guest experience to get guests to come back. Disney however, knows no matter how long construction takes on their rides or how good or bad guest experience is, people will still come because of the number of parks and things to do, as well as Disney being more well known. This is why Village still gets more visitors than Dreamworld from my guess. In winter, if an interstate visitor buy a Dreamworld pass they only get Dreamworld and Skypoint, while if they buy a Village pass they get Movie World, Sea World, Wet n Wild and Paradise Country. People would think “Why go to Dreamworld when there is so much to do down the road?” Yes Dreamworld is introducing a Dreamland/Ocean Parade/Rivertown/Flier, but most people won’t go for a kids land/kids rides, I would expect more people to wait for Rivertown. And even then, Village is introducing WoO/Surfrider, so in this case I feel new additions wont matter if both are doing the same thing.

You're absolutely right, but there is a break point. You can't ride that reputation forever because reputations change with each visit, each bad review and negative news story. If you don't live up to your reputation, that cashflow is short lived. We're seeing Universal making gains on the Mouse in Florida at present, while Disney continues to show contempt for their guests - and there is already a notable shift as a result. While a lot smaller, the shift locally is also apparent, albeit starting slowly - purely from my own observations i've seen more people start to give real consideration to visiting dreamworld over village. This could be for many reasons, but one of the biggest has been the focus the park has had on trying to attract visitors to come back to the park post-incident. I think once the Dreamland \ Ocean Parade \ Flyer additions are complete, and you can walk back into a park that isn't shrouded by hoarding everywhere you turn, they're going to really accelerate, and this summer may be their *(long LONG overdue) comeback. I'd love to see a competitive edge on the coast again, like we saw in the mid-2000's. Village are still out in front - but if they keep going the way they are currently, that may not last.

The name is corny; and the animatronic isn't 'world class'. But I think it's great to see something like this at our parks. We rarley see animatronics (it's been over ten years since the last one was installed), but for the target audience it's awesome and it in an impressive animatronic, considering it's in a splash pad. I've always admired Disney/Universal for having interactive characteres (prime example is Donkey at Universal) and wished our parks would follow the same route and they finally have. I know DW have a more anologue approach when it comes to attractions (they generally prefer to have attractions/elements that are simpler in their engineering to ensure reliability, rather than having reliance on screens, animatronics, etc). So this octopus came as a surpirse to me, but a good one, and I hope it is reliable because it already seems very popular with kids. I can imagine the interactive version of the octopus might only be on weekends and holiday periods, but I'm glad it also has an auto option so it's not in a 'sleep' mode. Overall, I think the splash pad will serve it's purpose very well and it's proving very popular, so it will be ticking all the boxes for the park. It's not the prettist splash pad, but it has a lot going for it and fills a gap in the parks lineup. The interactive screen was a good concept, well presented with the rockwork wrapping around it, but with its location due to sun glare has become a poor choice. The rockwork needed to be deeper so it was more something you stand within/under to help reduce the glare; or in a different spot entirly (ie, on the inside walls of the dodgems). I think this area is an overall good expansion for Ocean Parade and adds a lot more value for families. Let's hope the rest of a OP gets an overhaul, with more attractions to fill the large void in the area.

If this isn't a Disney knock off, then my name isn't bob.

Probably a cost thing. Disney used to replace every lightbulb in an install when they reached 50% of their life. It ensured the show was never running sub-standard, but it was both an enormous expense, and an unnecessarily wasteful one. These days you'll see dead bulbs and the like because 'it isn't due' for maintenance. it's more cost effective as the 'damage' to the show is considered to be worth the money they save by only replacing things as they blow. The downside is that if something is working as it should during a maintenance period (and it isn't SCHEDULED to be replaced), it gets ticked off. If it fails 5 days later, it might have to wait until the next time it goes down for refurb... unless it is show-critical.

Its not we hate comparisons, its more that the comparisons need to take all the factors in. On the surface just by giving the price, that seems like a great deal, but factor in the throughput of Disney (the entire park) vs Aussie parks and suddenly you can see Disney can offer a lot more fast passes, so to sell all of them they have a slightly lower price point. MW on the other hand has slower operations and can only offer less passes, so the are able to increase the price, making them more money while still meeting demand. Not saying I like the concept or anything, just business really. Comparisons are great, but don't cherry pick small facts to suit your story. Show the whole picture or its worthless.

I know you guys hate comparing - but the most expensive skip queue that I can think of is Rise of the Resistance ... at Walt Disney World at $USD25 or .. $AUD38. That was just the peak though.. it's usually $AUD31.

Disagree. It was easy to benefit from Fastpass at Disney when it was "free". and how is it a lose-lose if one party gets to bypass a significantly longer queue than the other if they know how to use the app?

Hong Kong Disneyland makes an effort. Not quite as fully catered as it sounds like DLP is, but HK offers Jungle Cruise in three languages. The golden mickeys presentation was done in Mandarin with english subtitles, but the rest of the park's offering was in english, with many on-screen elements subtitled in mandarin \ cantonese. It sounds like DLP is a great non-US option for english speaking disney fans.

Looks like it's changed a lot. We went back in 2014, before Ratatouille. Crush was down for maintenance. We flew from the UK I to Charles de Gaulle and got a TGV to the park entrance (hint - the TGVs are very fast). Had just carry-on luggage so dumped it at the Disney luggage drop place for us to pick up later (we were staying in nearby Val d'Europe) and straight into the parks. Did Studios first, which included Aerosmith, Tower of Terror, Studio Tour and RC Racer. We were done in 2 hours and spent the rest of the day at DLP. At the time there just wasn't enough there.

I visited France back in June and visited a few parks over the course of 3 weeks. Might as well get one of the easier ones out of the way, with Walt Disney Studios. https://www.parkz.com.au/attraction/walt-disney-studios I had a two day pass which was the right amount of time for Disneyland Park / Walt Disney studios. But for the purposes of this TR I'll just go attraction by attraction rather than a recount of both days. Getting to the park is easy, about 40 mins from Central Paris on the RER, then through the security checkpoint into Disney Village and the two parks. When you arrive, the main street is actually a sound stage, with plywood sets forming the shops and restaurants. Crush's Coaster Recommended to start on this one since it draws long queues. I frequently saw it reaching 120 minutes. It was broken down when I arrived, so I hung around for 20 mins and got on as soon as it opened. Really good! An indoor marina themed station (complete with seagulls chanting "mine") leads into a short lift hill, a couple of turns outdoors before heading back into the building. From there are a few dark ride scenes where you are going with the sea turtles to ride the east coast current, a jellyfish field, and finally a lift hill in the hull of a ship with sharks chanting "fish are friends not food". From there it's into a very dark show building with the standard Maurer SC2000 layout, with a few scrims with projected flowing bubbles to simulate riding the current. Much darker inside than scooby. The coaster is zippy and good fun. My only criticisim would be that too many coasters at Disney Paris rely on being in a big dark room with a few effects. Avengers, Crush's and Space Mountain all rely on it, so thats half the coasters. A tip, the single rider queue time lies. I saw it advertised as 50 mins, walked in and there were 3 people waiting, so it was more like 5 mins! Worth using since there is nothing worth seeing in the standby queue. RC Racer Similar comments to the one in HK. I really like these compared to the spinning halfpipes because the beyond vertical spike creates this great sensation where you are floating, but also being forced forward in your seat (much like the beyond vertical drops on GL/Abyss), combined with the launches picking up speed. Again the single rider queue is the way to go. Slinky Dog Zigzag Spin Missed the one in HK so did this because it has a short queue. Most gentle matterhorn ride ever lol, but the theming looks great. Not sure who makes it, but I suspect Intamin because it looked like the cars actually run on Intamin track. The theming is great, with a pile of dog toys on a bowl as a centerpiece. Ratatouille Hmmm, a bit underwhelmed by this one sadly. I love trackless and 3D dark rides, so was really looking foward to this, but it falls a bit flat. The vehicles can spin, but cannot do the full range of motion like you get on rides like Spiderman or Planet of the Apes or the Justice Leauges at Six Flags. You ride in large rat shaped cars that seat 6, and scurry around through the kitchen, being chased by angry kitchen staff, with a mixture of oversized sets (including going under a stove, into a fridge, through the wall cavities), interspersed by scenes in front of giant screens. For some reason I thought that despite the reduced range of motion the vehicles would still maybe scoot around a tiny bit on the spot or rotate a bit from side to side in front of the screens to give a little feeling , but nah you're just parked there in front of a giant screen for 30 seconds watching a giant movie, with things popping off but it feels strange and muted without any movement. The best part probably is the giant sets. A nice touch is when you are under a giant waiters trolley, and as you roll fowards the castors either side of you rotate as well. In this area they had a food festival going, with very permanent looking stands selling food from different regions of France. I tried this cheese and potato thing but it was a bit pungent! Spider-man WEB Adventure Ok, so it wasn't until shortly before I went on this trip I found out they built an Avengers campus at WDS (For some reason I thought it was just Rock n Roller coaster being re themed with other stuff coming later)....Cool, means I don't feel guilty about skipping DCA! This is another 3D dark ride, with vehicles that track the movements of your hands and allow you to shoot webs. Can tell you ahead of time there is nothing special enough to see in the standby queue, so by all means do this with single rider...You still get to see the preshow either way . The ride is themed like an old brick warehouse that used to be "Stark Motors" that has now been taken over by a tech startup called the "World Engineering Brigade" . The preshow is set in a research workhop and uses a few layers of scrims, and has Peter Parker showing you his new spiderbot . The spiderbot is able to mine materials and 3D print it's own replicas, which sounds cool until they start cutting holes in the walls and replicating out of control. That's where you come in to start hunting them down before they replicate into the millions, by blasting them with webs just like spiderman. The ride reminded me of a long lost relative of toy story mania, with large back to back vehicles travelling in front of game screens. The bits in between were probably better themed, and in this case yes they did take advangage of the spinning of the vehicle to get a bit of wild movement between scenes. I've heard this ride bagged out a bit, but I had a great time. The graphics and the gesture tracking was super crisp, and each scene had heaps of ways you could interact with it, eg shoot webs at the spiderbots, or you could fling a web at an oil drum, then sweep your hand a across and cause it to fling across the room and cause a massive explosion. Avengers Flight Force This was a rethemed of Rock n Rollercoaster, with a snazzy, but perhaps sterile queue set in Avengers HQ. Think lots of stainless steel and chamfered panels, like an Apple store without the wood. Simple storyline, some missiles have been sent towards earth by the bad guys, all the other avengers are busy with other missions, so its up to you to help Captain Marvel and Iron Man by flying in a manner that draws the missiles away from earth. There's a really good Iron Man animatronic in the preshow. Another touch I liked is the pulsating lighting tubes throughout the queue that all go haywire from the power surge when the ride launches. The coaster, again, excellent, with flashing red lights on the launch, followed by 3 inversions taken smoothly in the dark, with the odd curved screen with the two heroes shooting beams etc in the battle. The finale is a huge panoramic screen where you see the baddies missiles blown up in a spectacular green explosion, coupled with a cresendo in the music, all at full speed, before finally hitting the brakes. Pym Test Kitchen Forked out for Sit Down Meal for a change. This restaurant was a buffet with novelty food items that were either bigger than smaller than normal. The theming reflected this. Eg for burgers, you could get sliders, or get a slice from a burger the size of a hubcap. There was a bit of scientific mixed in too, eg blue coloured salad dressing, things in test tubes, this really nice lemon dessert that had an crystaline atomic structre pattern on the top etc. 49 EUR, ouch! Tower of Terror This thing is wild. I've done other TOTs in Cali, Florida and Japan but this one has the best most intense ride cycle and its not even close! Right from the first pushback, you are rocketing to the top forcefully. No slow lifting floor by floor, just several sustained ups and downs, all the while a creepy girl at each floor tells you "not to scream, it will only make it worse". I get the feeling Europeans are a bit tougher in terms of thrills, so they get a better cycle as a result. The queue is the same as the others. Gorgeous. Cars Road Trip Urrrgh. This is unashamedly a filler while they build the Frozen area. It was the studio tour, it has been cut short due to construction work in the park, and they kept the catasrophe canyon bit, and stuck it in with this utterly rubbish road trip thing where you look at 3D props of roadside landmarks. Think lame stuff like a giant spanner, billboards, the Tyre-ful Tower. But then the catastrophe canyon bit is ham fisted too becasuse they took the tanker that blows up and put a cars face on it, so you're literally watching a setient tanker getting burned alive with a look of mild concern. Walk on queue said it all. Tapis Volants You know, out of all the Disney rides I've never done one of these Dumbo/Orbiter type things, time to rectify that. It's themed as if Alladin is being filmed as a live action movie. You can move the carpet up and down with a little lever in front of your seat. Supposedly the other lever makes you tilt back and forth, but despite reaching back and trying it did nothing? The viewing area was nice too. Cars Quatres Roues Rallye. Same sort of ride as Patricks Jellyfish Frenzy, a figure 8 motion demolition derby, but with Cars theming. The queue predates cars land, so it's like a mini mish mash of Radiator springs. Despite having two of the rides installed side by side it still must get long queues. Final thoughts The park is pretty good, though a lot smaller than every other Disney Park. The offering is about 1/3 of Disneyland next door. I did appreciate the thrill rides here, probably the most 'intense' lineup of any Disney park. Perhaps what it lacked was strong themed zones. The whole front of the park is this open bitumen area with a lot of plain looking studios and food trucks. The bits around Avengers Campus, Ratatouille and Toy Story felt immersive, but then the rest of the park is a bit mish mash. Perhaps once frozen is finished it will feel a bit more consolidated. At the moment, even the orignal DCA is better! The park seemed popular, with crowds and 30-60 min waits all day. As always, photos are here. https://www.parkz.com.au/search/photos/location/walt-disney-studios

Disney rumours intensify

This new wild mouse would be a great opportunity for highly themed compact coaster along the lines of raging spirits at disney but actually being a good coaster at the same thing Maybe mine cart style in western area at movieworld

"Entertainment precinct" sounds like code for cinemas and some restaurants, maybe a bowling alley. More Downtown Disney than Disneyland.

Power of the brand and low journalistic standards. Disney operates 12 of the 25 most popular theme parks in the world as well people just don't resonate as much with the likes of Lego and Universal. The likes of News.com.au and DailyMail know that if somebody even remotely prominent mentions 'Disney' and 'theme park' in Australia that they've got the perfect article which will shared around social media and forums giving them glorious clicks to feed their family for another week.

Why is it always Disney when people discuss the expansion of the theme park sector in this country, It's exhausting to constantly see new articles about some empty new land that could house a Disney Park. Why is it never just a theme park in general. A well built theme park with good attractions will attract people across the country or even abroad anyhow, I don't see why these "proposed entertainment lands" have to only house a Disney park.

You're more likely to spontaneously combust whilst getting a handshake from Betty White wearing a leopard patterned leotard than Australia getting a Magic Kingdom style Disney park.

I am glad to hear that Energex and council officers now supports the hotel, if it is built that means Village will have 1005 rooms across Sea World Resort and Movie World hotel, not even counting the Paradise Country hotel, which is pretty good. In comparison Shanghai Disney Resort only has 215 more rooms. I am hoping they can make a deal with WB to use their characters in the hotel, even if the hotel has the rake. For example they could theme the kids zone in the hotel to Looney Tunes, and theme some of the restaurants.

I'm curious - i'm sure this is an issue the team behind these effects are aware of, and i'm sure they've explored every possibility for having it trigger early, so i'm sure i'm missing something - but it has me wondering - couldn't there be a separate 'manual' button to trigger this particular effect? Even if it were perhaps on a timer than only allowed it to run a certain time to prevent it being set off too early, or running too long? (I ask because the show elements on space probe weren't connected to the ride system. The operator would trigger the effects by a separate button to dispatch, which is part of the reason the TV countdown was never the same spot - the computer wasn't randomising it, it was just up to when the op triggered it (along with the patch job they did on the drive module that ran slower than the others, causing the timing to be off, but that's another story told too many times already) I had heard the CO2 effect on runaway railway was costing disney a butt-tonne of money - but if it's a specific duration per dispatch, surely some way to trigger it manually isn't out of the question? I'm just curious to understand why this isn't possible - as i'm sure they would if they could?

...So for abour $108 a year, you can get behind the scenes snippets of their new attraction build and other park elements. ...For a few dollars more, you can get hours of behind the scenes at Disney, plus literal years of streaming movies and TV series as well on Disney Plus. ...Don't forget the last construction blog they had for Leviathan just randomly stopped when they topped out the ride and we didn't get any other updates from that blog for the 18+ months between that and opening day

I don’t think it affected it either, but what I think @franky might be saying is Universal wants Dreamworks exclusively at their parks, which means they want all the non-Universal parks to remove Dreamworks, including Dreamworld. Remember the deal was made before Dreamworks was bought by NBCUniversal (land opened in 2012, Dreamworks acquired in 2016). A similar thing happened with Marvel, and all parks (excl. IOA) have removed or are removing the Marvel properties because Disney wants them exclusively at their parks, as well as Simpsons rumoured to being removed in 2028 at USH/USF at the end of the 20 year deal between Universal and Fox (similar scenario here) And that is why I think Dreamworld were forced to go to non-IP/ABC Kids rides, because: Disney/Pixar/Fox rides are mostly at Disney, and will most likely not be going to third-party companies Universal/Illumination/Dreamworks rides are mostly at Universal, and are being removed from third-parties (like with DW) WB/Hanna-Barbera/Looney Tunes as well as Nickelodeon rides are at Village So if you remove them, you basically have only Sony Animation. And even then, 2/3 highest of the grossing franchises (Spider-Verse, Smurfs, Hotel Transylvania) have seperate theme park rights. Add to that Peter Rabbit, Goosebumps, Angry Birds, Emoji Movie and Aardman theme park rights most likely owned by seperate companies, you basically only have Hotel Transylvania, Open Season, Surfs Up and the Netflix films.

I agree, I actually love S&S shot towers, I don’t get that sickly feeling that I do on other towers. It’s got a nice pop of floater air time at the top, and I could honestly probably fall asleep on all of them, even combo towers! I also loved Tower of Terror at Disney World, I even found it more thrilling that any S&S drop tower i’ve been on. I’ve definitely heard of Lex Luthor being much more tame than other shorter Intamin drop towers. I may crank the nerve for a ride as it does look like it has sick views, and when I return to Florida I was going to try and get on Falcon’s Fury because I’m actually really excited for it! It went down before I was able to get on it whilst I was in line for it last time I visited. I think I would find it much less daunting by facing the ground, and not get that gross stomach feeling. Anyways, fingers crossed I have the nerve😵‍💫

The effects are also cheaper imo. No strobe tunnel in Hong Kong, 2nd lift effects are just strobe lights compared to the tunnel on the California version, brake run tunnel looks worse. Load station is smaller and looks a bit odd too. With the Star Wars overlay it looks incomplete and a mish mash of Star Wars & old space mountain, you'd think if it was intended to be permanent they'd go all in on the retheme. You're right on the layout and soundtracks but look into the little details and you see it's the cheap version (their autopia version could fall under this criticism too) which explains why Hong Kong was considered bad in its opening day form. A couple of standouts and it's a good park for someone who hasn't visited a Disney park before (Like myself when I visited) however if you visited Disneyland or WDW beforehand you'd notice these things pretty quickly. As you say Mystic is a fantastic dark ride, easily the best thing there, and a great take on the haunted mansion, it doesn't depend on screens as heavily as modern trackless dark rides (compared to Ratatouille or M&M RR). Grizzly is a great ride that has a great feeling of speed but haven't ridden any of the big thunders yet so can't make a judgement on whether it's better than that. Iron Man is a good alternative to Star Tours but I wasn't particularly impressed by it and it stuck out like a sore thumb in Tomorrowland, haven't gotten to ride the Ant-man space ranger spin redo yet but based on POV's it seems to be a downgrade. Arendelle looks great and although I dislike Iger/Chapek era IP-based projects as much as the next person it has its place and is a necessary addition to drive visitors up as something different from what you can experience in the mainland. Hoping the Avengers e-ticket is eventually built to finish off the marvel corner of tomorrowland which will also give visitors a reason to come as there's nothing marvel at shanghai.