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For the first time ever, Australia’s number one theme parks, Dreamworld and WhiteWater World, are offering a 12 month Annual World Pass with unlimited entry for just $99 per person. What’s more, there are no block out periods during the holidays. The $99 Annual World Pass offer is also available to all Australian and New Zealand residents. The Annual World Pass provides double the thrills and double the fun in one convenient location – plan your own adventure with more than 45 rides, slides, shows and attractions. Hurry! Tickets available until October 16. From Dreamworld web site. I almost decked out the family but I don't like Dreamworld cutting the discounts that come with the pass. •Annual membership benefits of Max Action, Aqua Max, Platinum World Pass do not apply. Another note I like the ad for the Giant Drop in the man up campaign. http://www.dreamworld.com.au/content/drw_2...-6-Thrill-Rides

Edited by skeetafly
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Hmmm, I thought this might happen eventually, but i didnt think they would cut it that far, perhaps offer a discounted platinum world pass. Even more interesting is that the pass has no blackouts, is vaild 12 months after purchase and available to ALL residents of Australia and New Zealand. Id image that this coming summer their wont be room to move in the park Interesting to see how Dreamworld is really ramping up the marketing machine, perhaps the profit fall while WVTP was increasing profits was the kick up the ass the park needed. HOPEFULLY this will lead to more attractions, however i fear that the $99 pass will influence more pay per go attractions And yes, the new ad campaign is rather good.

Edited by tolly1804
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$99 seems so incredibly cheap for 2 parks for a whole year. Didn't a standard World Pass used to cost more than that? This concerns me slightly as the CEO of Macquarie Leisure said recently that Dreamworld doesn't have a policy of cutting prices and they won't do it even if their competitors are. They must be really feeling the heat from Warner Village to suddenly completely change tact like this. I'm a bit annoyed at Warner Village for starting these price wars... it doesn't help anyone! How about focusing on the quality of offerings rather than slashing prices. Hopefully this is just a temporary move by the parks until the economy really starts to pick up again

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They must be really feeling the heat from Warner Village to suddenly completely change tact like this. I'm a bit annoyed at Warner Village for starting these price wars... it doesn't help anyone! How about focusing on the quality of offerings rather than slashing prices. Hopefully this is just a temporary move by the parks until the economy really starts to pick up again
  1. And so they should. They can't offer an inferior product at twice the price, and expect people to keep pouring through the gates when the competitor is doing it better or cheaper or both!
  2. Warner Village starts a price war? Maybe so, but one could draw the line to say DW started it by constructing WWW? They established an offering in direct competition with another of WV's parks, and WV fought back with cost cutting?
  3. Focussing on the quality of offerings - rather than slashing prices? There are very few businesses that survive with that mentality. The problem is - it is the consumer that has driven down the pricing, and therefore the quality of the product suffers as well. Don't believe me? How many people do you know that say to a salesperson - in any retail store "is that your best price?" Every business out there now has a price matching policy - from bunnings to officeworks, "if you find a cheaper advertised price elsewhere, we'll beat it by XX% . It is the consumer's fault, nobody else's.
  4. As to being temporary - the problem is, if it works, it will stay. so unless these pricing discounts result in poor attendance, poor feedback etc, it will continue. And it won't change straight away either - there will always be a hesitation - should we change it now, or wait a bit more and see if it gets better? - no, this kind of thing is going to go on long after the economy turns around. (and thats only if it isn't already pointing in the right direction, because as I have said before, GFC isn't the all consuming financial monster that the media would have us believe.
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I bit interesting to see what they wrote on their facebook announcement "What’s more, there are no block out periods during the holidays like our friends down the road and it's valid for a full 12 months. The $99 Annual World Pass offer is also available to all Australian and New Zealand residents not just us Queenslanders."

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Well you guys seem to think it is a positive for the parks to be getting into price wars. Let me tell you in the long run all it does is hurt the businesses. There is a difference between the odd sale or special offer for marketing reasons and an all out price war. What do you think might happen next? If it goes on Village will come back with a cheaper price and then DW has to come back with yet another cheaper price. This seriously hurts the parks margins and means they become less profitable. If the park is less profitable there is less money to spend on new rides and refurbishments. I can't see the positives in that

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I think your forgetting probably at least 80% of the parks ticket profits come from tourists who wont be buying these passes. Your acting like these parks survive off local visitors and nothing else but in reality they could ban the locals and probably still make a profit. All these passes are doing is probably increasing profits by increasing the amount of locals who are now visiting when they probably wouldn't without the passes.

Edited by Scott.
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They can't offer an inferior product at twice the price, and expect people to keep pouring through the gates when the competitor is doing it better or cheaper or both!
Isn't that WWWs buisness model? Offering an inferior product at a higher price (Well, slightly higher)....It's no coincidence now the novelty factor of the place has worn off that the majority of their attendance is from world pass guests.
Focussing on the quality of offerings - rather than slashing prices? There are very few businesses that survive with that mentality. The problem is - it is the consumer that has driven down the pricing, and therefore the quality of the product suffers as well.
That may be the case in the retail industry (Obviously what you are basing your example on), but if what you were saying was really true across the board then eating out would only be fast food places and there would be no market for fancy restaurants, we'd only stay at Hotel Formule 1s and not at resorts, luxury car brands would not have a place in the market, only cheap buzzboxes, in LA Six Flags would be the most popular park, not the higher quality Disney and Universal parks, there would only be budget airlines and not full service airlines etc etc. Edited by Gazza
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I think your forgetting probably at least 80% of the parks ticket profits come from tourists who wont be buying these passes. Your acting like these parks survive off local visitors and nothing else but in reality they could ban the locals and probably still make a profit. All these passes are doing is probably increasing profits by increasing the amount of locals who are now visiting when they probably wouldn't without the passes.
Totally wrong. You only have to look through Macquarie Leisure's annual financial statements to see that a large proportion of attendance comes from the local domestic market. Due to the population growth in Queensland this is the segment of attendance that has continued to grow. Overseas visitors account for very little of the total figure. Take away the local market and revenue would drop massively. Anyway, I guess I would expect most users on here to be excited about discount passes as a large number of you will probably take up the offer. However it is a well known fact that on-going price wars damage businesses. I'm not totally opposed to Dreamworld responding to market conditions appropriately and I will be interested to see how this plays out. I'm just surprised considering it was only very recently that the CEO of Macquarie Leisure said Dreamworld wouldn't be discounting
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Just for interests sake I decided to have a look at the cost of a SoCal residents annual pass with blackout dates for both Disney parks. The cost 194 USD (or 224 AUD) They also offer an unrestricted pass for non residents, and that is 429 USD (or 496 AUD) So to sum up the residents one is 45% of the cost of the 'premium' one. Dreamworld is offering theirs for $99. By comparison the 2 year platinum world pass is 267 for two years, or $133.50 a year. So to sum this one up, the discount one is 75% of the cost of the 'premium' one. And to conclude, Disney actually discount more deeply than Ardent Leisure. But I didn't stop there. Parques Reunidos offer a pass that gets you into Parque Warner Madrid, Bobbejaanland, Tussenfryd, Mirabilandia, Bonbonland, plus a few others for 87 EUR, or 146 EUR. Cedar Fair offer a pass for their 11 US dry parks and 6 water parks for 160 USD (185 AUD) which works out to something cheap like 11 AUD/park (By comparison, its still $33 a park with the WVTP Qld VIP passes) I could probably go and find more examples (One thing that struck me is that all the places seem to have a field to put in a zip code for local resident pricing...has this ever been historically offered here?) I guess the point is that we do have quite expensive theme park admission here (And the margins of the Ardent parks seem to reflect this), and furthermore annual passes seem to only ever have been marketed to diehards who really like the place and are willing to throw down 2.2 days worth of admission for the privilege, rather than something for 'everyone' as a general form of entertainment. Again, I think this is a case of something being a standard overseas for a while, but supposedly really shocking and unacceptable for the Australian market. Now granted, I think they should have held off on the Q150 pass until well after the peak, and let the momentum of the new attraction marketing (Where it existed) push things more, but still I think there is room for this sort pricing on a more permanent basis. What I'd really like to see is for them to stop doing ad-hock deals, and just set up a 'grid' of permanently availabe annual passes where you pick the number of parks you want and amount of benefits you want, and give them all proper names (To me it is an oxymoron to call it a 'VIP' pass when it has blackout dates) If you did this, then the opportunity for up selling arises. Advertise the $99 dealies on TV since they are simplest, but then when they get to the website it could be like "Hey if we pay $20 more we can get the gold version of the pass and get into Halloween...lets get that!" I think this post is long enough. Edit: I'll put this in for fun. But I was at Coomera last Wednesday....When none of your ticket booths are open at either park, and all admissions are being done through guest relations, you know you are doing badly.

Edited by Gazza
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That may be the case in the retail industry (Obviously what you are basing your example on), but if what you were saying was really true across the board then eating out would only be fast food places and there would be no market for fancy restaurants, we'd only stay at Hotel Formule 1s and not at resorts, luxury car brands would not have a place in the market, only cheap buzzboxes, in LA Six Flags would be the most popular park, not the higher quality Disney and Universal parks, there would only be budget airlines and not full service airlines etc etc.
Sorry Gazza, but you're still wrong there. Luxury hotels advertise their specials, standby rates, and leftover rooms on wotif.com or readyrooms etc. Luxury cars still have price reductions and sales blitzes. I didn't say there weren't some such examples - and your point about the quality theme parks is one such example that came to mind when I wrote that. However no consumer is going to spend more on something if they can get it someplace else for less. You cannot get the disney experience at Six Flags. It's not just the quality, it's the overall experience. Much as I hate to say it, DW and MW are very similar in experience, that it really does come down to bang for your buck. I once had a client that wanted me to match a price advertised on a product in PERTH (this was in Sydney). The difference? $40. The reason? it was manufactured in Perth. Like I was going to discount it hoping that they wouldn't shell out $200 on an airline ticket to buy something $40 cheaper... but that is the mentality out there, and the consumer rules in the end. If the consumers don't pay, then the supplier either drops the price, or goes bust. Eventually, a low price will sell anything, hence why ebay has so many $1 NR auctions. Consumer rule isn't the only rule, but it's one of the bigguns.
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Sorry Gazza, but you're still wrong there. Luxury hotels advertise their specials, standby rates, and leftover rooms on wotif.com or readyrooms etc. Luxury cars still have price reductions and sales blitzes.
No, but my initial point was that you said
Focussing on the quality of offerings - rather than slashing prices? There are very few businesses that survive with that mentality.
As if to say the only way to survive in the market was to be a no frills price beater ("if you find a cheaper advertised price elsewhere, we'll beat it by XX%") like Bunnings or whatever, and that is simply not true. Granted, premium products will have price cuts every now and then, but the over-riding business stratergy is still to focus on overall quality, and offer "something more to some", rather than the focus being on meeting a particular price point. The problem is that you are confusing the product being sold versus the setting it is being sold in, and that is why you keep using the example of price matching. Obviously if you after one particular thing then you will just go with whoever is cheapest, because the 'niceness' of a shop, or the personality of the employees counts for little if the outcome is no different (Eg when I got an iPod, I just got it from the cheapest place since the quality of the thing I took home would not vary store to store) But if you are talking about the quality of the product being sold, then it changes the situation entirely, because with most products you have producers that try to appeal to different market segments, and you'll always have higher end producers that don't normally discount because demand is driven not by price, but by quality.... Edited by Gazza
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I never said "the only way". I said very few business survive with that mentality. There is going to be an exception or two in any industry who do it differently, and make it work for them. One such company was one I used to work for, who advertised "XXXXXX won't be beaten on price" absolutely everywhere. But the minute an issue with the pricing came up (the major products did not have a price tag), the sales staff were trained to sell "the XXXXXX difference", which included many additional extras that the other guys couldn't offer. Having said that, if the customer walked because they were choosing the cheaper price, the salesperson would still knock the price down, sometimes keeping the extras thrown in, to get the sale and stop it walking out the door. Convenience is another issue as well. Gazza you said you bought an iPod - let's throw back to the days when Apple had price control across all their stockists - would you have bought from the same "fast food" style store? That isn't a straight yes or no - it depends - was there a closer store that stocked it? Easier to get to? Better staff service? Less popular therefore less busy, and therefore quicker to get served? Better returns policy in case something goes wrong? There are some exceptions to what I am saying, but the examples you used of cars, theme parks and hotels doesn't work - because they are industries that get quite competitive, and WILL fiddle the pricing, either on request, or each time their competitor does. No Gazza, I don't think i'm confusing anything. When I referred to the Disney experience, I wasn't talking just about the additional efforts on theming and special detailed touches, that makes the "setting" better, just that you pay a premium for Disney because Disney is a completely different product to Six Flags. It's as simple as the difference between a FUN park and a THEME park. Six Flags is a FUN park. Sure, they theme things reasonably, but nothing is cohesive throughout the park (except the local wildlife and trees). You can't confuse those two products because it's like having a roast chicken versus a roast turkey - there are similarities on first inspection, but very little as your carve further. As to MW and DW, at the moment, the product offering is similar. They both have things for kids, things for teens and adrenalin junkies, and things for adults, parents and the young at heart. There used to be an easy difference between the two parks, but that border is becoming less distinct, and this is why the price wars are going on with them - because people will go to whichever park is cheapest, to get relatively the same experience. Now some would say that since DW is offering something better (eg: no blackouts and 12 months from day of purchase rather than a set expiry), however the issue is that they have made this decision AFTER the consumers have made their purchases at the other guy's gate. And those consumers made that decision because MW was the cheapest offering. It was also a special offer which created an urgency about the purchase. Now that DW is making this offering, I can see some people purchasing both, others purchasing this one who for whatever reason do view DW over MW, but for the most part, a lot of VIP holders will say "we've already got the VIP pass, we don't need another one". Gazza, I think we may need to agree to disagree.

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As to MW and DW, at the moment, the product offering is similar. They both have things for kids, things for teens and adrenalin junkies, and things for adults, parents and the young at heart. There used to be an easy difference between the two parks, but that border is becoming less distinct, and this is why the price wars are going on with them - because people will go to whichever park is cheapest, to get relatively the same experience.
But if one park decided to offer a more 'Disney' experience, then it might not need to discount.
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This is true, however, the whole thing behind a Disney experience was that the creativity behind it wasn't limited by budgets and shareholders when it was first established. This was the dream from the get-go, the way business was done, and so they're unlikely to change now, and if they do, they'll quickly change back. The same applies for these two groups in Aus. They didn't start out with the dream that Walt did. Like everything else, it was started as an ideal way to make money, and the Shareholders aren't about to sit on an investment that won't make money for 10 years while it gets it's dream realised. They'll dump the stock so fast that the banks will drop them too, and without money, they can't very well build the dream. Stagger it, you say? Sure, but in the meantime, you have to raise prices to compensate for your increased expenditure, and without a full-park offering of quality, people will vote with their wallets for the sake of one attraction, and again, you're back to square one. Most people would say that a higher gate price for a better attraction would be ok - but consider this for a moment: Hypothetically, MW contracts to build Australia's first B&M. It's going to be a world first, unique, one of a kind, never before seen in the world design that will blow your mind. It will be entirely disneyfied - themed to the enth degree with an immersive storyline. Cost is US$100M (So let's just arguably adjust for foreign exchange and say AU$150M for round figures. This is based on the cost of Everest, for example) With an average AU$10M cost per annual "Aussie E-ticket" attraction, thats 15 years at current gate prices before we'd need another. If we're going to make the whole park like that.......? Never happen - couldn't happen. Simple as that.

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