Theme Park Nut News Update - 19th January 2016

Let's get straight into some Disney news this week!

This week Disney announced that Bob Weis is taking over as the new President of Walt Disney Imagineering. He brings great credentials to the role having overseen the redevelopment of Disney California Adventure, and been involved with the development of Tokyo DisneySea.

In a completely unrelated piece of news, Kylo Ren is going to Disneyland! Seems like the thing to do after you *spoiler deleted*. As with most Disney changes at the moment, I'm happy for new, as long as it doesn't effect the old. As long as I can still get a photo with Darth, Kylo can be can-caning in the parade for all I care.

In a surprise to almost no one, the Lights, Motor, Action stunt show has been announced as closing in April. While this was never a hugely popular attraction, it's death is more to do with the position of it's real estate, and the coming Star Wars invasion than anything else. The Orlando Sentinel is also saying that the Earful Tower and the Honey, I Shrunk the Kids Movie Set Adventure, are also on the shopping block. I'm sad for the Honey, I Shrunk the Kids attraction, although I did think it was inevitable. It's only hope was being saved by some kind of Toy Story retheme. Still Star Wars is good!

Theme Park Insider had a good follow up to the news we wrote about last week, of Efteling's up coming dark ride Symbolica: Palace of Fantasy. This give a few more details on this genuinely exciting development in the Netherlands.

Very sad Australian Theme Park news this week as one of Dreamworld's first Tiger Cubs Sultan died, at the age of 17. Sultan was the largest Tiger at Dreamworld, at 200 kilograms, and was one of 4 cubs born at Dreamworld in 1998. The 4 were dubbed the Awesome Pawesome (Sultan, Taj, Rama and Sita), and were very big news for the park in the late nineties. Two of the Tigers, Rama and Sita still reside at Dreamworld.

Finally, Australian theme park site Parkz has added a trio of posts this week, updating us on the status of all 3 of the major Gold Coast parks: Dreamworld, Movie World and Sea World. The highlight for me of these posts, as strange as it sounds was the shots of the newly refurbished ice cream parlour at Dreamworld. That has always been a special place for me, so I'm excited that it is looking so fantastic for a change!


For more Theme Park coverage, follow me on Twitter @themeparknut. Until next time, Cheers!

Theme Park Nut News Update - 13th January 2016

January is a traditionally quiet time for theme parks. U.S. parks come out of their Christmas/New Years rush, just as Australian parks are hitting their mid-summer school holiday peak. But this year, there is no stop to the action! So let's get into this week's Theme Park Nut News Update!

Let's start in China, where the opening date of Shanghai Disneyland has been announced! First guests will be seeing the park on June 16 2016. Which means that we have just over 6 months to wait for a peak at Disney's newest park. I for one am excited for June 17th, which will no doubt be the day that the first on-ride video for the new Pirates of the Caribbean ride will be uploaded to YouTube.

In the original Disneyland, we got a glimpse at the future of the Rivers of America in the same week, that they closed the Rivers to start construction of Star Wars land. What a coincidence! I do love how beautiful but vague Disney continues to make their concept art! At DCA, we had to wave goodbye to (arguably) the most popular theme park show of all time, as "Disney's Aladdin: A Musical Spectacular" closed this week. This makes me sad, as everything I have read or seen of the show has been insanely positive, and yet I'll never see it (unless they bring it back somewhere at WDW!!). I understand though, DCA needed room for yet ANOTHER Frozen show.

In Orlando, Sea World topped off what is going to be (at least for a little while) the tallest coaster in the area, Mako. This B&M Hypercoaster peaks at just on 200 feet tall, and Sea World is desparately hoping that it's completion will boost attendance at this struggling park.

In the Netherlands, Efteling has give us a few more details on their epic dark ride for 2017. Symbolica: Palace of Fantasy will be a trackless dark ride where riders choose 1 of 3 potential paths, each with interactive elements. This ride sounds like it will be amazing!

At home, we have a couple of little bits and pieces going on as well. Technically not a theme park, but I'll give it a run here anyway, Wet 'n' Wild is bringing back Dive in Movies. This one-off definitely sounds like a trial of the event, to see if bringing them back would be viable. But regardless, the Lego Movie is an awesome choice, so I hope lots of people turn up! At Dreamworld, the twin girl tiger cubs have been named: Akasha and Adira. This week they also met their older brother Kai, and took their first steps onto Tiger Island. So flipping cute!!

For more Theme Park coverage, follow me on Twitter @themeparknut. Until next time, Cheers!

Theme Park Nut News Update - 5th January 2016

Happy new year! Welcome to another exciting year of Theme Park News coverage on Theme Park Nut. I've been a bit slack, and I haven't yet posted up my 2015 Yearly Round up. But hopefully I'll get time to finish that over the next few days. In the meantime, here is a news update for the last week of 2015 and the first week of 2016!

Before I get onto the few titbits of Theme Park news, I got to say something about the mammoth opening of Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Disney's Christmas Blockbuster is shattering box office records, which is set to be the highest grossing film in the U.S. (ahead of Avatar) within 3 weeks of being released. It is likely to become the 3rd highest grossing film world wide in roughly the same timeframe, with only Titanic and Avatar ahead of it. It is not certain that it will over come Avatar in world wide gross, but it will certain come close.

There are cash registers ringing in every part of the Disney organisation, and our appetite has now been wet for Star Wars Land which has been announced for Disneyland in Anahiem and Disney's Hollywood Studio in Florida. As such Theme Park Insider has given us a 4-part series on the upcoming land, and what Disney has to live up with constructing the Star Wars Land (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4). It's a good read, particularly if you are a Star Wars nerd like I am!

At Universal Hollywood, the park has quiet rolled out dynamic pricing for their single day tickets. The change has been entertained and tested by both Disney and Universal in the past couple of years. The idea is that the park will be able to make the quieter days cheaper for individual ticket holders, with the hope that the tourists will gravitate to the cheaper days, and even out the crowds. The change comes ahead of the park opening of WWoHP this year, which will likely draw massive crowds to the park.

Over at Disney World, there was a stampede with reportedly 15 people injured at Disney Springs, as panic set in when a rumour started that their had been gunshots in one of the restaurants. The irony is the panic that their were no gunshots, and the original disturbance was a 70 year old man taking a swing at a restaurant manager after he had waited a long time for his food.

At Dreamworld on the Gold Coast, Boxing Day marked the opening of the Hot Wheels SideWinder, a re-theme of the Cyclone roller coaster. Parkz.com.au took the re-opening as a chance to give a bit of a history lesson of the roller coaster, which is an interesting read for those that don't know the back story. You can see some images of the make over in the Parkz Forums. Overall, the feedback seems to be that the ride is a lot smoother with the new trains, which is a great thing!

Since we are starting off 2016 this week, it's appropriate to have a look at Theme Park Insider's Top 10 Most Anticipated Openings for 2016.  There are a couple of big hitters on the list, particular the WWoHP in Universal Hollywood. There is never a quiet year in Theme Parks!!


For more Theme Park coverage, follow me on Twitter @themeparknut. Until next time, Cheers!

Movie World White Christmas - Quick Review

This is my 100th post for this blog!! How exciting, and what a good way to celebrate by doing a review of White Christmas!


Last Friday night, my family and I went to the White Christmas event at WB Movie World on the Gold Coast. This event has been running now for a number of years, and has become a wonderful family addition to this park's event roster to balance out Australia's most popular Halloween Event (Fright Nights).

We have been to previous years White Christmas, and this years even lived up to the previous ones that we have experienced. It was a great experience, however there are a couple of things that could still be improved for the event as a whole.

Firstly, I was glad to see that the stands had disappeared from the main square, which made for a much more open event. The addition of the Fairy Garden in the main square was nice, but I must admit that I expected more from this from the advertising/website.

As usual Santa's area and the Parade were fantastically themed, and the lights were very beautiful. The light show itself was pretty much the same as the previous one, if I remember correctly, but that isn't a big deal.

The biggest problem that I had for the night was the noise. The main street sound was just booming from when the event started until when it ended. It was genuinely to loud for my 3 year old to cope with, and we had to watch the parade and lights away from the main street. I totally expect it to be loud, but it doesn't need to be deafening like Fright Nights. This is a very different target market, and I think they would do better by just turning it down a little bit.

The only other major complaint that we had was that the Carousel was closed for maintenance. I understand that this might have been out of Movie World's control, but if there is ever a time that you want that ride running, this is the time. Still it helped having the Junior Driving School open, with some Christmas lights inside it, as my daughter really enjoyed that!

We didn't partake in the Christmas Buffet, but I did hear that the food there was excellent. We went for the burgers from Gotham, which had very long queues (again can't really be helped) but the food quality was really high! My advice would be not to plan to eat in the park during the event if you can avoid it (which is hard with kids, I know). It is such a short event, it is a shame to queue for 45 minutes for food in a 3 hour event.

Apart from eating before or after the event, the other major tips I would give, is to park at the back of the car park, as close to the exit as possible. We did, and got out in a few minutes, while I'm sure some people would have taken an hour to get out. The other big tip, is to get there early. They were letting people with White Christmas tickets into the park (with wristbands) from about 4-4:30, and you can fit a couple of rides in before they actually close the park, and confine you to the roped off area for White Christmas.

Overall the event itself worked great, and was very enjoyable!! Kudos to Movie World for doing a great job with this event!

Theme Park Nut News Update - 22nd December 2015

It's been a quiet week this week, for the second last week in December, so let's get into this weeks Theme Park News Update!

On the local front, Movie World has re-opened the Green Lantern coaster. This coaster has been closed for nearly 9 months after a near catastrophic accident in March where one train derailed, and nearly flipped off the track. We were able to check out the newly opened coaster last Friday, running in all it's glory, when we went to the White Christmas event (which I'll write up a quick review for shortly).

In international news, this week marked the addition of metal detectors to Walt Disney World, Universal Orlando and Sea World. It is unclear at this time whether the co-ordinated action by the parks was related to some kind of threat, but it isn't particularly surprising. Universal Orlando has been trialling detectors at their parks in various guises and for specific events for some time. This is sadly inevitable, but if it makes the millions of tourists visiting these parks and the staff who operate them safer, then I am all for it.

At WDW, the new Skipper Canteen restaurant opened this week. This Jungle Cruise inspired table service restaurant has opened on the Adventureland Verandah space, and is the first connection to the Society of Explorers and Adventurers in a U.S. Disney Theme Park.

Over on I-Drive, approval has been given to build a 425 foot tall Star Flyer. This attraction will be not far away from the Orlando Eye which opened this year on I-Drive, and construction is expected to start next year.

On ThemeParkInsider.com today an interesting article has been posted today about the future of Knott's Berry Farm. In it Robert discusses the prospect of Knott's upcoming attractions helping it to get back to it's roots as a family park, rather than the "hard-iron" style park that it had been turning into. While this is all speculation, it is definitely interesting to consider, considering the evolution plan that Universal Hollywood has worked through in the last couple of years, and the revamp of DCA. This is a very tight market, with some very heavy hitters, so it's always interesting to keep an eye on what Knott's is up too!

While this isn't really a theme park, I think this is just a great story, so I think I would add this in this week. A Serbian-born Australian, who runs a recycling shop in Canberra called the Green Shed, has been working on a Amusement Park in the small town of Batocina in Serbia. Tiny, as he is known, has been working on a hedge maze, skate park, jumping pillows and a putt putt course. The area that he is building in has 75% unemployment, and very low standard of living, and his hope is that this little park will stimulate the local economy and create at least 50 jobs. What a great guy who has built a successful life over here, but what's to give something back to the community he came from!

For more Theme Park coverage, follow me on Twitter @themeparknut. Until next time, Cheers!

Theme Park Nut News Update - 13th December 2015

I missed last weeks update, so here is a double Theme Park Nut News Update!

The big news from the last two week is from Orlando where we found out that the Skyplex development was approved, but more importantly we found out why Universal was against it! It turns out Universal has an option to buy 474 acres south of Universal Orlando Resort. Overcoming the transportation difficulties, this would make a great space for a third gate, although there would be a blood big pole coaster just across the road. Should be interesting to watch this development over the next couple of years.

On the other coast, we heard last week that Universal Studios Hollywood will be opening their Wizarding World of Harry Potter on the 7th of April. This WWoHP is an almost clone of the original WWoHP in Island's of Adventure in Universal Orlando, except that there will not be a Duelling Dragons coaster, and the Hollywood version of the Forbidden Journey ride will be in 3D (as it is in Japan).

Staying in the U.S., we had Legoland California last week give us a sneak peak of their upcoming attractions, as well as lighting their (seriously awesome) Lego Christmas Tree.

In Paris, Disney has announced a major refurbishment of 10 popular attractions in the next two years. This is good news for this resort, which has been on a well documented attendance slide for the past couple of years. Hopefully this injection will bring new life into the Disneyland Paris Resort.

Earlier in the year we reported that a plan had been proposed to build a non-Universal Universal park in Okinawa. It looks as though the purchase of the USJ Company by Comcast, the owner of Universal, may have squashed that prospect, but it appears that Okinawa has not given up on getting a major theme park to use this space. Last week we saw it reported that they were approaching the Oriental Land Company to build on this land. OLC are the local company responsible building and operation of the Tokyo Disney Resort, however there is no indication of whether Disney would be involved in building the park that is being discussed.


At home, we saw a tiny glimpse of the new Motorsport area that is forming the basis for the re-theme of the Cyclone coaster at Dreamworld (to open on Boxing Day), as well as few details on the new Rider Express system that is replacing the Q4U system. At Movie World, the Green Lantern ride is still not running, although they have claimed this will be running again before Christmas. They have however had their first White Christmas event for the year! We have also had a little bit more detail leak out about the big developments at Movie World, as outlined in this article on Parkz.com.au.

We also found out about the secret improvement that Aussie World was teasing in their recent emails, they have introduced Annual Passes. At $90 for the pass, this equates to about 2.5 days at normal rates, which isn't bad value if you live in the local area. This does however compare badly with the Gold Coast parks, who offer Annual Passes/Memberships at around the cost of 1.5 days.

For more Theme Park coverage, follow me on Twitter @themeparknut. Until next time, Cheers!

Theme Park Nut News Update - 1st December 2015

Just  a quick update this week, as there hasn't been a lot happening in Theme Parks for the start of December.

The big news on the Australian Theme Park front is there is definitely something big happening at Movie World. A number of planning applications have been submitted in the last few weeks which appears to indicate that more than just one attraction may be on the way to this Gold Coast park. It will be interesting to see in the next few months if we get an official announcement of what they are up too, and when we are going to see it!
We have also seen this week that the re-theme of Cyclone Roller coaster at Dreamworld, into the Hot Wheels Side Winder is going to officially open on Boxing Day.

In other theme park news, there has been some news out of WDW this week, where the Lumberjack show in Epcot's Canada pavilion has ended. The show was only a recent replacement for the rock group Off Kilter that performed in that pavilion for a long time. There hasn't been any indication of if there will be a replacement in the near future.

Over at Universal Hollywood, they have announced the dates for their Grinchmas Christmas event. This years event will have to work around the construction of the Wizarding World of Harry Potter which is opening next spring. Theme Park Insider has posted a feature this week about the Zonko's Joke Shop at the upcoming Wizarding World this week.

At Universal Orlando, they have also extended the run of Beetlejuice's Graveyard Review into January.  Beetlejuice yet again proving to be hard to kill.

Finally over at Europa Park in Germany, it has been reported that they are planning a new kiddie coaster for 2016. No reports on the theme for this new ride, but hopefully further news will be coming in the next few months.


For more Theme Park coverage, follow me on Twitter @themeparknut. Until next time, Cheers!