A photo comparison: How’s Dreamworld doing?

After writing Tuesday’s article on how Dreamworld’s not a ghost town, another fun little piece popped up, this time courtesy of Daily Mail. Just to clarify earlier remarks, by no stretch is it normal summer trade for the park in terms of numbers – four of the park’s signature thrill rides remain closed as does the Log Ride and, unsurprisingly, The Thunder River Rapids Ride. Dreamworld’s CEO, Craig Davidson, spoke to FairFax Wednesday and shared “our summer pricing reflects our staged return to full operations” and ultimately “we’re all looking forward to the year ahead.”

In light of this, there’s a great read circulating titled “Dreamworld’s summer of sadness”, which, I admit is very catchy indeed. The article is propped up by a collection of shots that show all manner of emptiness. It’s a cracker.

Again, i’ll state my own bias openly, I love theme parks. It’s a passion of mine. My somewhat embarrassing party trick is telling friends that they can show me a photo of any roller-coaster and i’ll be able to tell you where it is, what it’s called and who made it. Yep, i’m just that cool.

Now i’m not going to run around chasing ambulances all day long – if I tried to have an intelligent conversation with everyone on this planet regarding this topic, i’d never sleep. But I figured, just this once, just because it’s such a classic read, because the article is just so, so… good, that i’d show how the park looked today in comparison to how the park looked in their article, side by side, and let you decide for yourself how the park is doing.

Note: photos above are from the Daily Mail article, photos below are taken today (5th January, 2017) at roughly the same time in the day by reader & blogger Theme Park Girl.

2017-01-05_18-49-10
Main Street? At nearly 5pm when the park traditionally closes outside of summer trading, the park was still packed today.
2017-01-05_18-51-25
Traditionally a quiet area of the park (which is perfect for relaxing and getting a cup of coffee between rides) is busy as people watch the shows in Main Street.
2017-01-05_18-53-00
Both of Wipeout & Tailspin (pictured) were closed at the time the picture below was taken, and yet people are still walking through having a good time. Even funnier, notice the surfboard on Wipeout in Daily Mail’s photo up top? They’ve been gone for weeks now.
2017-01-05_18-54-17
In so many of these situations, it’s a matter of timing. Sometimes not everyone likes to sit in the exact same spot. Notice how the bench is empty in the background on the bottom? Strangely enough, empty benches do happen from time to time.
2017-01-05_18-55-20
For all we know, the photo up top from the Daily Mail could’ve been taken right as the park opened before people started to trickle in. In saying that, The Claw was doing a solid trade today.
2017-01-05_18-57-03
See? Empty. Vacant. Deserted. Doom & gloom.
Get great deals on theme park tickets
Get the best price for 🇦🇺 theme park tickets and support OurWorlds by buying through our affiliate link.
Buy Now
Powered by ExperienceOz