Are people becoming afraid of having fun?
A accident that killed four people on a ride at Dreamworld on Australia’s Gold Coast has reportedly led to a decline in the number of theme park visitors.
Attendances at other parks in the region have been “inconsistent” since the tragedy, according to the owner of Dreamworld competitors Sea World, Movie World and Wet n Wild.
Village Roadshow’s share price has been hit along with that of Ardent Lesiure, the owner of Dreamworld, where four people died on the Thunder River Rapids ride in late October.
While incidents at amusement parks tend to hit the headlines, they are relatively rare.
And with the Christmas season approaching, the first set of Australian school holidays beginning this weekend, and increasing interest from the Chinese tourist market, numbers at the Gold Coast parks are expected to recover soon.
The Thunder River Rapids ride is being dismantled, and guest safety has been named as a priority at Dreamworld, which is yet to reopen, as it is at the other parks.
Update: a group of people were trapped for half an hour when the Green Lantern roller coaster at Movie World, near Dreamworld, stalled. Channel 7 News reported that the attraction had only just passed a softy audit. Nobody was injured.
