Wet'N'Wild New Year's Eve festival: questions over party organisers
Owners of the Wet'n'Wild theme park are facing questions about their decision to hire out the venue to inexperienced outdoor concert promoters for a New Year's Eve festival that was cancelled six hours before it was meant to start.
Village Roadshow Theme Parks have returned all money they received from the event's promoters on the basis that the money be used to refund 8700 ticket holders, who paid between $110 and $200 to attend the party.
Festival organiser One Cube โ who claimed "technical issues" as the reason for the cancellation โ was only incorporated four months ago. It has four Sydney directors - Eric Woo, Ruchita Perera, Nikola Alavanja and Diego Tobar - all of whom have been involved in organising club nights at Sydney venues, like Marquee at the Star casino, but none of whom appears to have put on anything the scale of the New Year's Eve event before.
Woo and Perera are partners in a tour and promotion company, Urban Agent, which faced criticism on social media last year over a Bollywood concert in which they were involved.
A promoter who has worked with them, who did not want to be named, said they were "good club promoters" but were not necessarily experienced with large outdoor events.
In 2013, Urban Agent helped promote tours by the Jacksons and Mariah Carey and were involved in the Bollywood concert Temptation Reloaded. Both the Jacksons and Carey tours were organised prior to Urban Agent's involvement.
Controversy dogged the Temptation Reloaded shows. Some concert-goers in Sydney were disgruntled with late-running performances, ticket prices and promised access to the show's main star, actor Sharukh Khan.
A petition with nearly 200 signatures urged promoters to reimburse ticket buyers while one unhappy customer, Shannel Fannous, who had won an Urban Agent contest to meet the stars, set up a Facebook page warning ticket holders for the later Perth concert about alleged failures of ticket upgrades and quality.
With this background, there have been questions as to why Wet'n'Wild's owners, Village Roadshow Theme Parks, were comfortable hiring the venue to One Cube for such a high-profile night.
Asked what checks had been done on the experience and background of the company, a spokesman for Village Roadshow Theme Parks, Darrin Davies, said that the arrangement had been a "hire only, a venue only" agreement after the park was approached. "We entered into an agreement to hire the venue, under a normal commercial relationship. It was our understanding they have had events of a similar kind in NSW previously," Mr Davies said.
Before the cancellation, Village Roadshow Theme Parks "took to [One Cube] some concerns around production issues and transport issues", Mr Davies said, specifically whether there was sufficient public transport for patrons coming to and leaving the venue.
"Our actions in raising concerns with them about the production and transport issues indicates that certain things weren't being met," he said. "Those [issues] were taken to them and on that basis they pulled the pin on the event."
"the production was fine, transport was sorted" but that in a "tough situation" Wet'n'Wild "made us pay a large sum last week Friday of 250k upfront room hire or event will not go ahead, as well as sign a contract 4days prior event".
The promised refunds have been welcomed by Fair Trading Minister Stuart Ayres, who encouraged ticket holders to claim a refund rather than wait for a mooted but "unlikely" rescheduling of the event.
From Here
So was it Wet n Wild who tried put the organisers over a barrell by demanding money up from just before the event was due or else they'd cancel? And did the organisers call their bluff!
Either way it was a pretty bad PR exercise for either party!
A friend who went to Wet n Wild (not for the NYs Eve event) said it was a rip-off. They had to wait in a long line to get in, their bags were searched and any food confiscated, there were lines for every slide, and a burger cost around $15.
