Trouble continues to surround the new Sydney water park as a third festival scheduled to take place at Wet’n’Wild this year has been cancelled, following the last-minute cancellation of both the New Year’s Eve festival and and its rescheduled Australia Day event.
Inthemix reports the festival was announced in September last year and was scheduled to take place at Wet’n’Wild in early 2014 but has now been postponed until next year. An anonymous source is quoted as saying the decision to cancel was made in light of bad PR surrounding the cancellation of the NYE event. “We would prefer to be kept completely out of any media relating to the NYE event… Obviously we’re not going ahead after the terrible PR surrounding this one,” said the source.
Up to 9000 partygoers were given just six hours notice that the New Year’s Eve event, which was to feature performances from Will Sparks, Tigerlily, and Yolanda Be Cool had been cancelled because of transport safety concerns. Promoter One Cube Entertainment attempted to reschedule the event for Australia Day but after a massive backlash from punters on social media, was forced to cancel that too and issue a reported $1 million refund to angry ticket-holders.
All parties have been shifting blame for the festival debacle, with Wet’n’Wild’s Managing Director Chris Warhurst claiming the venue was not satisfied with the transport logistics provided by the promotor. While the promotor claimed the venue had demanded a $250,000 venue hire fee four days before the event.
While the reasons for the event’s cancellation remain unclear, Village Roadshow Theme Park (who own the waterpark) spokesman Darrin Davies made it vehemently clear to AAP on Friday that there will be no more events at Wet’n’Wild in the near future. “From our point of view we are not currently entertaining more requests for hiring the venue,” he said.
