At its annual general meeting, Ardent’s Gary Weiss, who took over as chairman in 2017 promising to revitalise the company which had been devastated by the Dreamworld tragedy in 2016 when four people were killed on a ride, was asked to explain why people had not returned to the Gold Coast theme parks it owns.

It came from activist investor David Kingston who has returned to his long-running battle against the company and calling out Weiss to explain his failure to deliver on his promise.

Kingston said before the tragedy, visitation to Dreamworld and Whitewater World was 2.4 million people.

“In your document associated with your 2017 campaign you specifically cited that you were seeking to restore the 2.4 million visitors. Six or seven years later you are only half that at 1.2 million,” Kingston said.

“That’s the real problem. you are increasing yield and you are doing a number of things ok, but the problem is you are not getting enough people there.

“My question to Gary … given the fixed costs, given the company is still losing money which is a chronic problem (and) the cash deposit is continuing to go down because of the losses … when do you think (you will achieve) the 2.4 million, which is the number you submitted to the market in a detailed list of objectives you had?”

Weis said it was “very difficult to make predictions about the future”.

“When we looked at Ardent and looked at the historical performance of other theme parks around the world where tragedy had occurred the anecdotal data suggested that there would be a reversion back to pre-tragedy attendances over a two to three-year period,” he said.

In between, there was almost three years of Covid restrictions.

The company’s annual report also claimed that in the first quarter of 2024, Dreamworld saw its highest ticket sales since 2017.

“This supports our view that Dreamworld remains on track to return to historical performance, as its park refurbishment and renewable program progressively rolls out,” the report said.