Village Roadshow Theme Parks Pay Rates 2026: Movie World, Sea World & Wet'n'Wild Pay

Village Roadshow Theme Parks runs Warner Bros. Movie World, Sea World, Wet'n'Wild and Paradise Country on the Gold Coast — one of the biggest young, casual workforces in Queensland. The award floor is the Amusement, Events and Recreation Award 2020 (MA000080), which covers ride operators, admissions and ticketing, food and retail outlets inside the parks, lifeguards, character performers and grounds crews.

Sitting above it is the Village Roadshow Theme Parks – Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance Enterprise Agreement 2025–2028, approved by the Fair Work Commission in October 2025 with a nominal expiry of 30 June 2028. The agreement sets the actual park rates and must leave you better off overall than the award — the figures below are the legal floor it has to beat.

Adult minimum hourly rates under MA000080 from 1 July 2026:

Source: Fair Work Commission modern awards pay database, rates operative from 1 July 2026. Grade 1 sits exactly at the National Minimum Wage ($26.44) and is an entry grade — operating a ride, running a register alone or supervising a slide belongs higher up the ladder.

Most park crew are under 21, and the award prices age directly. The junior ladder is a percentage of the adult rate for your grade — under 17 pays 55%, 17-year-olds 65%, 18-year-olds 75% and 19-year-olds 85%. From 1 July 2026, per hour (permanent rates):

Source: Fair Work Commission modern awards pay database (the award's own junior rate rows). The ladder stops at 19 — from your 20th birthday you're on the full adult rate. Casuals add 25% to every junior figure: a casual 18-year-old at Grade 1 is $24.79/hr. Two checks matter most: your rate must step up from the first pay period after each birthday, and your grade must match your actual duties — a 17-year-old operating a ride is doing Grade 3 work at 65%, not Grade 1 work.

Theme parks earn their money on weekends, school holidays and public holidays, and the award prices those hours. For permanent staff on the award floor:

• Saturday: 125% — $33.85/hr at Grade 2
• Sunday: 150% — $40.62/hr at Grade 2
• Public holiday: 250% — $67.70/hr at Grade 2
• Overtime: 150% for the first two hours, 200% after

The enterprise agreement restructures some of this into its own penalty tables — which is allowed, provided the package leaves you better off overall than the award for the hours you actually work. A summer of Sundays and public holidays is exactly the roster where that test bites. Price a specific shift with our penalty rates calculator.

The patterns worth checking on a park payslip:

• Birthday step-ups missed — junior rates must rise from the first full pay period after your birthday, automatically.
• Grade lag — trained ride operators, unsupervised register work and lifeguard duties paid at entry grades.
• Unpaid time — costume and character prep, walking to a far ride station, end-of-day closedown and mandatory training count as work time.
• Casual loading absorbed — a flat "park rate" for casuals must still be at least 25% above the applicable base plus penalties for when you actually work.

Young workers are the least likely to query a payslip — and the most likely to be underpaid. Checking takes minutes with our payslip checker.

Keep your rosters and payslips (screenshots are fine), and price any gap with our back-pay calculator. Raise it in writing with your supervisor or the people team — birthday and grade errors are usually fixed quickly once they're in writing. Unresolved, the Fair Work Ombudsman (13 13 94) recovers underpayments at no cost, up to six years back, and treats young-worker cases as a priority cohort.