NYE Water Festival Cancelled

UPDATED 10am January 1st, 2014.

Things looked good for Cuban Diego Tuff, aka Diego Armando Tobar aged 31 of Potts Point. Until New Years Eve, when his NYE Water Festival at Australia’s largest water park, Wet and Wild in Sydney, was abruptly cancelled, leaving thousands of furious punters out of pocket with nowhere to go.

Mr. Tobar is a quarter owner of One Cube Entertainment Pty Ltd, a company incorporated in September 2013. He is pictured below in happier times, practicing a healthy diet. CX attempted to call his mobile: 0416 695 715 on New Years Eve, but it rang out and went to a voicemail.

His partners are Nikola (Nick) Alavanja (pictured below), also aged 32 who hails from Austria. He appears to share premises with Mr. Tobar. CX messaged him on his Facebook ( https://www.facebook.com/A.Nikola ), but have had no reply. Also involved are Eric Woo (38) from Hong Kong and living at Blakehurst, and Sri Lankan Ruchitha Perera, also aged 38 who resides at Zetland. Anyone wishing to serve either of these people with an appropriate and legal letter of demand can search One Cube Entertainment Pty Ltd on the ASIC register. It costs $18, but you get their addresses.

CX is not suggesting any of the named parties in this article has committed any crime. Media reports say that One Cube Entertainment  will honour refunds, yet their website is not updated with this information. You an email them here: info@nyefestival.net.au

The collaborators at One Cube are also associated with these entities: Fakeclub, Trashbags Australia, Deadeye Tours and Tuffem Up! Records.They have worked for, or staged events at, Sydney’s IVY and for the Maloney hotel group.

Collectively the group named convinced Wet’n’Wild Sydney, a new mega theme park owned by Village Roadshow Theme Parks, to allow them to stage the event within the new Sydney theme park. CX understands the park cancelled the event after One Cube Entertainment failed to satisfy safety concerns.CX understand these include traffic management planning, and security. Concerns were raised about responsible service of alcohol, and the park management swallowed a bitter pill by calling off the event.

One Cube in turn blamed ‘technical issues’, which has inflamed the technical community. One Cube thus snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, with around 8,700 of 9,000 tickets sold, they stood to make a great profit and repeat the event each year. Insiders claim some One Cube staff failed to heed advice, and were unrealistic in their dealings with professionals associated with the event.

The payment status of contractors associated with the event is unclear.

Village Roadshow Theme Parks will presumably be very embarrassed, the Sydney reservation line was jammed with angry callers as of 4pm New Years Eve, the scheduled kick off time for the event. Event professionals contacted by CX are staggered that Village Roadshow Theme Parks could allow an event of this scale without completely satisfying themselves at the contract phase that all safety and event management issues were in hand. The theme park have not only suffered a major reputational hit, they have also made it very difficult to stage a similar event in the future, since punters will be very wary about buying tickets for entertainment events at the new park. It is not hard to imagine the career trajectory of management who signed off on this ill conceived yet well marketed event.

Mr Tobar sums himself thus on his Linkedin page: “On point with attention to detail”.

CX were unable to contact anyone at Village Roadshow Theme Parks or at One Cube Entertainment by 4pm New Years Eve.

UPDATE: Rumors involving lighting company Chameleon Touring Systems supplying the event have been outright denied by CEO Tony Davies. ‘We have no gear anywhere west of Glebe tonight’, he told CX. ‘We don’t even know who was doing lights out there’. The rumors included a social media post, archived by CX, which alleged several Chameleon crew were injured on site, leading to the event cancellation. Chameleon say they will take legal action against the source, who is identified as an events worker from Greystanes in Sydney.