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Blackhole_Sun
TS Member
- Favourite Ride
- Black Hole
A lot of the older Arrow coasters are still going strong. I think they were over engineered in terms of track quality.
Has the Matterhorn been re-tracked? That’s our benchmark people. Love that ride.
Has the Matterhorn been re-tracked? That’s our benchmark people. Love that ride.
DiogoJ42
TS Member
- Favourite Ride
- The Metropolitan Line
I don't think so. But didn't MK's Space mountain get a retrack a few years back? That's a sort-of-clone, isn't it?
Blackhole_Sun
TS Member
- Favourite Ride
- Black Hole
Disneyland California, another belter of a ride has had a complete track replacement. I believe it was because the cars had been made heavier at some point.
If anything the cars are now lighter on Vampire so should put less stress on the supports and track. Not to mention the size of Vampires supports compared to space mountain’s there is no contest.
DiogoJ42
TS Member
- Favourite Ride
- The Metropolitan Line
Doh! So close and yet so far!
Reb
TS Member
I understand your skepticism, but this is straight from the surveyors report by the two guys that crawled along the track with a harness towards the end of last season to inspect it.
I also want to say that 2029 doesn't mean that this is the year they'll finally do something, but rather that 2029 is the year they'll legally have to take vamp down due to the track being unsafe (unless they do another inspection nearer the time to potentially extend that deadline).
Also 2: I also want to add that I'm not speculating; I'm reporting. I'm not here to score brownie points or something, I'm just a messenger.
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Trooper Looper
TS Member
I've not been to Chessington since 2022, but seeing Tomb Blaster in its current state does make me sad. The queue looks great though, but just so much on the ride needs fixing up.
I'd love to see the ride get some major TLC, but I know that won't happen. If they want a proper job, I'd personally get in touch with Meticulous, a company ran by someone who used to work for Farmer Studios, and does some great work. Get them in and see what they could do with it, even on just a technical side. Personally I'd pick an external company to work on it rather than Merlin. I know people love Curse, but I don't think a realistic Egyptian Themed ride would be the best option, especially for a light hearted family theme park like Chessington. Something just a little scary and wacky and adventurous could be good. I'd love to see the boulder working again. The elephant in the room though is easily the Guns. Bin em, they've always been holding the ride back.
Even if they just gave the ride new lighting with new programming, I think that would drastically improve the experience if they can hide the walls and mechanisms.
I'd love to see the ride get some major TLC, but I know that won't happen. If they want a proper job, I'd personally get in touch with Meticulous, a company ran by someone who used to work for Farmer Studios, and does some great work. Get them in and see what they could do with it, even on just a technical side. Personally I'd pick an external company to work on it rather than Merlin. I know people love Curse, but I don't think a realistic Egyptian Themed ride would be the best option, especially for a light hearted family theme park like Chessington. Something just a little scary and wacky and adventurous could be good. I'd love to see the boulder working again. The elephant in the room though is easily the Guns. Bin em, they've always been holding the ride back.
Even if they just gave the ride new lighting with new programming, I think that would drastically improve the experience if they can hide the walls and mechanisms.
The_bup
TS Member
- Favourite Ride
- Professor Burp’s Bubbleworks
Oh, and the boulder is straight missing.
Trooper Looper
TS Member
The problem with that in my eyes is that whatever will replace the current theming will 90% of the time not be as good on pure quality and scale if it was done by Merlin. I can't imagine Merlin being capable of making the Sphinx scene as it stands currently. If it was by them it'd probably be a static prop and not as big with some projections in the room with no moving props aside from maybe one object. Curse has shown that they're very good at lighting, but on Props and theming effects, it does seem to be lacking in terms of quality in some areas personally, especially the final scene. They're just not consistent.
Until there's a better company who can deliver better scenery and theming in the UK, I'd keep most of it but have it heavily worked on and fixed up. The axe throwing scene can be great if they get some proper lighting and programming in there, though that wolf in the cage is cheap (if that's still there).
Talking about effects, it is odd that the Boulder is gone now, but hopefully it means they're trying to get it back working and have taken it out for maintenance. It was always a highlight for me and my family when we visited, we rode it quite a few times and had a blast (no pun intended).
Good shout out @Alsty. The ride system does look like it's need a lot or work on it, especially with its poor throughput. You would've thought by now they would've contacted Mack for spare parts or new trains to help with reliability. Perhaps that's something they'll look into in the near future.
How many trains did it originally have?
DiogoJ42
TS Member
- Favourite Ride
- The Metropolitan Line
I could be completely making this up, but for some reason I'm thinking five?
Thameslink Rail
TS Member
- Favourite Ride
- The Smiler
It did used to run five trains. If everyone was on the ball they could get 1000+ pph, these days they're lucky to get 500pph.
Blackhole_Sun
TS Member
- Favourite Ride
- Black Hole
Matt N
TS Member
- Favourite Ride
- Mako (SeaWorld Orlando)
To be fair, Tomb Blaster wasn’t doing too badly throughput-wise when I visited in September, given the circumstances. I was only able to time it very roughly with my watch, but my dispatch interval was about 3 minutes, which would lead to 600pph.
Given that there was only 1 staff member operating the whole thing (low staffing on rides was a recurring issue at Chessington on my visit last year), I was not displeased with this. The queue also seemed to move quicker than that of anything else I did in the park.
Given that there was only 1 staff member operating the whole thing (low staffing on rides was a recurring issue at Chessington on my visit last year), I was not displeased with this. The queue also seemed to move quicker than that of anything else I did in the park.
John
TS Member
- Favourite Ride
- Steel Vengeance
I'll admit I've never seen the COSWP for Tomb Blaster but I'd be amazed if it's allowed to operate with less than 2 staff. Three seems like it should be the minimum to me: op, onload & offload. Surely with just 1 staff member they'd have to stay in the cabin whilst the train went round, only leaving to check restraints when there's no-one else on the ride?
Matt N
TS Member
- Favourite Ride
- Mako (SeaWorld Orlando)
For clarity, I should say that I’m referring to the onload platform here; one poor man appeared to be running the whole show alone on that onload platform, doing the tasks of batching, checking restraints and then seemingly sending the ride all on his own. There may have been another staff member on offload and possibly another in the op cabin, but he was certainly on his lonesome on that onload platform.
Low staffing seemed to be a recurring theme across Chessington that day. On numerous rides, staff members were handling the duties of batching and checking restraints simultaneously in a manner that reminded me of Flamingo Land. It wasn’t like at Alton or Thorpe, where restraint checking and batching are handled by separate staff members; at Chessington, individual staff members routinely seemed to be handling both duties.
Vampire only appeared to have 2 staff on the whole platform, who had the dual tasks of batching (one batching main queue, the other RAP) and checking restraints, and was resultantly attaining a 2-train throughput of only around 400pph and some dispatch times as slow as 4 minutes. Dragon’s Fury was not much better, with 1 staff member being in charge of both batching and checking restraints. Although it should be said that Mandrill Mayhem was quite heavily staffed and quite well operated, to be fair!