• ℹ️ Heads up...

    This is a popular topic that is fast moving Guest - before posting, please ensure that you check out the first post in the topic for a quick reminder of guidelines, and importantly a summary of the known facts and information so far. Thanks.

Chessington World of Adventures Resort

I was at chessington today.....erm....Not the best day I've had out....small gusts of wind had all the bigger rides closed all day. But dragons fury kept opening and closing all day. The wind really wasn't bad but it stoped anything half decent opening. Made me a little worried for the next year as I know I've seen and been on the vampire etc is some pretty major weather and today it all stopped due to a little gust and a shower. New ride wasn't open all day.....running joke among our group was because of the wind. End of zufari not working due to...Merlin not spending any money on the park. No rhino....prob the wind again. Park looks....ok, but not what I would expect after a year closed. Leaving the park took about a hour....and by this time there was only a few cars left. Due to the way they are now redoing the road. Now I agree the roads for the fields need doing....but couldn't it have been done in off season?? Isn't that what off season is for? All in all a very disappointing day. But it's Merlin so meh
 
Crawleyboy01 said:
...small gusts of wind ... The wind really wasn't bad but it stoped anything half decent opening ... today it all stopped due to a little gust
Click to expand...
Um, small gusts of wind? Admittedly I was around 25 miles from the park yesterday, but the wind we experienced was immense. We were regularly experiencing averages of 30+ mph, and gusts of over 55 mph... hardly "small" or "little", easily enough to prevent safe operation of many, many rides...
 
Even ignoring issues of the wind on Sunday, Rameses, Tiger Rock, Black Buccaneer and Seastorm were still under significant winter maintenance and Room on a Broom was shut (on its public opening day).

Way to go Chessington.
 
This is one area I have sympathy for the parks, opening day unreliability has happened since the dawn of time to new attractions. Major things like Tiger Rock should have been done but, hey, it's the preview day!
 
TakeYourMedicine said:
This is one area I have sympathy for the parks, opening day unreliability has happened since the dawn of time to new attractions. Major things like Tiger Rock should have been done but, hey, it's the preview day!
Click to expand...

Sunday was the official start of the season, open to all :)
 
The wind really wasnt that bad. I've been there in worse all all have been fine. I could understand at some points the gusts was pretty strong but at the same time dragon fury was open most of the day. Closing every now and then. Yet vampire didn't open. Vampire is surrounded by trees and buildings reducing the risk of wind...dragon fury out in open. The whole park still seemed like it was in its winter sleep. Half the rides was not in a open state. It was like when the park closed a few covers was gently placed over things and.....nothing till the opened the other day and found half the stuff wasn't working
 
Crawleyboy01 said:
The wind really wasnt that bad. I've been there in worse all all have been fine. I could understand at some points the gusts was pretty strong but at the same time dragon fury was open most of the day. Closing every now and then. Yet vampire didn't open. Vampire is surrounded by trees and buildings reducing the risk of wind...dragon fury out in open. The whole park still seemed like it was in its winter sleep. Half the rides was not in a open state. It was like when the park closed a few covers was gently placed over things and.....nothing till the opened the other day and found half the stuff wasn't working
Click to expand...

Trees.... high winds..... yep, no problem there at all!
 


For those who you who thinks no love has gone into this attraction. However I think there restricted on there budget. Not the designers them selfs. This a side, There are a lot of dead spots again. Like the Grufollo ride. As well as many similarities. Walls blank and just showing a witches hat. This Lets the ride down. There should be moving book cases & visuals everywhere. So many options with this theme for mystical creatures and crazy ideas.

Again if they had the budget. Which these budgets are getting too the point now, where they may as well not improving the ride with slight progression And half attempt finish. However seems like most recent projects from Merlin budgets have sort of ruined rides with incompletion. Wicker man a good example where it’s nearly there but leg down by the first turn of the tack and final scene indoors could of been a projection fire finale. With minimal theming in the que like. It was so close. But not close enough. Another is Lego Land new project. Everyone can already see how the outside facade is not what it should be.

I’m not sure if the animatronics (if that’s what you want to call them?) have been up-cycled. However I don’t feel there acceptable for a new ride. There so static and delayed with minimal movement. I mean how hard can it be, too allow there eyes to blink? Or use some projection on there faces. I don’t expect Disney standard. Well actually why shouldn’t we? We proven we can produce good hydraulic Animatronics in this country. Just look at some of the films produced here & Harry Potter studios has plenty inside that kept looked after. So we have staff who can specialise the maintenance of these things. It’s about time Merlin stepped up its game on these. Before it falls behind. Paultons Park & West Midlands Safari Park, have both shown great efforts in there dinosaur animatronics. It’s not hard Merlin.

Otherwise we’re all just going to save our money and fly out to other country’s for a theme park soon. Not really escaping reality here. Just over priced fair grounds. It’s a theme park & overall experience. Alleys be honest people expectations are a lot higher now. We seen the other parks. Why we so behind in this county? Alton towers Litually has none, apart from Duel. Let’s be fair, there animatronics are actually laughable to guests. I’ve heard guests say this before. Alton keep that ride as almost a Micky take. As in to say they know it’s silly but don’t take it too seriously. Well I’m sure that was the original intention of that ride. Judging though research of Duel & the haunted house.

Slightly worried on Merlin future with there budgets on turning round Duel one day & other dark rides. Alton towers should have had quite a few by now. But it barely manages 1. It’s sad as I feel the parks will get left behind the rest of the worlds standard. I wouldn’t fly over to visit them anymore. There just so behind. Which is frustrating as Alton towers was so ahead of its times at one point. Oh what went wrong. Oh yeah, Merlin and budgets. They got the money, implement it. Before it’s too late. Bad customer satisfaction has got worse and worse over the years. But somehow the company keeps covering up. I should know from my Thorpe visits this year with a journalist who was going to write a story on how bad the Park was & customer satisfaction. However he was pretty much paid off with VIP tickets.


Also does anyone know if The Grufollo ride had its dead spots completed? As this was promised by ride staff when first opened?

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Last edited:
Buster11 said:
I don’t expect Disney standard. Well actually why shouldn’t we? We proven we can produce good hydraulic Animatronics in this country. Just look at some of the films produced here & Harry Potter studios has plenty inside that kept looked after.
Click to expand...
Animatronics for film and for theme parks are two vastly different things. A film animatronic can have as many crew as you like controlling it off-camera and only needs to work for the few takes that it's in shot.

A theme park animatronic has to work automatically every second of the day, all day, all year, for years at a time. Make an animatronic even slightly complex and it will be guaranteed not to work.

Merlin do criminally under-invest in animations but you can't say "why shouldnt we expect Disney standards?", that's just unrealistic. Disney do their animatronics to an almost show-off standard these days. They're incredible works of engineering, but theyre gadets at the end of the day. What matters more is a good overall experience and entertainment.

Animations big or small are brilliant at adding life to a ride but they don't need to be the most advanced in the world to be entertaining. When I was young I remember family rides having way more animation than they do today. They were still simple animations but a lot of them. It worked!


Buster11 said:
Let’s be fair, there animatronics are actually laughable to guests. I’ve heard guests say this before. Alton keep that ride as almost a Micky take. As in to say they know it’s silly but don’t take it too seriously. Well I’m sure that was the original intention of that ride. Judging though research of Duel & the haunted house.
Click to expand...
Well, yeah.. Haunted House was always meant to be entertaining if that's what you mean, not to be taken too seriously. No ride should be taken too seriously (unless youre the one designing it!) You want to be surprised and thrilled, come out laughing. The Haunted House was great fun, the effects were always simple but it was the way the whole ride came together that made it fantastic.

Problem is, so much has been removed now or doesnt work as intended, or is badly timed now. Merlin usually do laughable animations (Saw The Ride's Billy at the start) due to sheer stinginess with budget, but to go the other extreme and say nobody will find something entertaining unless it's Disney quality is a bit much.

___Just skipped through the video and the animations look 'ok'.
 
Last edited:
Man, Chessington really doesn’t know what it wants to be right now.

I miss the days of original IP’s, but I could still understand the “only animal theming” thing it was trying to do, but now they’ve 180’d and are apparently trying to become a popular children’s book theme park and zoo...

Weird.
 
The thing is, a modern Disney animatronic can cost upwards of $200,000. Merlin would never, in a million years, spend even 5% of that building an animatronic.

We absolutely have the engineering capability, this is the kingdom responsible for such software and physical engineering masterpieces such as Grand Theft Auto and Concorde. It is just we have no one willing to pay for top quality animatronics, so therefor no one really makes them for theme parks in this country.
 
In other news, Chessington has been renamed Wonder Park for today only in order to promote the new animated film.

Out of interest, what do we reckon Chessington will get when their next major year rolls around in 2021/2022? I'm personally reckoning some sort of new family coaster; maybe something akin to Juvelen or Wave Breaker would work, as Merlin has a good relationship with Intamin? Or maybe a GCI wooden coaster like Wicker Man would work, as it would give the park a (sort of) thrill ride to open them up to a wider demographic?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top