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Chessington World of Adventures Resort

D4n said:
7pm close on ALL weekends and school holidays this season.

Big improvement.
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I think this has been up for some time. It's interesting that it looks like TP have the weakest hours of the four UK Merlin parks this season.

With Chessington, the elephant in the room is always throughputs. There aren't actually a great deal many rides, but with the waiting times they command - the hours need extending.
 
AstroDan said:
I think this has been up for some time. It's interesting that it looks like TP have the weakest hours of the four UK Merlin parks this season.
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In fairness, Thorpe Park did trial 8pm closes during the summer of 2019, but they weren’t especially successful, as the park had usually emptied out by about 6pm; I visited for one, and I remember being able to get quite a few walk-on, back-to-back rides on Swarm after about 6pm! Sadly, I don’t think the 8pm closes were particularly successful for Thorpe, as the rest were scrapped and reduced back to 6pm literally a week after I went.
 
Chessington have just updated the map on their app. Nicest design for years!
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Matt N said:
Since Gruffalo opened in 2017; the area was rethemed in order to make sure that Gruffalo and Vampire can coexist with one another.
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You mean renamed. All that happened was they slapped slightly brighter coloured paint on Transylvania, hung some incredibly cheap green netting on the side of a corrugated warehouse wall and called it a different name. No retheme happened at all.

On opening hours, it seems across all Merlin parks that the parks are clearly experiencing the short term rewards of being privately owned with the merging of CAPEX and OPEX as practically the same thing, something which is reviled in the twisted world of public listed companies. The long term effects of this business model are yet to be seen, but I'm cautiously optimistic that privately owned businesses of this scale do have the wiggle room to be able to make the right decisions.

Even with Thorpe having the shorter hours of the bunch, I was still surprised to see them open till 6pm next week.

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Longer opening hours is arguably a bigger benefit at Chessington than Thorpe. At Thorpe you might get 1 more ride done in the extra hour, at Chessington you could spend that time in the zoo or sealife. If enough people think like that it'll help reduce some of the queues too. Not as much as if they had good ride operations, but still.
 
Matt N said:
In fairness, Thorpe Park did trial 8pm closes during the summer of 2019, but they weren’t especially successful, as the park had usually emptied out by about 6pm; I visited for one, and I remember being able to get quite a few walk-on, back-to-back rides on Swarm after about 6pm! Sadly, I don’t think the 8pm closes were particularly successful for Thorpe, as the rest were scrapped and reduced back to 6pm literally a week after I went.
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They didn't trial 8pm close, they reduced it from 10pm.
 
I’m not sure whether this has been picked up on yet, but Chessington has apparently begun charging for park maps, and is receiving a lot of flack for it:

Currently, a map costs £3.50.

Could this be for COVID reasons?
 
Nothing to do with Covid, just trying to make a bit more cash. To be fair the app is free, so I see no reason to provide free paper maps. But £3.50 is steep unless it comes with more than just attraction maps. 99p would be fine for just a map, for £3.50 I'd want a mini guidebook with details on the animals and stuff.
 
jon81uk said:
Nothing to do with Covid, just trying to make a bit more cash. To be fair the app is free, so I see no reason to provide free paper maps. But £3.50 is steep unless it comes with more than just attraction maps. 99p would be fine for just a map, for £3.50 I'd want a mini guidebook with details on the animals and stuff.
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In fairness, they’ve included a lanyard too!
 
£3.50 for a map!? No doubt they'll be saying it is to promote use of the app and reduce paper waste (both valid points). Didn't Towers (or perhaps it was another park) once a few years ago for 50p or something?
 
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