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Chessington World of Adventures Resort

Matt.GC said:
It's not "heavily" rumoured though is it, let's face it.
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In fairness, I haven’t heard any other rumours.

A lot of people in the know are suggesting a B&M shuttle wing coaster; as odd as that sounds, it would add up. It would make the 1.4m height restriction make sense, as well as the two sets of airgates on either side of the station in the concept art. The track also looked quite B&M-style in some of the concept art, if that’s anything to go by.
 
Matt N said:
In fairness, I haven’t heard any other rumours.

A lot of people in the know are suggesting a B&M shuttle wing coaster; as odd as that sounds, it would add up. It would make the 1.4m height restriction make sense, as well as the two sets of airgates on either side of the station in the concept art. The track also looked quite B&M-style in some of the concept art, if that’s anything to go by.
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I suppose what we should be asking is have Golden Horse managed to 'develop' a wing rider?
 
pluk said:
I suppose what we should be asking is have Golden Horse managed to 'develop' a wing rider?
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In fairness, they did develop a dive coaster-style ride, so I guess it’s not out of the question that GH could delve into wing coasters!
 
Matt N said:
develop
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Unusual spelling of "rip off", there. I don't think you can really credit Golden Horse with the design, the track and trains have clearly been directly copied.

That said, a few B&M wing coasters have been built in China so it's surely just a matter of time before Golden Horse starts building their own versions.
 
In other news that doesn’t seem to have been mentioned, Chessington’s entrance audio changed for 2021, to a new track made by Nick Hutson:

I’ve got to say, I quite like it; I think it fits the adventure vibe of the park quite well! Well done, Nick!
 
Out of interest, I may have missed the news so I apologise in advance, when is the application for the new coaster at Chessington supposed to be going in. I'm sure they said July.
 
JAperson said:
Out of interest, I may have missed the news so I apologise in advance, when is the application for the new coaster at Chessington supposed to be going in. I'm sure they said July.
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They did say July, so I’d expect it some time fairly soon!
 
Matt N said:
In the description of the video I posted. Wouldn’t surprise me, as Nick does a lot for the London Merlin parks.
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I have heard that the music was composed by someone else. Not from an official source, so could be entirely wrong and it could be Nick. But I'd generally count this other source as fairly reliable.

Besides, if it was a Nick Hutson track, I'd have expected him to have heavily advertised the fact by now, given that it has been in use now for more than a few minutes...
 
Still can't get my head around the 1.4m height limit. It's a park that has been catering for kids up to 1.4m for a while now and doing reasonably well at it too even if the capacity of the rides is often poor.

If they do start to add rides for the thrill market though god only knows what that means for Thorpe.
 
Benjsh said:
Still can't get my head around the 1.4m height limit. It's a park that has been catering for kids up to 1.4m for a while now and doing reasonably well at it too even if the capacity of the rides is often poor.

If they do start to add rides for the thrill market though god only knows what that means for Thorpe.
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1.4m doesn’t mean it will be a huge thrill ride though. Also it doesn’t exclude that many as 11 year olds will be able to ride and it’s likely many families visiting the park have a range of children of different ages.
Although I do agree something with a 1.2m restriction would be better for the park overall. But I don’t think automatically 1.4m means it’s high thrills.
 
jon81uk said:
1.4m doesn’t mean it will be a huge thrill ride though. Also it doesn’t exclude that many as 11 year olds will be able to ride and it’s likely many families visiting the park have a range of children of different ages.
Although I do agree something with a 1.2m restriction would be better for the park overall. But I don’t think automatically 1.4m means it’s high thrills.
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You could be right of course however that in itself would be an even more baffling decision. To install a family thrill coaster and have it at 1.4m restriction. That makes no sense at all.
Interesting to see what they announce soon.
 
Benjsh said:
Still can't get my head around the 1.4m height limit. It's a park that has been catering for kids up to 1.4m for a while now and doing reasonably well at it too even if the capacity of the rides is often poor.

If they do start to add rides for the thrill market though god only knows what that means for Thorpe.
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I agree with this I just don't understand the thinking it seems a bit silly. Personally I think they may do something like Lagoon in the USA do with one of there roller coasters where they have a 1.4m ride but they have booster seats so that younger kids can ride with their parents. Surely this might be possible?

I do wonder if this is a plan to convert Chessington into a everyone park for the whole of London so they can ruin Thorpe and sell it to a property developer. Selling the park as it is would make it competition which would be good for merlin but they aren't going to want it. This is just be being pessimistic and rambling but I do wonder what the long term plan for Thorpe and Chessington's market shares are.
 
I think there is way too much overthinking going on here.

Chessington probably do want to ensure they have an offering for the whole family. Adding one slightly thrilling coaster doesn't then make Thorpe Park redundant.
I don't think its even certain that CWoA will get the 1.4m ride, it could end up being a 1.2m. But even if they do the other two rides will be more "childrens" rides anyway.

Personally I think what Chessington needs is another longer "proper" coaster like Vampire, not just a bomerang. Ideally 1.2m restriction but if they do 1.4m then the area should have another coaster too not just small flat rides.
They need more high capacity attractions but keep building tiny little things.
 
I actually think that as much as the 1.4m coaster probably seems like a strange choice on face value, it actually makes a fair bit of sense to me.

Think about it; it rounds out the park quite nicely, and I’d imagine Paultons Park is probably scaring Merlin a lot more than some people expect in terms of competition to Chessington, so one logical way for Merlin to beat Paultons coaster-wise is to tread on turf that Paultons hasn’t yet tackled, and the only coaster turf I can think of that Paultons hasn’t really tackled yet is a 1.4m thrill coaster.

In terms of Thorpe, Chessington building one thrill coaster doesn’t necessarily render Thorpe redundant. Despite the 1.4m height restriction, I get the impression that this will be quite a tame ride in thrill coaster terms, similar to what Air was intended to be at Alton Towers. Remember, Chessington’s target audience goes up to children aged 12; the older end of that age bracket will surely be hitting 1.4m and gaining an appetite for slightly more thrilling rides. I hit 1.4m at age 10, and I’ve never exactly been tall at any stage of my life (at 18, I’m now around 5’9”-5’10”).

Thorpe doesn’t really have anything in the way of a “starter thrill ride” so to speak, so this ride doesn’t infringe on Thorpe’s turf per se. As much as it’s strongly rumoured to be the same ride type as Swarm, I think it’s going to be a milder ride than Swarm and have some quite different elements, from what Chessington have said.

Besides, I’ve heard rumblings that now they’re under new ownership, Merlin plans to bring investment to all of the RTPs in order to aid their recovery from COVID. They said something to this end at the Project Amazon consultation, and the mood in the room was apparently that they weren’t just referring to Chessington, they were referring to all the parks. A coaster project is apparently in the works for Thorpe, and will probably open at some point within the next few years.
 
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Matt N said:
o one logical way for Merlin to beat Paultons coaster-wise is to tread on turf that Paultons hasn’t yet tackled, and the only coaster turf I can think of that Paultons hasn’t really tackled yet is a 1.4m thrill coaster.
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This is something I hadn't thought of. If this is a tactic against Paultons will Paultons be adding a thrill coaster in the next few years. That could be brilliant and probably better themed than Chessington's.
 
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