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Chessington World of Adventures Resort

Not a fan of the VQ, the new area will draw more people into the park but by kicking everyone out of the queue line they are, in effect, not increasing the total park capacity resulting in worse queues elsewhere.

Don't sell FT (or accept priority passes on it) & let people wait 90+ min. It'll take some of the pressure off Fury.
 
I wonder how long the slot will be held open for? I think you might see quite a few people deep in queues ditching them to make their way back out and over to Mandril Mayhem. I can see the tabloids jumping on this when people find that they’ve gone to the park for this attraction and end up being unable to ride it because they didn’t get a slot or got caught up in another queue and missed out.
 
This is basically Chessington admitting that their new coaster is going to be completely inadequate in terms of capacity. It will be interesting to see how long they stick with the virtual queue system, you'd imagine they'll have it in place all summer.

But yes, the system is very much open to abuse to those who realise you can just set up different accounts.

I agree with John, making people queue virtually for this is only going to put more pressures on other rides in the park that already struggle. There could be some more hellish than usual days at Chessington coming up.
 
Surely having people queue virtually for Mandrill will just put more pressure on other rides as people will want something to do whilst they wait ‘virtually’. The result will be longer queues for the likes of Vampire and Fury and then people having to leave mid queue to get to their mandrill slot.

So basically people will be queueing for mandrill but in a different ride queue line. This seems like it’s going to be a shambles. Will be watching from afar until things calm down.
 
BigShadowtinytree said:
Surely having people queue virtually for Mandrill will just put more pressure on other rides as people will want something to do whilst they wait ‘virtually’. The result will be longer queues for the likes of Vampire and Fury and then people having to leave mid queue to get to their mandrill slot.

So basically people will be queueing for mandrill but in a different ride queue line. This seems like it’s going to be a shambles. Will be watching from afar until things calm down.
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Tbh I think either way it was going to be a shambles.

To have a standby queue (with RAP coming into play to) would have resulted in a ridiculous queue time due to the capacity of this thing.

Chessington seem to think the virtual queue is the lesser of two evils, I can see the argument from both sides.

Ultimately they shouldn’t have built a new coaster with such a low throughput, but it’s too late for that now so they have to deal with what they have got.
 
Rob said:
Exactly. Just let people queue a long time for Mandrill Mayhem, instead of letting them cause mayhem in the rest of the park whilst queueing virtually.
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Yep, and close the entrance if when it gets to capacity.
 
We used the virtual queue system at Legoland a couple of weeks back for my youngests birthday and thought it worked well! Some rides were 'select a time slot' and you had 15 mins within that time to arrive at the ride, for the others, you choose which ride, generate a QR code and can ride whenever, as long as you're not on a 'time out' countdown.

The only issue was Flight of the Sky Lion was completely booked within seconds & was one of the only rides where you chose a specific time slot (this was with virtual queuing only being accessible to RAP and paid packages - I believe MM virtual queue is accessible to everyone on park?). I've seen a first come first serve disclaimer for MM which could mean people don't even get the opportunity to VQ?

I'm not sure how having only one ride using this system will work & having it accessed by all park visitors... it worked for us because my son can't queue in the normal line and we couldn't access rides whilst we were timing out so chose to eat/drink/watch shows/engage in other park activities during this time. But if you're able to queue normally, surely that's just going to disperse people to other rides because they will want to spend their wait time... enjoying rides?! Thus completely defeating the whole objective of reducing pressure on the rest of the park 🤷‍♀️
 
BooMT said:
We used the virtual queue system at Legoland a couple of weeks back for my youngests birthday and thought it worked well! Some rides were 'select a time slot' and you had 15 mins within that time to arrive at the ride, for the others, you choose which ride, generate a QR code and can ride whenever, as long as you're not on a 'time out' countdown.

The only issue was Flight of the Sky Lion was completely booked within seconds & was one of the only rides where you chose a specific time slot (this was with virtual queuing only being accessible to RAP and paid packages - I believe MM virtual queue is accessible to everyone on park?). I've seen a first come first serve disclaimer for MM which could mean people don't even get the opportunity to VQ?

I'm not sure how having only one ride using this system will work & having it accessed by all park visitors... it worked for us because my son can't queue in the normal line and we couldn't access rides whilst we were timing out so chose to eat/drink/watch shows/engage in other park activities during this time. But if you're able to queue normally, surely that's just going to disperse people to other rides because they will want to spend their wait time... enjoying rides?! Thus completely defeating the whole objective of reducing pressure on the rest of the park 🤷‍♀️
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Yeah a friend of mine is a regular at Legoland with RAP and always has fun trying to get a timeslot for Flight of the Sky Lion.

Chessington will have to release the VQ slots in waves otherwise they will all go straight away.
 
BooMT said:
I'm not sure how having only one ride using this system will work & having it accessed by all park visitors... it worked for us because my son can't queue in the normal line and we couldn't access rides whilst we were timing out so chose to eat/drink/watch shows/engage in other park activities during this time. But if you're able to queue normally, surely that's just going to disperse people to other rides because they will want to spend their wait time... enjoying rides?! Thus completely defeating the whole objective of reducing pressure on the rest of the park 🤷‍♀️
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This is spot on. This is exactly why virtual queuing doesn't work as a main queue replacement, or at least not within parks that are designed around the physical queuing model.

A park that operated on a virtual queuing model for ALL guests would have to designed completely differently, with a large number of support attractions around the most popular rides to keep people entertained whilst in virtual queues. Typically they wouldn't be queuing for major rides - as you could only be in one virtual queue at a time - but would be spending time on filler attractions such as flat rides, walkthroughs etc, watching live shows, eating/drinking as an activity in itself (as opposed to simply refuelling), shopping, carnival games etc. In addition you'd need a lot of 'milling areas' near the ride entrances with seating and stuff for people to look at so they don't feel that they're just hanging around waiting for their timeslot. None of Merlin's parks currently have anything like the required amount of support attractions to enable a virtual queuing model to be successful.

I can see the MM approach being a total failure personally - as others have said people will likely just head to other rides in the area - Dragons Fury, Tiger Rock, Rattlesnake - and queue for those whilst also in the virtual queue for MM. Those attractions are already massively struggling for capacity as it is. A slightly better approach might be to apply the virtual queueing model to all major rides in the park, but then you have the problem of the extensive queue lines being empty whilst everyone is hanging around the park clogging up paths and wondering how to fill their time. It's a really slippery slope going down this route and for my part I think it should be reserved for RAP users only.
 
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BooMT said:
Not sure if anyone is following the passholder Jumanji preview ticket saga but 😂😂 Merlin 'forgot' to release any tickets at the release of... tickets 🤔
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Bodes well for virtual queuing doesn’t it. Yes I know they are different teams and so on and so forth..

I guess with the whole virtual queue thing hotel guests will never get “early access” to the new ride too like they do with others..
 
Danscott22 said:
I’m just pre empting that this is all going to end in disaster.
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It’s going to be less Mandrill Mayhem, more Merlin Mayhem. It’s going be absolute carnage.

At least with a physical queue you can see how long it’s estimated to be and make the choice to queue or not for a couple of hours or whatever, at least you are pretty much guaranteed a ride. I feel sorry for the people that will inevitably find themselves unable to get a slot on busy days. Thoughts and prayers to the staff in Guest Services on the first weekend of operation in what is sure to be a difficult time
 
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