Chessington World of Adventures Resort

Because life's not fair and queuing is the primary activity at a theme park.

Judging by the number of people in Guest Services that day asking to see the resort manager, yes, he was complained about, I know of at least two people that did anyway (that's how I found out, we'd popped in for something unrelated and there were about 20 people standing in the corner, so
I asked if they were in the queue and got told no, not unless you've come to complain about the Dragons Fury host, which if you have you might as well wait with us until the manager get's here", the conversation flowed from there while we waited, as we left another family came in wanting to see the manager 'about the bigot on Fury'.

Before this gets heated... @IanSR, can you explain how the system works this season with the tokens etc?

Also, how does it work in this scenario?

For example - Vampire has a 60 minute queue, Fury has a 75 minute queue. You ride Vampire with your pass and then want to ride Fury. Can you go straight to Fury or is the 60 minutes you didn't wait for Vampire taken into account?

Have they changed the system? You used to have to wait until an hour (so say you went on Vamps at 11, you couldn't use the pass again until 12, then after Fury 13:15 and so on)... Pretty much for the situation a reasonable simple and effective one; so wouldn't be actually surprising if they had changed it...

It's only used like that on some rides though, most others can just walk straight on (I always like it on Sea Dragons, where they'd walk past an empty queue to go into the exit)...

Rick said:

Before this gets heated... @IanSR, can you explain how the system works this season with the tokens etc?

Also, how does it work in this scenario?

For example - Vampire has a 60 minute queue, Fury has a 75 minute queue. You ride Vampire with your pass and then want to ride Fury. Can you go straight to Fury or is the 60 minutes you didn't wait for Vampire taken into account?

Click to expand...

That's correct, you wait the 60 minutes before getting on Fury in your example, then once you've done Fury you wait another 75 minutes before doing whatever you choose to do after. They also limit you to 10 rides now. I did hear they were doing a blanket 45 min wait but this wasn't our experience.

Personaly I think Paulton's system is better, you get one quick queue per ride and if you want to re-ride you join the main queue, sadly there are people abusing the system although Merlin are doing a good job of weeding them out this year, and of course there are always those families who have multiple RAP users who swap and hide tokens between family members to allow them to hop on and off rides, but they are the minority, most people, especially those who need the systrm the most, don't abuse it (believe me, they piss the genuine RAP users off too).

As Benzin says there are the rides where you can walk straight on but they have reduced that list this year, I always have to laugh at those people too, some people just don't use the common sense they were born with.

Thanks for clarifying. Abuse of these systems was so common at the Merlin parks. From what I understand, the registration element this year has begun to address this.

Abuse feels almost inevitable. It's so difficult to police it and the folk who are dishing the bands out are nowhere near senior enough to make any kind of decision.

IanSR said:

Personaly I think Paulton's system is better, you get one quick queue per ride and if you want to re-ride you join the main queue

Click to expand...

I suspect the Chessington system is fairer? If you have a guest who is only comfortable riding one or two attractions, it makes sense for them to be able to do that over and over. And... dare I say it - if you are able to queue 30 mins for your second go, some may question why you were unable to do so for your first lap?

Im guessing Paultons is more designed towards the kids who might not be for re-rides or generally have more other things to do...

Better than Walibi's "stand at the exit for an hour" or Phantasialand's non existent one mind...

I think, all things considered my preference is the Disney system which is essentially an extension of Fastpass.

1. Go to attraction with 60 min wait
2. Host gives you instruction to come to exit in 60 mins
3. Do whatever else for 60 minutes
4. Return, ride and repeat

The downside is that it requires a host at the entrance to every attraction which might be a factor in it not being implemented elsewhere in quite the same way, but I guess you could do it with Q-Bot or an app with semi accurate wait times.

They are using qbot at Legoland this year for RAP and by all accounts it's been a bit of a disaster, but I'd say that is probably more to do with people turning up unaware of the new system than anything else, I did have to laugh at all the people who complained the app doesn't tell you when it's time to go to the ride on facebook only for someone to politely remind them their phone also has a countdown timer.

You are probably right Rick, thinking about it the Paultons system does penalise you if you like re-rides, but i felt it was fairer overall to everybody because it prevented that, and prevented those situations where the ride host was too busy to write the time in.

If there's one change I wish Chessington/Merlin would consider is for families who have multiple RAP users they didn't give them a timecard for each person, but just one that covers everybody, this would stop the situation where the group walk off the ride and go back round and then use child two's card to get back on immediately, I'm sure this is where a lot of frustration stems from from both the public and ride hosts, and frankly it annoys me when i see it going on too, especially when said family is stood there boasting about it.

Yeah, that's annoying - but if you tried to prevent that, people would just book in as two smaller groups?

The whole system is open to abuse and folks of varying needs end up with the same arrangements.

Hats off to them to making a go of it and reviewing it, I guess.

LOL I hadn't thought of that...

Just to annoy! The single rider on fury today was a dream. 40mins to 60min main que. Got on within 10 mins and guess what allowed to ride as a 2! Crazy

Legoland's old system was so badly abused. You just got a pass which let you skip the queue on 10 rides with no conditions or limits. Trouble is they used to give them to anyone who even suggested they might have a disability, meaning that most guests seemed to have some...

Back when I used to work on Boating School (before they upped it's capacity) it wasn't uncommon to see access pass queues as long as the main queue. And we were loading 1 to 1. The irony is these people that supposedly "couldn't queue" started forming a + 30 minute queue, fully aware this was the case. But the real problem was for the Q-Bot users who'd show up at their alotted time only to have to join the back of the ride access queue, completely undermining the time slot system. Hence why this year they've merged the two systems. In theory it makes far more sense and should be fairer on those that really need it. I'll be honest I think most the people kicking off about the change were those that were abusing the old system anyway...

You know that old saying "those who shout (complain) loudest, usually have something to hide".

We try to avoid the parks at the busiest times for that reason, I'm always amazed at the length of some RAP queues, find another ride and go back later damit, it's not rocket science lol.

There's a rumour that another one of Weymouth Sea Life's old rides is going to Chessington. Seems an odd replacement for Creey Caves though. https://www.facebook.com/ChessingtonBuzz/posts/1554223711285003

Seems Chessington's just released plans for the redevelopment of Mystic East, with the construction of three new tiger enclosures, the relocation of the resort's two Sumatran tigers, and four new Amur tigers.









Looks rather cool - love the integration between the enclosure and the ride.

Well at least it is an improvement on what is there at presnet, as it looks a complete and utter mess. A pity that the drop looks likely to remain relatively unthemed (compared to how it was originally) but I will not deny that this is better than nothing.

It looks nice and better than it is currently. However what the park really needs is new rides! He park can't handle crowds at the moment, and all the new rides they have introduced in the past few years has been rethemed, not actually adding to the parks capacity.


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Interesting. Good to see something is happening to Dragon Falls. The area around the splashdown will look very different with the tiger enclosure separating the main path from the flume. Presumably there will have to be some tree removal too.

I'd like to know in more detail what's happening to the existing theming such as the Buddah statue and the dragon tunnel.

I think I recognise the art style in those concepts. It looks like @tayspru's work. (Could be wrong though).

Fan of that! Although this probably means the removal of the Dragon's mouth, but I don't mind as this proposal looks really nice! Love the idea of the interaction with the tigers.