Chessington World of Adventures Resort

Your not wrong Tim, it must be irritating for Merlin seen as they seem to be gearing up to float on the stock market. My personal worry is it will make all of these parks very busy later in the season. Which is great for the parks but i like visiting on the quieter September days.

Colossus and Saw both opened though...

Even with them shut, Thorpe had the other 3 open, which whilst is quite a usual situation there is a lot better than what Chessie have got going on atm...

To not have any major rides open is a shocking situation to be in, regardless of the cold...

Chessington have just updated their site - all attractions are now open, though Zufari may still have restricted opening due to the cold.

Ah that's great if Chessie have got their attractions up and running. As for Zufari, I spoke to a manager who said that they hope to have it fully running later on this season - I'm guessing they want it open all day by summer otherwise that would cause chaos. (Not to sure if that's already been noted on here as I'm on my mobile so forgive me for repeating.)

Dave said:

It is a little odd, certainly Towers has not got a full ride compliment up yet and some coasters have barely opened but Towers has had 3 foot (4 where its drifted) of snow and it's colder up north than London so i'm perplexed how Towers (and Thorpe which has notorious maintenance) is managing to open stuff yet Chessie can't. Though to be fair Chessingtons rides are generally older and from questionable manufacturers (Maurer, Arrow).

Still the only Merlin park having any luck this season so far seems to be Thorpe which is ironic as it had such a terrible season last year.

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It is very odd that the coasters were not open. I just cant take weather as an excuse. Thorpe and Alton are doing fine with the weather. Very Strange. Hopefully someone high up is giving Chessington a telling off.

Thorpe Park is having a great season. Hell I'm impressed that slammer was running the whole day with no issues whatsoever when I went. That was passholder day. Whats going on? When did the engineers become magicians!

2013. The year where absolutely nothing opened on time. ;D I think Paulton's Park might be the only exception this year.

Islander said:

Jared said:

Islander said:

Lottie. said:

However it didn't seem like they were going to make an effort to open the coasters.

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Thing is, how could you possibly tell this? I can say with near certainty that they would have been trying very hard - it's very much not in their interest to open with loads of attractions closed.

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There were no trains on the coaster tracks, and no sign of any engineers working on them...

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Wa...hang o... what th... Jared, not being entirely positive about Chessington?!? What... what is this?? I... cannot comprehend this...

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Shocking, I know, but what I saw yesterday wasn't Chessington. It seems to have taken a few steps forwards the past few seasons, but has now paid the price and fallen off the cliff. I've always adored the park, but this year, I'm more angry than anything, but not so much with Chessington, more other things Chessington related that I can't talk about on here.

Went to the park yesterday, I have always been a fan but I am going to give my honest opinion now... What an absolute SHAMBLES.

Updated the website on yesterday morning and it said nothing was closed due to the weather! Great we thought so we headed up only to find Vampire, Dragons Fury, Rattlesnake and RMT & Dragon Falls all out of action! We headed to Zufari and had to wait 30 minutes before they started running the ride.

Zufari I thought that the ride was very well thought out, needs time to settle in and grow. The preshow was funny and I like the idea behind that and the talking lemur. The animals were all hiding because it was to cold but the expeirience was pretty good. I thought the cave finale was pretty poor though, there was no effort made in the slightest. even if it had some tiki masks or something it could make an improvement. All in all a good ride but not great. I would give it 6/10 but don't queue more than 45 minuites - 1 hour for it!

Here is my video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2hsUXBrRRg#ws

Later on in the day things started to open as it warmed up but Vampire was on 1 train... with a 60 minuite queue (FML) so all in all a pretty rubbish day, if I had paid I would have been seriously miffed but as it was on the Annual Pass I couldn't complain to much. Dragon falls looks ghastly and RMT seems to have had nothing done to it either!

Thanks for listening to my rant/review ;D

At the moment It also looks like that all rides are open today! APART from the Dragon Falls and RMT!

Themeparkmania said:

At the moment It also looks like that all rides are open today! APART from the Dragon Falls and RMT!

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Well considering they're doing the rockwork on those two, they won't be open for a while...

They announced that already, so no surprise at all...

Themeparkmania said:

Later on in the day things started to open as it warmed up but Vampire was on 1 train... with a 60 minuite queue

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What were they thinking? What kind of insane person only lets 1 train on Vampire? How did it even get a 60 minute queue in the first place?

It was a relatively quiet day to be fair, erverything was pretty quiet but it was so painful, so so painful!

HaydenCR said:

Themeparkmania said:

Later on in the day things started to open as it warmed up but Vampire was on 1 train... with a 60 minuite queue

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What were they thinking? What kind of insane person only lets 1 train on Vampire? How did it even get a 60 minute queue in the first place?

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Themeparkmania said:

It was a relatively quiet day to be fair, erverything was pretty quiet but it was so painful, so so painful!

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Quiet, and a 60 minute queue for Vampire?

Call me a little cynical - but I am starting to question how much of this is a budget issue.

Throw the opening couple of weeks to the wolves, that must save a fortune in costs, not running all those rides.

Given Merlin's previous record of this, would it surprise that many people?

I personally was thinking the same TheMan... How convienent that on the first 2 weeks of the season which usually are the quietest virtually the entire park is shut?! Dragon Falls, RMT, Rattlesnake, Dragons Fury, Vampire, Zufari & Seastorm must save at least 50 members of staff to run them all? They closed the rides for over 5 days in the cold weather as well, far longer than any of the other snow ridden parks! :X

Why would any sane park close down two major rides for Easter Weekend without an actual reason?

I doubt it'll be to do with cost-savings directly, but a result of not spending the money on maintaining the theming and hence it's at a stage where the rides have to close in order to be fixed up...

The rest of the rides, god knows why Chessie can't run them, when down the road Thorpe is happily running everything bar Colossus and Saw in the early hours of the day... But I think assuming it's down to saving costs is daft, as why would the park deliberately close rides and cause a lot of burden to visitors and put them off visiting?

It is a good point, I doubt that they planned to do it but it would effectively save them money in the long run surely? with running costs, staffing etc. On the flipside though they were also giving out free tickets to return.

Benzin said:

Why would any sane park close down two major rides for Easter Weekend without an actual reason?

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Easter weekend started today not yesterday. I was passing comment on the quiet days. Clearly Falls and RMT are something different, but the rest makes no sense no matter how you look at it, in comparison to the other parks.

Something isn't right is it? I have never known anything like it. Doesn't require abstract thought when it is so obviously in your face.

Here is one of the images I took of Zufari



Rest can be found on Flickr
http://www.flickr.com/photos/themeparkmania

Themeparkmania said:

I personally was thinking the same TheMan... How convienent that on the first 2 weeks of the season which usually are the quietest virtually the entire park is shut?! Dragon Falls, RMT, Rattlesnake, Dragons Fury, Vampire, Zufari & Seastorm must save at least 50 members of staff to run them all? They closed the rides for over 5 days in the cold weather as well, far longer than any of the other snow ridden parks! :X

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Falls and Runaway Train are being wrecked so that leaves those two out. Vampire and Fury struggle to make it round their circuits on cold days. Fury vallies on hot spring days between the immelman turn and break 1, break and break 2 quite frequently hence its closure in the cold temperatures. Zufari is because of animal welfare I believe. I don't understand why Rattlesnake is closed and can only think that like Colossus and Saw, it's motor won't run in low temperatures.

Themeparkmania said:

It is a good point, I doubt that they planned to do it but it would effectively save them money in the long run surely? with running costs, staffing etc.

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We were told yesterday, that Dragon Falls is more than just a theming refurb, and due to the large amount of downtime last year, is going through an extensive refurbishment. Visible yesterday were new conveyors on all the lifts, all the supports seemed to have been cleaned up and the store in Mystic East was being made bigger at the back.

There also seemed to be a lot of scaffold work on the buildings, presumably for cleaning. So I am assuming that they've got a lot planned, although, I am awaiting official word on more.