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Another day another theme park

Snagglemama

Snagglemama

TS Member
Favourite Ride
Wicker man.
I have managed to get my partner to agree to take us to Chessington next week. Vampire is another bucket list coaster of mine. I chose Chessie because it's not coaster heavy like towers and my partner has a disk problem so no rides for him. I've never been before so if anyone has any tips or anything I would be grateful. Also where do you get the best ride on Vampire?
 
One thing I will say to you about Vampire is that when I rode it, it was a bit of a headbasher, in my opinion. I did ride it back in 2014, though, so it might have changed since then.

One ride I do recommend you get on as well as Vampire is Dragon's Fury. An excellent Maurer spinner, in my opinion, and an improvement on Spinball! It's really good fun and quite intense in portions. Well, not Nemesis or Smiler intense, but intense for a family coaster! My personal favourite ride at Chessington, which I know is quite a controversial opinion!

Besides the park's coasters, I would also recommend going on ZUFARI if you want to see some of the park's animals. It may not quite be Kilimanjaro Safaris at Animal Kingdom, but it is still a fantastic attraction!

I haven't seen it for myself, but Land of the Tiger and Tiger Rock also look like attractions worth exploring, in my opinion.

Hope you have a nice day!
 
Get there early, go directly to Vampire and do it first, you might be lucky and only have a short wait.

Vampire is much like Smiler, it has an indoor queue so people look through the fence, see the queue is quiet short, and assume the wait won't be long, in reality it'll be an hour if the queue is anywhere near the chess board. Same for Tiger Rock, it has an indoor queue that'll add up to 15-20 minutes to any queue outside.

Dragon Fury is easier to judge, but unlike its sister ride Spinball at Alton, throughput is awful because everything runs slow darn sarf.

Other than Ramases Revenge and the snake thing (Kobra?) pretty much everything else is for 6 year olds, oh rattlesnake and the mine train thing are also OK for adults.

Only do Zufari if it is walk on, unless you're really into seeing animals, and don't hang your arms over the edge of the land rover, they really don't like you doing that.
 
Matt N said:
One thing I will say to you about Vampire is that when I rode it, it was a bit of a headbasher, in my opinion. I did ride it back in 2014, though, so it might have changed since then.

One ride I do recommend you get on as well as Vampire is Dragon's Fury. An excellent Maurer spinner, in my opinion, and an improvement on Spinball! It's really good fun and quite intense in portions. Well, not Nemesis or Smiler intense, but intense for a family coaster! My personal favourite ride at Chessington, which I know is quite a controversial opinion!

Besides the park's coasters, I would also recommend going on ZUFARI if you want to see some of the park's animals. It may not quite be Kilimanjaro Safaris at Animal Kingdom, but it is still a fantastic attraction!

I haven't seen it for myself, but Land of the Tiger and Tiger Rock also look like attractions worth exploring, in my opinion.

Hope you have a nice day!
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Thanks for your advice :) must have a look at a POV for dragons fury. Yes I plan to do Zoofari I like animals.
IanSR said:
Get there early, go directly to Vampire and do it first, you might be lucky and only have a short wait.

Vampire is much like Smiler, it has an indoor queue so people look through the fence, see the queue is quiet short, and assume the wait won't be long, in reality it'll be an hour if the queue is anywhere near the chess board. Same for Tiger Rock, it has an indoor queue that'll add up to 15-20 minutes to any queue outside.

Dragon Fury is easier to judge, but unlike its sister ride Spinball at Alton, throughput is awful because everything runs slow darn sarf.

Other than Ramases Revenge and the snake thing (Kobra?) pretty much everything else is for 6 year olds, oh rattlesnake and the mine train thing are also OK for adults.

Only do Zufari if it is walk on, unless you're really into seeing animals, and don't hang your arms over the edge of the land rover, they really don't like you doing that.
Click to expand...

Great advice thanks :):)
 
Hotel guests get Early ride time on Vampire so the chances of finding a low queue at park opening these days aren’t great - it might be one to leave until the end of the day and jump in the queue just before ride close.

Otherwise perhaps splash out on fastrack for Vampire and Dragons Fury. Zufari has a single rider line (to the left of the main entrance) worth using to save the painful queue that often forms for this ride.

The posted queue time for Gruffalo tends to be wildly over estimated - most of the time in reality it is half of what they state it is.

Take some time to look at the zoo and maybe a show or two. Big cat feeding is worth a watch. Enjoy!
 
AT86 said:
Hotel guests get Early ride time on Vampire so the chances of finding a low queue at park opening these days aren’t great - it might be one to leave until the end of the day and jump in the queue just before ride close.

Otherwise perhaps splash out on fastrack for Vampire and Dragons Fury. Zufari has a single rider line (to the left of the main entrance) worth using to save the painful queue that often forms for this ride.

The posted queue time for Gruffalo tends to be wildly over estimated - most of the time in reality it is half of what they state it is.

Take some time to look at the zoo and maybe a show or two. Big cat feeding is worth a watch. Enjoy!
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Many thanks. We will probably get a fast track for vampire then. Where do you get the best ride on this?
 
Back, but it's often reserved for RAP, but even if it is, the second or even third to last row are just as good.

The front is good, but I allways found on the front that by the time the train was released from either of the lift hills you were almost already at the bottom, you got a nice view, but the front row is not in the remotest bit forceful.

Quiet often the batcher will tell you where to go, but if you ask nice they'll let you go to the back or wait, or you could just do what I see a lot of people do and ignore the batcher and go where they want, the poor batcher has enough of a problem trying to stop too many people from entering the platform let alone controlling people once they are on it, so invariably they'll shout once or twice at you and if you still ignore them, just give up, as one once put it to me, it's like trying to herd cats. Never done it myself, we mostly go on via RAP, but doing that gives you a unique view as to how the GP behave.
 
IanSR said:
Back, but it's often reserved for RAP, but even if it is, the second or even third to last row are just as good.

The front is good, but I allways found on the front that by the time the train was released from either of the lift hills you were almost already at the bottom, you got a nice view, but the front row is not in the remotest bit forceful.

Quiet often the batcher will tell you where to go, but if you ask nice they'll let you go to the back or wait, or you could just do what I see a lot of people do and ignore the batcher and go where they want, the poor batcher has enough of a problem trying to stop too many people from entering the platform let alone controlling people once they are on it, so invariably they'll shout once or twice at you and if you still ignore them, just give up, as one once put it to me, it's like trying to herd cats. Never done it myself, we mostly go on via RAP, but doing that gives you a unique view as to how the GP behave.
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Thank you we will try and get back then won't ignore the batchers they are people too
 
Okay so we went to Chessington. We got there around 10.10 and the queues for rides were already heaving. We got our tickets and headed in. Looked at some animals and then headed onto tomb blaster which was on a five minute queue. It was an Okay ride. I like the way the cars swing around. The Audio got stuck a few times.

Next we got some quenchers which are in these awkward long tube thingies.

We queued for rattle snake for a good long while after the 20 minute queue line was very deceiving. I didn't like sitting so low in the cars and the ride was very rough.

My son then brought us some fast passes onto scorpian express. We waited around half an hour despite the fast passes and there was a test run before we got on. No flames or water and only two goes around. It was also very slow.

We decided to go and get some food. Headed to vampire kitchen to be told there was a problem with the tills. So we grabbed a sandwich from sandwich company.

Every one in my group was feeling poorly so I brought a fast pass onto vampire as it was a pretty consistent hours queue throughout the day and we had my partner with us who can't do rides.

After dealing with a little girl in the queue line in front of me who was practically having a panic attack I settled in to ride. I enjoyed the ride. It was pretty rough and I spent the ride home dreaming of a b&M vampire. The trains don't seem to match the theming and the track is just brown.

I didn't do any rides after that. We grabbed our nitrogenie deal and headed to the car park. We did see the tigers on the way past and they are just awesome.

I love the park but want Merlin to invest in the coasters. All the tracks are dull and seem to be unloved. We have agreed that we have done the creds now. I would reride vampire on a very short queue. But we would go back for the animals and bits we didn't get to do
 
The Vampire trains were replaced a few years ago by Intamin (iirc), the original Arrow ones were like pods, that's why they don't seem to match the ride.
 
Yup, it was Vekoma, and it happened around 2002, I think?
It was a totally different ride back then. The centre of gravity was lower, and each car sat four riders, so you swung like an absolute beast! Not to mention the epic theming which was trashed long ago. :cry:
 
Out of interest, is the old iteration of Vampire the one that everyone raves about? Only asking because I went to ride Vampire in 2014 with everyone's critical acclaim of it in my head and I came off kind of disappointed. It had some good moments, but I thought it had a few dead spots, and it was also quite rough, in my opinion. The theming was great, however! And it probably still is!
 
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