Chessington World of Adventures Resort

[Leah]

If you have to then I, too, would go for this fastrack. If you can (not sure if it's on their "one shot" fastracks) I'd add Rattlesnake on also.

Having said all that though, I don't condone the use of fastrack and would say to avoid it if you can. But each to their own

I would fastrack rattlesnake, but I find its always a good one to run to first thing as everyone goes straight for fury or vampire. Also, from there you can run to tomb blaster and rameses without massive queues.

And I agree about fastrack. I hate the fact it exists and it allows people with money to queue jump, but Im prepared to lower myself to that level if it means I can get the two decent rides done without waiting two hours for each. And Chessington aren't too badly priced for fastrack compared to some other parks.

 

[Matt Creek]

None of Chessington's rides deserve fastrack as their rides have particularly low throughputs.

Dragon Falls is the only ride that apparently gets over 1000PPH and Vampire only gets 600 PPH with being the highest throughput coaster there.

Most non coaster/dark/water rides probably don't exceed 300 even on a good day.

 

[Leah]

Thought that bubbleworks had a decent throughput. Queue always moves quite quickly, and is always shorter than the shown time (not sure why, but it's always at least 20 minutes shorter than advertised when I see it).

 

[Funcone]

Dragon Falls might have a theoretical throughput of 1000 guests an hour. The boats each hold five guests, so that's the equivalent of 200 boat fulls, or sending one every 18 seconds. But in reality it won't ever achieve that. Firstly several boats have gradually been taken off over the years, so it doesn't run as many boats as when it was new. If you watch the conveyor in the station, it doesn't have a constant line of boats. There are gaps every so often.

This may be partly a health and safety move to discourage boats from stacking before the station. On log flumes boats tend to stack before the station for a variety of reasons (some boats move quicker depending on how heavy the load is, sometimes the station conveyor has to be stopped, for example if an elderly or disabled guest is having difficulty getting out of a boat). There could have been incidents where boats have collided with the back of the 'stacked boats' too hard. With the age of the ride they may have also removed boats in the poorest condition. Plus each time the station conveyor's stopped this will also chip away at the throughput, although I doubt this generally has a massive impact as they don't tend to stop the conveyor a lot.

The other issues is that the nature of the ride makes it difficult to fill every seat. At peak times they do try to batch groups together, although they don't do this very often. You'll inevitably get the odd empty seat.The 'intimate' position of riders means you can't squeeze too many strangers in together and there isn't a proper single riders queue. On top of this disabled guest board from the offload and aren't asked to share boats. At peak time these guests take a reasonable chunk of throughput. It's also worth mentioning that some guests refuse to share boats and in cases can become very aggressive about it. It might be because they want an onride photo and don't want strangers in it. It might be because they're anti social.

A combination of not having a constant flow of boats through the station and not filling all the seats means the throughput wouldn't ever top 1000. I believe 600 is roughly what they aim for.

 

[Leah]

Which rides do have an SRQ?

 

[Benzin]

Fury does now I believe, probably the only one though...

I dread to think how I'd be as a park visitor now, amount of crap the staff do... Never work at a park kids, it ruins you...

 

[Burbs]

Fury does now I believe, probably the only one though...

It does indeed, but seems to be temperamental whether it's open or not.

 

[Rick]

And I agree about fastrack. I hate the fact it exists and it allows people with money to queue jump, but Im prepared to lower myself to that level if it means I can get the two decent rides done without waiting two hours for each. And Chessington aren't too badly priced for fastrack compared to some other parks.

This statement absolutely sums up my absolute bafflement regarding how enthusiasts react and respond to Fastrack.

I dread to think how I'd be as a park visitor now, amount of crap the staff do... Never work at a park kids, it ruins you...

I'd encourage any enthusiast to work at a park, it begins to give you a real understanding of how the industry works and allows you to better understand the decision making process that a park follows. Most importantly, it demonstrates that this industry is a business and should be respected as such.

I'm not saying you can't have that without working at a park, but I think it definitely helps.

 

[Leah]

This statement absolutely sums up my absolute bafflement regarding how enthusiasts react and respond to Fastrack.

I don't want this to come across in the wrong tone, but I'm genuinely asking: what do you mean?

As a whole, I'll assume that enthusiasts hate the idea of fastrack: it's essentially queue jumping for the rich. I don't like the use of fastrack under normal circumstances, but I don't know if you've visited chessington recently, but their operations are dire. It's like portaventura, in order to have a tolerable day, you need fastrack. I'd never buy one for towers, but at chessington you have to wait hours for even the smaller rides (black buccaneer with 70 minutes yesterday, not much less than vampire).

 

[Rick]

I don't want this to come across in the wrong tone, but I'm genuinely asking: what do you mean?

I mean the undertone of "I hate Fastrack, it shouldn't exist. By the way, if the lines are long I'll use it". It's ridiculous.

I can't really get annoyed about Fastrack, at all - I think there is an expectation amongst the public that there should be this facility available, it's part and parcel of the theme park experience in 2016. Plus, it helps reduce your entry/MAP price and if you want to splash the money, it improves your day.

If you're 'rich', you can do more things in life, that's just the way it is. If you go to the cinema, you can sit in the better seats, you can go on holiday to Dubai instead of Dundee or you drive an X3 rather than a C3.

If Fastrack is run well, which Merlin does so on the whole - it doesn't especially lower the quality of the experience for the folks in the standby line, that's more of a perception thing - if you really run the numbers, that's the way it goes a lot of the time, yet the assumption is almost always the opposite.

I was at Chessington on Saturday, queues were pretty long, but times were vastly overestimated on most rides - by as much as half. Operations were slower than they could have been on some rides, but they weren't horrible across the board. It didn't help that Fury was closed for the bulk of the day. We used Fastrack for Zufari which was posting a 45 minute wait, but was in fact about 25.

 

[Benzin]

Thorpe runs Fastrack awfully...

As for working at a park, not on the rides, and as a ride host/op you're not ever exactly privy to the "decision-making" process (unless you become buddies with the ops manager of course)... Most of Chessie's decision making is questionable anyway, particularly from an operational standpoint, and especially on Vampire (I assume they still only use one staircase for leaving the platform these days?)...

 

[Funcone]

That's true, although you're probably less privy to the decision making process at a large park like Chessington than some of the smaller parks where there are fewer layers of management separating the ops from the people at the top. Plus when a parks part of a large corporation some of the big decisions are made at head office whereas at an independent park more of the decisions are made locally. But it's true that at most parks rides ops aren't privy to information about future rides etc.

 

[Rick]

@Benzin & @Funcone - I don't disagree in terms of making decisions, but I was suggesting that you have some context to the decision making process and a better understanding of why a decision has been made and where it has come from.

I think some enthusiasts who chant the "Merlin is evil blah blah blah" mantra would be surprised just how many decisions are made and implemented at a local level. The park managers are fairly autonomous.

There are certainly financial directions that from Merlin and the park has to react to them accordingly, but that's quite right and proper when it's Merlin's cash. The Merlin senior team are responsible to the banks and their shareholders, not any park manager.

 

[MaxPower]

I think some enthusiasts who chant the "Merlin is evil blah blah blah" mantra would be surprised just how many decisions are made and implemented at a local level. The park managers are fairly autonomous.

Although I despise Merlin, I don't blame them for the capitalistic way they run their parks, they are a business after all. It's us as the consumers that have accepted the extortion and mediocrity, who are ultimately to blame for the way things are.

Merlin have realised that they can do relatively little in terms of investment, and people will still come back. They can continue to put prices up, and people will pay. Why wouldn't you do these things if you can get away with it?

 

[Rick]

Although I despise Merlin, I don't blame them for the capitalistic way they run their parks, they are a business after all. It's us as the consumers that have accepted the extortion and mediocrity, who are ultimately to blame for the way things are.

In the cases of enthusiasts though, it's often worse than that - they spend a fortune with the company and spend hours of their time on websites like this invested in talking about it.

Also, I guess I don't agree that the Merlin parks are mediocre. I think there are some fairly sucky decisions from time to time, but on the whole they're pretty much the best we've got - so they can't really be average, at least from a UK perspective and that's all that matters to most guests.

As I have alluded to time and time again, the glass half empty with the company approach kills me. They have produced some knock out rides, some not so great - but on the whole, some great rides, the most creative since the Hex era, easily.

I'd suggest that Zusafari is a great family ride (the kids love it), Swarm is a tremendous coaster - who doesn't love a burnt out church with a crashed plane and the like? The Smiler was a nice attempt, but you could perhaps argue there wasn't quite enough time from drawing board to construction. I would suggest that if these rides don't do it for you, you're going to be forever disappointed.

 

[Leah]

You do have the optimistic approach to it: merlin have done some decent rides, some very good rides and are clearly the best the uk has right now. They have done some amazing things: swarm, saw(?), smiler, th13teen, wild Asia... etc.

But I think it's unfair to call the company above average. Maybe in the UK, but even independent European parks put merlin to shame (phantasialand, europa). Even paultons this year have outdone merlin, I am yet to visit but their new area looks incredible. Merlin charge extortionate prices for their offerings, and we/the public will pay because it's the best we have. Don't get me wrong, I don't mind the prices too much if we do get something new worth visiting for, but some parks are barely making additions each year, while standards continue to drop. this year, we gained DBGT, headsets on air, three(?) new 4d films, and a camp site, but lost at least 7 rides (I know some are temporary), and the MAP price still increased.

 

[Benzin]

Zufari is probably the best example of how bad planning can ruin several aspects of what should be a decent attraction... The pre show that got binned after a season, the awful loading area and the finale didn't add anything worthwhile to what should've been a simple safari experience... It needed a story like one needs a hole in the head, especially one seemingly forgotten about halfway through...

Zufari sums up Merlin's style over substance quite well, lots of good ideas, but the implementation is often left wanting... Which means that the additions never tend to go beyond 'good', maybe bordering on 'great', but never further than that... Swarm itself has some questionable design choices (the roofless station removes any potential atmosphere as an example), and similar arguments can be drawn against all their additions...

 

[Rick]

@Benzin The above is the perfect example of where you have to remove yourself from the coaster enthusiast bubble, or you end up becoming like a movie critic, rather than a movie goer and the view of the former is far less important the latter.

If you don't, there's nothing wrong with that, it just means you're not their core audience anymore and you end up in a situation whereby you're not on the same page as the company in terms of expectation vs. likely delivery and that appears to create nothing but frustration among enthusiasts.

 

[Plastic Person]

I think you can have it both ways, and as a long time enthusiast who visits the parks less these days, I find myself stuck in the middle. A lot of the criticism of Merlin shows a fundamental lack of understanding of the company, the industry, and often, just basic economics.

On the other hand, I don't think Alton Towers, for example, is a great place to visit at the moment. I think the atmosphere is depressing, the maintenance is poor and although it doesn't affect my experience, I am an enthusiast, and I reserve the right to argue that Nemesis: Sub Terra, Galactica and even elements of The Smiler were poorly thought out, fad driven and completely lacking in logic or longevity. Therefore, the best solution I've found is simply not to visit until they open SW8.

 

[Matt Creek]

The main difference I can currently see between the European and Merlin parks is planning, upkeep and dedication.

At most European parks, they seem to be highly dedicated in keeping the places nicely looked after and installing additions that not only look great but fit into and compliment the surrounding area.

This is highly evident at parks such as Efteling, Europa, Phantasia and even Liseberg. Where the likes of Baron 1898, Klugheim and Ireland blend in perfectly whilst proving worthwhile additions to the line up. The parks I've done all seemed very clean and looked after with few (if any) areas looking tired and neglected.

Crossover back to the UK, and all the parks have a number of areas that appear badly neglected at all parks. Even with the TLC and Chessie's mini overhaul there are still lots of areas that are rundown. Add on the closed/abandons rides and you're left with many neglected areas.

Sadly bar most of the major investment (Which even then have their issues), a hefty amount of off year investments come across as shoehorned. With the only intentions of being last minute additions to bring guests rather than improve the park. Take I'm A Celeb, Angry Birds Land, Galactica and Storm Surge as examples.

Good parks probably often think "what can we do to improve the guest offering and experience". A growing number of European parks and Paultons seem to be doing.

However I get the impression with Merlin their workings are "what can we do to get people to visit". Hence why so many investments are 'slap bang' without considering of park cohesion and improvements. Hearing already of what's planned for some of the parks next year doesn't restore my faith in them improving the parks, which is a shame as I think they could all be fantastic if run to their full potentials.