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Chessington World of Adventures Resort

I agree with both electricBill and AstroDan. It's not a great zoo and it is too expensive for what it is... but without it Chessington has nothing and that's why it has to stay. If they continue to expand the park and the zoo, Chessington will be the better for it. Concentrate just on rides and it goes back to being a second rate Park. On the other hand they really need a new headline ride, backed up with more interesting rides in general.
 
Well, we've come too far now, but there was a time when I strongly believe Chessington could have continued without the zoo.

Too much has changed for it to be financially viable however, so it looks like we're stuck with the animals.
 
I think the animals play a huge part of the park. Thorpe park used to be an all day park before they got rid of the farm. Now if its quiet you can get everything done by 2! Chessington with its animals allows families down time and experiences together. It pads out the day. Its always had the zoo but it should open rides and animals more often. I think the best example of dule opening was when rattlesnake and creepy caves opened in the same year. They were both really well recieved at the time. (Plus both theamed very well).
 
Saying Chessington would be better off without the animals is a really bad idea! The zoo is one of the only good parts of the park.

Chessington always has been and always will be an animal park just like Flamingo Land, Busch Gardens & SeaWorld are.
 
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To my mind, the zoo itself is not the issue with Chessington. The zoo areas are in places dated, but typically pleasant enough. Also, although they have all the usual animal park animals like Humboldt penguins, Asian short clawed otters, meerkats and a variety of uninteresting antelope type thingies, Trail of the Kings and some other enclosures have some more unusual fauna to enjoy.

I agree with most of the recent comments before mine. The park could combine animals and rides neatly if it was handled properly, but the planning restrictions and other Merlin parks not far away are seemingly being used as excuses to push the park further and further towards the animal end of the scale at the expense of the rides. Unfortunately it doesn't compare favourably to a full-blown zoo, and the queue times for the park's entirely inadequate capacity rides strongly suggest that the rides are still a much more significant draw for guests.

Cutting one side or the other is not the solution; either would likely be the end of the place. What I think is the answer is a swift but carefully considered rebalance of the park, with priority given to both new ride attractions and park infrastructure so that it can not only handle the guest numbers it gets, but actually impress them! An intertwined family coaster and rapids, as often suggested, would be a good start. If the themes for these new attractions could sensitively incorporate new enclosures for appropriate species into immersive surroundings, I think Chessington might then finally be on the right track after years of seemingly plodding along in a directionless manner.
 
Are there many examples of combining animal attractions and rides? Aside from transportation rides (which Chessington did have until very recently). At both Busch Gardens and Animal Kingdom the main rides don't seem to involve animals. Cheetah Hunt kind of does, but even there I don't remember the coaster actually running through or above the cheetah habbitats. It was more that the ride was themed to the animals in a nearby enclosure. The Lost River at Flamingo Land is one of the best examples that comes to mind. Also the penguin ride at Sea World, the omnimover in the Living Seas at Epcot and the Atlantis dark ride at Legoland. Turtle Trek at Sea World uses animals in the queue, but not in the main ride itself (although since you're not actually riding on anything it's more of an attraction). Wild Arctic does the opposite and uses a simulator as a pre-show to an animal attraction. I think Montu used to go over a crocodile pit, but I'm not sure if it still does?

I can see a lot of challenges to actually having animals in ride areas. There's the animal welfare issue if the rides are stressful for the animals. There might also be issues around access to the rides if they need to do evacuations or for the engineers to do maintenance and inspections. The ride could also limit access to the animal enclosures for things like cleaning. Plus it's hard to make it feel like you're floating through the animal's habbitat and have cages that secure the animals safely. If you're not careful it just feels like you're floating through a load of cages. Kilamanjaro Safaris pulls it off, but that has a foot print bigger than the whole of Chessington World of Adventures giving them plenty of space to hide the divides between enclosures. Plus you're viewing the area from near ground level. It's not an elevated ride like a coaster or a water ride. There's also the fact that if you have to go on the ride to see the animals there are people who want to see the animals but can't go on the ride. That's an issue with Zufari, that children who don't meet the height restriction are excluded from see the enclosures.

I'm not saying it can't be done. The Atlantis ride at Legoland is technically impressive, although I wouldn't consider it to be a great dark ride in the same way that Hex is or even Wallace and Gromit's Thrill-O-Matic is. The Lost River probably is one of the best example of what can be done, but does also require a reasonably large footprint. I'm sure Chessington can combine the rides and animals more, but to do it well will be challenging. If it's not done well then it becomes a pointless gimmic that doesn't work particularly well as a ride or an animal exhibit.
 
To clarify, my suggestion would be to have animal enclosures within theme areas, not ride areas themselves. As you've said, Funcone, that's unfair on the animals, not necessarily safe, and just downright impractical generally.
 
There should have been an acknowledgement of the truth rather than pretending the penguins were still alive, then it would have avoided this PR stuff. Good statement put out by the zoo team. But the park always covers things like this up anyway, we'll probably find the enclosure wasn't built properly in 2015 or the defences were too cheap, the zoo security wasn't working as it should have been or some same old story..
 
I don't know what a zoo's obligation is in terms of informing the public or regulators when this stuff happens.
 
Regardless of any obligations, can you imagine a Merlin park informing the public that they messed something up and allowed lots of penguins to be eaten? Naive of them to claim they're making alterations to the enclosure when actually they're all dead.
 
Personally I feel that the zoo was right not to inform the general public of the attack.

You can't stop a determine fox no more than you can stop a determine thief. You can only put deterrents in and make it as difficult as possible.

This stuff happens all the time on farms and at other zoo's. I won't say too much, but one of our regular zoo's has had fox attacks in the past and they don'inform the guest. Animals are often removed from show due to a variety of reasons, and the zoo are under no obligation to give an explanation.
 
electricBill said:
Regardless of any obligations, can you imagine a Merlin park informing the public that they messed something up and allowed lots of penguins to be eaten?
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Is it normal in the zoo industry to announce or advertise such things? I get the impression it's not, but I really don't know?
 
RoyJess said:
You can't stop a determine fox no more than you can stop a determine thief. You can only put deterrents in and make it as difficult as possible.

This stuff happens all the time on farms and at other zoo's.
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I'm not an animal/zoo expert but I'd expect there'd be some kind of obligation as part of their licence to keep these animals, that Chessington kept the animals secure from foxes at least. Humboldt penguins are a protected species, (I fink - in the wild anyway).

A determined fox won't get in if there's a proper grade defence against it, this isn't a local farm. The park have also suggested there was a failure with the enclosure defence or security monitoring so clearly there was an error rather than chance. But that's not really my point, Im not outraged the fox got them.

I meant the sign was naive, suggesting the enclosure was shut for some kind of routine improvement when in fact the park had allowed a fox to get in by mistake. Similar cover ups to the Lorikeet thing a couple years ago when they were attacked by a rhodent infestation that the park let get out of hand. Or when their lion's unexplained passing timed magically on the same day they got some new giraffes into the papers.

Persoanlly I don't care if they're under obligation to announce it or not, but I'm all for handling the truth rather than misleading guests and that would've avoided this "lies" media story anyway. Of course the real reason they didn't acknowledge it was to avoid bad PR.
 
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At SeaWorld & Busch Gardens the policy is to announce the passing of animals that have names and can be easily individually recognised by guests. So when Tilikum passed away it was announced, but if a Penguin passed away I doubt it would be. This is an exceptional circumstance though which I honestly would have expected to be announced.
 
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