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Chessington World of Adventures Resort

I remember the good old days, when Vampire had signs in the queue making it very clear that each train only had a 30 second window to unload, load and dispatch, and it WOULD leave without you if you faffed around.
... Or the days when the queue for Rameses would spill out of it's entrance, and all the way back to The Flying Carpet... But only take an hour and a half. Bag the last ride of the day (at 9pm on a summer evening!) to get every program back to back ... without stopping to ask of anyone wants to get off.
... Or the days when you could eat your lunch while being entertained by an animatronic Wurlitzer organist.
... Or the days when the RMT's queue started near the site that would eventually be home to Rattlesnake, and wound it's way up and around the rooftops of the whole street, before crossing the bridge in to the water tower structure.
... They had post mix Ribena on tap at every beverage unit!
.... They had Rodeo....

The Chessington I knew and loved died the day the demolished the rockwork around Dragon Falls' second lift. It's only gone downhill from there.
 
From what I'm hearing the guest numbers recently have been no more than that (park capacity being around that sort of figure). They just don't operate their rides efficiently now, and theres more fastrack/RAP - the problems are entirely of their own making.
 
Fastrack and RAP are problems at all Merlin Parks, but particularly Chessington and LEGOLAND. The rides are too small to be handing over 30-50% capacity to RAP and fastrack.

On the RAP front, I get that families with a RAP user will want to ride together etc, but the size of the groups being allowed through is spoiling the day for the majority of customers. The wife’s convinced she’s read it’s max 3 people per RAP - is that right?
 
On park today not doing too bad got cobra, monkey singers and nearly at station on dragons fury. Operations are a mixed bag, fury wasn't open for 10 as it hasn't been signed off though they seem to be doing a decent job of pumping trains out
 
AGL said:
On the RAP front, I get that families with a RAP user will want to ride together etc, but the size of the groups being allowed through is spoiling the day for the majority of customers. The wife’s convinced she’s read it’s max 3 people per RAP - is that right?
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I think it varies between rides, at Thorpe and Alton it's just RAP + carer (or it was last time we went) which seemed a far better solution, but Chessington seems to have an open ended "up to" policy.
 
Vampire was on 4 rows ride access pass yesterday so no surprise it's main que was only moving 30 people every 20 minutes (I was timing) so a capacity of under 100 per hour in the main que line. ...
 
I’ve seen groups up to 6 using RAP across all parks last year including Alton , Chessington just can’t cope as 2 1/2 hour queues is just really bad, having just come back from our first Netherlands trip with the family ( my youngest is now over 1.2 so makes it worthwhile) and wow what a difference in operations over there and no fast track helps , my wife was looking at queues that would normally take an hour to and hour and a half but these parks where eating all those people in under 20 mins easily which my wife could not believe!!
 
....and to think if you rocked up after about three next week you'd have such short queues that you'd get about seven rides on Vampire in, just the best time to go nowdays unfortunately.
 
I was thinking about capacity on rides at Chessington.

The Seastorm, yes a bleedin' Seastorm - has been commanding 1 hour + waits at points over the Easter. A 4 minute walk through (ROTB)... 2 hours! Vampire? 2 1/2 hours at times. None of the large coasters get the capacity per hour for which they were designed. Both Fury & Rattlesnake do not allow 4 adults per car. Just... wow. All of the larger rides have Fastrack and RAP. Queues not shifting. Chronic poor investment over 20 years with no signs that this is about to be immeiately addressed. More and more rides ready to die. Will Buccaneer ever re-open? Tomb Blaster has become a joke - with 1-2 hour queues and a ride getting around 1/2 the capacity for what it was designed.

I don't really know how Chessington manages. Whenever I think Alton Towers has it bad, I just need look south and feel far better.
 
How is it possible to run Tomb Blaster so poorly?

Operating it now means advancing a train with 2 cars already loaded with RAP/FT, then when it's stopped letting people from the main queue straight onto it (no prebatching before it arrives), and then when everyone is seated they still waste at least another 60 seconds before closing the lapbars. Surely you'd close the lapbars as soon as everyone is seated. What are they waiting for? It's certainly not a block to clear as it must be 3-4 minutes between each dispatch?
 
The whole thing is knackered.

Emergency lighting shouldn't be on unless there's a power failure, allowing it on just kills the ambience. The rock on the lift doesn't seem to work these days. The music should be timed properly, some parts seem too quiet (broken speakers?). Once I heard the music from the previous scene running concurrently with the current scene which sounded awful. I doubt there was a train in the previous scene so it shouldn't even be running. It also doesn't seem to wait in the Snake Pit like it used to, advancing much sooner before the music reaches its climax... I could go on.

I expect a Julia Donaldson IP is pencilled in soon to put this ride out of its misery.
 
The other week I waited 20 minutes for Tomb Blaster from the station room! Rows 1, 2, 9 and 10 out of use on every train due to either Fastrack, RAP or guns not working.
 
The park desperately needs investment. There were plans a few years back to build a new coaster on the field next to Dragon's Fury, although nothing ever came of it.

The only investment Chessington has had in recent years has been the re-theming of old classics that were left to rot due to decades of awful maintenance.
 
The thing is: I don't think Chessington ever will see the investment for as long as the guest figure remains stable.

10 years ago we were saying they needed major investment.

Now look at it.
 
When you're operating a household well known park near one of the biggest cities in the world with few and low throughput rides, then it's a recipe for disaster.
 
Tomb Blaster is a great example of how dysfunctional Merlin often are. It's fallen from one of the best dark rides in the country to one of the worst. MMM turned it from an already broken down, badly maintained ride in 2015 into an even worse one, a feat I wouldnt have though possible. Probably charged an extortionate amount to the park too, but because theyre internal to Merlin theres nothing that can be done about it.

Plus lots of 'safety theatre' additions like the permanently-on emergency lights in your face and removal of bits of scenery for no reason. If theres a risk of people falling off the platform, install air gates. It's one of your biggest attractions. Not using the bays destroys operations.
 
Chessington desperately need a big new Rollercoaster with a capacity over 1000 people per hour. Many of their rides will not last another 5 years, (Vampire, Tomb Blaster, Black Buccaneer, Rameses Revenge). Merlin need to learn that a refurbishment is not enough. No new rides for six years and no new Rollercoasters for 15 years is not good enough. We know that they have plenty of money in the bank and we hope that they will use some of that on something actually new. But this is probably just wishful thinking.
 
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