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Chessington World of Adventures Resort

Very interesting; I certainly never knew that Chessington had such ambitious plans in the 1990s; wonder why they never materialised if they had planning permission?

I also found some of the proposed rides in there very interesting. Drayton's wooden coaster is interesting, I admit, but I found some of the others more interesting, like:
  • The 265ft Arrow looper proposed for Southend Pier.
  • The 300ft tall, 8000ft long 10-looping coaster that either B&M or Morgan was going to build.
  • The 300ft drop tower on the side of the Spinnaker Tower in Portsmouth.
  • The 3 other 250ft+ tall coasters that Giovanola was going to build for the then-Paramount parks.
Very interesting article @Rick; thanks very much for sharing!
 
Matt N said:
I certainly never knew that Chessington had such ambitious plans in the 1990s; wonder why they never materialised if they had planning permission?
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Because Tussauds were gearing up to /had already been sold off and costs cut right down. It was the beginning of the kind of attitude Merlin still operate on today. Why build a big area with new flats and a coaster, when you can throw together some second hand fairground rides for half the cost? And nobody will know what they didn't get..

Beanoland was fun for what it was, but the park still feels like it was never quite complete. There were more cancelled plans too I'm sure, and still are. Hopefully one day soon a big coaster will go through at least.

I still think I heard an alternative idea for Rattlesnake spoken in an interview (but can find no real evidence now)
 
Coming soon to Alton Towers...

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Can't see the problem with it myself. It's there if you want it and probably helps the queues on the main rides to be a bit shorter
 
Haven't the theme parks always have some-sort of pay for inflatables in the past?

Velcro wall. Gladiator jousting. Giant Velcro dartboard and football . Climb the ladder to ring bell. Leg swiper that replaced Ripsaw. Water spheres that you climb inside on water etc..

These inflatable obstacle course are just simply another type and a step up of those listed above. If I wanted to go on a bouncy castle, I just simply go to my local pub, they usually have one in the beer garden that customers can go on for free.
 
Couple of hours on pen this afternoon before back for the day tomorrow.

We haven’t been since April, but since then they appear to have riddled the gruffalo ride with emergency exit signs and there are low loads of doors open. It’s ruined what was a very good ride for younger kids.

Room on the broom - you’re now left to fend for yourselves and walk about as a group on your own. The scenes all start on their own and without a guide, we’d missed the last broom scene so had to wait around for the loop, which was driven by the preceding scene. Shambolic.

And tomb blaster doesn’t appear to have any soundtrack. Also shows a 60 minute queue and we were on in 10. Gruffalo showed 45 and we were on in 25. Would have been about 10-15 if they weren’t holding everyone at the photo point. After that, they were hardly getting people through to fill the boats. Utterly incompetent.

Scorpion was running well. That’s all we did today but Christ it doesn’t bode well for tomorrow.
 
AGL said:
We haven’t been since April, but since then they appear to have riddled the gruffalo ride with emergency exit signs and there are low loads of doors open. It’s ruined what was a very good ride for younger kids.
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Probably something to do with the hot weather and broken/lack of air conditioning inside the attraction
 
siralgenon said:
They always hold you there, I think it's something to do with numbers in the station and evacuation routes.
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Think he was talking about the open fire doors rather than the holding at the merge point. Although the building does have air conditioning so it's more likely just laziness to not shut doors.

Really poor form and Im guessing the emergency exit signs you mention were all lit up like on Tomb Blaster? Emergency exit lights are supposed to only come on automatically when there is a power outage, otherwise they're meant to stay off, you dont need white light blaring out everywhere "for H&S" but it's the usual ham-fisted understanding of safety at Merlin parks.

All this bad lighting has completely ruined Chessingtons dark rides.

The batch point thing just sounds like staff not co-ordinating properly if there's nobody inside the station but a long queue outside. It would be ridiculous if they'd gotten to a point where hardly anyone is allowed indoors, hopefully that's not a new rule theyve made up.
 
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