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Chessington World of Adventures Resort

Random question out of the blue sorry, but I'm interested to know If John Wardley has ever stated his opinion of the Gruffalo River Ride Adventure? I heard he was warned by Theme Park fans to not ride Bubbleworks after its 2006 sponsor, saying that he would be in tears what the park has done to his ride. So, would he react even worse to this?
 
Trooper Looper said:
Random question out of the blue sorry, but I'm interested to know If John Wardley has ever stated his opinion of the Gruffalo River Ride Adventure? I heard he was warned by Theme Park fans to not ride Bubbleworks after its 2006 sponsor, saying that he would be in tears what the park has done to his ride. So, would he react even worse to this?
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Who knows, really? A lot of people view Gruffalo as an improvement on 2006 Bubbleworks, so maybe he’d be happy?

John has never been one to criticise Merlin and the like too much anyway, so I’m sure he wouldn’t hold too much of a grudge.
 
Matt N said:
Who knows, really? A lot of people view Gruffalo as an improvement on 2006 Bubbleworks, so maybe he’d be happy?

John has never been one to criticise Merlin and the like too much anyway, so I’m sure he wouldn’t hold too much of a grudge.
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Is he though? I've heard that there's there's a rumour going about that JW was spotted on Duel the last few weeks, even back in May when I went to AT, i was told that he was spotted riding Duel, and was carrying whay seemed seemed be a large book of sketches. Some say the drawings date back to the HH days. If he had little Grudge against Melrin with his Dark rides and how they tamper with them, then why was he potentially sighted in Duel numerous times this month?
 
It's important to remember that John Wardley doesn't own the rides in any way, just as any Creator in this industry doesn't own what they work on. Once the project is delivered, really the creatives have no say in how they are maintained (for better or worse) - they certainly couldn't come in and say "well this isn't what we intended, please change it back". Not after handover during the first year or so at any rate.
 
Trooper Looper said:
Is he though? I've heard that there's there's a rumour going about that JW was spotted on Duel the last few weeks, even back in May when I went to AT, i was told that he was spotted riding Duel, and was carrying whay seemed seemed be a large book of sketches. Some say the drawings date back to the HH days. If he had little Grudge against Melrin with his Dark rides and how they tamper with them, then why was he potentially sighted in Duel numerous times this month?
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Perhaps he was just reminiscing? Or comparing his initial ideas to how the attraction is now?

Also, in Merlin’s defence, it wasn’t them who “tampered with” Wardley’s creations (or at least, did the initial tampering in Bubbleworks’ case)… both Duel and Imperial Leather Bubbleworks, as well as all the other replcaements of Wardley classics, had been bought in prior to the takeover. If you’re wanting to blame someone, it was Tussauds if anything who were seemingly hellbent on changing Wardley's classic rides.
 
Islander said:
It's important to remember that John Wardley doesn't own the rides in any way, just as any Creator in this industry doesn't own what they work on. Once the project is delivered, really the creatives have no say in how they are maintained (for better or worse) - they certainly couldn't come in and say "well this isn't what we intended, please change it back". Not after handover during the first year or so at any rate.
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Well, you're right mostly, but it isn't completely ruled out, he advised for Tungsten strobes for the Spider and Column ghost for The Haunted House, and Tussauds did that the following year. That's all I wanna say, I feel were going out of Chessington related talk.
 
Islander said:
they certainly couldn't come in and say "well this isn't what we intended, please change it back". Not after handover during the first year or so at any rate.
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It was a little different with John in the day, only because he wasn't just a creative manager, he was a director of park development for the whole company so he had more influence. It's a little known fact he tried to initiate a new Haunted House revamp in the early 2000s after being unhappy about a previous revamp, but he then soon retired so didn't have a say in it.

Ever since then he's only been a consultant so wouldnt have the same influence on the parks, and I'm sure he would tell people the same that he doesn't own the rides he produced and it's up to the parks to do what they want with it.
 
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Out of interest, roughly when did John Wardley’s level of influence over the parks fall? I know that much of the early stuff had him involved heavily, and his involvement was much lower by the time Merlin came about, but I’m never entirely sure exactly when his level of influence fell.

I know that Wardley was technically involved with everything up until about 2013, but I get the impression that he played a far more pivotal role in the likes of early Chessington, Gloomy Wood, Katanga Canyon and Nemesis (they were very much his ideas, and he was the project lead who was doing the bulk of the designing) than he played in his work for Merlin (even though his name was plastered all over Thirteen and Smiler, he always implied in interviews that it was someone else who was the project lead with the big idea and he played a more supplementary role in those rides’ design).
 
Matt N said:
Out of interest, roughly when did John Wardley’s level of influence over the parks fall?
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He was a contracted designer on several rides (and the whole park planning) for Chessington in 1987.

Then he was made a park development director for Tussauds from 1989 ish, through to 2002 (after Air) when he left Tussauds. Not working for the company anymore, you could say this was when he influence stopped!

He was then often brought in as a consultant on coaster projects from 2008 onwards. As a consultant, he could've had any amount of input, but it's up to the Merlin team to decide what to take on board or what stage to bring a consultant in.
 
What are your opinions on the Current Version of Tomb Blaster? Is it in your opinion a worthy attraction to be in place of the once loved Terror Tomb, or do you still avoid it when visiting the park?
 
Rob F said:
Some of the sets are really showing there age and spoilt by non ride lighting, EG lighting under the pit with the moving floor from fire exits etc.

Some main effects haven't worked for a long time which is a shame
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The only things I can point out that's not working gin the ride is the Boulder, which only spins, and doesn't really move towards you. The Hatches scene, that had standard lighting, and the actual hatchets weren't working sadly, and as you said, the pit is too revealing, as you can see the flooring beneath it. Why not they just cover the Lights emitting from the hole with a thin sheet of something, so it hides the floor, but the light still comes through just as fine.
 
Alsty said:
Says a lot about the state of Duel rather than being a shining endorsement of Tomb Blaster.
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Yeah. Each ride is trying to be completely different. Duel is trying to be a really good dark ride, but isn't all that great with the blasters While Tomb Blaster is trying to be both a decent dark ride WITH the shooting elements. That's why I see them both a different type of indoor rides.
Sambiasso said:
Without going off topic, Duel in its current state is the pits even as a dark ride. By far the worst ride in the Merlin Park portfolio.

The whole thing needs ripping out and starting again.
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I take it you're not all that familiar with Duels history. Take a look at this video below. This is what the ride used to be before it had guns. It went from one of the best Dark rides on the planet, to one of the worst in the Merlin Chain
 
My first ride on the latest incarnation of the tomb last week, and tbh it was perfectly serviceable. That's obviously not the heights of excellence I'd hope for them to be aiming for, but it puts the ride well down the list of the parks problems for me. There are silly lighting issues, the story doesn't really exist, it has odd pauses of nothingness at the end of scenes, but despite all that it remains grand in scale and well presented enough to not be an embarrassment, especially when taken in from behind the distraction of all that shooting.

The biggest thing it needs is a tonne of dry ice pumping out, which seems to have gone completely. Would hide a multitude of sins and give the whole thing atmosphere.

As for the rest of the park. Meh. Entertaining enough for a day I suppose but there isn't a single inch of the park that isn't worse than it was 15 or 20 years ago, which is just sad to see.

The most worthwhile investment they could make, more so than the world's dullest wing rider, would be buying a fleet of 8 new Zamperla trucks for that damn throughput nightmare, which is currently down to 4. Next attention should be Zufari, which needs the biggest rethink imaginable and a simple but spectacular danger cave.
 
Construction update on project Amazon from Theme Park Guide here.

Couple of points of note - it looks like the station is going to be fully enclosed, compared to the concept art which showed an open air station similar to Swarm. Indoor station is a plus for any UK coaster.

Confirmation via a super zoom on some paper work that this will indeed be B&M, I think it was pretty certain, but not actually officially confirmed anywhere previously.

Project Amazon Station Goes Vertical And Theming Work Continues | Theme Park Guide

Project Amazon is being built at lighting speeds at Chessington! The park is not sitting around with the main theming feature for the rollercoaster at
themeparkguide.co.uk themeparkguide.co.uk
 
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