Chessington World of Adventures Resort

[Matt N]

Cheers @Rick; I should have included a picture myself!

 

[AT86]

And it’s based on a ‘run down’ aesthetic too, what could be more Merlin.

 

[Matt.GC]

Any construction updates

The tiger structure (because Chessington needs more rock tiger theming structures) looks like the framework is all but complete, not sure when that Buzz picture was taken but it looked more complete than that from the angle I was at. The station building frame is in place. You can see the support foundations around the edge of the site.

 

[siralgenon]

I've not watched the film's so I could be very wrong but that looks nothing like a tiger to me.

 

[JAperson]

I've not watched the film's so I could be very wrong but that looks nothing like a tiger to me.

From memory (it's been a while since I watched it) I believe it's meant to be some sort of ancient monument that resembles a tiger, it also must be remember that this Jumanji world is set in a video game.

 

[Tim]

I know this ride won't, but a wingrider which has one side of the train slot through a mouth structure like that would be super cool.

 

[Rowan4947]

The theming structure has most of the metalwork in place.

Been like that that for a week or more i think.

 

[Jb85]

Cheers @Rick; I should have included a picture myself!

To be fair that would look impressive

 

[djtruefitt]

I imagine universal rock will be on site soon to do the rock work part of it.

 

[Matt N]

I’ve noticed great scepticism online about this ride’s capacity, and whether or not the ride will hit its listed theoretical capacity.

Out of interest, what makes people so sceptical that this ride will hit its theoretical capacity of 720pph?

I only ask because the planning application lists an anticipated park time of 1 minute to reach this throughput (as the ride duration is also to be exactly 1 minute). In this operations video, Swarm (which has an extra row of restraints to check compared to what this will have) manages to dispatch the train having been parked for only 1m 5s:

(Go to 2:27)

If Thorpe can do it, why couldn’t Chessington?

Within the realm of Chessington, I actually think 720pph is a really decent capacity, and could go some way towards solving the park’s alleged issues!

 

[AT86]

If Thorpe can do it, why couldn’t Chessington?

You’ve witnessed Chessington’s operations, right?

 

[Matt N]

You’ve witnessed Chessington’s operations, right?

I haven’t been since 2014 myself, and back then, I wouldn’t really have been paying attention. So it’s fair to say that I lack first hand experience of Chessington’s operations.

I know their reputation is poor, and that their capacities are allegedly low, but Thorpe’s reputation for operations is equally poor, if not more so (even though I’ve always found Thorpe to have pretty decent ops myself), and they did a good job on Swarm in the below video.

I must admit it does surprise me that Chessington allegedly has such terrible operations given that I’ve always found Alton and Thorpe fairly decent and I don’t remember Legoland’s being bad either. Is Chessington an anomaly within Merlin when it comes to operations?

 

[jon81uk]

Out of interest, what makes people so sceptical that this ride will hit its theoretical capacity of 720pph?

I only ask because the planning application lists an anticipated park time of 1 minute to reach this throughput (as the ride duration is also to be exactly 1 minute). In this operations video, Swarm (which has an extra row of riders to check) manages to dispatch the train having been parked for only 1m 5s:

(Go to 2:27)

If Thorpe can do it, why couldn’t Chessington?

Within the realm of Chessington, I actually think 720pph is a really decent capacity, and could go some way towards solving the park’s alleged issues!

Chessington has a lot more children riding which means more faff.
Also if it is a wing coaster then people will want to faff with shoes/sandels as its floorless.

720pph is not a decent capacity for a park like Chessington and they really should be building attractions that get through significantly more.
Not sure what daily attendance is like at Chessington, but 720pph over a seven hour day is around 5000 guests. That means any day with a higher attendance than 5000 guests taller than 1.4m (or shorter hours) and guests will not be able to ride.

I'm pretty sure the park gets well over 5k in the summer.

A proper coaster with multiple trains and a 1.2m height restriction (more like Vampire) that could theoretically acheive over 1000pph would have served the park significantly better.

 

[JAperson]

There's no chance of this reaching 720pph most of the time, it involves kids which always slows things down but also the dispatches would have to be ridiculously fast all the time. If this had a turntable and a second train you'd be looking at something just over that, so I doubt it's going to get that. Then again it is B&M so I'm sure it'll be engineered to be able to have a good capacity, it will all revolve around how the park operates it.

 

[Matt N]

There's no chance of this reaching 720pph most of the time, it involves kids which always slows things down but also the dispatches would have to be ridiculously fast all the time. If this had a turntable and a second train you'd be looking at something just over that, so I doubt it's going to get that. Then again it is B&M so I'm sure it'll be engineered to be able to have a good capacity, it will all revolve around how the park operates it.

With regard to the bolded, I don’t think that’s necessarily true.

With a 24-rider train, 720pph equates to a dispatch every 2 minutes, or 30 trains per hour. The planning application states that the ride will be 1 minute long, and the load/unload time will be 1 minute as well in order to attain this throughput. I’d hardly call 1 minute a ridiculously fast park time that wouldn’t be attainable over a long period. As I said, Swarm at Thorpe attained a similar load/unload time to this in the operations video I posted above, so I reckoned this would be perfectly attainable at Chessington with a train that’s one row shorter.

If the ride had a turntable, switch track or similar mechanism that accommodated two train operation, I reckon the theoretical would be 1,440pph (a dispatch every minute, or 60 trains per hour) or somewhere just below, because the ride duration and the park time would be occurring concurrently rather than separately (one train would be loading and unloading whilst the other was going round the ride, whereas on one train operation, the station would be totally empty whilst the train was going round and the load/unload time is added on top of the ride duration), thus roughly doubling the throughput.

One question I do have is; why do we assume that more children will be riding this than Swarm? I know Chessington has a younger visitor demographic than Thorpe, but it will have the same height restriction as Swarm (thus limiting the ride’s audience to older families and adults by default), and Thorpe does have older families visit it, so it’s not like Swarm won’t have older children riding. I’d also wager that children who are 1.4m in height will likely be old enough not to cause any major holdup to operations in the way that smaller children might.

 

[Rick]

720 does feel like a bit of a stretch, that said ... Chessington do have some hardware that is painful to achieve a good throughput with. This should give them a good base to start from because it will almost certainly be well engineered, if nothing else.

Something like Dragon's Fury, for example, has all the complexities with the weight of riders, it not being particularly friendly to 'guests of exceptional size' (I wish they would bring that phrase back ... ), weather problems and it being a pretty cheap hunk of junk from the outset.

The 1.4m height limit should help reduce the faff.

Let's see.

 

[Matt N]

If not 720pph, I could certainly see them getting pretty close to that figure. I’d certainly guesstimate that they could get at least 600pph (25 trains per hour, dispatch every 2 minutes 24 seconds; this would necessitate a 1 minute 24 second park time).

From what I can gather, even 600pph would put it at the high end of Chessington’s throughputs. And I personally reckon the theoretical 720pph is highly attainable.

As @Rick says, the 1.4m height limit should hopefully reduce faff compared to some of Chessington’s other attractions. The people riding will likely be older children at very least, so they should be less likely to do anything that delays operations than on other rides at Chessington. And from my experience, even young children don’t delay proceedings that much.

I do say this without first hand experience of Chessington’s operations, however.

 

[Matt.GC]

Chessington operations aren't allegedly bad, they are bad. It's like watching everything in slow motion. 720pph as a top end target of a new addition in a park that already has pathetic throughput rides is just plain stupid. The only good side of this is, when attendance settles down after opening, a new attraction will give visitors an additional queue line to stand still not moving forward in. That could shave a few minutes off all the other barely moving queues eventually.

 

[RicketyCricket]

From what I can gather, even 600pph would put it at the high end of Chessington’s throughputs. And I personally reckon the theoretical 720pph is highly attainable.

Just because it's at the high end of Chessington throughputs doesn't mean 600pph is good.

The queue will still move at a snails pace with Fast Track and RAP users.

Buyers are spoilt for choice at the moment with family thrill coaster models available. It seems strange that out of all the options available they've gone for something with a 1.4m height restriction *and* low throughput.

Even Taron and FLY are 1.3m.

 

[Rick]

@RicketyCricket it doesn't make it right ... but if you have a ride in a park that has lower demand because it is 1.4m, you need less capacity.

I don't think 1.4m is a bad thing. If most kids are hitting 1.3m between 7-9, having nothing to look forward to in that park from that age doesn't seem right.