Matt N
TS Member
- Favourite Ride
- Shambhala (PortAventura Park)
On another note; now the Jumanji tie in is in the public eye and I’ve had a fair amount of time to process this investment, I have some definite thoughts about it. I’ll look at this from a balanced viewpoint and express what I feel are some positives and negatives.
Positives
P.S. I know I contradict myself a fair few times, but I should say that I am in two minds about certain aspects of this investment, so some contradiction is inevitable!
Positives
- Investment in Chessington is never a bad thing. And £17m is huge for Chessington; I wouldn’t mind betting that that is equal to, if not more than, the overall new attraction CAPEX at Chessington over the last 5-10 years. ZUFARI cost less than £10m (I seem to remember £8m being quoted as a figure) as did Gruffalo (not sure on this, but I remember £3m coming from somewhere) and Croc Drop (£2.5m), and I’m struggling to think of anything else major that’s happened at Chessington in the last 10 years other than those 3. With that in mind, a £17m investment is big news for Chessington! I know that inflation likely makes £17m worth slightly less than it would have been in the past, but nonetheless, it’s very big money in Chessington terms!
- This will provide a new major attraction to help disperse crowds a bit more. While people argue that Alton Towers lacks filler, I’d argue that Chessington has the opposite problem; they are very saturated with filler and lack major e-tickets, and rides that would be considered filler in other theme parks currently masquerade as major rides at Chessington for this reason. This should go some way towards improving the balance, and helping the park ease its alleged queue problems. This is not replacing anything, this is adding capacity to the park, and quite significant capacity at that. The coaster has an alleged capacity of 720pph, and the flat rides will allegedly be capable of 600pph each, so this land will add an overall theoretical capacity of 1,920pph to the park. That’s not an insignificant number by any means, and should hopefully go some way towards easing the overcrowding burden at Chessington.
- Building upon my previous point, I’m glad for the inclusion of supporting flat rides. These should help ease the burden on the major coaster and ensure that the park continues to have a wide variety of things to do.
- Whatever you think of B&M in the current climate of the industry, a park building one is undeniably a pretty big status symbol. And when that park is Chessington, which I would never have pegged as getting a B&M in a million years, it’s hard for me not to be excited! Putting aside the specifics, this is a B&M at Chessington; what an exciting prospect!
- Delving more into the ride itself; Wing Coasters a great ride type, and I definitely think this could have a lot of potential to be a good ride. Whilst I’m not expecting Swarm, it could function well as more of a starting thrill coaster for the park, and it looks as though it will add a really good ride for the older children and thrillseekers coming to the park, which it could be argued that Chessington currently doesn’t have many of.
- I think Jumanji is a very strong choice of IP. The last film came out in 2019, there is another film in development, and the franchise as a whole has made £2billion; it’s very much still in the public conscious. Heck, I seem to remember hearing that the last film alone made more at the box office than all of the Saw films put together, and Thorpe Park has made a great success out of Saw The Ride for the last 13 years! I also think that this IP fits Chessington very well; even if the tie-in does go down like a lead balloon in the years to come (I don’t think it will, but you need to consider the possibility), the land could be quite easily retooled into a generic jungle land that would suit Chessington’s brand identity and demographic down to the ground. I have great faith that this IP tie-in is a fantastic decision by Merlin that should do very well!
- The theming of this area looks phenomenal; the 55ft Tiger Shrine will surely be very impressive, and the planning application showed some other really nice touches as well!
- I do wonder whether the 720pph capacity of the coaster was what Chessington needed. The park has well documented capacity struggles, and this will be a major attraction themed to a big ticket IP, so it will inevitably get high demand. Will a 720pph theoretical throughput be enough to handle that demand? The supporting flats could help with this, in fairness, but I reckon the coaster, as the headline attraction of the area, will receive the bulk of the demand.
- If I were to cast a slightly more critical eye upon the coaster layout, I’d argue that it doesn’t appear to play to the strengths of the Wing Coaster ride type very much. The things I feel that Swarm (the only Wing Coaster I’ve done) does well, such as the awesome sense of speed, the great near misses, and the awesome floaty inversions don’t appear to be channeled here very much. I’m open to surprises and very willing to be proven wrong, but that’s my current thought.
- As much as I love B&M and am very excited to see Chessington working with them, part of me is slightly sceptical as to whether they were the right fit for the park and this particular project. Reviews of rides like Dæmonen at Tivoli Gardens suggest that compact, small scale rides like this one are not B&M’s forte, particularly when big trains like the Wing Coaster trains are used. I do wonder if another manufacturer and ride type could have provided something more worthwhile for Chessington with greater versatility, wider appeal (I imagine another manufacturer could have made the height restriction lower than 1.4m) and slightly more “bang for buck”. I’m very willing to be proven wrong, but that’s just my current thought.
- In spite of my negative above about capacity, I do wonder if Chessington is hiding something here that will make the coaster higher capacity than it appears to be at first glance. Merlin have hidden things from planning applications before (remember Smiler’s missing 6 inversions?), and not everything said in past planning applications has ended up true (What happened to Wicker Man’s “silent magnetic lift system”? That lift hill has to be one of the loudest I’ve ever stood by…), so it wouldn’t necessarily be unheard of. The ride has a maintenance shed, which coasters running only 1 train don’t normally have. One of the key pillars of B&M’s design ethos is high capacity, and I’d be surprised to see them betray that. John Wardley recently stated in a TowersTimes Q&A that he was impressed with how B&M had “solved the shuttle coaster capacity problem” with Chessington’s ride, which I feel is an interesting comment to make when this ride, which is being pegged at 720pph with a 24-rider train, has lower capacity than the regular Vekoma Boomerang (760pph with a 28-rider train) and the Vekoma Giant Inverted Boomerang (870pph with a 32-rider train), two fairly commonplace shuttle coaster types. Given that Wardley has not shied away from criticising sub par capacity on rides in the past, I found his comment intriguing. Could B&M have invented some genius technology that allows the ride to run 2 trains?
- I also wonder whether a lower height restriction may be in store. I’ve heard rumblings that this ride will be a “Family Wing Coaster” rather than a regular Wing Coaster, which could suggest that different seating and a lower height restriction could potentially be in store. Some Legolands are also building Family Wing Coasters, and I’d be very surprised if Lego permitted anything with a 1.4m height restriction to be built in their parks.
P.S. I know I contradict myself a fair few times, but I should say that I am in two minds about certain aspects of this investment, so some contradiction is inevitable!
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