Chessington World of Adventures Resort

[Matt N]

I'm sure there was an image on here somewhere of them? Might be making it up

I don’t think they’ve ever been revealed, if I’m remembering correctly. Some people have done spoof images of what the trains could be like as a joke, but the actual trains have never been revealed, to my knowledge.

 

[ChristmasPud]

the emergency evac/clearance time is just minutes for a highly flammable set.

I remember that extremely damaging exaggeration spread by people at Chessington saying you'd only have minutes before the whole building was in flames, but that was ridiculous. "Minutes" is maybe the target evacuation time, you'd still plan for the fastest possible in any ride.

But the set is not "highly flammable" otherwise the ride would be shut down immediately. The building is huge, the fire would have to spread extremely quickly if "minutes" was true.

Like every dark ride at major parks in the world, the set was fire retardant treated and within regulations. This means it's hard to set alight and any spread is mitigated allowing plenty time to evacuate and contain. In evacuation the faster danger is smoke spread, which the roof vents are there for.

What happened was the set became 20+ years old and needed re-treating for assurance, this happened in the 2015 refurb.

 

[DistortAMG]

I remember that extremely damaging exaggeration spread by people at Chessington saying you'd only have minutes before the whole building was in flames, but that was ridiculous. "Minutes" is maybe the target evacuation time, you'd still plan for the fastest possible in any ride.

But the set is not "highly flammable" otherwise the ride would be shut down immediately. The building is huge, the fire would have to spread extremely quickly if "minutes" was true.

Like every dark ride at major parks in the world, the set was fire retardant treated and within regulations. This means it's hard to set alight and any spread is mitigated allowing plenty time to evacuate and contain. In evacuation the faster danger is smoke spread, which the roof vents are there for.

What happened was the set became 20+ years old and needed re-treating for assurance, this happened in the 2015 refurb.

I think all you need to look at is the speed and ferocity the old pirate ride at Europa Park was totally engulfed in flames a few years ago. The building was engulfed in flames within minutes, a much larger building I must add.

Do not forget that smoke kills first. So even if the whole building is not totally engulfed in minutes, a serious danger to life exists for anyone in the building due to smoke spreading very quickly and more than likely covereing the rest if the building that is not burning yet. Having to get people out of these buildings within minutes is not because it is something to aim for as a good practice, it is to preserve life. Europa Parks' fire a few years ago clearly showed how fast a massive dark ride can be engulfed.

The sets while flammable, are also highly toxic due to the materials used. Adding even more to the danger. As that will make the smoke extremely toxic.

 

[ChristmasPud]

Do not forget that smoke kills first.

You didn't read my post then!

I think all you need to look at is the speed and ferocity the old pirate ride at Europa Park was totally engulfed in flames a few years ago.

No clearly there's more complexity, or all dark rides around the world should be shut down.

The Pirate ride if Im right was a victim of the fire starting outside the building and already getting to a large blaze, allowing it to spread much faster. I imagine was too large to control once it came into contact with the sets. It didnt start inside the ride. The same happened with Wicked Witches at Thorpe Park, it started in the adjacent building. Perhaps the case there was the containing walls of the building itself allowing a large blaze to spread.

 

[DistortAMG]

You didn't read my post then!

I did read it, The main point of my post being recent fires in major dark rides, at major parks, contradict what you say about fires not engulfing buildings within minutes. Fire protected sets should suppress the speed. They did not, suggesting the materials used are very flammable.

Maybe there is a case to be made about fires getting large before they hit the building, but even so, seeing as two major dark rides, WWH and PIB had huge.....HUGE and fast fires, due to said fires starting outside their buildings, the case should be made that this should be built into the design. All those fire retardant materials seemed useless in both rides due to how fast they burnt.

 

[ChristmasPud]

Fire protected sets should suppress the speed. They did not, suggesting the materials used are very flammable.

But then all dark rides and all large themed installations in visitor attractions would be illegal and should be shut down.

Im sorry but this is like saying because Smiler crashed then coaster block mechanisms aren't safe. There's specific circumstances and complexity there

The original point of the operations precautions makes sense, but the line spread at the time by Chessington staff was a damaging exaggeration.

 

[DistortAMG]

But then all dark rides and all themed installations in all visitor attractions would be illegal and should be shut down.

Im sorry but this is like saying because Smiler crashed then coaster block mechanisms aren't safe. There's specific circumstances and complexity there

It is nothing like saying that at all because the safety block system worked fine. It was manually overridden by a human. That is hugely different to the point I am making.

Two major dark rides quite literally burnt to the ground, very quickly and very fast. The goal of fire suppression is to suppress the fire is it not, the clue is in the name. Therefor, it would not be out the realms of possibility to assume that rides that have fire suppressed sets would actually slow the speed of the fire, would it not?

How does that even suggest something should be shut down? It does not.

What I am saying is, the speed and ferocity of not only Europas pirate ride but WWH, suggests that in these situations, fire suppressants on the sets does not do much to slow the speed of the fires. Given what we saw with our own eyes about how fast the fires spread. This also suggests that once ignited, the sets become very flammable, clearly they are else the buildings would not burn like they did.

You stop a forest fire by removing fuel, aka wood from the fires path. Fire retardant materials could be compared slightly to removing fuel from the path of a fire. So even if the fire started outside the building and was large by the time it got to the sets, it should have slowed the pace of the fire down once reaching the ride. The opposite happened, the fire sped up and went from large to absoloutly huge, clearly suggesting there was some highly flammable materials inside, else the fire would not go from a large one to a huge one.

You need three things for a fire; heat, fuel and oxygen aka the fire triangle. The oxygen and heat were already there in the Europa fire before hitting the pirate ride, once the fire hit the pirate ride the fire went hugely bigger, I mean HUGELY. The only thing that would have changed according to the fire triangle before and after hitting the building would be the fuel. In this case, becoming far more flammable once hitting the pirate ride.

 

[Themeparksandy1981]

You also only have to look how quickly a fire destroyed 2 of the building on the sky ride at Alton Towers. There was nothing left of the top station.

 

[ChristmasPud]

It is nothing like saying that at all because the safety block system worked fine. It was manually overridden by a human. That is hugely different to the point I am making.

This is exactly what Im saying, complexity and specific circumstance, not "the block system clearly didnt work" ie "well the fire retardant clearly didn't work" like you're making out.

You stop a forest fire by removing fuel, aka wood from the fires path. Fire retardant materials could be compared slightly to removing fuel from the path of a fire.

In that case, better remove all the timber that constructs your roof, all the flammable materials in your house (which are far less compliant than anything you'd be allowed to put in a dark ride) and all theatres and installations should remove all their sets immediately, if existing fire retardancy methods "dont work"

Sorry but I have background in this exact thing so not debating a long strawman post when this has veered away from the original discussion about operations. Dark rides with large themed sets are built to prevent fire and the idea that Tomb is a 5 minute death trap is false.

You also only have to look how quickly a fire destroyed 2 of the building on the sky ride at Alton Towers. There was nothing left of the top station.

Again saying "you only need to look at (insert huge fire incident here)" is false, or youd conclude all buildings are about to burn in similarly huge fires. Obviously in the cases where the blaze was allowed to get so big there was some kind of failure under specific circumstances. You have to look at the context and complexity of those cases. Otherwise apparently nobody should set foot in buildings again.

Even non-flammable materials like structural steel performs worse in a fire than structural timber. My favourite factoid

 

[Craig]

Whilst I'm sure KeithLardStreet would be appreciated by some, I think it's probably wise if we get back onto the topic of Chessington rather than delving into the world of fire safety.

 

[rob666]

Keith Laird, a real Bolton F&S officer, was very cross about the character, (who was rumoured to be a dog shagger), and was supported by many local people in making his complaint.
Very funny, and very true.
Much more entertaining than the "burning down a shed" discussion.

 

[James Watkins]

This must’ve been what John meant about the new coaster ‘solving the capacity problem’ if true…

From: https://mobile.twitter.com/MikeThemeParks/status/1610316699709882368

 

[Matt N]

This must’ve been what John meant about the new coaster ‘solving the capacity problem’ if true…

From: https://mobile.twitter.com/MikeThemeParks/status/1610316699709882368

This was suggested a few months back (it may even have been me who suggested it, come to think of it), but was vetoed on the basis that the Noise Impact Assessment described 24 riders per train and the gap between airgates was no bigger than that of The Swarm (thus suggesting that the clearance envelope will not be large enough to have two back-to-back rows).

 

[John]

As a guess, I'd say it's more likely that at least 1 row is facing backwards than there being any major modifications to the train design.

 

[Alsty]

And simply reversing one or more rows wouldn't do anything about Wardley's fabled "solving the capacity problem".

I feel another sense of deja vu.

 

[Benzin]

Doing a Mraws then?

Which again is weird because it's a shuttle coaster in the first place.

 

[Connor98]

I’d imagine if they were serious about capacity it would of been possible to create a switch track similar to Ice Breaker to allow more than one train.

 

[Danny]

That would have been the sensible, albeit far more costly option.

Funnily enough, the original tweet's author has deleted the two posts proceeding gloating at seeing the trains. Make of that what you will.

 

[Matt.GC]

That'll be another attention seeking social media lie then.

 

[djtruefitt]

I guess you could add one row facing backwards on to the back row, adding 4 more seats, but that’s hardly gonna do much for the throughput.