• ℹ️ Heads up...

    This is a popular topic that is fast moving Guest - before posting, please ensure that you check out the first post in the topic for a quick reminder of guidelines, and importantly a summary of the known facts and information so far. Thanks.

Chessington World of Adventures Resort

In response to a Towers St tweet about Rattlesnake getting throughput of 100 per hour.

Obviously no idea of it’s validity, and somewhat an interesting choice for a fan account to divulge the detail, but there we go.
F317D480-7115-4597-8154-CE4C946882BE.jpeg
 
In response to a Towers St tweet about Rattlesnake getting throughput of 100 per hour.

Obviously no idea of it’s validity, and somewhat an interesting choice for a fan account to divulge the detail, but there we go.
F317D480-7115-4597-8154-CE4C946882BE.jpeg
This is what we were led to believe by the ride staff, and correlates with how the ride was being operated. No details shared about the nature of the technical issues though.
 
Last edited:
In response to a Towers St tweet about Rattlesnake getting throughput of 100 per hour.

Obviously no idea of it’s validity, and somewhat an interesting choice for a fan account to divulge the detail, but there we go.
F317D480-7115-4597-8154-CE4C946882BE.jpeg
From the same guy who said Scorpion Express wasn’t coming back…. Yet it’s confirmed as reopening shortly now the train is back on the track.

Wouldn’t take everything from this account as absolute, but seems like maybe the ride can’t feed back information of where the cars are located on the track?

Really it needs replacing, it’s off the shelf coaster which could easily be replaced with another. It’s the worst operated ride there, they regularly send the cars with single riders.
 
They’re operating Rattlesnake in “safe mode”? I never knew such a mode existed… is it some sort of manual override mode, where the operator controls when to send it? Based on what “safe mode” does on a Windows PC, I would have guessed that it was some sort of manual control mode, but on the other hand, I’d be very surprised if Merlin allowed such a thing post-2015…

With Rattlesnake only seating 4 riders per car, only sending a car when the previous one completes the circuit must result in a very low throughput…

As an interesting aside, I believe the Arrow wild mouse coasters at Cedar Fair parks in America operate in a similar manner. I’ve heard that a car can’t be sent on those until the previous one completes the circuit, and the queues can apparently get long…
 
Looking at the block diagram on the screen in the op cabin, the ride still shows the individual blocks occupied. The current system appeared to be purely procedural, dispatching as the previous car rounded the corner into the station.

Is the scorpion train back? I didn't see it yesterday when I walked over.
 
Looking at the block diagram on the screen in the op cabin, the ride still shows the individual blocks occupied. The current system appeared to be purely procedural, dispatching as the previous car rounded the corner into the station.

Is the scorpion train back? I didn't see it yesterday when I walked over.
They were doing the same with Vampire for the majority of last season. They wouldn’t send train 2 until they physically saw train 1 through the window in and on the brakes.

Reports are that the train is back but missing the shells and restraints. I will have a look next weekend when I visit.
 
I can confirm that Vampire is no longer restricted in that way - staff were going flat out to ensure maximum capacity on Saturday resulting in entirely reasonable queue times on it all day, unlike many other rides.

Another operational observation was that Tomb Blaster seemed to be sending trains much faster than in recent years - not sure if there's been some change there but the queue moved more than twice as fast as when I last rode, only taking about 25 min from the steps down to the building rather than the 60+ I've waited from there previously.
 
Correct indeed, it's called "manual block mode". There are buttons for each block but even then the computer will only let the op move a train if the next block is clear.
If that's the case how were they able to override it to cause the Smiler crash?
 
Top