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Chessington World of Adventures Resort

Interestingly, the queues actually don’t seem that bad at the minute; the longest queue is 75 minutes, and the longest outside of the “Brave Adventurers” portion is only 25 minutes.
 
Fastrack at Chessington accounts for only a very small percentage of the total riders. The problem of fastrack is overstated.

What does slow the main queues down is Ride Access Passes. This one is much harder for the park to manage, because a lot of people seem to qualify for it.
 
Enter Valhalla said:
What does slow the main queues down is Ride Access Passes. This one is much harder for the park to manage, because a lot of people seem to qualify for it.
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I apologise if I’m making a sweeping statement here, but would it be fair to say that Chessington is the Merlin park that struggles the most with RAP?

It has a younger crowd visiting than Alton and Thorpe, and from my personal experience, younger children with certain conditions are more likely to need RAP than teens and adults with the same conditions. I know that with my own personal experience of having autism, my condition was certainly less well managed when I was a child than it is now, and even though I technically qualify, the only time I ever used RAP was on my first ever visit to Alton Towers aged 6.

Chessington is also the park I seem to hear the most anecdotes about with regard to high usage and allocation of RAP. Alton Towers also has its fair share of problems, but Thorpe and Legoland don’t seem to have nearly the same amount of problems with RAP.

I haven’t been to Chessington since 2014, but I’ve heard too many anecdotes to not be able to suggest that the park may have significant RAP usage compared to the other parks.
 
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Sorry if this comes across as a bit presumptuous, but I think another problem with RAP is that a lot of people abuse the system as a free fast.

I have seen countless cases of people using one elderly guest as their foot in the door, who then doesn't end up riding.

Whilst theres certainly an argument for not wanting to leave your family for long periods of time due to a disability, I suspect that they know exactly what they're doing.
 
Reb said:
Sorry if this comes across as a bit presumptuous, but I think another problem with RAP is that a lot of people abuse the system as a free fast.

I have seen countless cases of people using one elderly guest as their foot in the door, who then doesn't end up riding.

Whilst theres certainly an argument for not wanting to leave your family for long periods of time due to a disability, I suspect that they know exactly what they're doing.
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Yeah, just shoot 'em all at fifty.
 
Enter Valhalla said:
What does slow the main queues down is Ride Access Passes. This one is much harder for the park to manage, because a lot of people seem to qualify for it.
Click to expand...

Reb said:
Sorry if this comes across as a bit presumptuous, but I think another problem with RAP is that a lot of people abuse the system as a free fast.
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If managed correctly it should not be a fastrack, its a means to wait for the ride elsewhere. So if the queue sign says 75 minutes you should come back in at least that time to ride. But the park doesn't always enforce that properly.

The only issue is that while waiting that 75 minutes they can go and ride something with a shorter wait. My understanding is that for guests with children who may have austism or similar that can a good thing as it keeps the child distracted and avoids a meltdown.
 
Im my view the only way RAP can be fair to ALL guests is to make 'Virtual Queue' available to ALL guests free of charge. This removes the 'Advantage' of RAP. Allows all guests to go on a 2nd ride while virtually queuing for the first. It also removes any stigma of RAP or having to jump through the hoops of getting a RAP pass. All guests then have equal access to the attraction regardless of disability. I read currently about 26% of the population have a diagnosable mental illness so if that means roughly about a quarter of all guests currently qualify for RAP (ignoring there 4 friends/family members they can take on with them) thats a lot of guests percentage wise getting an advantage over others. https://www.mind.org.uk/information...health/how-common-are-mental-health-problems/

Now I know obviously that would mean if everyone could get access to Virtual Queue the 'Stand By' queue would be even worse (say 4 times worse) but I would argue thats OK because all those guests have equal access to the Virtual Queue so therefore it would be more acceptable to give more priority to the Virtual Queue and if guests want to additionally while waiting for Virtual Queue go in Stand by at same time they know what there getting and it removes the advantage to some guests over others.
 
I don’t think having a “if you have a mental illness then you qualify for rap” mentality is a good idea. I have a couple of mental illness’ but my conditions don’t inhibit my ability to queue up the usual way, I mean I don’t necessarily enjoy the queueing experience, especially in certain queue lines, but I don’t think many people do, it’s just something you have to endure at theme parks if you want to go on rides.

Don’t get me wrong some conditions may require it, but I don’t think all of that 26% automatically needs a rap by virtue of having a mental illness.
 
pjanvil said:
Im my view the only way RAP can be fair to ALL guests is to make 'Virtual Queue' available to ALL guests free of charge.
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I've thought about this before.

It would be cool to have a system where you could book your day before you get there, largely negating long queue times, however, this all falls apart if a ride breaks down, and with Chessington's reliability... Well...
What's the record for days without a breakdown?

I also feel like this is something that works well on paper over practice. All it takes is one attendant to be a bit slow and suddenly you're behind on a few virtual bookings, throwing the whole day into chaos...

On second thought, maybe this wouldn't be such a good idea...
 
rob666 said:
The one time they tried it at Thorpe, it quickly became a disaster...If I remember it correctly, some years ago now.
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Yet other parks operate a system where there is no fast track but a free virtual queue or slot reservation system it works really well. Both Energylandia and Liseberg use reservation systems that work well.

Obviously every park is slightly different but I don’t see why a ride reservation system in principle couldn’t work.
 
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Blackpool old "tamagochi" system, running on the basic cheap "entry cost" model, was excellent.
Worked well when it wasn't too busy, and no glitches.
Then they changed it to a crap app.
 
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Although I notice the most recent post has moved things onto the £20 for ERT thing (which is an absolute rip off by the way), just to note we have a dedicated RAP topic which has covered a lot of the points being made. Please continue RAP discussion there.

Back to the ERT cost, how anyone at Merlin can say that's even remotely good value for money at a family park is beyond me. A typical family of four paying £80/£1.33 a MINUTE for an hour's access to the park? What an absolute rip off.
 
From the Mr Pedantic angle...you might get three top attractions in during that very quiet hour at the start of the day, then another couple in during the quiet "first" hour after that...park half done.
So I think it is a magnificent idea and the park managers deserve a putty medal.
Says him who hasn't been to the park in fifty years.
 
Install new headline rollercoaster that has woeful throughout.

Instigate mandatory virtual queue for said rollercoaster in an attempt to manage crowds.

Receive complaints from guests that they are unable to secure a place in the VQ who therefore can’t ride the ‘new’ thing that tempted them to visit in the first place.

Begin to charge an extra £20pp to enable access to the new ride for an extra hour without needing to use the virtual queue, whilst at the same time watering down the value of early access to your hotel guests.

Merlin Entertainments folks.
 
It might please the same people that are happy to pay for fast track....which is quite a lot, particularly at a poorly-operated park.

It will be interesting if/when the same is rolled out at Thorpe and Alton.
 
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