LiamC
TS Member
- Favourite Ride
- Hex
I've been meaning to post my thoughts on Zufari and Chessington as a whole since I got back. It being only my 2nd ever visit I was excited to see how it had changed since I had last visited. Starting with Zufari, I think it's a strictly middle of the road affair. It's ok, average, but a number of minor touches could improve it massively in my eyes.
To start off, at present, the ride area and surrounding area is incredibly bland. Having said that, when the vegetation does grow it will look considerably better. It's a shame that the queue area and bridge into the area are surrounded by huge bamboo fences as it makes the area seem so small and cramped. Viewing the trucks going around whilst stood in the queue would make the queue experience a lot less boring. There is very little at the minute in the queue to keep people entertained and it's a very cramped cattle pen you could be stuck in for some time.
Moving onto the pre show, it's nothing special really, but it keeps children entertained. The animation on the Lemur is terrible, but having an actual person doing it's voice and interacting with the group in the building I thought was fantastic, so it's six of one and half a dozen of the other in the terms of that.
Onto the station and loading, I thought this was a complete shambles to be honest. Onload/offload is just a complete mess and quite a scrum. The main reason for this is, after the pre show, everyone is let out at once creating a complete bottle neck in the tiny area outside the building. Perhaps letting one row out at a time could help this? Also, when the ride is over and you return to the station, you offload on one part, then walk through a gate right across the onload area whilst people are moving onto the platform to load into the trucks, creating another mess of people. Why not just load/offload in the same area one after the other?
Ride wise I found the whole thing to be nowhere near as bad as people are making out. I think we had a good day weather wise so a lot of the animals were playing ball being outside and running around which was good. I will however say that it's a bit short for my liking and the finale is quite poor. Not enough happens in the final cave, and what does happen left me wondering why it actually had happened. The only thought I could draw from it was there was some sort of storm that floods the cave? If this is the case, even just adding some bright strobes and the sound of thunder/lightning would improve it greatly and make the finale easier to understand.
Tl;dr, it's not as bad as everyone has made it to be, however it's not amazing either. It's strictly a middle of the road, average attraction.
Moving on to the whole park itself and it's current state after my last visit. I have to say, I was completely dreading seeing the state it had fallen into after reading what people had posted on here. However, it wasn't that bad at all. They've hit the nail on the head with Wild Asia, the "newest" area since my last visit, and the whole area looks fantastic, a major improvement on Beano Land that went before it. Ride wise it's still as sparse as when it was BL and Kobra is a bit of a a bore, but theme wise it looks great in my eyes.
Dragon Falls, on the other hand, is a state. I remember the first time I visited, back in 2007, and being completely awestruck by the thing. For a log flume in the UK to look like that blew me away. Now it's completely devoid of external theming and just really industrial. I really hope they manage to pull it back to something that resembles what it used to be.
Ride operations wise, we had a good day and hit the park when they were running things relatively well on the whole, despite it being quite busy. Operations on Vampire were a bit odd with holding everyone and only letting two at a time into the airgates, but it seemed to sort of work in a weird way. I think they said they hit capacity whilst we were queuing for it also. However, whether their capacity is the actual rides available capacity is another thing
However, Dragon's Fury was a bit of a fail, stacking all cars either in the station or on the break run two or three times whilst we were queuing. For a ride that is supposed to constantly moves it's cars through the station, that's quite a bad jam to be honest.
On the whole, I think Chessington is getting a bad rap on here from people. It isn't running as bad as people make out and Zufari isn't a complete disaster and write off, it just need that extra something to make it memorable. However, my visits to Chessington are very few and far between, this last weekend being only my second one ever. Therefore, being a relative n00b to the park this could be why i didn't pick up on things as much as people who visit regularly would.
Tl;dr, I like Chessington ;D
To start off, at present, the ride area and surrounding area is incredibly bland. Having said that, when the vegetation does grow it will look considerably better. It's a shame that the queue area and bridge into the area are surrounded by huge bamboo fences as it makes the area seem so small and cramped. Viewing the trucks going around whilst stood in the queue would make the queue experience a lot less boring. There is very little at the minute in the queue to keep people entertained and it's a very cramped cattle pen you could be stuck in for some time.
Moving onto the pre show, it's nothing special really, but it keeps children entertained. The animation on the Lemur is terrible, but having an actual person doing it's voice and interacting with the group in the building I thought was fantastic, so it's six of one and half a dozen of the other in the terms of that.
Onto the station and loading, I thought this was a complete shambles to be honest. Onload/offload is just a complete mess and quite a scrum. The main reason for this is, after the pre show, everyone is let out at once creating a complete bottle neck in the tiny area outside the building. Perhaps letting one row out at a time could help this? Also, when the ride is over and you return to the station, you offload on one part, then walk through a gate right across the onload area whilst people are moving onto the platform to load into the trucks, creating another mess of people. Why not just load/offload in the same area one after the other?
Ride wise I found the whole thing to be nowhere near as bad as people are making out. I think we had a good day weather wise so a lot of the animals were playing ball being outside and running around which was good. I will however say that it's a bit short for my liking and the finale is quite poor. Not enough happens in the final cave, and what does happen left me wondering why it actually had happened. The only thought I could draw from it was there was some sort of storm that floods the cave? If this is the case, even just adding some bright strobes and the sound of thunder/lightning would improve it greatly and make the finale easier to understand.
Tl;dr, it's not as bad as everyone has made it to be, however it's not amazing either. It's strictly a middle of the road, average attraction.
Moving on to the whole park itself and it's current state after my last visit. I have to say, I was completely dreading seeing the state it had fallen into after reading what people had posted on here. However, it wasn't that bad at all. They've hit the nail on the head with Wild Asia, the "newest" area since my last visit, and the whole area looks fantastic, a major improvement on Beano Land that went before it. Ride wise it's still as sparse as when it was BL and Kobra is a bit of a a bore, but theme wise it looks great in my eyes.
Dragon Falls, on the other hand, is a state. I remember the first time I visited, back in 2007, and being completely awestruck by the thing. For a log flume in the UK to look like that blew me away. Now it's completely devoid of external theming and just really industrial. I really hope they manage to pull it back to something that resembles what it used to be.
Ride operations wise, we had a good day and hit the park when they were running things relatively well on the whole, despite it being quite busy. Operations on Vampire were a bit odd with holding everyone and only letting two at a time into the airgates, but it seemed to sort of work in a weird way. I think they said they hit capacity whilst we were queuing for it also. However, whether their capacity is the actual rides available capacity is another thing
However, Dragon's Fury was a bit of a fail, stacking all cars either in the station or on the break run two or three times whilst we were queuing. For a ride that is supposed to constantly moves it's cars through the station, that's quite a bad jam to be honest.On the whole, I think Chessington is getting a bad rap on here from people. It isn't running as bad as people make out and Zufari isn't a complete disaster and write off, it just need that extra something to make it memorable. However, my visits to Chessington are very few and far between, this last weekend being only my second one ever. Therefore, being a relative n00b to the park this could be why i didn't pick up on things as much as people who visit regularly would.
Tl;dr, I like Chessington ;D
