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Chessington World of Adventures Resort

I don't understand why Tomb's new fencing is deemed acceptable mind, as you see more kids climbing on it now than the older stuff...

Mainly because it's easier to climb on, yet is safer? H&S is very logical at times...

I never fully thought the incident was purely Chessie's fault anyway (indeed, even a small child leaning on the old fencing wouldn't have caused a massive break surely?), I'm still surprised the pond isn't surrounded by fencing as a result...
 
If the whole place is a construction site could they not hand over a camera to a site worker? If they just used pictures at this point on social networking to advertise the improvements they wouldn't exactly need high quality photographs taken with an slr. Just give a compact camera to a site worker to take general pictures, then the marketing team or whoever can pick out images to share online to start some minor hype and interest.

Smaller independent parks in the UK and around the world seem more than capable of sharing construction pictures. Merlin parks seem to shy away from it for some reason (only Th13teen at Alton Towers has had any real wide coverage).
 
ILC said:
Now the runaway train I think doesn't need doing. It goes much faster that dragon falls and to therefore cannot have much time to look at dirt or rust. Take the vampire tunnel. When was the past time you looked in there to see if it was clean?
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Runaway Train and Dragon Falls both had very dated supports that were no longer considered safe. I.e. the fibreglass was being held up by dodgy scaffolding rather than a proper steel frame. For some reason this was only discovered early this year when the park carried out structural investigations.

Chessington was a prototype theme park in some ways, so the original sculptures and designs were probably not intended to last for decades anyway. So it seems their shorter lifespan was a bigger factor in their removal than their visual appearance.

I can't really see how the Tomb Blaster accident was anything to do with it since nobody could have fallen off the Dragon Falls stone heads. :twirly: :twirly:
 
James said:
If the whole place is a construction site could they not hand over a camera to a site worker?
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Completely agree and I have asked for photo's from the park, so waiting to hear back.

Bob said:
I'll always wonder if the Tomb Blaster accident in 2012 was the catalyst for what happened to Runaway Train and Dragon Falls. After all, those two rides have been decaying rapidly for the last fifteen years, why suddenly the rush to pretend that it was all scheduled refurbishments when realistically, the rides were ready to go days before the cancelled Annual Pass day.
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Here's a quote from Nick Varney regarding the works on the theming:

Nick Varney said:
At the end of last season we commissioned a full condition survey of the park’s older attractions. This revealed that, while safe, the theming façades of Dragon Falls and Runaway Train had very limited ‘lives’ remaining. Rather than take any risks, we decided to remove them now. Runaway Train will be replaced as soon as possible while Dragon Falls will be fully refurbished for 2014. All theming will be replaced ‘as new’ and hopefully improved upon.
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So it wasn't related to the accident at all, but I can see the logic there.

With regards to the cancellation of the Annual Pass day, this was done due to the park not being ready. Transylvania was a construction site, Zufari had a lot of it's animals still in quarantine and there were numerous issues with a couple of rides not being ready due to the aforementioned theming removal works.
 
Jared said:
Nick Varney said:
At the end of last season we commissioned a full condition survey of the park’s older attractions. This revealed that, while safe, the theming façades of Dragon Falls and Runaway Train had very limited ‘lives’ remaining. Rather than take any risks, we decided to remove them now. Runaway Train will be replaced as soon as possible while Dragon Falls will be fully refurbished for 2014. All theming will be replaced ‘as new’ and hopefully improved upon.
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Does this mean that Runaway Train will get a new mountain and not be completely re-themed, and that Dragon Falls will look new i.e. removing the dragon and stone heads and replacing with new features?
 
BenBowser said:
Jared said:
Nick Varney said:
At the end of last season we commissioned a full condition survey of the park’s older attractions. This revealed that, while safe, the theming façades of Dragon Falls and Runaway Train had very limited ‘lives’ remaining. Rather than take any risks, we decided to remove them now. Runaway Train will be replaced as soon as possible while Dragon Falls will be fully refurbished for 2014. All theming will be replaced ‘as new’ and hopefully improved upon.
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Click to expand...

Does this mean that Runaway Train will get a new mountain and not be completely re themed, and that dragon falls will look new i.e. removing the dragon and stone heads and replacing with new features?
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Your guess is as good as mine on this I'm afraid, although I do remain optimistic.
 
I imagine it would've been easier to fund these costs before they turned into a public company than after. Think it'd be a bit sour taste to be like "woo you now own the company, btw we're spending £5m on something we should've done beforehand".
 
Five million? We should be so lucky. I'd be amazed if they cough up more than 1.5 mil for both (Falls and RMT) projects.
 
DiogoJ42 said:
Five million? We should be so lucky. I'd be amazed if they cough up more than 1.5 mil for both (Falls and RMT) projects.
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That's still a lot of money when you consider what £1m did to the theming in Beanoland... ;)
 
They're opening a hotel, for 2014?! Either this'll open RIGHT at the end of the year, or it'll be a shipping container job like Thorpe's.

I'm guessing that, since this has been announced pretty much simultaneously to Thorpe's, it'll be the latter.
 
Could it just be a retheme of the current hotel, removing all the Holiday Inn branding, to become the Chessington Azteca hotel? It was rumored quite some time ago that the Holiday Inn branding would leave, and it would just be ran as a Merlin hotel.
 
Now that's a nice logo.

This 'new' hotel will be the result of that extension they started building at the end of last season. I don't see anywhere on the website that says it will be a second hotel in conjunction with the current one.

Hopefully they are rebranding the entire hotel to this Aztec theme now that the ties with Holiday In. Have been cut!
 
Sam said:
They're opening a hotel, for 2014?! Either this'll open RIGHT at the end of the year, or it'll be a shipping container job like Thorpe's.

I'm guessing that, since this has been announced pretty much simultaneously to Thorpe's, it'll be the latter.
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If it is a shipping container, it will have to be a rather posh one as the ground works began in September. My thoughts are that it will be a proper building as they have stated it will have restaurants, a stage, swimming pool and other attractions, but not open in march and open around June time.

djtruefitt said:
Could it just be a retheme of the current hotel, removing all the Holiday Inn branding, to become the Chessington Azteca hotel? It was rumored quite some time ago that the Holiday Inn branding would leave, and it would just be ran as a Merlin hotel.
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I'm pretty sure the Holiday Inn contract was a seven year tie, so the branding should be removed. According to the website, this is to be a separate hotel and not a re-theme of the current hotel as it is open throughout the winter.
 
If you want to read into the url it is under "Our Hotel" - certainly implies a retheme of the existing hotel.

If there were a new hotel being built wouldn't a planning application have appeared by now? (I don't know anything about how planning applications work for Chessington). Shipping containers wouldn't work for the target market. Young families want spacious rooms in a permanent looking building.
 
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