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Chessington World of Adventures Resort

Thinking about this, this is a pretty disgusting move by Chessington. They will have known for a while that these rides wouldn't be open, especially Vampire if they're waiting for parts, and yet they've chosen to wait until people arrive to tell them and announce on social media. And to fob people off with this "return for £10" nonsense is pretty insulting.
 
We asked about annual pass holders and were given a £5 voucher to spend on park which was quite nice and much better than a fastrack ticket that they normally do.

In terms of the closed rides I think Rameses revenge was last minute as they added that to the board just before the park opened, techies were working on that most of the day and it looked like a fault with one restraint.

Chessie tweeted me saying bubble works was still undergoing health and safety checks and a manager told us the staff are yet to be fully trained on it.

Dragons fury started testing at about 4pm but the manager did tell us in the morning it would be doing testing but should be open on Friday or Saturday.

Vampire needs parts and they have no idea when that will open.

And Griffins galleon was in pieces with no floor, seats, sides or themeing on it with it all sat on the side.


In good news though the new penguin bay is very nice and a much better improvement on what was there before. The new show was also much better than I expected!
 
It’s a disappointing start to the season. They’ve delayed announcing ‘show time’ (staggered) openings. Since 2012, on off peak days, they’ve been opening certain areas and attractions later than others. It’s expected they’ll do the same again this year, but they’ve held back until they can resolve these other issues. Vampire and Bubble Works are rides people visit early in the day. But I doubt this will be much of a consolation, particularly as many people don’t agree with staggered openings anyway.

It’s looking like Rameses might be open tomorrow, although since the incident where it got stuck in the air, there’s been a minimum of 15 riders. I suspect on quiet days there could be a wait if people want to ride it.

Bubble Works was supposed to be open for February half term, but was substituted for Tomb Blaster when they found a problem with it. It seems to be quite a major problem, and could be a while before it’s open.

Edit: On their Facebook page they're saying that all of them apart from Vampire will be ready for this weekend, so perhaps Bubble Works is almost sorted.
 
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Also isn't a bounce back ticket only £12 or £15 anyway? Hardly an amazing compensation offer offering a £10 return ticket. A free lunch would have been better.
 
Rob said:
And the award for the worst start to a main theme park season ever goes to....... Chessington:)
Click to expand...
Whilst I agree, this is utterly scandalous, I think that prize HAS to do to Thorpe for... pretty much every season between 2007 and 2011...
As for the general public, whilst as my last post here illustrates, I'd struggle to defend Chessington on most counts, I've actually had to unfollow them on Facebook due to the arguments it was sticking on my timeline...
 
Today they have announced on their Facebook page that if you visited yesterday, today or tomorrow you can come back for free before 21st (I think) July. Clearly they realised hey we're getting far too much abuse on FB!
 
That should have been the offer from the off. Glad they have come to their senses and hopefully they learn from it for the future.

:)
 
Now is it just me or does chessington have some of the worse amount of downtime for their rides?

The "closed rides" sign is always out at the entrance and there never seems to be one day where they don't have a ride closed all day. Of course we all know last week they opened with the following rides closed:
Vampire
Dragons fury
Bubbleworks
Griffins galleon
Remasis revenge

Now a week later and the following rides are closed:
Safari skyway
Griffins galleon
Vampire
Kobra

Some of them rides seem to spend more time closed than actually open! Is it just bad luck? Lack of maintenance? Or just cost cutting?
 
I don't believe the closures with Kobra and Griffin's Galleon have anything to do with cost cutting as Kobra was operating on the Saturday AP Day and has only been down since this weekend. Griffin's I'm unsure about as it experiences a fair amount of downtime during the season anyway. Safari Skyway is in the same boat as Griffin's in downtime terms, pun not intended, as it struggled during the latter half of last season. Vampire is still waiting on manufacturing parts.
 
Has Griffins actually opened this season yet? On the letter they gave out on opening day (and indeed on the statement they released) they said it would be back open on Saturday. However it looked no where near ready on opening day.
 
No, it hasn't been open as far as I or anybody else is aware.

EDIT:

Griffin's Galleon is now operating. Kobra's currently getting its maintenance fix.
 
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It's because they've only been able to get one train ready, and they don't want queues to go insane.
 
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Does anybody know why there are such horrendous queues at CWOA these days? Small rides like Skyway, Truckers, Kobra all getting over an hour wait? And Fury etc. up to 90 minutes?

It struck me when I was on the Mini Monorail at EP the other day which was walk on.

Have operations got even worse? Why do people tolerate this!?
 
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I made similar comments over on TPM recently· It seems the main issues are a lack of high capacity rides, fastrack and mediocre operations. Having Vampire closed and then on 1 train/ticket only isn't helping

Some numbers from Matt Creek

Chessington
Falls 1000
Tombs 600
Fury 550
Bubbles 600
Zufari unknown
Rattlesnake 350
Scorpion 500
Click to expand...

Nothing particularly high there (Vampire is 700 at most and I suspect Zufari is around 750 on 4 vehicles, but that's a complete guess). The other day Monkey Swinger was advertised as 60 minutes - completely barmy!
 
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