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Chessington World of Adventures Resort

AstroDan said:
Not every park has the same target audience...

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I do appreciate that dan but within merlin they do not cater for young children very well, even if i was to include Legoland there isn't that much that a under 0.9 can actually do .

My point is more that the children's areas within merlin are not that great, for young kids.
Even if we just said peppa pig land vs cbeebies.
 
AstroDan said:
Not every park has the same target audience...

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I would say it feels like Chessington, Legoland and Paulton are all roughly going for the same audience though, families with children mainly under 12.
Alton Towers definitely feels like its trying to cater to all ages, even if there aren't enough rides without height restrictions. Thorpe obviously is going for families with kids over 13 and young adults without children.

I've not been to Paulton but it does appear to offer some better options than Chessington, but Chessington has more dark rides.
 
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Out of interest, does Chessington have generally lower throughputs than the other Merlin parks or something?

Given that the kids are in school, I would have expected a fairly quiet park, but I’ve just had a look at their queue times, and it actually seems rather busy compared to the other Merlin properties. Currently, in terms of roller coasters (to delve into a particular ride category), Dragon’s Fury is on 90, Rattlesnake & Vampire are both on 60 and Scorpion Express is on 40. By comparison, no roller coaster at Thorpe Park, which I’d expect to have greater crowds on a weekday, is currently above 60; the longest is Saw at 35, with the lowest being Stealth & Swarm down on 20. Flying Fish is also on only 5 minutes. Towers currently has 4/10 coasters above 60 (Rita on 65, Oblivion, Thirteen & Smiler on 70), with the lowest being RMT right down on 10 minutes.

Do Chessington’s rides have inherently lower attained throughputs or something? Given that Vampire attains 1,200pph according to RCDB, Scorpion attains 1,000pph and Fury and Rattlesnake both attain 900-950, I’ll admit this surprises me!

What actually is Chessie’s highest throughput ride, out of interest?
 
Matt N said:
Do Chessington’s rides have inherently lower attained throughputs or something? Given that Vampire attains 1,200pph according to RCDB, Scorpion attains 1,000pph and Fury and Rattlesnake both attain 900-950, I’ll admit this surprises me!
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Chessington haven’t got anywhere near those throughputs for years.
 
AT86 said:
Chessington haven’t got anywhere near those throughputs for years.
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If that is the case, does anyone know what more typical throughputs are for Chessington’s majors? Does anything there get 1,000pph or close to it?
 
I think the only ride that might be able to achieve close to 1000ph is Tiger Rock since it’s basically continuous loading.

Vampire is more like 500-600 per hour.
 
Chessington has a broad appeal I think, its the most family friendly of all the Merlin parks with a reasonable mix of ride types and the zoo and some simple dark rides.
But too may attractions are low capacity, or not operated as well as they could be, or just poorly designed to start with.
 
I reckon the new shuttle coaster should provide a boost; if manufactured by B&M, as it’s heavily rumoured to be, then its throughput could be the highest at Chessington!
 
AT86 said:
I think the only ride that might be able to achieve close to 1000ph is Tiger Rock since it’s basically continuous loading.

Vampire is more like 500-600 per hour.
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I think that's probably fair, Vampire tends to kick a 24 seater train out every 2.5 minutes.

How many 'trains' do they run on Tomb Blaster these days ?
 
Up to 4, target throughput on 4 is 500/hr according to a laminated sign on the op panel (as of Summer 2019)
 
Vampire on 3 trains could hit 1000.

It hasn't run like that for years though.

Fury on 7 cars got 600-700.

So yeah there's no rides with any decent throughput there anymore bar Tiger Rock. Tiny Truckers got 200pph like once when I worked on it.
 
200pph on Tiny Truckers? That’s rather low, although in fairness, I guess it’s an attraction that not as many will ultimately ride.

If 200pph was what it used to get, what does it get now?
 
Truckers consistently got 45 minute queues before it had Fastrack and the recent surge of RAP.

It has no throughput because you had 5 trucks with a max capacity of 2 adults and 2 kids. So you very rarely if at all could fill it up (it's not particularly a ride can double people up on after all).

No idea how they run it now. But Fastrack would be awful to deal with on it.
 
I went for the first time on Wednesday, overall the day was OK, park busy with school groups and families with kids. Queues however generally where shorter than advertised. Dragons Fury was listed as 45 mins when we joined, we got on in just under 20 mins, Vampire was similar. Kobra was advertised as 50 mins, took around 20 again. Monkey Swinger was advertised as 20 mins, took one cycle so only a few mins. Only queue that took longer than advertised was Croc Drop, posted as 30 mins, took close to 60.

The problem with a number of the rides was that due to small capacity cars, ie rattle snake, Fury and due to social distancing only loading one party per train, often cars going with only 1 or two passengers on them, further slowing what are already low capacity attractions. Managed 10 rides without particularly rushing around etc- Fury X 2, Vampire x 2, Rattlesnake X 1, Scorpion Express x 1, Croc Drop X 1, Tomb Blaster X 1, Kobra x 1 and Monkey Swinger x 1.

Glad I have now ticked the park off my list, prob won't return until the new coaster has opened though (if its good enough to warrant another trip. All though Alton (my local park) has its flaws, the quality of attraction is so much better than both Chessington and Thorpe, well accept food options.
 
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