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Chessington World of Adventures Resort

...just wondering, if there was a little more space, what if Mandrill Mayham had been a Duelling shuttle coaster? Not sure if it is possible with a B&M coaster of that size or for wing riders in general but it would have been a hell of a lot better capacity wise and all the worries here likely wouldn't be nowhere near as bad.

Imagine two set of coaster tracks looping round the jaguar head!
 
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@RyanUK sorry can’t use the quote function as it would be a nightmare to edit on my phone but in answer to your question on the valid concerns around this project:

1) As you mention, throughput, which in the early days we thought might be improved but hasn’t been.

2) There is another wing rider within 30 miles of this owned by the same group so a bit unimaginative.

3) The layout is mediocre (but I will come on to this a bit later).

4) You would likely get more bang for your buck with another manufacturer (also will come into this).

Now all those where valid areas of debate and points one and two still stand, some things have elaborated the concerns of points three and four:

For layout, it still looks a bit “meh” but the launches look punchy and the “wobble” after the roll could be interesting so jury still out.

For “bang for your buck” since this project was announced it’s clear Merlin has struck some sort of deal with B&M to showcase a family offering so the cost may not be “as expected”.

Throughput is obviously still a concern for a park riddled with terrible throughput, and comparisons will be made with Swarm by many people. As for rideability we have as much information now as we are going to get without plonking our arses on the ride and although I am not yet sold and reserve the right to debate it there is always the fact videos do not a ride experience tell!
 
QTXAdsy said:
...just wondering, if there was a little more space, what if Mandrill Mayham had been a Duelling shuttle coaster? Not sure if it is possible with a B&M coaster of that size or for wing riders in general but it would have been a hell of a lot better capacity wise and all the worries here likely wouldn't be nowhere near as bad.

Imagine two set of coaster tracks looping round the jaguar head!
Click to expand...

I’d rather they had just gone for a regular full circuit launch coaster with several trains in that case.
 
jon81uk said:
Vampire was nowhere near a Worlds first.
It’s the sixth Arrow suspended coaster.

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That’s what RCDB shows but I’m sure it’s been described by Wardley himself as a worlds first for being flourless? Or at least a worlds first for something. One known fact is that Wardley knew about this model coming out so went to see it, before building Vampire.
 
RyanUK said:
That’s what RCDB shows but I’m sure it’s been described by Wardley himself as a worlds first for being flourless? Or at least a worlds first for something. One known fact is that Wardley knew about this model coming out so went to see it, before building Vampire.
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It was only converted to floorless in 2002 when it was given new Vekoma trains.
 
RyanUK said:
That’s what RCDB shows but I’m sure it’s been described by Wardley himself as a worlds first for being flourless? Or at least a worlds first for something. One known fact is that Wardley knew about this model coming out so went to see it, before building Vampire.
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That story is about Nemesis. He heard Six Flags were building a coaster below the track, he told them “we have one at Chessington”, and the response was “but this one inverts!” and AT got the first B&M inverted coaster in Europe.
How true it is we don’t know but that’s the story JW tells.
As of course Six Flags MM already had an Arrow suspended coaster before Batman anyway.
 
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jon81uk said:
and AT got the second B&M inverted coaster in the world.
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I'm confused. Isn't Nemesis the fourth, after Batman: The Ride at both Six Flags Great America and Great Adventure and also Flight Deck at California's Great America?
 
zeock said:
I'm confused. Isn't Nemesis the fourth, after Batman: The Ride at both Six Flags Great America and Great Adventure and also Flight Deck at California's Great America?
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Yep I’m wrong, I mis-remembered the story. Nemesis was the first in Europe and the only not at a Six Flags.
It’s been 19 years since I heard John Wardley tell it!
 
Chessington needs high capacity rides. It's a busy park near to central London and accessible by public transport very easily.

A high capacity headline coaster would have been amazing, it's all well and good saying mandril mayhdms capacity is on the same level as Vampire or Dragons Fury, but when both of those should be doing better it's easy to see why this is a problem.
 
MattyH said:
Chessington needs high capacity rides. It's a busy park near to central London and accessible by public transport very easily.

A high capacity headline coaster would have been amazing, it's all well and good saying mandril mayhdms capacity is on the same level as Vampire or Dragons Fury, but when both of those should be doing better it's easy to see why this is a problem.
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It's not only going to be similar to Vampire or Dragon's Fury, it's in addition to. Merlin often remove rides to install new ones, they notably aren't doing that here.
 
If Vampire achieved even 70% of its theoretical throughput, Mandrill Mayhem would be lower.

Hopefully, MM will actually achieve its targets.

Chessington should spend money on getting Fury up to speed. 300 to 400/hr actual is totally inadequate. I actualy felt for the staff on my last visit. It was a disaster zone at Howl'O Ween.

This area will, in theory, add a total of around 1200/hr to ride capacity. Not insignificant vs. the park's overall capacity but dire when you look at the bigger picture and consider that something like Wicker Man regularly achieves 1000/hr on its own.

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Overall I do think the Tussauds annual pass is what caused some of the issues for Chessington as it probably drove more people to the park compared to day tickets, particularly repeat visits by the same family.
For a small park with a zoo it was pretty good, but I expect the influx of passholders in the early 2000s just pushed too many guests into the park.
 
Benzin said:
Vampire not having 3 trains drops the throughput from 900-1000 pph to whatever they get now.

Fury target was 600-700 pph.

An influx of MAP users isn't the cause of those dropping.
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Although the annual passes didn’t directly cause the rides to operate with lower throughput, I do think it’s plausible that the rise in the Tussauds annual passes in the 2000s changed the income for the park’s significantly and Chessington especially seemed to suffer. If you have a relatively captive market of repeat passholders there is less incentive to run rides better as they are likely to come back anyway. Also when it works out that each guest is only paying a small amount to get into the park it can’t give them much of a budget to operate on, so things like Fasttrack become more important to generate revenue.
 
jon81uk said:
Overall I do think the Tussauds annual pass is what caused some of the issues for Chessington as it probably drove more people to the park compared to day tickets, particularly repeat visits by the same family.
For a small park with a zoo it was pretty good, but I expect the influx of passholders in the early 2000s just pushed too many guests into the park.
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I do think there’s something in this.

In 2008, park attendance rose by 29% (~968,750 in 2007 to ~1,250,000 in 2008, as per Merlin’s attendance graph) despite the lack of a major new addition.

Merlin gained control of the parks in summer 2007, and 2008 was their first “proper” year in control of the parks where products like the Merlin Annual Pass properly entered the public conscious.

With all of this in mind, I’d wager that the MAP was at very least a significant contributing factor to Chessington’s rise in attendance in the late 2000s and 2010s.

However, I don’t think it tells the whole story, nor do I think it explains why Chessington struggles so much with queues nowadays. The park maintained a peak attendance level of around 1.8 million between 1995 and 1998 (a level that has never been hit since, even under Merlin), and anecdotes from the 1990s suggest that the park never suffered with long queues quite like it does now.

From what I’ve heard, I feel that the issue can be blamed more on throughputs for major attractions dropping due to H&S requirements, although the guest figures rising again in recent years certainly won’t have helped.
EDIT: Sorry, I wrote this post before your most recent reply…
 
Beginning to think we have a secret Merlin employee on this forum with all these figures. 😏

jon81uk said:
That story is about Nemesis. He heard Six Flags were building a coaster below the track, he told them “we have one at Chessington”, and the response was “but this one inverts!” and AT got the first B&M inverted coaster in Europe.
How true it is we don’t know but that’s the story JW tells.
As of course Six Flags MM already had an Arrow suspended coaster before Batman anyway.
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Yes I know that but John went to see the Arrow prototype. He made a separate trip a few years later during the planning for Nemesis. Transylvania only really properly came about because of this new coaster - had a suspended coaster not been put in, it’s likely Transylvania could’ve been something completely different and we might not have even had the Bubbleworks!
 
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