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Chessington World of Adventures Resort

Visited today and noticed that the RAP building by Adventure Point was closed and there was a sign on the door saying that an 'exciting new space was coming soon'. Actually it said there was an 'Exiting new space coming soon' - I didn't get a chance to take a photo of that spelling mistake.

Not sure what is going in there.
 
Bowser said:
I was there today too, Vampire was on one train all day hence the queue.
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Even on two trains this season on a normal day, Vampire attracts a much larger queue than Mandrill.

There are other factors behind it including Vampire having the lowest height requirement since Scorpion Express stopped running, Mandrill being a coaster with an inversion and one of the most intense rides at the park, Vampire no longer running 3 trains like it used to and the operations on Vampire can be abysmal.

Mandrill Mayhem, let's give them credit have decent operations since the higher airgates came in and the virtual queue was dropped - it's batching system is much more organised than it's big brother about a 30 minute drive away.

On a normal day for Mandrill, it seems to have queues of around 30-60 minutes whilst Vampire and Dragon's Fury struggle with 60 plus minute queues.

I'm hoping the proposed coaster with the rumoured Minecraft theme is at least 1000 plus pph when that opens. Chessington needs a high capacity coaster.
 
TPick said:
Visited today and noticed that the RAP building by Adventure Point was closed and there was a sign on the door saying that an 'exciting new space was coming soon'. Actually it said there was an 'Exiting new space coming soon' - I didn't get a chance to take a photo of that spelling mistake.

Not sure what is going in there.
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The old building by Mexicana or the new guest services by the stage? Probably a new Fastrack outlet or Coke refill
 
jibbsie said:
If I am correct removing a vehicle on vampire is difficult, as they have to use a winch (old arrow) to pull it up the station and up the storage track, I would assume this required tech services and probably quite a while in down time.
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I never knew that. Does make a lot of sense, given there are no kicker wheels, only gravity drive.
 
Towers4ever said:
The old building by Mexicana or the new guest services by the stage? Probably a new Fastrack outlet or Coke refill
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Neither. The building near pizza pasta, it's got the little pond with the remote control boats next to it. It used to be guest services and then recently seemed to used for RAP enquiries etc.
 
Re Vampire train removal - I believe there used to be a sliding switch track before the bend into the station, but it is too short for the current trains so has been permanently fixed in positions trains must now be pulled uphill from the station side.
 
I was at the Passholder day yesterday too. We had a good day, I was worried as the previous day was a blue light day and I saw lots of complaints from people online who attended that and said it was busy, ride availability was poor, staff were rude etc. Fortunately that wasn’t the case on Sunday.

Chessington is far more bearable when it’s not completely rammed, we got Vampire and Mandrill done by half 10, did Dragons Fury later in the day and waited about 40minutes which was a nice change from the 1.5hour+ waits we usually have on a normal day there. Most things were walk on except for the coasters. Rattlesnake was evacuated at one point, saw people harnessed up and being led down the steps by staff, can’t imagine it has long left at the park.

Had my first ride on Mandrill, my verdict is that it’s okay, nothing to write home about. Going up the spike is a unique element. Just a shame they couldn’t fork out for a full circuit coaster that could run at least 2 trains. It does sort of lumber around its layout but we went on early in the day so maybe it warms up later on. Overall it’s a decent “my first inversion” coaster and I suppose it appeals to its target audience, although my two kids have already done the likes of Iron Gwazi and Velocicoaster so they were pretty underwhelmed. Chessington is crying out for a high capacity, low height requirement coaster. That seems to be what draws the crowds in. Didn’t think much of the Jumanji area overall, theming apart from the big cat centre piece which is impressive, looks very cheap. It might look better once all the plants have grown in a bit more.

We weren’t given any information about the giveaways/events they were putting on but I saw on the MAP groups on Facebook that they did some stuff in the stage area and a few prizes were given out so that’s nice although it would have been good to have some signage or something around to make people aware there was stuff going on. Some people were apparently given leaflets with this info on but we weren’t. To be honest though we were there for the rides more than anything.

They also didn’t check our pre-book either, just scanned our passes and let us in. Don’t think it was a sell out though although you’d think on days like that they would want to make sure everyone had booked.
 
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TPick said:
When we were queuing for Vampire at around midday'ish they were sending a second train round half filled with dummies. Not sure of the reason for that.
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Weird one that. It needs half filling to go round with people (first 6 rows) but usually and does run empty OK.

I can only assume they were scared of it stalling possibly due to cold weather (although it’s pretty mild at the moment anyway).
 
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