- News all the latest
- Theme Park explore the park
- Resort tour the resort
- Future looking forward
- History looking back
- Community and meetups
-
ℹ️ Heads up...
This is a popular topic that is fast moving Guest - before posting, please ensure that you check out the first post in the topic for a quick reminder of guidelines, and importantly a summary of the known facts and information so far. Thanks. - Favourite Ride
- The Metropolitan Line
- Favourite Ride
- Taron
- Favourite Ride
- VelociCoaster (Islands of Adventure)
- Favourite Ride
- Ug Bugs
- Favourite Ride
- VelociCoaster (Islands of Adventure)
- Favourite Ride
- Voltron Nevera
- Favourite Ride
- VelociCoaster (Islands of Adventure)
- Favourite Ride
- VelociCoaster (Islands of Adventure)
AT86
TS Member
I think the closest would be Splash Landings Hotel and the waterpark which was a £30m project in 2003, according to inflation calculator that’s around £55m today.
Bowser
TS Member
DiogoJ42
TS Member
New fastrack ticket kiosks outside every ride entrance?
RicketyCricket
TS Member
The official Minecraft twitter account have posted it to their 7.6m followers. Merlin can't afford to screw this up.
This is going to attract a hell of a lot of people and the current ride line up already struggles with capacity. Hopefully there's a plan in place to address this.
From: https://x.com/i/status/2035404335891329136
This is going to attract a hell of a lot of people and the current ride line up already struggles with capacity. Hopefully there's a plan in place to address this.
From: https://x.com/i/status/2035404335891329136
Bowser
TS Member
Second train on Mandrill?
This'll have a budget of £50m which is absolutely enormous... World of Jumanji was the park's previous biggest single investment at £17m!
Gives me hope that this could be something really special!
All the concept art:
From: https://x.com/AttractionSc/status/2035420956831727799
And Chessington Buzz hints that the next project will be even bigger... and they don't mean the waterpark apparently
From: https://x.com/ChessingtonBuzz/status/2035426376384213393
New Merlin logo spotted too...
From: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1VyyT056enDGy85dlxxebVgePW8dG2g3d/view?usp=sharing
I still can’t quite believe this is ending up at Chessington…given how little investment it got for so long to get such large investments shows what can be done.
A small zoo that will in no way be prepared for what’s about to happen.
Matt N
TS Member
I know they did do that Branded Survey a couple of years ago about Minecraft at Towers, when they also did it for Chessington at the same time... so clearly Towers was considered at one point. How seriously, we'll likely never know, but that survey suggests that the thought clearly occurred to them.
This could be quite big for Chessington, I feel. £50m is a lot more than I was anticipating, and is absolutely huge money! That must easily be Britain's most expensive theme park installation, no?
I think they will have to fire a serious rocket up the backside of operations if they anticipate lots of additional people coming, though. The park already struggles with capacity as it is, and if Uncharted is anything to go by, I don't foresee the Minecraft coaster being a massive queue muncher.
GooseOnTheLoose
TS Member
Out of all the Merlin parks in the UK, it's the only one with the local infrastructure and park size to be able to handle it.
A large chunk of that £50 million will be rights and set aside for PR / advertising, but we shall see.
It does put an immediate stop at the claim of a lack of investment in UK parks, however.
Matt N
TS Member
It's worth remembering, though, that Merlin signed a joint deal with Mojang, so the rights likely wouldn't factor into the Chessington project's budget alone.
Even by inflated Merlin standards, £50m is a hell of a lot of money. The largest publicly confirmed budget I can remember for a Merlin installation previously is £18m for Swarm and Smiler. They did confirm that Derren Brown was "Thorpe Park's most expensive investment ever" without specifying a price tag, and I seem to remember £30m being the rumoured budget for that, but £50m beats even that quite comfortably!
I hope that the coaster has huge capacity, it really needs to be an absolute people eater, well designed station and batching will be necessary. Maybe duel loading stations might be in order? In other news do we know what manafactuer is going to be used? I suspect ART Engineering may well be the top contender, surely Merlin cannot be building four coasters in sheds, without that being linked? The two Galacticoaster's just been built at the US Legoland parks were built by ART. I also don't think we can rule out Intamin and Zierer (who Merlin are using for a few projects at the moment)
The 'worlds biggest Minecraft shop' is bound to be a huge earner for them surely, maybe thats the real reason they wanted all this?
At least it's got A world record!
The 'worlds biggest Minecraft shop' is bound to be a huge earner for them surely, maybe thats the real reason they wanted all this?
At least it's got A world record!
Skyscraper
TS Member
Chessington reading this...
Plans show it'll have a single station, and I've heard it'll have three cars of 12 riders.
Matt N
TS Member
I'd be very surprised if it's not an Intamin Multidimensional Coaster similar to Uncharted at PortAventura, based on what the rumour mill is saying and the planning documents.I hope that the coaster has huge capacity, it really needs to be an absolute people eater, well designed station and batching will be necessary. Maybe duel loading stations might be in order? In other news do we know what manafactuer is going to be used? I suspect ART Engineering may well be the top contender, surely Merlin cannot be building four coasters in sheds, without that being linked? The two Galacticoaster's just been built at the US Legoland parks were built by ART. I also don't think we can rule out Intamin and Zierer (who Merlin are using for a few projects at the moment)
The 'worlds biggest Minecraft shop' is bound to be a huge earner for them surely, maybe thats the real reason they wanted all this?
Based on that, I unfortunately think you may be disappointed with the capacity. The vehicles only seat 12 riders, and Uncharted has a theoretical throughput of 900pph. The upcoming coaster of the same model at Parc Asterix will allegedly be capable of around 1,100pph, so higher is evidently possible, but I wouldn't be expecting throughputs to be through the roof here.
Well yeah that would suggest an Intamin Multi-dimension, I was unaware of the detail the plans went into. That capacity is going to be difficult, they are going to have to make sure the station and batching are at least well designed to have even the slightest hope of coping. I don't understand Chessington's lack of planning in terms of capacity, Mandril needed to be high capacity and wasn't, and now this indicates still relatively low capacity.
Bowser
TS Member
Moderate capacity sells fast tracks.
Big IP's sell tickets.
Cheap annual passes mean people expect to queue or pay not to.
There is no motivation to build high throughput rides.
I'm not entirely convinced this is really true though, other Merlin attractions get high capacity, even Wicker Man got three trains. Especially with something like this, the more people they can push through the more who are going to spend an absolute fortune in the gift shop. They know they will sell fast tracks for this on its own, from international visitors who just want to ride it for a start.
Matt N
TS Member
I don't think Merlin, at least historically, do necessarily build low throughput attractions to drive FT sales. As @JAperson has raised, they made the conscious decision to put 3 trains on Wicker Man and remove seatbelts when most other GCIs have 2 trains and seatbelts, and in the past, they've also built B&M coasters like The Swarm and high throughput rides like Thirteen which can comfortably exceed 1,000pph.
I do think, though, that it's perhaps fair to suggest that throughput is not a principal concern for Merlin like it maybe was for Tussauds. The middling capacities of both Mandrill Mayhem and Hyperia would imply that the focus on this aspect of the parks has maybe lessened in recent years.