Matt N’s South Parks Saunter 24th/25th September 2026 (25th September 2026: Chessington)

25th September 2026: Chessington

Today was the second day of this trip down South; after a night in the hotel, I spent the day in Chessington! I was interested to get back to Chessington, as my last visit there was in 2023 and before that, my last visit was all the way back in 2014; it’s a park I’ve seldom been to compared to Towers and Thorpe, so it packs a lot more mystery and is likely a lot more interesting to read a report from me about!

I had stayed in the Safari Hotel, and previously unbeknownst to me, Chessington still offers ERT to its hotel guests for the entire season. This was a nice perk, so I intended to take full advantage, and as a result, I headed to the Azteca Hotel area to await entry into the park for 9am:

Before going in, we were held in the Amazu (?) area, with lots of animals to look at. I’ve never been in this area of Chessington before, and it was quite nice! When entry came at 9am, I headed to the one substantial coaster open during ERT…

Mandrill Mayhem

Mandrill Mayhem was on an advertised 5 minute queue, and was the only substantial coaster open during ERT, so I decided to take a ride on there. As a matter of fact, the 5 minute queue on there was overstated, as I was batched straight into the airgates; I can never moan about that! So, how was the ride? Well, I hadn’t remembered being a huge fan in 2023, so I was intrigued to get back on there. Truth be told, I’m still not a massive fan, if I’m honest. I was sat on the inner seat of row 1, and to start with the positives, the first swing launch section of the ride is good fun! While it’s hardly the swing launch on Toutatis, the backwards launch and junior scorpion tail provide fun floaty airtime, and the launch back through the station is decently punchy! I find myself liking it less when you get past this point, however; the layout doesn’t do a huge amount, and what it does do I find uncomfortable and/or nauseating. I don’t care for the sustained hangtime of the helix, and the roll is just a bit too slow for my own tastes. While I’m not sure rough is the right word, the ride also isn’t overly smooth, and judders about a surprising amount even in the inner seats. The other trouble is that I’m not generally the world’s biggest fan of shuttle coasters, and for some reason, the backwards portion of Mandrill Mayhem leaves me feeling very slightly nauseous. I find this quite odd, as plenty of far more intense coasters don’t make me feel nauseous and other coasters with backwards sections, like Thirteen and the family boomerangs, don’t make me feel nauseous. Perhaps it’s just the more intense backwards section, as I’d say Revolution and Wipeout were somewhat similar? It’s a shame; as Swarm is in my top 20, I should have been falling in love with the same style of ride at Chessington, but I’ve just never overly warmed to it:

After getting off, I then headed back round for another ride. I got front row again and had similar thoughts.

After that, I thought I should divvy things up from just repeatedly riding Mandrill Mayhem, so I decided to take an opportunity to grab the credit on the other coaster that was on ERT…

Chase’s Mountain Mission

The new-for-2026 World of Paw Patrol was also open for ERT, and Chase’s Mountain Mission was on an advertised 5 minute queue time, so as I needed the credit, any notion of me not riding kiddie coasters has well and truly gone out the window after this season, and I figured that this was likely to be my quietest chance (a suspicion proven correct by the 45 minute queues later in the day), I decided I might as well give it a go. I walked straight in… but I didn’t realise that the ride had a whole preshow sequence. And I have to admit that this made the experience particularly excruciating compared to a normal kiddie coaster ride… perhaps I’m too self-conscious, but when you’re stood alone in a tight room filled with young families while you have dancing lights around you or are being addressed as “junior patrollers” by the preshow, I don’t quite know what to do other than look around awkwardly! I think kiddie coasters with preshows might be a genre to avoid… anyway, how was the ride? Well, it’s a mirror image of Farmyard Flyer at Paultons, if I’m not wrong, and similarly to that, the ride was a perfectly adequate, if unremarkable, kiddie coaster, with some mild moments of speed and quite a short track length. It seemed a tad smoother than Farmyard Flyer, and while I can’t speak for the accuracy of the theming to the show as my only knowledge of Paw Patrol is from half-watching it with my Gen Alpha cousins when they were at my nan’s house, it all seemed quite nice:

After getting off Chase’s Mountain Mission, I left the Paw Patrol area and closed out ERT with two further rides on Mandrill Mayhem in rows 3 and 4:

As 10am was fast approaching, I then decided to get in the pre-opening queue for…

Dragon’s Fury

I knew that the queues for Dragon’s Fury could get long, so I decided to try and beat the masses into the pre-opening queue. This proved a prudent choice, as I got on within 5 minutes; I can’t moan about that for a popular ride! So, how was Dragon’s Fury? Well, I’m not normally the biggest fan of spinning coasters, but I have to say that Dragon’s Fury was good fun! It seemed smoother than Spinball, the ride span well without spinning excessively, and I find the sprawling layout much more fun to ride than Spinball’s more tightly packed one; you even get a couple of nice bits of airtime on there! Dragon’s Fury was a nice surprise this morning, and I definitely enjoyed it:

After Dragon’s Fury, I decided to strike the other major coaster while queues were low…

Vampire

Vampire was on an advertised 5 minute queue time, so I decided to give it a go while the queue remained short. This proved a prudent decision, as I got on within 10 minutes, and I have to say that the operations on here were stronger than they were last time I was at Chessington; while the throughput will never be absolutely brilliant for a litany of reasons, the operators were getting the trains out with relatively good urgency! So, how was the ride? Well, I remember not overly rating Vampire back in 2014, but I liked it much more in 2023… and I have to say I liked it even more again today! I was seated in row 12, and I have to say that the ride delivers wonderfully as a family coaster; it has some absolutely ace moments of speed and force for a family coaster, those properly swinging trains add a definite additional thrill compared to the bog-standard SFC trains on something like Flight of the Pterosaur, and contrary to what 2014 me said, I also don’t find it overly rough. Overall, then, I thoroughly enjoyed Vampire this morning, and despite it being Chessington’s oldest coaster, I would say it’s still easily their best (for me at least); it’s a great ride, and I think is proof that old can still be great:

After getting off Vampire, I initially pondered an instant reride after having enjoyed it, but the queue had gone up to 20 minutes at the entrance and was later announced by the operator as 35, so I thought that riding something new was probably the better course of action. As such, I decided to head for…

Croc Drop

Croc Drop was on an advertised 5 minute queue, so I decided to take a ride on there. The queue time board was true to its word, and I was indeed on within 5 minutes; I can never moan about that! So, how was it? Well, I’m a fan of a good drop tower, and while Croc Drop is hardly one of the more intense ones out there, I still think it’s quite good fun, with some fun giggly drops that provide mild lift! I also quite like the theming and audio on there; I think all the mist and music gives it quite a sense of occasion:

After getting off Croc Drop, I decided to head for a ride I hadn’t ridden since 2014…

Zufari

Zufari was on an advertised 5 minute queue time, so as I hadn’t ridden it since 2014, I decided to give it another go and get a fresh opinion. The ride did have a single rider queue, but it made little difference as the truck was waiting for people to board, so I hopped into an empty seat at the end of a row. So, how was Zufari? Well, I’d remembered it being good fun in 2014, if not quite on the same scale as Kilimanjaro Safaris at Animal Kingdom, which I rode for the first time a month after my last ride on Zufari. However, I’m going to ask a very blunt question after my ride today… was Zufari always that rubbish? Or did Kilimanjaro at Animal Kingdom just ruin it for me? I’d remembered it being shorter than Kilimanjaro… but today, it felt like you passed only about two animal species before you hit the finale, which by safari standards is pathetically short. And I feel like I remember the cave at the end doing something in 2014… but today, it made no sense whatsoever as we literally just drove through a cave with some pretty plants. It was fun to see a few animals, but I’m not sure I’d waste my time riding it again unless it was on a very short queue like it was today:

After getting off Zufari, I decided to head for a dark ride…

Tomb Blaster

Tomb Blaster was on an advertised 5 minute queue time, so I decided to have a go on there. The queue took 10 minutes, so I got on in relatively little time, which I can never moan about! So, how was it? Well, it was good fun! I do have to say that that ride has some very impressive physical scenery and quite a nice storyline, and some of the scenes are really quite nice! The lighting could be improved in some scenes, though; I wonder if a Curse-style revamp, where they reuse lots of the scenery and just modernise everything a bit, might go down well on here in the future:

After Tomb Blaster, I headed for another reride on Mandrill Mayhem. The single rider queue was unfortunately closed today, so I queued for around 10 minutes in the main queue. I was in row 1 this time, and similarly to earlier, the ride had a fun launch, but I’m not its biggest fan overall:

I then headed for another reride on Vampire, on an advertised 40 minute queue that took 35. In the queue, I was behind two boys who were using Nokia flip phones; I had no idea those were still a thing, let alone still in fashion! As for the ride itself, I was in row 11 and it was once again great fun; it’s such a great family coaster, and I definitely didn’t appreciate it enough before:

After Vampire, I pondered a spot of lunch, but I noticed that everywhere was either closed or had a big queue, so I decided to take another ride on Croc Drop to wait for the queues to die down. Once again, the ride was really good fun:

After getting off Croc Drop, I decided to brave the queue for Drop’n’Chicken, which ended up taking about 30-45 minutes out of the day when you combine the queueing and the eating! I then had a reride on Dragon’s Fury, which was once again good fun! Although incidentally, why is it that they faff around with weighing groups and such on here when they don’t on Spinball? The procedural difference seems odd:

After Dragon’s Fury, I went for another reride on Mandrill Mayhem. I waited 20 minutes and was in row 3; very disappointingly, I never got further back than row 4 all day, despite wanting to get further back to try the backwards row:

After Mandrill Mayhem, I closed out my day with not one, but two back-to-back rerides on Vampire. One took an hour, as the ride closed for “essential cleaning” when I was at the end of the queue and the queue was advertised at 40 to begin with, while the second took only 10 minutes as I took advantage of the depleted post-closure queue. These were in row 11 and row 12 respectively, and they were terrific fun once again; the ride had warmed up nicely over the course of the day, with some brilliant whip in those corners!:

After getting off Vampire, I hadn’t realised that it was already past park close; I had foolishly thought that the park closed at 5pm, but it had actually closed at 4pm. As such, I dashed out of the park to try and catch an earlier train out of Chessington South. This later backfired, as I had to buy a new ticket and while everything ran well up to London Paddington, my train between London Paddington and Bristol Parkway was ultimately delayed by nearly 45 minutes, thus meaning that I didn’t get home much earlier anyway (in fact, I may still be in transit depending on when this report is posted!):

So, that just about wraps up my day at Chessington and this trip down to the southern Merlin parks! I had a really good day at Chessington; it’s not a park I’ve been to much compared to Towers or Thorpe, but there are some really good attractions! My favourite in the park is definitely Vampire, but there are some other fun bits too and I do have to say that there’s a wider range of non-coaster attractions than there is at Alton or Thorpe, if that’s important to you. If I were to say what they should get more of, I would say that they could do with additional headline ride capacity, and I do think Minecraft could be a step in the right direction. The coaster looks very good, and if it’s anything like Uncharted, it should ride pretty well too! I shall definitely be back to ride it in 2027!

Thanks for reading; I hope you’ve enjoyed this report, and the series of reports from this week! I think I’m unlikely to visit another park in 2026, so I shall likely see you all in 2027 trip reports-wise; after a somewhat quiet 2025, 2026 has been a terrific return to form for me, so I hope that 2027 maintains the momentum!