I'm finding Chessington really frustrating at the moment. According to the park app the queues for things like Kobra, Tiger Rock and Dragon's Fury have been around two hours, Vampire, Rattlesnake and Tomb Blaster hover at 90 minutes and everything else is between 30-50 minutes.
I believe none of this is related to Land of Jumanji as the park was just as busy well before the new land opened. Yesterday may have been the perfect storm of good weather, new land and last day of half term but I think the problems are far deeper then this. The park is operationally damaged. Fury, Rattlesnake, Monkey Swinger, Tomb, Zufari, Rock and Vampire do not run the capacities that they should be or can do. The downtime across the park is worse than it's ever been. Scorpion will be reopening this month but that cannot do enough to spread people. The sheer amount of Annual Pass holders with RAP passes is having an enormous effect on just shifting numbers through stand by.
And there is no magic answer here. The way the park is run, the staff just do not care. The only exception being the Jumanji staff who to there credit, are playing the characters and trying their best with compromised rides. Everywhere else though, you can tell the staff just aren't trained to the standard required. They do not give good service, they do not do good operations. There's no passion, there's no drive, there's no energy. And this comes from the top. The managers do not care. Not to the level that a family theme park requires.
I think sadly, a lot of the efforts to make the park look better over the last two years has been wasted as the sheer basics of running a theme park have completely collapsed. If Merlin are to make Chessington a destination (which seems to be the intention) then some radical thinking needs to take place. Rattlesnake and Fury need to go and be replaced with rides that have capacity. Rattlesnake does not fit in this park anymore. 1.4 metres with a 1.2 metre B&M wing rider a few metres away, no sorry.
Let's be real, Tiger Rock and Tomb Blaster are dead in the water. It's time for them to be replaced with modern tech, something like Chiapas and a newer slow moving dark ride, natural successors to what is there now.
I love Chessington and I want people to have the same level of enjoyment and love that I had when I first visited in 1992. It's horrendous to hear the horrible days out people are having and I want this park to turn it around as it's the closest we have to a Toverland or a Nigloland in the UK.