Mattgwise

Every year the effects are fixed and two months down the line they are broken and 9 times out of 10 never repaired until closed season.

Strange. My first ride was saturday. I didn't get the train number I was in but it was row 3.

It is most certainly an awesome ride, but yes very rough in places. It gave an almighty jolt on the cobra roll in the second part of the ride. Much, much more vicious than the jolt at the bottom of Saw in my opinion. Felt like the whole train shifted.

Well if anyone has read the themeparkreview China trip reports, most rides seem to be knockoffs! So chances are high that it isn't a mondial!

Have had a response today for my visit described above: Thank-you for taking the time to email us regarding your recent visit to Chessington. Your comments are valued and we appreciate your feedback. What’s more, we aim to respond promptly and honestly and, whenever practical, act on the comments to improve the total guest experience. Firstly, please accept our apologies for the delay in responding to the specific points you have raised; we have been experiencing a high volume of incoming communications. We aim to give each message the attention it deserves. We’re very pleased to hear about the positive aspects of your time spent here. I have ensured that your lovely comments have been passed on to the relevant members of our team. It is, however, very disappointing to hear that you were unsatisfied with several aspects of your visit. In regards to the opening hours of the park, as a resort committed to providing a family day-out, we operate within standard commercial opening hours. We believe that this allows our adventurers to make the most of their visit while respectfully observing that many families will have a long journey home and with young children. Furthermore, while Chessington is located conveniently within ease of the local centres of Kingston and Chessington, we understand that these areas have a high residential population. Thus, to reduce noise and traffic disruption, we respectfully observe our neighbours and operate within general working hours. We apologise for any disappointment caused by this factor and as part of our consistent development, I have passed your comments on to our marketing team for review. The Fastrack system, as you will know, is provided for guests who wish to save time on queuing. The number of tickets available for each attraction has a maximum allocation that reflects the capacity of each attraction. We’re sure you can appreciate it can be very difficult to anticipate in which order our adventures will use the attractions available on their Fastrack packages, therefore we ensure we monitor guest feedback on a daily basis and look for trends in queue times to ensure we are providing the best service possible to both Fastrack ticket holders and the main queue line. It appears on this occasion that our Fastrack allocations were not monitored effectively. I have ensured that your comments are forwarded to our Xtra Adventures team to review our systems to make sure that our loading and dispatching of the rides is consistent and fair. In relation to the operation of our rides, the waterjets on the Monkey Swinger are a permanent installation and it appears that during your visit, these were not operational. In terms of the dispatching of Vampire, as a company dedicated to developing upon the feedback of our guests, we will most definitely review our current methods and, if necessary, make any changes and/or modifications. As I can see you and your family did not have the day that you had hoped and planned for, I shall be sending out a return certificate for the 2 of you to return any time between now and August 2014. Once again I do apologise for the unusual events experienced during your visit with us. I do hope I have been able to effectively address your comments and resolve any issues that you may have. Here at Chessington, your feedback is extremely important to us, guiding and shaping our future development and ultimately, helping us to provide world-class customer service. Please rest assured that your comments will be fed back to the relevant departments and staff members. Should you wish to discuss your concerns further, please do not hesitate to contact me and I shall assist you duly. We have a number of incredibly exciting, new, wild adventures waiting to be discovered here at Chessington this year and beyond, and we look forward to welcoming you to enjoy the vast array of fantastic, unique experiences we have on offer. We hope to see you soon at "Britain's Wildest Adventure!"

It's surprising how much this simple feature enhances this ride. I usually love it, but found it dire over the summer without water. Glad they are back working.

I think people are assuming it is closed more than other previous "new" rides as we can always find out now through ride times. Before if a ride went down you would only really know if you was on park. Today was planned maintenance as the twitter page showed yesterday. The park have confirmed through comments on that tweet that it will be opening again tomorrow.

Strange, My Bloody Valentine reveal has disappeared from the Fright Nights page. Unless it wasn't supposed to be revealed yesterday.

http://thorpepark.com/frightnights/?utm_source=Website&utm_medium=FB&utm_campaign=Fright+Nights They have started to reveal information. More coming each day over next few days. Edit - Damn Jamie beat me.

Asylum is not mentioned in the press release so I would be surprised if it did return to be honest. http://www.thorpepark.com/press/releases/default.aspx

Looks like park music may be interrupted more often with birthday shoutouts. A guest asked the following on FB: "is there anyway I can get some sort of shout out done for her over the P.A. system if you have one?" Then TP replied with this: "Great minds! We're just making arrangements for this very thing...could you email tpsocial.media@thorpe-park.co.uk with the details!" Or maybe this feature will be restricted to the areas with The Noise playing? Anyone know more?

Jeans Left handed or right handed

Always get several rides on this during fright nights in the freezing cold as it tends to have no queue at all later on in the evening. Up and down many times in a row like a yoyo!

Yes people would be livid. Remember feb half term when they reached capacity for zoo days almost every day? However the complaining of the queue times is perfectly acceptable in my opinion due to the poor operations! So in reality the queues shouldn't be as long as they have been for most of the rides.

I saw on a Thorpe Park Facebook post "Rides will close 9-10pm depending on demand".

That is a nice extension. Although I can confirm even Chessington extended ride close until 7pm today. (Well yesterday now)

But isn't the proposed Dreamland heritage park supposed to be opening with one they have in storage in a couple of years.

Looks awesome.

Have you been on park? Even without wasting time saying that the queues are too long results in a very small ride count. The operations in terms of batching, loading and dispatching is dire on most of the rides. If run properly the queues could have easily been reduced by a significant amount.

Well your day was very different to mine on Wednesday. Nothing but queues except of course a couple of the small kids rides. And very different to those commenting on FB. Out of interest how many rides did you get on each day?

Fair comment as it is there to reduce queueing times not a VIP system with no queuing at all, BUT I have heard the fast track sales team on several occassions, whether it be in the fast track kiosk or at ride entrances advertise it is skipping the queues. That would be perceived by many as instant access. Do you think paying for fast track and waiting 1 hour for Kobra is acceptable as that was the situation going on there which led to the exclusive rides occuring.

Insane day. Just look at the "Recent Posts by others" section of the Chessington Facebook page! Yep the train was often waiting in the brakes and always came straight in after the other left. I took a screenshot from the mobile queuetimes when Dragon's fury reached 2 hours 10 mins, but can't find an option to attach to here.

May as well just make the rides permanent opening schedule March until May and September to October. This happens most years.

Not a great day at Chessington today, got on 7 rides, but at least the park did extend ride opening until 6:30pm, although I think it should be open until at least 7 during August as Standard. I can also confirm the wasp saga really is not that bad. Saw more than usual but not too many and could comfortably hold food or drink (only had a wasp come near me three times in the whole day) Upon arrival the park was already extremely busy and by 10:15 Vampire already had a 75 minute queue. 70 minutes later we were on. They really are useless with this ride. The whole ride system needs an upgrade, the staff need rockets up their bums and the third train needs to return. I timed on two occassions in the station 2m30s between train arriving in station and leaving. Then when I said to the worker that they used to dispatch in 45 seconds at one point he said that it was impossible and that I must be wrong!!! By the time we got off the queue had reached the 2 hour mark. Next wandered over to Dragon Falls to be presented with an 80 minute advertised queue although 45 minutes later we were on. Why are they redeveloping this ride? Other areas look in much worse condition. In my view all they need to do is restore it back to it's former glory putting back the rock work. After this headed over to Wild Asia. Attempted to join Monkey Swinger queue to be told it had shutdown and needed to be tested. We then headed over to Kobra which was advertised as 2 hours. We decided to leave that and lined up for Tuk Tuk Turmoil. 30-40 minutes later we were at the front and it started to kick off between to families as one tried to let people through the queue to join them. The staff member was very professional and dealt with the situation very well defusing the argument. Though we were going to have a repeat of Legoland at this point. After this Monkey Swinger had reopened so waited 40 minutes to ride that. It is ridiculous that only one member of staff operates this ride, causing loading, unloading and checking to be painfully slow. What happened to the days of being counted into the batching area during the ride, not after the previous rides guests have left. At least 5 minutes passed between each cycle and of course large numbers of people using the exit gate, slowing the queue further. Also does anyone know how long the water has not been working, it was off or broken today and really reduces the experience? Then had lunch in a deserted Zafari, which was pretty average. Next headed to bubble works to be faced with a 60 minute queue. After this was offered a free fast track ticket for Dragon's Fury by a random who had to leave the park early. As much as I HATE fast track of course I didn't decline. However we had to wait 25 minutes for the ride. I found this outrageous and would have complained to AS had I purchased the ticket. Finally at 5:20 decided to attempt the 70 minute queue for Kobra. This ride is another that has a painful waiting time and I was horrified to find twice throughout the wait the operator announce that the next ride will be exclusive to fast track ticket holders and exit passes to reduce theirs and then the main queue time. Fast track was clearly over sold and caused even Tiny Truckers to have an hour queue. I mean seriously, an hour for that!!!!! And by then it was 6:40pm and the end of the day. Some other queue lines we saw included 90 minutes for Zufari, 100 minutes for Tomb Blaster, and Fury peaked at 2 hours 10 mins at one point. Apart from the poor operations still tried to make the day a good one and have to say all retail staff were amazing.

Has anyone here actually been recently that could tell me whether the wasp numbers really are that bad, or are people exaggerating. I am going soon and it's just I am not a huge fan of them and will provide entertainment to others in the queues and embarrassment to myself.