dragon2000

I see Chessington are still quite happy with making their guests hate their day outs, mainly in terms of fastrack over-selling and the car park situation. A few quotes from the wonders of faceboook: 'I can't believe it. I am at chessington in the vampire queue its a 70 minute wait and there is only 1 train going!!! why?" "Had fab day today at chessington although some things put a downer on it....the HUGE ride queues (we ended up spending most of the time in the zoo), the unbelievable terrible carpark that we had to pay £2 to park in ON TOP of the £42 to get in! The biggest joke was queuing for 20 mins for doughnuts, paid, then told to join another 10 min queue to hand in my receipt and collect my doughnuts???? What an awful system!?" "Please sort out the vampire queues...." "Over two hours to get on!" "The sign at Dragons Fury said 20 mins that was 1 hour 10 before it broke down and we still are not at the front!!! We can't go anywhere and the coasters not working. Great day out. Not!!!" "The rides keep braking down we have had to wait for both the vampire ride and dragons fury twice now wasting my day! Sorry but the money you charge this is unacceptable" In reply: "Yep same... Tomb Blaster aswell." "I went to chessington just yesterday! And yeah it is amazing and I love it there. But the queuing is unbelievable! I waited 2 hours to get on dragons fury, and 100 mins for vampire which I didn't get to go on! Also the bins stink! When queuing it makes you feel sick.. But overall I just think they should sort out the queuing, cuz its awful " "Sort your car park out! Full of pot holes, especially the huge one by the left hand exit barrier!" "I agree the carpark needs tarmacing, it was full of potholes and bumps when I went last yr, it will damage tyres if they aren't careful!" "We had a great time in the park yesterday looking for the Moshi Monsters!! The kids loved it. Only down side was that I'd wish they sort out the car park roads as there are SO MANY pot holes, you have to be very careful!! Come on Chessington, with all those £2's for parking you must be able to do something!!!" "My only negative comment is the state of the roadway/track, we parked in the leopard field. On the way into the park roadway was bad enough with some very big potholes, but leaving the park the roadway is a total disgrace. Pls pls pls get this rectified asap because this is seriously letting the park down. My car grounded out with one pot hole, I hope there's no expensive damage to the underside of the car." "I have been a loyal annual pass holder for a few years now. I need to make one point though. Chessington is closed from November - March. That is 5 months. The south car park is not used AT ALL in that time. Why then, can you not do something about the APPALLING state of the roads in that car park? It would be an easy fix, to grade them and flatten them out, or better still, to tar them over. They are a disgrace, and I wouldn't be surprised if some cars are damaged just while trying to exit that car park. Truly, they are in a dreadful state and have been for a couple of years, at least. I would love to hear that there is a plan in place to fix them during this year's 'closed season'. Any chance?" "I hope the money u are now collecting for the car park wil be used to lay tarmak on the way out them pot holes are dangerous! fort I damaged my tyres" "Finally - what is going on with your car park. Returned to car at about 6.25 and the queue to get out took 45 minutes on an unmade, bumpy and dirty road - and you have the cheek to charge £2 for this honour. Same at Official LEGOLAND Windsor a few weeks back - 45 minutes to get out of the car park at closing time." You'd think Chessington would sit up and take notice wouldn't you? On the facebook page they came up with the same copy & paste reply each time saying how their maintenance team check the car park surface daily and make improvements. Utter lies. Have seen no improvements made to the surface aside from the very closest car park being gravelled over the past 3 years, let alone on a daily basis (we tend to visit and keep a check on these things every 2/3 weeks). I have seen Chessington staff in their 4x4 pickup truck *once* this year, and they were pretty much ramming people off the road as they tried to squeeze between queueing cars and a metal gate. Setting a good example... Chessington just don't seem to be able to grasp that the the car park and the 'roads' they have got to enter/exit them are full of craters! I would love to see the person who types comments onto Chessington's facebook page get into a little city car and drive through the car park - just to see the pained look on their face as their car bumps up and down along the road...

Yeah I went through a few youtube clips just in case I could find it but it is hiding from me! Just keeps going round inside my head. Should of used the sound recorder on my phone...

Afraid not. The track has one main female vocalist with a sort of club/dance style remix backing.

Before I fall asleep I can't get one of the songs the park are playing around Vortex out of my head! (It might also be played at the entrance before opening). Lyrics something along the lines of "I got to fly, I got to fly" Or "I wanna fly, I wanna fly; in front of this DJ, in front of this DJ". I'm going a bit deaf and I can never hear lyrics properly at the best of times, sorry. Anyhow if anyone can help me figure out what the song is so I can get it out my head and onto my iPod that would be great!

Inferno was busted for a few hours today. Train stopped at the top of lift which I assume was evaced. Fenced off the area between the loop and the brake-run (where sideshow games are) and had the cherry picker reaching up to the brake platform. Got fixed eventually and re-opened. Also never seen the *entire* queue filled outside of school trip season. Inferno was very popular today!

Quick notes from today: *Telephone box is excellent! Has its own speaker and makes broken ringing noises etc. There is a lot more red colour on the 'rear' side which you can't see in the photo. *Fire set to go off every 7 or so trains - shame as looking down on the massive fireball from the inversion is the best feeling, lot's of trains will be denied this viewpoint. Assuming it was just too expensive to set off for every train. Spent quite a bit of time on the Swarm island today and only saw a successful fireball twice... It basically fails to ignite every time. Sad times. *Helicopter turnaround had the tiniest of water splashes, fire engine splash was turned off completely. *LEDs should look great for Fright Nights. Just hope they can get the last few ones working. Still not a fan of seeing staff members sit on the station track and have a chit chat while people are boarding. Which reminds me, putting Swarm to one side, I don't think I've ever seen the majority of Thorpe Park staff look as miserable as they did today. Seriously guys, a smile costs nothing!

Really frustrating day at Chessington yesterday. There is still lots that make it a really charming park to visit, improvements are being made in places (e.g. Tomb Blaster lighting looking good) and I have a ton of fond childhood memories of the place. It's interesting to see the other thread pop up regarding whether Chessington needs another major ride. We all know the answer (and have done for many years now) - of course it does! Vampire & Dragons Fury just simply don't have enough capacity to fulfil demand. If one goes down, everything really does go to pot. The park still don't have a grip on the selling of fast tracks. Over-selling to the extreme this week it seems. Arrived at 9.45 yesterday, got on Dragons Fury by 10ish, by the time we got to Vampire after going to the loo, member of staff basically stood blocking the queue entrance stating it already had an hour+ queue! The mind boggles... Staff stood in front of it all day giving the bad news of how long the queue is, when we went back in the afternoon they estimated a mind-blowing 2 hours. Honestly was a bit doubtful and thought, no way, that can't be right, so gave it a go. Stood in the same spot in the queue for 15mins, all while trains going overhead. Then moved (no joke) 2 meters. Stood in that place for another 5mins. Gave up as they were indeed right, it would have taken 2 hours at that pace... Speaking to member of staff at entrance who said they (like me) had also been to Disney recently where things are operated so much better, and admitted fast tracks had been over-sold, but they had just stopped... I know it's perhaps a little harsh to compare against Disney but if Merlin are aiming to be one of the best in the world I think it's fair: Seriously, Disneyland can keep the queue for Big Thunder Mountain down below 70mins all day standby in the peak week of the year and they have what 3x(?) the visitors a day that Chessie gets? Even Crush's coaster at the Studios managed to stay at 70mins and they must of had twice Chessie's visitors when we were there last week - compared to 75mins for Fury all day yesterday. You know when crowds seemingly thin out in the last hour of most days? Wake up Chessington - this does not happen in the summer or at weekends! You need to extend opening to 7pm like Thorpe. Fury queue dipped down to 50mins on its entry sign at about 5.45pm and we were going to join for a 2nd ride of the day. Guess what - break down! Cars stopped all over the course, good way for the ride to end the day . Mooched off to Vampire for 5.55pm where staff still outside trying to warn people away and saying queue is still over an hour. Waited it out and ended up moving a bit faster than our attempt earlier in the day - theory: staff wanted to get home! Took an hour. Ended up on very back of the train which is rare nowadays due to exit riders, was good! I'll also say this - it's not nice for guests to not only have to wait hour+ in queues for staff to roll their eyes or moan about how there are still loads of people in the Vampire station/queue and they can't leave yet. Goodness knows what happened to the poor people who waited in the Fury queue in case they managed to get it open again, all other rides would have shut their queue lines at 6pm - Fury cars were still stuck on the MCBRs when we left the park at 7. Final moan for today, and backed up by the number of similar feelings on the facebook page: How they have the nerve to charge £2 to park in that grass/gravel car park I'll never know. They've just said they inspect and make repairs to it each day. They must be having a laugh. The craters in the surface only get worse on each of our visits to the extent off being car-damaging; and it took us 45mins to get out of the car park! I thought that Disneyland would be a ton more stressful during the peak of summer and having to cope with all those people, rather than familiar old Chessington. I was wrong - compare: *Disney: 8am-11pm openings, 2 theme parks, free fast passes meaning you can plan your day with no queueing, 6 parades a day, night time spectacular display, and I didn't even get bothered by a single wasp during a week! *Chessington: 10am-6pm openings; 1 park with annoying upsellers, 'sideshow-basketball-annoying-people'; fast tracks which cost £5 a pop and cause the standby queue to feel 2nd-rate citizens and not move anywhere, 3 Madagascar shows a day, wasps attacks, and you have to pay to leave the park and still have to add an hour to your day getting out of the damaging car park... Sort it out.

I also don't want to be a downer but indeed Frazzle the dragon is looking great but he too often is mechanically broken recently. Great to see Tomb Blaster spruced up again on the inside - good job to all involved!

The fire effect is amazing! It was having quite a bit of problem not going off properly today though - I'd say about 30% no fire ball. When the flame doesn't catch properly the area absolutely stinks! Hopefully the park can keep the effect running (assuming it is financially viable & environmentally ok). The heat produced is incredible and it was catching a lot of people off guard. Highlight was a young lady jumping out of her skin in the queue line when it went off. Looking down on the massive fire ball while upside down on the ride is incredible, well done Thorpe! Now...if we can just get the two water splashes working too...

Broken all day again today. Whole ride team stood outside for most of morning but by afternoon left 2 staff there to inform guests. Were shunting trains around in the last hour of the day. A couple of launches by mechanics on 1 train op in the final 30mins of day but never opened to guests.

^ The annoying thing is they did! They installed entirely new wooden panels throughout and then went over-board and put up the metal poles... Same prison bars are along Rameses raised queue too I believe.

Yep, feels like a prison.

Listed on the website as unavailable, oh dear!

Fans of the ride rejoice - Tomb Blaster is now back open! Addition of metal bars along the length of the queue line & also the same on Rameses.

^The fence is just to the left of the path to the sunken gardens, so you can still access them. Operation was just like Marc described above. Still on 2 trains but yes staff were waiting a considerable amount of time before opening the gates and allowing loading. Hopefully can get back to normal speedy operations soon!

Visited on Thursday. For the 30 seconds it was giving a ride it was quite decent. But it was literally 3 rotations in each direction. The zero-ing problem seems to be getting worse each time we visit. This time we spent about 30 seconds being held sideways at the highest point before then rotating soooo slowly a full 720 degrees around the platform. Just the zero-ing took 2 minutes. Love the ride when it's running properly but this season the operation is just depressing...

Anyone know if Stealth is having a minor problem recently? It's operating but there seems to be a long pause every time during loading, waiting until the ride is able to launch. Causing queue to be much longer than it should be.

I think you're missing my main point. If it's so busy, which we all know it will be, why on earth are they not open later than 5? Even the weekends so far this year, where it's not been as busy, still feel way too much of a rush. If it was my only visit for a year I'd be really annoyed that I couldn't get everything I wanted to do done, whereas last year I could.

Shutting at 5pm at the weekend is ridiculous. Really, really busy day at Chessington today. I've never seen so many people still sitting around at closing time on the steps in Transylvania. I know we're in tough times but I think the cost cutting is going a little far now. 60-90 minutes for Vampire straight from when it opened up (late!) right up until closing. 50-80mins for Dragon's Fury all day long. All other rides with huge queues. I suppose Tomb Blaster being shut and Dragon Falls breaking down didn't help either... Not sure how well their Halloween event is going to turn out to be this year. As it is there is only going to be about 1 hour in the partial darkness, which is hardly very Halloween-like. Seeing as one of the big selling points is getting to ride the rides in the dark it's a bit ironic... I'm already dreading the queue times for the event. Might need that 3rd Vampire train... Oh wait, it no longer exists aside from parts... On a positive note my favourite part of my Chessington visits is the 'Children's' Zoo. The baby goat (Willow) and lamb along with all the other sheep, goats, pigs etc are awesome! Really relaxing just to be able to go and stoke some farm animals after a stressful week at work (no pets at home ). Scaffolding all over Tomb Blaster for the queue re-build, though no visible work happening on it today. Chessington still cautious about all other raised wooden queues with Runaway Mine Train and Rameses' using alternative entrance paths.

Yup, also visited the park today and was looking forward to showing off The Swarm to a family member. As much as I love the ride itself, today was indeed a very poor performance for Thorpe. Things looked fairly bright first thing at opening, despite there being a 'Swarm will be operating on reduced capacity today' sign outside the entrance it started off on 2 trains and managed to get on within 10mins. Annoyingly the front row queuing system seems to have been given up on and even after politely requesting the front seat the ride host denied us (it would only have meant getting on 1 train after). So front row now seems to be purely pot luck, great On the ride, really disappointed with the complete lack of helicopter water fountains and the late timing of the fire engine fountain splash. The helicopter blades were also not turning... Returning later, found the ride broken and not being allowed anywhere near the island. Later still, Swarm has gone down to 1 train. Wait in the slowest moving queue ever. Think we must have moved about 5 meters every 10mins. Finally get to the batch area and realise why. Ride host is letting fast-trackers in time after time after time. Basically ignoring the normal queue. Could not believe it, ridiculous. No way should they sell so many fast track tickets for a ride on reduced capacity . Finally think we are about to get on and guess what... break down time!! Gets fixed after 20mins and there is no apology whatsoever from any member of staff. Thanks. Resume slow operations. Total queue time = 90mins Third time we went to ride was right at the end of the day. Still on 1 train. Still a real slow moving queue. Get to the station and find staff not really focused on the job in hand. Few things I saw: staff *kicking* the dispatch/advance button; messing around on their (in-ear) radios which were loud enough for guests to hear; no batching; standing in a huddle in the middle of the station having a gossip; climbing up on the track in the center of the station. Poor show. Total queue time = 50mins As I said earlier, thank goodness the ride itself is decent... P.S. One final thing - would it hurt for Merlin staff to say 'please and thank you'?? It's something that is really starting to bug me (and is also lacking at Chessington), it's really simple, and for every job I've ever had it's the No1 thing for customer service... P.P.S. Still have never seen the fire effect work

Completely agree with you Jamie, was also there and the ride was terrible! Literally the worst ride I have *ever* had on it. 2 turns backwards and then forwards and then it faffed around rotating twice at about 1mph trying to zero. Really disappointing to have it open late, have a big queue, give a rubbish ride, break down for rest of day...

Thorpe Park have themselves said on their Facebook page that they are awaiting parts and have no plans to remove Slammer. I imagine they have simply taken the sign down to minimise the attention drawn to the ride. Personally I hope Slammer is around for years to come - always find it thrilling and it really is a rarity.

Nothing visible happening with Storm Surge today. Just sat there silently. I'm guessing it's waiting for a part?Mechanics were doing bits to Rush.Fingers crossed they are both ready for the Easter break (at the latest)...

Vortex looked like that once it got dark - had a fantastic smoke machine & there was light shining through the small holes in the dropping floor which looked awesome!It's a shame that Samurai didn't have its smoke machine this year (at least on our visit) - as you say, the pod lights & smoke = amazing.

Also popped down to Thorpe for a visit yesterday. Like everyone has said, it's great to see The Swarm's construction ramping up. Good atmosphere in the park in general, and was nice how it got a lot quieter (seemingly) in the last few hours. Just a couple of points to add on to your report Luke... Apart from Colossus - which disappointingly only had 1 train on track at the start of the day, opened 10mins late and then managed to operate for all of 2 cycles before breaking! I was literally gonna be on the next train which was frustrating. None of the staff seemed to know what the problem was (all harnesses were locked but the ride was refusing to dispatch) and even the engineer looked a bit perplexed to start with. Took 25mins to fix with trains being shunted backwards, forwards, backwards, and forwards again! Thankfully they also used this time to put it on 2 train operation...Although they seem to be doing better this year, Thorpe really do still have a problem with breakdowns. Aside from the Colossus incident we were also witness to technical difficulties on Storm Surge (twice), SAW, Stealth, plus of course Slammer being in pieces.At least Samurai was open for a change (and though a short cycle, we had a decent enough ride).Spotted 'Les Coogan' hanging out by Stealth around 9pm, also a police officer by the Swarm fencing. Disappointed not to have seen any roaming actors in the 12 hours we spent at the park - though apparently there was at least 1 in the park as I saw someone's photo Very minimal halloween themeing (a few nooses and barrels?) - aka if the mazes weren't there you wouldn't know it was Fright Nights... Though the park lighting is pretty good after dark as usual, and the smoke machine on Vortex is great! Can we also have the one on Samurai back though please??