Seems a bit odd really, I thought that Market Square was one of the acceptable looking areas of the park (well, as far as acceptable goes in Chessie terms).
So are you saying that wasn't valid with a wristband?
EDIT: Just looked on the website, seems that is the case. Quite disappointed really, I thought they were better than that.
Festive Zoo day 7th December 2013
To start of with I was in two minds if I was going to go at all. The reason for this is that Legoland have been advertising on the local radio that they have 8 rides open, each child gets a Lego toy, free entry for the kids, it all sounded too good to be true. In reality all the rides Legoland had open were pants, and the cost to get in for adults was £20 for normal guests and £15 for annual pass holders. So this means two adults who own a pass will pay £30 to get in for most of the park to be closed, but if they went during the main season it is free entry and for normal guests it is still cheaper for them to go on a BOGOF and get the full experience..... Still a hell of a lot cheaper than Lapland UK of course. Where as for Annual pass holders it was free to get into Chessington.
Then put the added advantage that our lunch would get MAP discount, free fizzy drinks, it was going to be a cheap day out.
Looking on the Chessington Website, it is very clear there was going to be very little open.
"7th - 9th, 14th - 16th December, 19th December – 5th January (excluding 25th December) - Open 10am - 3pm.
NEW FOR 2013 - Take a magical adventure to visit Father Christmas* and his elves in a brand-new walkthrough attraction "The Night before Christmas - A Magical Adventure". When you enter the home of Father Christmas, you’ll find yourself in a world of wonder and excitement!
Journey into the Elves workshop and help them make some very special toys.
Discover how Mrs. Christmas makes all those delicious Christmas cookies in her kitchen.
Assist the Head Elf in sorting through all those Christmas cards and letters in the Mail Room.
Finally, enter the study of Father Christmas and show him your Christmas lists!
Don’t forget to collect your free chocolate as you leave!
That's not all - take your photo with our Reindeer or have a walk on the wild side and visit Trail of the Kings. See our Lions, Tigers, Gorilla, Binturong, Fossa and Lynx, then come face to face with the creature beneath the waves including sharks and rays in our SEALIFE Centre. Don’t miss our Sealions making a splash over at Sealion Bay, and be fearless explorers and brave snakes, lizards and spiders in Creepy Caves.
Plus, with our daily animal shows there will be lots to see and do this winter."
For those people who have moaned they don't get a present, it states you only get chocolate. I was disappointed to see there were no rides advertised as open on the website as previous Festive Zoo days have included Seastorm, Bubbleworks and Hocus Pocus.
But it was very clear what you were going to get, half the Zoo, see Santa and no rides. If you had any additional expectations, you will only be disappointed.
Plus there was no map to download showing you what was open. Here is a copy for those who are going to be visiting
Entry to park
This is something they got very right and very wrong at the same time. Let me explain...
I checked the website the night before and the scrolling message said to get there early if you were an Annual Pass holder. So we got to Chessington at 09:25, we were the second lot of people at the gates. We were greeted by locked gates, no Christmas decorations, no members of staff. As the queue started to build guests were queuing on the Zebra crossing and delivery trucks were trying to get through, not very safe for young children. It really would not have hurt for Chessington to have a member of staff on the main gates to talk to guests and manage queuing on the Zebra crossing. It was not until 09:55 that a member of staff came to open the main gates. They were playing Christmas music inside the park, but guests queuing outside could not hear it.
Now this is where things could have improved. Have at least one member of staff on the main gates at 09:30 to answer any questions and greet the guests, this really doesn't cost much but gives a better impression. Let guests through the main gates at 09:45, allow those purchasing tickets or retrieving Annual Passes to get them and other guests to go directly to the turn styles. It is madness that they have a perfectly good queuing system inside the park, but they choose to have their guests queuing over a zebra crossing with traffic trying to use the road. I won't go into details about an extremely rude guest who though queues were not for her and that everyone else "had to get out more" or "Have a hernia" when they pointed out she was queue jumping.. This would have been fixed with a member of staff getting guests into line.
Then we were let in, got up to the machines to scan our tickets and I can say the staff were brilliant, asking guests if anyone had a birthday, singing happy birthday to somebody and getting everyone excited. Then at 10am we were let in, and Chessington have indeed done up the park. The lights are still in place from Halloween too.
The Night Before Christmas walk-through
Located in the Creaky Cafe, the venue itself is very small. After visiting and reading the description, Chessington really did oversell this attraction. The staff were very friendly and professional, yes we were the third group through the door as we chose to run directly here rather than queue for ages.
Journey into the Elves workshop and help them make some very special toys. - You just walk into a room and a member of staff chats to you to kill time, this is all really
Discover how Mrs. Christmas makes all those delicious Christmas cookies in her kitchen. - I didn't see any kitchen, there was talk about things she makes and some fake food (See picture below), but I'm sure everyone who has done this bit will remember "Don't touch" is all I can remember
Assist the Head Elf in sorting through all those Christmas cards and letters in the Mail Room. - I must have missed this bit
To be honest for a free attraction it was good, if you had paid just to come to see Santa, then I can understand how people would be disappointed with this. The theme was good, it was warm in there and we didn't queue, but there was a very big queue outside most of the day.
AND of course there is the up selling part which Merlin can not resist, the photo with Santa, we got a photo and it was good quality, the Picsolve guy was on his own, he couldn't get the photos into the holder as they were not fitting, he couldn't get the photos into the photo Christmas tree decoration as the plastic was not fitting together. We were the 3rd group of guests through as a disable group had been fast tracked in front of us and already the queue to get photos was causing a delay in guests getting out of the Santa room. I mentioned to a member of staff about this bottle neck, I'm not sure if anything was done about it or not.
I guess if I had waited 30+ mins for this, I would be disappointed.
Employee of the month
Somebody said they didn't have Christmas trees, I saw 4 of them in the kitchen area and more with Santa, here is proof of one of the trees
The kitchen
Meeting Santa
Picsolve picture
The queue was very long
Rides
I was very happy to see that there were rides open this year, I am guessing the reason for these not being advertised on the website is to only attract guests who want the Zoo and Santa and not guests who are expecting a full theme park. I can understand this, but looking at what was on offer, you have half the Zoo missing, some guests would be put off by no rides. But the park was very busy indeed, so it looks like they got this one right. I won't be returning for February half term as it was too busy last year and Alton Towers have a much better line up of things on.
The Bubbleworks was the same as it always is, one or two effects fixed, but still in need of a good clean. Seastorm was good, the first time I went on it, I didn't realise the cars turned around. Hocus Pocus was good, either I had a pair of 3D glasses which were working well, but it looks like the place has had a good clean and the 3D effects looked better than normal.
Food
This is what really let our day down. They had the doughnut shack open at he main gate and the Market Square sweet shop open, but the only resturant open was the Chicken Shack. We wanted a Burger Kitchen, but that was closed and we could not get to Pizza Pasta as most of Market Square was a construction site. Now unless you could gain access to Pizza Pasta from the Childrens Zoo, it all looked very much closed off to us(See picture below).
The Chicken Shack is just a nasty place, every time I go here, either high season, low season, it is just a nightmare.
Now I have never had any complaints about the quality or taste of the food on any of my visits, in fact I prefer the food in there to Burger Kitchen, but the service is just so shocking and it is the same every time we go in there.
Queue to get a table, the tables are too close so you bash into guests to get to your table. Then the queue to order food is always out of the door, the staff are either too slow or they do not have enough staff on and the knowledge of their very limited menu was not good. They could not work out how to get the post mix machine working so we could get our drinks.
We had 1 kids chicken meal, 1 beef burger, 1 chicken burger and 1 Panini. We waited over 10 mins at the main counter, then was given a hot panini and no drinks as they would bring them over when they worked out how to use the machine. So 1 child had their full meal, but we we waited for ours. After 15 mins we queued up to remind the staff they had forgotten our drinks. Then the food I had seen under the hot lights for a good 10 mins was brought over to our table. It tasted good, but it is really not that difficult to have the food arrive at the same time. They really need to sort out the queue system or employ more staff as it is always very bad in there.
Plus they need to learn how to clean properly, we sat at the table far right at the back, near the door where the staff took the used plates. The windows next to us had 6 live flies crawling over it, there were two dead wasps on the window seal and the amount of dust and old bits of food which had clearly been there since the main season really is off putting. The tables and the kitchen looked clean, but you would think that with the park being closed for 6 weeks, they would have done a deep clean of the whole place.
But they put up some decorations
Sealife
Being an indoor attraction this was very popular, to be honest way too popular and busy, but the staff were on full form and for us it killed 20 mins of our time. The displays were fine and guests looked like they were enjoying themselves.
Animals
Sea Lions were good as normal, we missed the Penguin presentation, Otters and didn't bother with the Childrens Zoo as we have done those many times this year. Creepy Caves were closed but advertised on the website as open. The Reindeer were popular which you would expect. The Trail of the Kings was good and most of the animals were out despite the cold weather. Most of the glass viewing windows have been cleaned or replaced, so you can now see through and take pictures which has made a huge difference
Construction work
Market Square was closed and lots of building work was taking place, there were at least 3 lorry sized skips near the Black Buccaneer so it looks like the £5 million upgrade is going well. I was not able to get close to the Mine Train or RR. Fury did look in need of a good paint.
Oh dear, I knew it would be bad but I thought at least they'd have put real effort into the festive part considering the mess in the zoo and the almost non-existent ride options. They've always been good for the little details at Halloween in the past so you'd think some trees and garlands would be manageable for them.
During the last few years (2009-2012) I've always wanted to visit Chessington during a zoo day, smaller crowds, more focus on zoo and selected rides. However this year I plan to avoid it completely as it's not worth the 45 minute drive for what's there.
Despite their apparent upgrade plans, I have low expectations for 2014. As I expect mine train and falls will be lightly rethemed, the bird garden less impressive than expected and generally bad operations still happening throughout the park. The only thing I expect will look nice will be the hotel extension, but that's probably because that makes them more money than paying guests.
Agreed!
I also think that the queueline for The Swarm lacks any sort of atmosphere. The TV's don't really do much for me (more annoying than tension building) and it is a simple cattle pen without much theming other than what can be seen around the ride.
The sound effect in the tower doesn't even work anymore...
Also on another note, I'm sure the coaster has a good roar here
However it seems as if it was silenced.
I definitely remember the storm surge music through the queue plus the announcements to the hold tight during the right. TBh was one of the few things about the ride that were actually good.
I think the biggest mistake they make with the rage bandwagoners is their general over niceness and trying to appease them. When people come up with these stupid reasons to be angry at nothing they should very firmly but politely tell them they are being moronic and will be ignored; the sane people would probably respect them more and the idiots would not bother and take their rage elsewhere. Thorpe went some way towards this with their asylum response.
The other very poor thing from Towers facebook this year was the handling of the Smiler downtime, with updates too slow and too late. I wouldn't be surprised if this tactic came from above though, and it is not actually down to their social media people. The silence was deafening either way.
Unfortunately there is no real way to feed back either of these things within the survey!
Good idea for a thread
I agree with Detonator - the wait at the top is so tense. All drop towers freak me out, but Detonator is the worst (or best, depends how you look at it!) Still get nervous every time.
In terms of actually being scared though - as in "oh my god am I actually going to survive this thing", it would have to be either the Wild Mouse at Blackpool, or the Bomb Bay at Wet 'n' Wild Orlando.
Organised Chat:
This Friday, at around 7pm.
Subject: Thorpe Park's next investment (what would you like to see etc...)
It doesn't have to stay as that subject, it's just a starting point.
See you there!
I love the idea of the Swarm's theme! Alien invasion, crashed plane and helicopter, near miss with a smoking wing, fireball explosions, the whole thing based on a panicked evacuation.... Sounds bloody awesome. And can you remember the buildup to opening? Crazy alien dude predicting the end, viral videos of the start of the attack... God the potential was unbelievable!
The trouble is, a lot of it is totally wasted... Nobody 'gets' what the hell is supposed to be happening... It's just "that ride that has the plane crashed and that". A lot of it just too half-arsed to be noticed.
I think the station building is absolutely amazing, but ruined by the lack of a roof! The atmosphere could have been amazing in there if it was enclose and made fairly dark.
Same goes for the helicopter - it's fantastic that it's there, but it's 'plonked' in the middle of nowhere where nobody can see it. Therefore, again, wasted.
The queue doesn't help with the atmosphere either. Cattle pen nightmare!
That said, I do love the Swarm. Definitely one of the most badass themes going, and I actually love the ride its self. The music is fantastic as well!
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