SteveJ

Out of interest, does anyone on here have any of the Prof Burp's props that were sold in 2005? From what I gather the Gas room Burp, lots of bottles big & small, a Boffin and various misc parts were sold, oddly a load of well-known props were just binned too. The Finale Burp was kept by the park but later thrown out.

I agree with your thoughts but odd that you thought most places had no audio - Legoland has always been deliberately a more peaceful, quieter ambience park but is actually 80% covered by background audio and usually the complaint is those areas are too loud! Interesting.

Merlin can choose to invest in Chessington any time of day. But they put Chessington on a back burner because it already makes the profits they want from it, despite much the infrastructure being on the verge of condemnation and the rides in dire states. Chessington themselves also often make weird decisions and seemingly ignore the real state of their park. Merlin have vastly more money than Tussauds did when they built Chessington in the first place. They could rebuild all the infrastructure and faltering rides if they wanted to, but instead they continue to run the theme park on a minimal budget and only spend on frivolous short/medium term investments like a themed carousel, cheaply repainting one falling apart facade at a time, or a random panda show with an MDF stage. On their doorstep are huge rides originally built to a fantastic standard, Vampire, BubbleWorks, Tomb, sitting there with enormous creative potential just waiting to be restored or reinvented, but instead they make them worse through menial projects. __ It was known many years ago that expenditure would have to be spent on new Dragon Falls theming, BubbleWorks maintenance, Trail of The Kings infrastructure, Tomb Blaster's interior for many years. These things were constantly delayed with many excuses, meanwhile Merlin easily constructed a large hotel costing millions of pounds at lightning speed. Merlin as a company also regularly build whole theme parks around the world now. They are not a company who just "dont have the budget". Rather, they deliberately choose not to disseminate that budget on their UK theme parks as they should, not until it is justified by their rubbish investment cycle system and brand marketability processes. They also class essential "maintenance" as "refurbishment" in order to budget for it differently and justify it as capital expenditure rather than a necessary cost. It is a requirement of new significant projects at Chessington that they all be animal or safari themed, as no idea is allowed to pass before it satisfies the park's imposed "Unique Selling Point". Euehh. They've already turned the park into a low budget imitation of Animal Kingdom and borrowed their image from Longleat Safari Park. Yet it's only superficial branding that they're interested in like bamboo and animal prints painted on things. And it's very much rumored that the future major investments will all be turning the remaining distinctive, fun themes into animal-based themes just because of this boring formula. __ Merlin can also 'choose' to make amazing theming if ever they want to, there are so many fantastic design studios around that go without this work because the big companies rarely hire them for theme parks anymore. Sometimes Merlin do theme well if they see it necessary, but even then they've never achieved anything truly great in my opinion, in light of the amazing independent parks around the world like Phantasialand, Efteling and Europa (which have much smaller company backing). MMM is not a true functioning attraction design studio in that sense - it operates and project manages according to Merlin's internal policies and only persues projects that satisfy Merlin's aims. Everything they do has to be justified in terms of marketability, projected figures and their 'USP' policies. Not according to what people will respond to and find surprising or entertaining like Chessington & Alton Towers did in the 90s. This more often than not means reducing detail, restraining ideas and rarely allowing for true innovation. Their themes are stingy and feel like they've been written on Wikipedia, their humour dull and corporate, because MMM are keen to look as 'serious' as possible to impress the company shareholders. Not what a successful creative company should be like. Yet MMM advertise themselves as "the highest quality creative company in the world, delivering faster than any of their competitors", a proper lie, and ignoring that Disney, Universal or their European competitors even exist. The corporate barrier and lack of real care shows in things like their handling of BubbleWorks closure, the terrible state of the rides that they claim "most people wouldn't notice", the atrociously poor value entrance prices. Yet they have no reason to change, because the big numbers keep coming and parks like Chessington are still, wrongly, seen as being in a different league of quality to other independent UK attractions.

I honestly believe the name should be changed, by all means change the park into Merlin's African Adventure as they are intent on doing - remove the corpses of former fantastic 90s rides so that they can be remembered in their best days, not their broken states - but don't keep pretending it's still "Chessington" anymore. Everything about the park that was is thoroughly gone, things like 2006 BubbleWorks just served to pander people's nostalgia when it fact it was very far removed from how people remembered it. Get rid of anything recognisable from the old days and then they can make it their hotel complex like they always wanted. That way anyone interested in visiting a fun, nice theme park will go elsewhere and stop giving them their time.

Only you've brought up the headsets, I have no opinion on HTC Vive or otherwise and havn't mentioned headsets. I'm speaking of the ride's AV and technican design, for which there are many layers and it's not a simple 'this model or that' and not limited to the VR as the guest sees it. It's a special application of virtual reality and automation, applied to a theme park ride. And all those layers had oversights or lack of consideration for factors which led to its delay. It will also mean the ride continues to suffer technical issues, it also has some fundamental flaws which would require the VR elements to be rebuilt in order for the ride to last more than ~4 years. If Merlin don't use Figment or the related contractors again then they will have to end up reverse re designing their designs, and this always leads to further bodges, especially when its decided they don't want to keep paying thousands into the ride every year. Had a wiser attraction operator built these things they'd have been extensively tested in the final conditions, better built to a specification more appropriate for a high-maintenance, high guestage theme park ride. Universal were already building much more complicated show control and AV things 20 years ago, when they were much less experienced than Merlin is now.

You have misunderstood. The headset is different to the computer and A/V tech feeding it, is different to the installation work, is different to the content production, is different to the application. They are all different things. It's as if you had a high end TV screen playing a faulty, wrong-spec DVD player. Playing a dodgy quality demo DVD. Or imagine that badly installed, locked in a hot hot cupboard and frequently dying. One of the ride's many issues. Apply it to a functioning ride that has to operate hours on end, every day, and you have an enormous problem, HTC Vive or not. Merlin points the blame at Figment, and they may be a shoddy company, but they themselves also rushed the development of virtual reality for use on theme park attractions. The Ghost Train is riddled with design oversights and inherent difficulties, leading to the confusion to get on and off while finding another headset to use, and the faults in the latter half when the train is resetting. They also employ many shoddy contractors, because they're cheaper than other professionals.

Luckily not, this is just the very cheapest and poorly managed version of VR - with the least consideration they could get away with. MMM rushed designs and made many oversights as usual, and it seems Figment were not reliable contractors. Likely Merlin didn't offer the necessary timeframe and budget for what was being demanded, judging by many similar situations they've created in recent years. And that's with this enormous "budget" in the first place, wonder where it all went...? The ride's AV will need to be totally rebuilt over winter if they want a hope of Derren Brown's Ghost Train lasting. Maybe they could use that opportunity to make the VR content special and not feel like a Maplin demo, and do a lot of work to the show presentation of the experience.

Entrances - 2010 cheap themed signs and bamboo stuff already rotting/faded, very unsuitable car park and infrastructure for new South entrance. Dragon's Fury - messy presentation, ad-hoc queue alterations making it a headache just to get on the ride, faded track and crowded exit, poor throughput for a major ride, lack of signage explaining single rider queue. Wild Asia - 2010 wood built theming already fungi infested, faux stonework peeling off Kobra theming, lots of decoration already missing from area, faded paintwork, all the rickshaws removed from the paths for some reason this year. Mystic East - bare bones of what it used to be, none of its huge theme structures (anymore except for buddha which is cheaply repainted - bad paint skill and gold already peeling off to show green in places), station bare with no ambient lighting, queueline fences falling over, new queue cheaply produced fencing built on plaza, dirty building, the ride is now a horrid tour through back-of-house areas, the Dragon tunnel is on the verge of demolition, the horrid half-demolished condition of the tunnel is easily viewed from above, missing ALL of its original animations and FX. Tomb Blaster - vandalised set, cheap overbright lighting, poor attempt at a UV makeover, poor laser gun system, all effects out of sync or broken, audio terribly edited and hurts the ears, shadow of its former self, formerly atmospheric queueline now brightly lit with unnecessary evac lights, ridiculous unnecessary metal queue fences, the exteriors are green Vampire - extremely messy lighting, missing audio throughout the indoor queue, bare concrete space where creepy themed crypt shelter used to be, poor quality trains from 2002 where used to be well-built trains, high quality animatronic abandoned in poor condition, station audio set up a mess with barely any speakers working, music so quiet, missing chandeliers, various FX long since gone, murals no longer illuminated, cheaply produced 2015 theming already lying broken on the floor in queue. Hocus Pocus Hall - animations air leaking, extremely dusty props, lighting broken or lighting FX poorly replaced, UV murals very faded in places (the original painters are in business and could be called back), some FX missing. Trail of Kings- very poor infrastructure, small spaces, needed demolishing and replacing years ago but they've decided to dress it up with patches of theming instead. Zufari - unreliable cave FX, terrible cave FX, bland boring appearance, terrible queue system, terrible preshow, guests unable to find the entrance, etc Front of house in messy condition. Parts are so far removed from their intended design, they are either poorly rethemed or structures demolished with no replacement, messy appearance, clash of old and new. Cables hanging slack over pathways between buildings, exposed back of house areas, many details still covered over with ivy. Many back of house areas in big need of refurbishment/replacement and aren't suitable. Hotels are lacking in many areas, cheaply produced and feel like decorated Travelodges. Conclusion - It's not a fun day out anymore, don't keep going.

Why not just call it "Skin" and stop backstorying and contextualising a logo to death, just make the maze great fun and scary.

Eueeehhh IMAscore are best at their corporate-friendly branding and clean production for impressing easily impressed enthusiasts. Not to say their music is bad, it's just quite generic actually. Its not fans' fault (and not necessarily IMAscore's fault!), just shows how bland and boring everything has been for 10 years that now IMAscore are considered the most amazing package music company in the world. Interesting Alton Towers are revamping all their background music again. It seems every 5 years a new marketing director comes on board and has the bright unique idea of making the park seem fresher by changing all the music around without realising how complicated that actually is, and then they lose interest and stop funding it. Only for it to happen another few years down the line. It's happened at least 3 times before in the last 15 years, most of the time it got changed back eventually. The new Mutiny Bay sounds decent. But to be frank, after a while playing through cheap speakers it will only sound exactly the same as the last music and the next director down the line will think they're a genius by changing it all over again.

According to him, he's never been on it since it changed and maintains he has no connections with the current version.

Looks like some facts from that documentary were used, in a very hamfisted way ("the floor lifted up in the finale" when the fountains were first turned on, "the strobes went backwards" etc). However there was a separate issue raised whereby Chessington took images from there that didn't belong to them and photoshopped out the watermarks to present it as their own. The whole thing from willyheads to nicking other peoples' stuff just seems more than ever like they didn't really know what the ride was they were closing.

The appauling send off for a once very cherished dark ride giving everyday children some fun, run into the ground by corporate suits and then reduced to a contrived obsession. I don't mean anything personal, but there it is. Chessington handled it embarassingly, but they've profited loads from the tours and saved thousands by not maintaining the scenes properly for years. The end of Imperial Leather BubbleWorks at last! I'll take my good memories of the original and leave.

It's a random download off YouTube being played on a ride, clearly no budget was even given for even the cheapest or tracks to be produced.. is there anything more to say on it? At your local funfair maybe this would be the norm but not somewhere that charges a typical family over a hundred pounds to get in. And licensing/royalties/buyout of audio is an entire complex (dull) topic in itself that is their responsibility. Sad that literally anything can just be stuck on a sound card now, and yet many people will still accept it like it means something. Audio design is vital to parks but it's increasingly being used as muzak fodder for the sake of it. Considering they've barely thought about this, it's not worth anyone else thinking about either.

It was a very low standard no-budget scraping barrel decision. The music was found by typing in 'Land of the Dragons' into YouTube and the first video that pops up, try it yourself. Is it even royalty free? it doesn't look like it. Gives a clear idea of standards really, and is obviously not suitable ambiance for the ride.

You're misunderstanding the design of the area. It was designed from an experience point of view to have contrast between the eccentric Germanic town area and the darker Vampire area in the trees, a fun thematic thread to pick up on. But it wasn't meant to be explicit as in "this is the lively area, this is the dark area" as such, it was just designed well to have contrast and balance the 2 rides with nice room to explore. However in the last 10 years its just been a mess of stuff and the park clearly don't understand design of anything if they want to paint a building bright purple "to make it scary" and have plastic shower heads greeting you as you enter the area. If asked how Gruffalo fits in Transylvania they'll probably stick up a sign saying "the Gruffalo's taken over the factory" or something trashy, to appease the fans like they did with X Sector in 2013. They don't even consider proper design when they make these decisions.

Yes a fizzy drinks factory didn't "fit in with Transylvania" in the first place. Except, back then there were no fiddly theme park enthusiasts to get hung up on that, when they could all be enjoying the brilliant ride and lovely scenic area instead. BubbleWorks had a very European eccetricity inside but that was as far as backstory went. Backstories and "making sense" are an invention for when bad designs need an excuse to sound good anyway, a good ride doesn't need them. Probably even the Gruffalo Storybook Adventure could fit unobtrusively in the area if it were any good.

I know your sentiments are good but to be honest Merlin deserve the criticism they get, and they still won't have the ears to listen or see it necessary to change their deliberate dumbing down of UK theme park attractions and genericism. I know there are unfortunately many needlessly sarcastic and uninformed people who moan about Merlin over this that and the other, but there is a genuine unease with merlin in the industry as well. It raises a very interesting point. When it comes to theme parks, Merlin has a very corporate restricted system for building new projects, they could choose to do something truly amazing and lasting if that was their priority, instead they systematically make contrived decisions based purely on how they think profit can be maximised. Budgets for actual design and concepts are hugely restrained deliberately. On a project, nothing is allowed to be spent until it is justified in terms of direct returns. No creative cultivation at all, despite the huge opportunities and resources in the rest of the theme park industry to do so. Attitudes & policies within the company towards design and entertainment are also very disagreeable, and there is a lot that could be said about this, but it's not appropriate here. Merlin, as with most corporate giants, stifle the design & entertainments industry in the UK with their style of work, self-centred practices and their mistakes in project design. But they have the money and that's what they flaunt really, spending more to give the impression they are the best than to actually create the best. To be frank, as a theme park fan, visiting for nostalgia's sake is a mute point because any non-Merlin rides are quite deliberately left to die until they can be recycled into one of their own (see the entire last 15 years of the BubbleWorks); similarly visiting the old parks in the hope that one day a classic attraction will be made will waste years of time - when you could be enjoying genuinly brilliant European independent parks that do it yearly instead (for much less ticket price). On the other hand if those people who do genuinely enjoy Merlin's brand of stingy genericism then there is nothing wrong with enjoying it, and feel free to keep visiting, just I feel most people don't see what could really be achieved with theme parks outside of Merlin. Or even outside Disney and Universal, who do continue to produce high quality attractions out of but not nearly to the level of creative integrity they used to, and are even more corporatised internally. Speaking generally, Chessington is run as "the African themed one" in merlin's resort theme parks box of chocolates, and its future development has already been planned for the next decade or so- its heritage and the good old days don't even come into it. If Merlin's current style is what you like then that's what you'll get, if not you'll be much happier with your memories of when it was a park with actual craft and character, and not visit anymore. Creative entertainment has long since vacated the park.

The station is in a terrible awful condition and will probably never be fixed properly or faithfully while the park is run the way it is, although the wig replacement is worth giving a little credit as it is more similar to how it looked originally. The recent one was almost completely torn. Here's a rubbish picture c1990 If only we could get that lighting properly restored with red back lighting behind the organ and the Phantom of Opera style spotlighting. And music-timed lightning strobe. Also in the organist's appearance in the Black Forest Chatea he had a pony tail wig. The character wasn't intended to be horrorfying and scary, just gothic and morose looking. But this is lost compeltely after his main appearance was removed from the restaurant and the station animatronic barely moves as intended, has broken costume and isn't looked after professionally.

But it's very obvious that it shouldn't be that way. £35 per person is an exploitative price for hot air. Of course people will pay for the nostalgia over a ride that was very famous for 15 years and then ruined for no reason Had the park invested any upkeep in what guests see, had a team of people maintaining & restoring the animations, audio, scenery and lighting to at least attempt to address the daily complaints abou the ride's poor condition - then perhaps these tours wouldn't be such a blatant cash in. Guests really deserve something faithful to the ride as a send off, not this. An actor in a cheap suit, that looks like the closest things the entertainment department could afford on a tiny budget. Perhaps they should apologise for very poor retheme in 2006 that ruined a cherished attraction. The current attraction is still a favourite of children who obviously never rode the original, as it recycles so many props and sets just painted over - so can you imagine how much more inspirational it would be to them if it was still all untouched.. That's the real loss.

Ha I hope Chessington see this! And their Prof Burp tour would be very ironic and funny if only people were not paying £35 each to do what staff do every morning anyway, walking through the sets in their very dirty poor condition (not actually going backstage at all), with the added bonus of a man wearing some leftover suit and wig that is nothing like Prof Burp at all. How did it get to this?

Thorpe probably planted this story to the Daily Mail anyway, it's standard tasteless PR rubbish. Realistically, there is no fracking message in the ride, fracking was obviously just 'topic of the month' when they were planning it and MMM didn't have the imagination to make it into anything interesting. So there you are, its got a fracking backstory, boring, move on

The pricey tours are ridiculous considering the park have invested almost nothing in maintaing the ride scenes over the last decade. All a sudden they are making out they care for it as much as the fans, "bringing back" Professor Burp (management dont really know who this character is/was other than what's on wikipedia). They've seen little worth in this "dinosaur" ride for 10 years, until now when they realise they can exploit people's interest in it for lots of money. So many families & fans are going to be toured through the broken down remains of what used to be a classic ride, it's really odd how its ended up like this. Even just restoring general things would have made a big difference, like proper lighting in there (rather than cheap LED panels flashing on demo settings in every scene), fixing shattered effects, fixing the audio properly... Sad to hear some people genuinely asking what changed in 2006, that brings home just how long it has taken them to settle the ride's fate. Before the refurbishment, it really was a perfect family attraction and, had it been properly looked after in the 2000s, would still be just as popular as Prof Burp's BubbleWorks now. The current ride is a modified, sterile version. Most the fun animations were disconnected or removed. The amazing colours and textures painted over in flat primary colours, the characters all made to look the same. All sense of humour replaced with an advert for Imperial Leather soap. It was probably the worst refurbishment in the UK and the most unnecessary.

But Thorpe's engineering manager would have been nothing to do with the effect because it was done by MMM and not yet handed over. And "H&S issues" just means MMM hadn't got it signed off/finished/approved on time, so my point stands, same with all the many pieces of theming that were added late. Also, if you were actually in the know then you'd realise there's nothing really to defend about Merlin and that people needn't follow blindly like sheep to their PR. Merlin are many different sub companies and departments too, hence the huge difference between the ride being maintained by MMM and Thorpe Park operations.

You don't know what you're talking about then, since Alton Towers have had significant cuts to their staff deliberately, and Galactica's staff are all paid for the first 2 seasons by MMM's budget, so in effect Towers management have saved on the entire cost of running Air for 2 years. As soon as those years are up, the cost cutting will come down on Galactica too. The Swarm fire effect was meant to be there from the very beginning but MMM failed to make that appear on time too.. There's a difference between people judging before it opens and people being quite rightly cautious considering an atrocious track record and the problems this project has faced already before it's opened. I'm sure more will come to light soon