SteveJ

Interesting! I do remember the pond path by the waterfall (which was often broken), but never knew it used to be the ride's queueline until after they demolished it. I'm sure there was a lot of scenic design they removed as well, although I've only seen parts from old maps/brochures. I think all that still exists is the boiler which has been put into storage (judging from this photo)

Runaway Train had one of the most elaborate queues ever for such a small rollercoaster. It used to be significantly longer than what it was by 2012! I believe you entered through the line of buildings where the game stalls are now, then went up over the balcony to overlook Calamity Canyon? Then the path went down steps (which still existed by 2012) and round a pond with the waterfall effect and totem pole that were replaced by the Children's Zoo. From there it joined the familiar bridge, went down the steps in the boiler shack, through the cave and over the last bridge to reach the platform. The cool but unnecessarily long design shows how willing Chessington were to be extensive and creative back then, when nowadays roller coasters of 10x the budget now just get concrete and switchbacks! Does anybody know when the queue was shortened? The original entrance hadn't been in use for as long as I can remember.

The Flying Fish had its old trains back with newly fitted restraints. Hopefully Chessington will be doing the same because those wobbly double seat bars feel so dated on rollercoasters these days! I love individual lap bars on smaller rides like Fish/Thirteen/X.

But it's not one ride, it's two along with the monkey enclosure and new hotel. And Dragon Falls is a major ride that demands some big scenic construction, at least it ought to. I'd rather they focussed on one ride at a time to do the best job (although I'd prefer them to redesign Dragon Falls first!) Runaway Train and BubbleWorks are opening this year.

Here's the real link (at the bottom of the page). Well we kind of knew anyway considering the lack of announcement.

The heater are in the roof, ornaments can't fall upwards! And their trees weren't that tall. Oh well, I just hope Chessington move on from this incident. And build a nice lovely BubbleWorks extended queueline in its place so we don't need that cattlemen taking up space in Transylvania anymore.

Well I'm not trying to pass the blame around but common sense to me is not using electric heaters in such a small space in the first place. Yes, they were fine for years as Refresh/Alpine Spa but that was simply a shelter over some benches. It would therefore be impossible to heat something up to the point of catching fire because the energy would immediately escape outside. When they built walls around it the heat would have become trapped and built up, which meant fewer electrical heaters should have been used. Either that or install proper heating that actually takes convection into account and doesn't burnt things.

It wasn't, it was caused by a big enormous fire. And poor judgement to put Christmas decorations near electric heaters. And reluctancy to spend money on proper indoor heating. And karma.

It's why Americans find Chessington so entertaining.

Not at all I love Rattlesnake! It's better than that pretty bland facade, plus there wasn't much of Calamity Canyon up at the top end anyway. Although very detailed, I never considered Rattlesnake to be "well-themed" as such, especially considering it was built in 1998 yet seems to use effects from 1930. It has my favourite dodgy animatronics in the country, although not quite on par with the zombie outside Duel in terms of being blatantly unconvincing. But that's all part of the fun!

Oh no, not that video. Just realised for most of the video they are dancing in front of the Calamity Canyon building front that was demolished to make way for Rattlesnake when they turned it into 'Mexicana'.

Oh yes, unfortunately that particular area (which is ironically I fire exit I think) looks pretty charred now. You can see the burnt out roof in this picture: I think not long ago they installed some strange bat models and SFX that would activate if you opened the gate. Of course that's gone now, along with more old facades near the top of Transylvania it seems.

I don't think I knew about this. What was it? Was it in the plant room?

Yay but it's still the same "old" and "abandoned" "ruins" that I thought you said you were already bored of before knowing anything about it? But I agree it's a great idea for a theme to start of with and just what Chessington used to be great at. In fact "ruins of the mines" and "abandoned town" sounds exactly like the original premise for Calamity Canyon way back when the park opened in 1987, which is nice and retro. Also it seems the change of Mexicana to Scorpion Valley will be connected to the new monkey enclosure anyway, although not all Aztecan explicitly... the wording is so vague on that webpage, I'll have to wait and see. Probably hardly any of that £14million budget is actually going to new designs for Runaway Train and Dragon Falls, but at least they're coming up with new ideas where necessary and not just rehashing old ones or leaving it plain.

ERUGERUGINR no! That certainly used to be Chessington's speciality (the way I remember it years ago) and it made all the classic rides very special for me. It's what got me interested in theme parks in the first place, that you really could explore and enjoy each ride in your own way. It was never trying to be massively impressive or showing off, instead it was cozy, quirky and charismatic. I agree completely that there needs to be more diversity, although I would blame Merlin overall and their studios or whoever has the creative lead for being uncreative rather than Chessington. It seems they can only either come up with "decaying, minimalistic and dull BUT AWESUM if you're a teenager" (everything they've ever built at Thorpe Park) or "bright, cheap and plain" when appealing to families. The Smiler and Thirteen are some of the only great ideas they've come up with, but even those were massively under-realised. The fact that all Merlin have done so far with Chessington is install three African areas, one of which is actually just called "Africa" and consists of a pavement (what? I can't believe what I'm typing, plus they already had a far better African area with Forbidden Kingdom), shows them up for being lazy and uncreative. Chessington should be like a great album, where all tracks are part of the same record with the same characteristic sound but each one does something different in its own way. The Vampire, BubbleWorks, Terror Tomb and to a lesser extent Dragon River (because it's older) all had that recognisable Chessington wit and were all based on historic cultures, but each still had their own individual character. There are endless possibilities of what can be done with an Aztecan theme, different colours, different characters, different imagery - if only they were to put their minds to it and make a great ride from it. As a hotel, let's just hope it's substantial.

Well surely that's more to do with having a narrow mindset rather than any fault of the park! I know what you mean but there's so much that can be done differently with ancient cultural themes, it doesn't just have to be "lost" and crumbling stone buildings and all that. The entire park, not just half, is about discovering different cultures and lands because that's the very point of Chessington "World" of Adventures, but that shouldn't necessarily make it monotonous. With Terror Tomb, for example, Chessington didn't just do the expected "ancient Egyptian land being discovered" ride, they made it into a bizarre horror house meets Indiana-Jones-gone-wrong idea and fused it with early 90s metal. And it was great... while it lasted. See I love that kind of thinking, and Chessington created all their best rides using creative processes like that. These days Merlin's new rides are built on statistics and marketing, and are bland as a result. I know this isn't really relevant to the new hotel but your comments got me thinking. Ultimately I agree with you because I somehow don't expect Merlin to think outside the box with this project, especially when the hotel's name is just its theme with an "a" put after it, as if it were some option on RollercoasterTycoon3. I hope I'm wrong!

Interesting points but I think there's nothing immediately wrong with using another ancient civilisation as the basis for a new theme; it all depends on how imaginative Chessington is. Chessington "World of Adventures" is all built on the idea of discovering different historical lands/cultures (not necessarily ancient in the case of Transylvania), and so far there's been very little of ancient America, so I like the idea. An Azteca/Incan theme in its most generic form can be too similar to a generic ancient Indian/Egyptian/Oriental theme, but when considered properly they are all vastly diverse. Unfortunately I really don't expect Chessington to go all out with this because it's just a small Merlin-penned hotel extension rather than a themed area, so we might end up with a samey theme area after all. The name alone is so straightforward that I don't expect anything unique about this hotel! ...But I think it's a good choice of theme nonetheless and I look forward to seeing what's in store next year.

Well there's no mistake in "magnetic retarding brakes"? What did you think it was supposed to say?

Were you not aware that The Asylum already opened two weeks ago or did you just have a very delayed reaction?

Funny you say that because the soundtrack for Mystic Manor (the obvious inspiration for Mystery of HPH) was composed by Danny Elfman himself... IMAscore really is astonishing but they'll never beat Mr Oingo Boingo.

It did for quite a few years. I remember going on it quite a few times in the early 2000s both sides.

Yes but I always thought the quirkiness was forced and nothing compared to the whimsy of Chessington's other rides. Already Mystery of Hocus Pocus is far more entertaining than Hocus Pocus Hall ever was, and it hasn't even opened yet! Plus it seems to have fun little nods to other classic rides, which is great. I predict this "curse" that caused Stubbs to go missing is because he dared to steal the "Egyptian emerald" from the Terror Tomb, since that is the last thing on his list. Of course the online story is nice for promotion but I really hope they pull it off inside the attraction. I'd love a new Hocus Pocus for 2014.

Or you could just look at this.

Nobody was criticising Thorpe Park that I can see. Somebody just pointed out the difference for fun because it looks pretty amusingly pathetic in comparison. I am actually excited looking at these photos. So why the big overreaction? Plus it's actually easy for a theme park to 'theme' their rides, with the money Thorpe Park ought to have. There are people whose jobs are to meticulously design sets on restricted budgets, and not much of that expertise is on show here, that's all. I love the look of those fir trees at least, can't have been very cheap!

Painting some fibreglass stonework orange certainly fooled me into thinking it was made of wood. Well what was I expecting after all? It's still massively better than most of Thorpe Park's previous Fright Nights efforts! ...Also it's interesting what they are doing with The Asylum. All of the existing exterior decor has been taken down it seems...