TPJames

NST may be a negative in an enthusiasts point of view however that doesn't mean it is for the general public.On visiting AT for my first time in over ten years, our whole group really got into the experience, everyone was screaming, laughing and generally having a good time and being immersed into the experience. As a regular enthusiast visitor, I can see why the attraction can be a let-down and be viewed with no re-ride factor but from the general public's point of view it is a fun and immersive experience. A random guest visiting for their first and only time in a time period of a few years will find the attraction enjoyable as it's something different the park has to offer. I don't think the experience deserves the negativity it gets from the enthusiast community as I found it really enjoyable when visiting last year. I think it's a shame the experience isn't as popular anymore as it was intended to be and I find it upsetting that Alton have made changes to the experience including removing actors from the experience which now puts a negative light on the attraction. Last year, when I was in the experience it was very well received by the group we were with. Whilst it is an attraction subject to opinion, I think it is something unique for the general public to experience and I think they will enjoy trying out something different and fun to the standard rollercoaster.

Ahahaha! Reserve n' ride operating on the coasters during fright nights...? Prepare for 5 hour queues for the mazes!

Chessington have been really poor over this half term in terms of operations; Dragons Fury running empty cars around the circuit(despite being on a reduced number of cars anyway), Rameses revenge closed half the time and running one row when open, Vampire breaking down constantly, Kobra closed the whole week and Monkey Swinger and Griffins Galleon closed most of the time. The rides which have been open are either on really slow/ reduced operations or running only one member of staff resulting in massive queues. I understand that sometimes these things cannot be avoided, but for such a major headlining theme park in the UK, it is shocking that they are running with a service this poor and still charging full whack for a visit. I had a brilliant visit to chessington a few weeks back but only because it was dead as operations and ride reliability remain as poor as at the beginning of the season and have not been improving. (The public haven't been putting up with it as well as queues for guest services have been absolutely horrendous all week).

Sorry for being sad but... Rameses revenge is currently displaying a 60 minute queue. How can it even hold that length a queue with the new, shortened queueline? I can only presume reasonably slow operations would lead to such a long queue on what is a relatively unpopular ride at chessington.

Possible chances of having the Dodgems and IAC added to the Thorpe Park queue time list?

Unfortunately, a day at chessington always seems to go to the extremes in terms of queue times: -You either visit on an off peak weekday and it is absolutely dead. (I went towards the end of the Easter holidays and the longest queue was 20mins for Fury and everything else was 15 or less, excluding vampire which was on a timed ticket system). -OR you visit on a weekday/holiday and it is completely packed to the extremes; main rides at 60minutes+ and never dropping below that and supporting rides at 30-45minutes+ and rarely dropping below that. There is rarely a middle way anymore, which is one of the beauties about thorpe park. At thorpe park, you have the choice of an extremely dead weekday in the middle of the school term, an average weekend where queues for the coasters never exceed 45-60minutes at most (although tend to be emptier) or the option of visiting at different times in the holidays where crowds can range anywhere from making the park moderately busy to extremely busy. At thorpe park you get much more of an option of when you want to visit to determine crowd levels, whereas with chesssington nowadays there is a limited choice and if you are unable to attend an off-peak weekday, you are simply stuck with the crowds and long, slow queues. It's been stated many a time but the only solution to the problem is to invest in more high-throughput rides or improve upon the exisiting ones. If worked upon well, current rides could achieve almost double the throughput they are currently achieving or a major investment catering for 1500pph+ would be ideal to divert the crowds away from supporting low throughput rides. I do love chessington as a park, but only when it is dead because the rides within the park are simply not worth the long tedious queue times they receive. A bit more effort from merlin would mean queue times would die down, reviews would become better and gate figures would gradually increased resulting in higher profits. We all know merlin care about the money, they just seem to be blind in ways to increase profits and that solely lies at building guest satisfaction and investing within a park. At the moment, they seem to be sitting back and watch the money roll in, and whilst they are gaining more money and satisfaction, chessington isn't developing as a park and that will have a bad effect in the long term when the existing attractions cannot simply cope anymore and the whole park will have to be done over. (I wouldn't be surprised at this point if they simply sold off the park due to abandoning it and not investing in it in the long run meaning it is too much work to restore and make acceptable for the public's expectations)

110minutes isn't demand...?Dread to think what kind of queues you like to stand in.

We have to remember that this year potential locations for horror mazes have significantly reduced and therefore it is unlikely we will see an expansion this year to the event despite how popular it has appeared to be in the last couple of years. -The arena is currently in use for construction of the 2016 dark ride and therefore MBV will have to be relocated; most likely to the beach or potentially next to the swarm island as it was advertised to be located there last year. -Studio 13's building is currently in use by I'm a celebrity and it is unlikely Studio 13 will make an appearance anywhere else upon park simply due to the layout and complexity of the building and design. I also find it unlikely that IAC will be converted into a horror maze due to the complexity and specificity of the layout meaning that it isn't able to suit any other purpose. I wouldn't be surprised however if they added a couple of Halloween elements to cater for the target market. -With the rumoured return of CCR, and the fact that the BWP shed has been removed, despite CITW's theming remaining standing, this could yet again take away another potential location for a maze. Unfortunately, if the railway track is indeed being replaced, it is unlikely that BWP will return as there are no other locations to suit the maze. I think it is going to be a tight squeeze for the mazes this year and I reckon we could potentially be returning to the mazes located in tents on the beach. The event was simply so popular last year that an expansion would be ideal to cater with the 3 hour+ standby queues the mazes were receiving(although RNR was not helping the situation). In an ideal world, I would like to see the same mazes return from last year with an additional maze and a new scare zone(along the lines of scary tales to cater with slightly younger audiences) and these would help spread out and ease the crowds as last year all rides and mazes had full queue lines and to experience a major attraction there was no queue time under 2 hours.

To bump that up, I just had a peek and it appears queue times have increased even more from what you have just stated...Vampire: 90mins. Falls: 80mins. Black buccaneer: 75mins. Fury: 70mins. Bubbleworks: 65mins. Monkey swinger: 60mins. Tiny truckers: 50mins. Scorpion express, Zufari, Safari Skyway, Peeking Heights: 45mins. Rattlesnake, Tomb Blaster: 40mins. Seastorm, Tuk Tuk, Jumbos: 30mins. Sounds like pure fun today Also, vampire is still operating a two train service, the reason for the confusion was due to the park stating it was back to "full capacity" and this was believed to be three trains however in reality is only two trains.

At the end of the day the issues within the park seem to be within the higher management teams, not within the staff themselves. -The park has been equipped with rides which can only handle a small amount of guests; with barely any rides topping 500pph, the fact that the park has been becoming increasingly busier over the years means that queue times are insane for the "supporting rides". -Management have decided to save money by what is clearly under-staffing; both this year and last year I have seen one staff operation on the following: Seastorm, Black Buccaneer, Monkey Swinger, Tuk Tuk Turmoil, Hocus Pocus,(admittedly not usually a problem but was 30mins in Feb half term) along with various children's rides. The main issue with this is that it isn't a rare sight, no matter how long the queues for these side attractions are, a second member of staff is unlikely to be added due to cost cutting resulting in large queues. -There have been no major investments in recent years to try and divert queues to a high-throughput attraction. --- Something I have noticed is how queues at chessington rarely drop at the end of the day like they always do at thorpe and towers. It appears to me that along with the short opening hours, the rides don't have high enough throughputs to simply shorten the queue length approaching closing time. This tends to mean that the rides will be operating long gone closing time as they simply do not have the capacity to reduce the queue at a fast pace.

Will be continuing over May Half term with selected rides open from 6pm-9pm for hotel guests along with unlimited fastrack in the mornings from 10am-11am

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In European fairs the health and safety certainly does seem very relaxed... Another thing to spot is how everyone rushes onto the platform before the ride has completely stopped to guarantee themselves a seat. There is nothing but a yellow line to stop people from jumping on the ride while it is still moving and this could potentially be dangerous certainly when there are massive crowds about which there tend to be in German fairs and you want to rush on to make sure you actually get a ride.

I don't have a problem with the concept of thorpe introducing them at all however the way they have structured the promotion of these badges is particularly odd. If adults like to collect them aswell, why are they only avalible with a kids meal? Also, why are only 100 being released when thousands of people enter the park daily? The logic behind them certainly does seem very confused however I have no objections against the introductory of them as they seem like fun, free collectibles

Personally I was tall enough to ride Ninferno when I was ten, but surely the market of the Pop-Badges is around age 4-8 not 10-12 year olds. It just seems very illogical to me however there is obviously structured reasoning behind it.

Why would an under 12 "child" want a stealth pop-badge when they aren't likely to be tall enough to go on stealth?

I believe school trip season is 6th July onwards for the next couple of weeks. However, I wouldn't be surprised if some schools decide to visit even earlier than that to avoid the crowds. If you can, I would reccomend trying to visit before July as this tends to be when the summer season begins.

VIP passholders do all of these things anyway.

I completely understand what you are saying, it is a maze which means every experience will be different inside no matter what time you enter within it. However I was simply advising not to visit at the end of the day as it leaves you very liable to getting a poor run just like I did. Experiencing this at the end of the day was actually an ideal option for me as it means you get longer within the park; we ended up leaving the park well over an hour after closing and walking through a deserted park was certainly something! However the fact that the run was so poor and they rushed us through left us feeling so disappointed and disgusted that it completely contradicted the purpose of going at the end of the day; going at the beginning of the day seemed a far more ideal option and meant we got a nice controlled run with only a 15minute queue. All this speculation about both amazing and disgustingly poor experiences just goes to show what a bad idea implementing this maze was. I have no doubt either that it isn't increasing gate figures by much either as I've not seen it over 120mins, which is only 200people anyway. Barely anyone is likely to have gone to thorpe park this season for the sole purpose of experiencing this (with the possible exception of its first weekend being open). It has settled into its surroundings now but the matter of fact is that the main time people go to thorpe park for mazes is at fright nights. Having this maze open throughout the season is likely to be unpopular and it will end up like saw alive due to ridiculous running costs. It also reduces potential space for fright nights meaning everything is likely to be very squashed up this year. Things like the 2016 dark ride is the type of expansion we need to see to this park, not tacky low-throughput fillers which expire after a couple of years. The flat rides are also likely to die soon and I hope we see worthwhile decisions moving forward in investment rather than last minute decisions to try and push gate figures.

Don't go at the end of the day whatever you do... They will heavily comprimise experience to get rid of the queue so they are able to go home. If you're really desperate to go in, I'd reckon getting to the maze at any time between 10-10:20 and the queue shouldn't be longer than 15-30mins at that point (which is only 60people anyway) and you should get a nice long run as at that point the queue will be short meaning they can take their time during the run. Go in with extremely low expectations. If you expect anything good in the slightest you are more than likely to be disappointed, especially if it's busy and they decide to rush it.

Samurai has apparently re-opened? (Do we also know if it is on full capacity)

5 years is an over exaggeration. It won't be able to cope for that long. Depsite my love for slammer, I think it will have to go by the end of 2016/2017 at the latest.As for samurai, that needs to be scrapped at the end of this year as it's so damn is useless now.

I thought you weren't a fan of Reserve n' Ride...?Jus' Sayin'

Speaking of rides with an atmosphere... This is insane! (2:00 for start)

Well considering operations are so slow that the ride stacks on two trains, I'm not suprised they have given up hope of a three train op ever returning.