ashleyrose-66

Swarm was running one train yesterday morning. It developed a fault at about 10.30 and for at least 20 minutes there were no trains running at all. Nemesis opened with one train and they put a second train on just as I reached the front of the queue - about 11.45ish.

I was at Thorpe Park yesterday and was in the queue-line at about 10.15-10.30ish when they announced that there was a technical problem and that SWARM wasn't running. They announced mechanics were on their way. Swarm didn't run for at least 20 minutes, as I waited and then went off to do something else. That may be why they ran on one train for a while as they were resolving a problem with the other.

Was at Thorpe Park yesterday with the family so didn't stay late. However, looking at the Thorpe Park Twitter feed, it appears there were huge problems getting out of the car park last night! Several tweets sent to the park at about 19.30 were claiming they had been stuck in the car park for an hour, and there car bleeping their horns and drivers getting very angry etc!! Anyone know what happened?

I must have left just before it opened!!

SAW was closed all day today! Really disappointed.

Went on Sunday an queued for Rameses. It was busy at CWOA on Sunday! They were having problems with the restraints locking whilst we were queuing, and then the ride failed to flip and was brought slowly back down to the start point. Everyone had to get off (but were given a fast track ticket) and they had to re-set the ride. I (like many others) couldn't be bothered to wait so left the queue-line and went on Tomb Blaster instead!

Went on Saturday - I noticed the mirrors have been removed from the fountain finale and the painted black walls were back... Why?

I am a MAP holder and have been renewing each year (a family of 5) our Premium Passes in October. Chessington is our "home" park. A friend of ours who has MAP Premium Passes has told us that he receives a Merlin Magazine and got some Lanyards (pass holding neck things) through the post a few weeks ago! However his "home" park is LEGOLAND (he lives closer to there than Chessington!) We have never received a magazine or lanyard!! I know they have the correct address for us, because I checked it with them last year, so am I missing out because of my "home" park or is there some sort of glitch and I need to call them? Cheers

Still closed...

Yes, the animatronics always do seem to work for the first few weeks of the season, and then bit by bit things stop. The Hippo's mouth will stop opening and closing, or the spinning ducks will stop spinning etc... This Autumn, they should take the opportunity to close the ride for the entire Winter (not open it during Festive Zoo days) and give the whole ride a proper clean up.

The dust is probably smoke and soot dust from the Creepy Café fire to be fair. But I do agree with you. When the park closes this autumn, they should spend some time (and money) in giving the whole ride a good clean up and paint job. In the past, Bubbleworks has remained open throughout the "Festive Zoo Days" which means they haven't been able to spend the time required on giving it some much-needed TLC.

I went on Saturday, and noticed there was no music at all in the first section of the ride! It seemed to pick up again in the Hawaii section, but before then, you just had the station music drifting further and further away until you were in almost silence!

My observations from my visit on Saturday: The Market Square looks great! They still don't have enough picnic benches though so the area looks very spacious. I guess they don't want too many picnic benches to encourage people to eat at the restaurants, but a few more in what is a really nice area of the park wouldn't go a miss. They have moved the electric ride information board next to Sea Storm and it wasn't working on Saturday! The Creaky Café is a distant memory and it looks like they won't be re-building it any time soon. The floor has been finished with the same brickwork as Market Square so I doubt they would have gone to that effort if they had plans to open another café there. Again, there were just 5 picnic benches (I am not obsessed with picnic benches, honestly!!) so that needs to be addressed. Bubbleworks was open, there seemed to be little Imperial Leather branding. The boats didn't have the logo on them, and the bottles on the conveyor (just before the ascent) were plain and the logos had clearly been removed. The logo as you enter the ride from the station was still visible though! The ride itself was largely the same, apart from the mirrored wall in the fountain area (the wall backing on to the former Creaky Café!!) Scorpion Express was a bit of a let down! The pyro was quite good as the train pulled out of the station, but the Scorpion didn't seem to work properly. I think it is supposed to spray water, but there was almost nothing, just a trickle of water which was largely underwhelming. The ride is very open and it really does suffer for the loss of the tunnel the RMT used to have. Chessington are promoting it heavily - "New for 2014" - sort of stuff, when it is a basically a refurbed old ride. They have done away with the benches (crates) inside the Zufari shack, and replaced them with ugly railings! The pre-ride film with "Chase Van Driver" wasn't shown at all, and we were "treated" to Gotzee for about 30 seconds. I guess they have an issue with people entering the shack after others and exiting towards the trucks before them, but surely they could have worked it out a bit better than shoving in a cattlepen? Rameses Revenge was open! Finally, the Madagascar show is exactly the same as last year, and the year before..!! Surely they should have changed it by now? Keep the Madagascar characters, but think of a new show!! Overall, it seems that Chessington is much the same as it was. I do think the Market Square looks nice but the other "improvements" are a bit meh!

I went last year (on the Sunday) and it was absolutely FREEZING!! As a result it was fairly quiet. I wasn't dressed properly for the cold and gave up and went home within 2 hours, but had been on just about everything before I left!

Does anyone know when the Chessington/Merlin Passholder Preview Day will be available to book please? It's advertised on the Chessington Website as the weekend of the 15/16 March (which annoyingly clashes with the Thorpe Park weekend!) but there is no sign of being able to book your tickets. It's just over 2 weeks away, and the Thorpe Park tickets (for the same weekend) are available, so it must be very soon? Many thanks in advance!

It's a shame it's not going to be ready for this weekend, but I am sure it's not a decision they have taken lightly and it's obviously not safe enough to open so soon. We went during half-term, and where Burger King used to be was a complete building site, and there was still scaffolding up. I said at the time that it looked like it was some way off being finished, and that appears to be the case. The exterior looked nearly complete (I think it's called Vampire Bites or something) but inside was a mess.