Mark9

Queues are weird at Chessington. At one point Fury's queue was at 35 minutes, Runaway Trains was at 50. It's because guests move round the park in the same way so instead of every ride being busy, rides are busy and empty at certain times.For instance on an average day, Fury is always the busiest at the beginning of the day but its queue time goes down by half around lunchtime. After lunch the other rides such as Runaway train, Tomb Blaster, Bubbleworks and Rattlesnake get really busy whilst Fury and Vampire remain quite short.(Chessington Geek)

I feel really old now!It's been 10 years since I first saw Samurai at Chessington and now 10 years since I first rode Bubbleworks.Someone book me a place at an old peoples home before I fall over

Average queue times coming your way!Dragons Fury 40 minutesVampire 40 minutesTomb Blaster 20 minutesRattlesnake 30 minutesRunaway Train 30 minutesDragon Falls 15 minutesBubbleworks 25 minutes

I think the irony of Chessington is that despite the lack of investment in the rides department, the park is still able to attract over a million people every year on the strength of its name alone. Over in the polls section Thorpe is quite easily thrashing Chessington as the favourite park to visit out of the two. But this is a completely biased forum as most of us on here are thrillseekers and like the big rides. What we forget is that rides are for everyone and the sheer variety of things to do at Chessington puts it well above Thorpe Park.James you said there's not enough to do at Chessington but I really do beg to differ. If you think of it as a family unit, you've got all the different kinds of rides, the zoo and all its shows and feeding times, the many things going on around the park and probably more stuff thats slipped my mind right now.My point being the rides at Thorpe you could ride anywhere else in the world (and ironically rides like Colossus, Stealth, Fish and all the flats can be). There's nowhere in the world where you can get rides like Tomb Blaster, Dragons Fury, Dragon Falls, Bubbleworks, Safari Skyway and Vampire. Even the common rides such as Rameses Revenge, Rattlesnake and Runaway Train's are themed beyond what they would be at many, many parks. And here ends the Chessington praise!

Lol... yeah shut up yeah

Post it here dude... we all wanna see!

Always put it higher. Some things can't be accounted for on rides so I'd rather have people queue less then they expect then more then they expect.

Depends really because like today for example it would be sharp showers then sunny again. So the queue was from 40-80 minutes.

Ah well you see the thing with Chessington is that most of the major rides do run in adverse rain but they aren't totally immune from problems. For instance Tiny Truckers, Safari Skyway, Peeking Heights often close totally in rain. Truckers because it's an indoor ride so doesn't like damp, Skyway because the trains have trouble getting up the hill by Seastorm and peeking because being bucketed with rain at 85 feet isn't exactly nice.Dragons Fury and Rattlesnake are affected by rain. Only today, we could only load two people on each Fury car because they were going to fast around the track. The same happens on Spinball Whizzer at Atlton Towers.I believe Griffins Galleon and Black Bucaneer are also effected by weather.

It's rubbish. Seriously, if you want to keep the old Bubbleworks alive in your mind, do not ride the new version.

Now now Jack, don't be like that

They left a gate into a ride area open....Amazingly not the first time, there used to be a smaller gate leading into Infernos shed/lift hill bit and someone has a picture of it wide open for anyone to run into and get beheaded...

Stealth trains getting stuck on top hats then falling off sideways doesn't happen that often?I should bloody well hope so, it's impossible for it to happen anyway.

How exactly would it do that...

There's nothing wrong with chain hotels. The Chessington one is a fantastic hotel. And that is run by Holiday Inn, one of the supposed dreaded hotel chains.

Possibly although I don't remember having that kind of problem on Rage. On Saw it makes me cringe seeing peoples heads flying about on that drop.

It wouldn't effect throughput that much as if you look at Stealth at the moment the train has done its thing and is back over the bunny hop before the other train has even started to move into the on-load position. Afraid not, it is always closed when I go. I've seen it open once in an entire year.

That why it breaks down so much yeah?

This may just be me but..Is anyone else really finding Saw a pain to ride?I've been on many many rollercoasters in Europe, and Saw is the first one I've been on that I actually dread re-riding. The indoor bit I'm fine with but as soon as that car hits the bottom of the main drop, my head gets knocked left, right and centre no matter what row I'm in. I find so many parts of the ride really painful and un-enjoyable. I've always taken the mick out of Marc in regards to Colossus's headbanging but in my opinion Saw is far more notorious then Colossus. Does anyone find this or is just me?

Well quite, just a few points to bandy about.Numo 1. I'm not really going against what Stealth does. it's clearly built with the simplest in mind. 200 feet, wow, 80 mph, wow. Oh my god, all these huge numbers being bandied about. Will drive you mad! But there is no substance there. Numo 2. "those turn things are bare boring init bruv they dont do no loops or nuffin". They don't say that at the end of Inferno so why would Stealth having a few overbanked hills make people call the ride boring. It seems like crazy logic to me.Numo 3. The general public. Ah you see, they wouldn't know any different, these ignorant little souls. Except they do bang on about this sort of stuff. Queuing 2 hours for an 8 second ride? They think it's bloody madness, and if you think about it, they are totally on the money. Stealth is a great launch coaster but my problems aren't anything to do with the ride itself. What it does, it does well but when you think of what could have been done, and then see what is done it really is the bare minimum that they could get away with. I always think of it like this. In 1998, Tussauds built Oblivion. Now it's only a very good drop into a hole and yet look at that queue-line interaction, the effort put into making it more then just a ride. The stuff added to Stealth such as the Dj doesn't happen anymore.. so Stealth will always scream COULDN'T BE BOTHERED at me.

I personally think Stealth is the most over-rated ride in the UK. There is so much that can be done with the accelerator concept and with the free reign Thorpe had meant they could have done anything they wanted. Instead they stuck with the tried and tested. The problem is striking that balance between an interesting ride and something guests will enjoy. Parks like Miribilanda in Italy and Europa Park are only now really showing that launch rollercoasters have large legs. It's just a shame that Stealth for me will always reek of lazy ride planning.

Are you serious with that comment?

He's still there, posting via phone

Is that before or after you throw in all the other Thorpe downtime

No, it's not alright.