Mark9

I'm finding Chessington really frustrating at the moment. According to the park app the queues for things like Kobra, Tiger Rock and Dragon's Fury have been around two hours, Vampire, Rattlesnake and Tomb Blaster hover at 90 minutes and everything else is between 30-50 minutes.
 
I believe none of this is related to Land of Jumanji as the park was just as busy well before the new land opened. Yesterday may have been the perfect storm of good weather, new land and last day of half term but I think the problems are far deeper then this. The park is operationally damaged. Fury, Rattlesnake, Monkey Swinger, Tomb, Zufari,  Rock and Vampire do not run the capacities that they should be or can do. The downtime across the park is worse than it's ever been. Scorpion will be reopening this month but that cannot do enough to spread people. The sheer amount of Annual Pass holders with RAP passes is having an enormous effect on just shifting numbers through stand by.
 
And there is no magic answer here. The way the park is run, the staff just do not care. The only exception being the Jumanji staff who to there credit, are playing the characters and trying their best with compromised rides. Everywhere else though, you can tell the staff just aren't trained to the standard required. They do not give good service, they do not do good operations. There's no passion, there's no drive, there's no energy. And this comes from the top. The managers do not care.  Not to the level that a family theme park requires. 
 
I think sadly, a lot of the efforts to make the park look better over the last two years has been wasted as the sheer basics of running a theme park have completely collapsed. If Merlin are to make Chessington a destination (which seems to be the intention) then some radical thinking needs to take place. Rattlesnake and Fury need to go and be replaced with rides that have capacity. Rattlesnake does not fit in this park anymore. 1.4 metres with a 1.2 metre B&M wing rider a few metres away, no sorry.
 
Let's be real, Tiger Rock and Tomb Blaster are dead in the water. It's time for them to be replaced with modern tech, something like Chiapas and a newer slow moving dark ride, natural successors to what is there now. 
 
I love Chessington and I want people to have the same level of enjoyment and love that I had when I first visited in 1992. It's horrendous to hear the horrible days out people are having and I want this park to turn it around as it's the closest we have to a Toverland or a Nigloland in the UK. 

I'm finding Chessington really frustrating at the moment. According to the park app the queues for things like Kobra, Tiger Rock and Dragon's Fury have been around two hours, Vampire, Rattlesnake and Tomb Blaster hover at 90 minutes and everything else is between 30-50 minutes.
 
I believe none of this is related to Land of Jumanji as the park was just as busy well before the new land opened. Yesterday may have been the perfect storm of good weather, new land and last day of half term but I think the problems are far deeper then this. The park is operationally damaged. Fury, Rattlesnake, Monkey Swinger, Tomb, Zufari,  Rock and Vampire do not run the capacities that they should be or can do. The downtime across the park is worse than it's ever been. Scorpion will be reopening this month but that cannot do enough to spread people. The sheer amount of Annual Pass holders with RAP passes is having an enormous effect on just shifting numbers through stand by.
 
And there is no magic answer here. The way the park is run, the staff just do not care. The only exception being the Jumanji staff who to there credit, are playing the characters and trying their best with compromised rides. Everywhere else though, you can tell the staff just aren't trained to the standard required. They do not give good service, they do not do good operations. There's no passion, there's no drive, there's no energy. And this comes from the top. The managers do not care.  Not to the level that a family theme park requires. 
 
I think sadly, a lot of the efforts to make the park look better over the last two years has been wasted as the sheer basics of running a theme park have completely collapsed. If Merlin are to make Chessington a destination (which seems to be the intention) then some radical thinking needs to take place. Rattlesnake and Fury need to go and be replaced with rides that have capacity. Rattlesnake does not fit in this park anymore. 1.4 metres with a 1.2 metre B&M wing rider a few metres away, no sorry.
 
Let's be real, Tiger Rock and Tomb Blaster are dead in the water. It's time for them to be replaced with modern tech, something like Chiapas and a newer slow moving dark ride, natural successors to what is there now. 
 
I love Chessington and I want people to have the same level of enjoyment and love that I had when I first visited in 1992. It's horrendous to hear the horrible days out people are having and I want this park to turn it around as it's the closest we have to a Toverland or a Nigloland in the UK. 

Yeah she is getting on a bit now, almost 35 years old. I would love for it to get a bit of love now that Mandrill is open. 

It will be far less intense than Ride to Happiness. 

Awkward. At least it's true to its predecessor in barely working. 

Awkward. At least it's true to its predecessor in barely working. 

Awkward. At least it's true to its predecessor in barely working. 

Awkward. At least it's true to its predecessor in barely working. 

It's definitely open today. 

Wahoo, now open. Few comments from me.
 
Park did a little opening ceremony, which was nice. Even though Jumanji is open for hotel guests (9am-10am), it was still good for something to recognise the significance of the new area. Short speech done, area opened. So to ride Mandrill Mayhem you need to join a virtual queue. This does create a massive bottle neck right off the bat but 20 minutes later there's no one waiting outside to get their QR codes scanned. Its launch day was quiet in the park with only the Jumanji rides having any significant wait times (for reference, Vampire was less than 10 minutes all day). This ran out around 3:30pm so just as a warning, on a busy day it could run out a lot earlier.
 

 
The most we waited for Mandrill was 30 minutes and the team working it were doing the best with the limited capacity. They made a point of filling every seat, deliberately holding back single riders to pair them up with groups of three or other single riders. This being an intense, geek heavy day there was a lot of single riders so I wonder if this will continue on a more traditional park day. 
 
The station is fine, the thing I like is that unlike the Swarm where you just wait on either side of the station (and one is significantly longer then the other), here you are pre batched and let pretty much straight onto the ride. But this does create a bigger problem where the train is still for several moments as you can't get onto the platform until a staff member opens a gate. There were points that the staff were only one on each side, its a lot of work for one person. Again, low capacity ride being made lower. Trains felt exactly like the other Wing-riders, it begs the question, could The Swarm be a 1.2 metre ride or is there something I'm missing?
 

 
The ride itself is surprisingly good. I had reservations about this being a proper lower tier B&M but actually its a pretty varied ride experience. The spike for example as you launch out the station is full of hang time particularly in the back part of the ride. The launches feel really nice, sitting between Mack and Intamin. The turns are full of whip. I love the turn coming out of the station heading in(or out) or the zero g roll. It's so snappy. The Zero G roll is really good. It's taken at the perfect pace and is in the perfect location over the entrance to the area. The helix around the monument is surprisingly forceful on the right hand side of the train. The backwards return journey is lovely too. We had 6 rides overall and it was pretty unanimous in that this is a perfect fit for Chessington and a good step up ride for those that want a bit more then Dragons Fury but aren't quite ready for Thorpe. I think one of its main positives is a weird one in that the earlier B&M Wing-riders were very graceful rides, The Swarm for example has a natural flow and each element works in conjunction with the next. It always feels in control. The newer ones such as Fenix at Toverland and Mandrill have jerkier elements and feel less refined weirdly. And I kinda like that. So yes, a nice surprise. It has all the strengths that you'd expect from a B&M in that it's reliable and efficient and is a strong Premier ride for the park. It perfectly fits in next to Vampire, Kobra and Dragons Fury and I'm very happy and hope it brings the park the success to take it through the next decade. 
 
Ostrich Stampede isn't great to be honest. Takes way too long to load and only one has twenty seconds of really good jumping energy. The rest is a bit meh with you just spinning around. Mamba Strike was much better and weirdly jerky and seemed to be the busier of the two rides. Both of these rides were doing the job well of support flat rides and makes the area feel more complete and rounded. 
 
So to conclude it was a successful launch for a park that really needed the investment. With Croc Drop two years ago, Blue Barnacle, Trawler Trouble and Barrel Bail Out last year and now Jumanji, the ride offering has seen significant and much needed changes and I hope to see this continue. I love Chessington and I do bring out the rose tinted glasses out for it. it has so much potential that has been locked away for what feels like two decades. This needs to be the start of something because Chessington can be a great park again.

Wahoo, now open. Few comments from me.
 
Park did a little opening ceremony, which was nice. Even though Jumanji is open for hotel guests (9am-10am), it was still good for something to recognise the significance of the new area. Short speech done, area opened. So to ride Mandrill Mayhem you need to join a virtual queue. This does create a massive bottle neck right off the bat but 20 minutes later there's no one waiting outside to get their QR codes scanned. Its launch day was quiet in the park with only the Jumanji rides having any significant wait times (for reference, Vampire was less than 10 minutes all day). This ran out around 3:30pm so just as a warning, on a busy day it could run out a lot earlier.
 

 
The most we waited for Mandrill was 30 minutes and the team working it were doing the best with the limited capacity. They made a point of filling every seat, deliberately holding back single riders to pair them up with groups of three or other single riders. This being an intense, geek heavy day there was a lot of single riders so I wonder if this will continue on a more traditional park day. 
 
The station is fine, the thing I like is that unlike the Swarm where you just wait on either side of the station (and one is significantly longer then the other), here you are pre batched and let pretty much straight onto the ride. But this does create a bigger problem where the train is still for several moments as you can't get onto the platform until a staff member opens a gate. There were points that the staff were only one on each side, its a lot of work for one person. Again, low capacity ride being made lower. Trains felt exactly like the other Wing-riders, it begs the question, could The Swarm be a 1.2 metre ride or is there something I'm missing?
 

 
The ride itself is surprisingly good. I had reservations about this being a proper lower tier B&M but actually its a pretty varied ride experience. The spike for example as you launch out the station is full of hang time particularly in the back part of the ride. The launches feel really nice, sitting between Mack and Intamin. The turns are full of whip. I love the turn coming out of the station heading in(or out) or the zero g roll. It's so snappy. The Zero G roll is really good. It's taken at the perfect pace and is in the perfect location over the entrance to the area. The helix around the monument is surprisingly forceful on the right hand side of the train. The backwards return journey is lovely too. We had 6 rides overall and it was pretty unanimous in that this is a perfect fit for Chessington and a good step up ride for those that want a bit more then Dragons Fury but aren't quite ready for Thorpe. I think one of its main positives is a weird one in that the earlier B&M Wing-riders were very graceful rides, The Swarm for example has a natural flow and each element works in conjunction with the next. It always feels in control. The newer ones such as Fenix at Toverland and Mandrill have jerkier elements and feel less refined weirdly. And I kinda like that. So yes, a nice surprise. It has all the strengths that you'd expect from a B&M in that it's reliable and efficient and is a strong Premier ride for the park. It perfectly fits in next to Vampire, Kobra and Dragons Fury and I'm very happy and hope it brings the park the success to take it through the next decade. 
 
Ostrich Stampede isn't great to be honest. Takes way too long to load and only one has twenty seconds of really good jumping energy. The rest is a bit meh with you just spinning around. Mamba Strike was much better and weirdly jerky and seemed to be the busier of the two rides. Both of these rides were doing the job well of support flat rides and makes the area feel more complete and rounded. 
 
So to conclude it was a successful launch for a park that really needed the investment. With Croc Drop two years ago, Blue Barnacle, Trawler Trouble and Barrel Bail Out last year and now Jumanji, the ride offering has seen significant and much needed changes and I hope to see this continue. I love Chessington and I do bring out the rose tinted glasses out for it. it has so much potential that has been locked away for what feels like two decades. This needs to be the start of something because Chessington can be a great park again.

Wahoo, now open. Few comments from me.
 
Park did a little opening ceremony, which was nice. Even though Jumanji is open for hotel guests (9am-10am), it was still good for something to recognise the significance of the new area. Short speech done, area opened. So to ride Mandrill Mayhem you need to join a virtual queue. This does create a massive bottle neck right off the bat but 20 minutes later there's no one waiting outside to get their QR codes scanned. Its launch day was quiet in the park with only the Jumanji rides having any significant wait times (for reference, Vampire was less than 10 minutes all day). This ran out around 3:30pm so just as a warning, on a busy day it could run out a lot earlier.
 

 
The most we waited for Mandrill was 30 minutes and the team working it were doing the best with the limited capacity. They made a point of filling every seat, deliberately holding back single riders to pair them up with groups of three or other single riders. This being an intense, geek heavy day there was a lot of single riders so I wonder if this will continue on a more traditional park day. 
 
The station is fine, the thing I like is that unlike the Swarm where you just wait on either side of the station (and one is significantly longer then the other), here you are pre batched and let pretty much straight onto the ride. But this does create a bigger problem where the train is still for several moments as you can't get onto the platform until a staff member opens a gate. There were points that the staff were only one on each side, its a lot of work for one person. Again, low capacity ride being made lower. Trains felt exactly like the other Wing-riders, it begs the question, could The Swarm be a 1.2 metre ride or is there something I'm missing?
 

 
The ride itself is surprisingly good. I had reservations about this being a proper lower tier B&M but actually its a pretty varied ride experience. The spike for example as you launch out the station is full of hang time particularly in the back part of the ride. The launches feel really nice, sitting between Mack and Intamin. The turns are full of whip. I love the turn coming out of the station heading in(or out) or the zero g roll. It's so snappy. The Zero G roll is really good. It's taken at the perfect pace and is in the perfect location over the entrance to the area. The helix around the monument is surprisingly forceful on the right hand side of the train. The backwards return journey is lovely too. We had 6 rides overall and it was pretty unanimous in that this is a perfect fit for Chessington and a good step up ride for those that want a bit more then Dragons Fury but aren't quite ready for Thorpe. I think one of its main positives is a weird one in that the earlier B&M Wing-riders were very graceful rides, The Swarm for example has a natural flow and each element works in conjunction with the next. It always feels in control. The newer ones such as Fenix at Toverland and Mandrill have jerkier elements and feel less refined weirdly. And I kinda like that. So yes, a nice surprise. It has all the strengths that you'd expect from a B&M in that it's reliable and efficient and is a strong Premier ride for the park. It perfectly fits in next to Vampire, Kobra and Dragons Fury and I'm very happy and hope it brings the park the success to take it through the next decade. 
 
Ostrich Stampede isn't great to be honest. Takes way too long to load and only one has twenty seconds of really good jumping energy. The rest is a bit meh with you just spinning around. Mamba Strike was much better and weirdly jerky and seemed to be the busier of the two rides. Both of these rides were doing the job well of support flat rides and makes the area feel more complete and rounded. 
 
So to conclude it was a successful launch for a park that really needed the investment. With Croc Drop two years ago, Blue Barnacle, Trawler Trouble and Barrel Bail Out last year and now Jumanji, the ride offering has seen significant and much needed changes and I hope to see this continue. I love Chessington and I do bring out the rose tinted glasses out for it. it has so much potential that has been locked away for what feels like two decades. This needs to be the start of something because Chessington can be a great park again.

I just think it's great that Thorpe have bought back rollbacks on Stealth. 

What annoys me more is that Merlin food used to be pretty good and pretty affordable. But its completely the reverse now and the crap you get is no where near worth the money.
 
I'll pay the premium for good food but I'll spend as little as possible if I know the food is questionable. And as I'm more then willing to shovel out $80 for a meal at Tiffins in Disney World, the fact that I really don't want to spend £10 for a burger and fries at The Burger Kitchen says a lot. 

'Rooms'

An absolute crime that Parc Asterix only has five pages of discussion whereas Port Aventura has 26.
 
Anyway.. Toutatis is great. Top notch. I was worried about the pacing of the thing, especially as similar like Taron and Taiga are very well paced. Nothing to worry about though, this is a very fast rollercoaster with the most aggressive ejector air time I've experienced so far. Those little launch dips are just fantastic. The rest of the ride is also very pleasing and we had about 8 rides on it over two days. I didn't have a favourite seat preference. Loved the front and back equally. Definitely my favourite Intamin, traditionally, I'm a bit luke warm with their rides but they've really made a step forward since Taron.
 
Oz'Iris, is excellent. It's just the best B&M inverter out there right now. It combines the whippiness of Nemesis with the weird floaty air time of one of their hypers. There's so much air time on Oz'Iris or zero g feeling, it's very odd to describe because aside from Monster, no other inverter rides like this and it's absolutely joyful. It's a shame that only Banshee and Monster were built after Oz'Iris, because actually, Oz'Iris feels like a proper evolution of what B&M were doing before. Managed eight rides, should have done more. 
 
Pegasus Express is lovely, we had three rides and really enjoyed each one. Chessington should really be getting something like this, not a wing rider but I digress. High capacity, lovely moments, fast and snappy. Really accessible for everyone. 
 
Tonnerre 2 Zeus was odd. Should have really re tracked the whole thing as there's a significant difference between the old and the new. It makes it a very mixed ride. I still enjoyed, but I also felt like there's a missed opportunity here. I don't like the trains. Really chunky, giant restraints that reminded me of Maurer Sohnes X car ones.
 
A lot has changed at the park since I went in 2017. Every rollercoaster now has a batcher (before it was a free for all), operationally everything was on point and the staff work bloody hard to fill seats, even when the ride is walk on. Twice on Oz'Iris, they were making us run through the queue to fill two seats. Literal walk on. I don't know if we hit a quiet day as Toutatis queues were all over the place. From 90 minutes, to 20, then back to 45 and down to 15 then up again. 

What annoys me more is that Merlin food used to be pretty good and pretty affordable. But its completely the reverse now and the crap you get is no where near worth the money.
 
I'll pay the premium for good food but I'll spend as little as possible if I know the food is questionable. And as I'm more then willing to shovel out $80 for a meal at Tiffins in Disney World, the fact that I really don't want to spend £10 for a burger and fries at The Burger Kitchen says a lot. 

I'm sure Sony are impressed that Merlin are completely incapable of negotiating with the engineering team and stopping these strikes. 

Rattlesnake did open and it was displaying an 140 minute queue. Which is possible as when I went it was on a three car operation. 
 
It's unbelievable incompetence. Something is fundamentally wrong with the Merlin parks. 

Why are you excusing awful quality and excessive price rises?
 

Why are you excusing awful quality and excessive price rises?
 

Why are you excusing awful quality and excessive price rises?
 

Why are you excusing awful quality and excessive price rises?
 

I visited yesterday and some thoughts and bear in mind Chessington is a rose tinted glasses park for me-
 
This park isn't really ready for Easter. It's going to struggle with one train on Vampire and what looks like to be only four functional cars on Rattlesnake. The second Vampire train is located just behind Scorpion Express at the moment. They also have 12pm opening for Wild Asia, Tiger Rock and Zufari. Which is fine, the park was pretty quiet. But three of the six weren't ready for 12. Scorpion Express's train has returned and was being put back together on the ride. So thats good.
 
It's wonderful that they've done big projects like repainting Fury or the ground work near the Main Entrance. They need to go focus on the small details now. Some of the theming across the park is really aging, worn away and looking pretty shabby. I know, I want the world.
 
The staff were absolutely miserable. The odd smile from a retail staff member was the best we really saw. But I can't help think this is from the top and some of the situations the staff seem to have to deal with. Like on Vampire they don't fill the station anymore. But they don't have someone batching people into rows, instead, the on load platformer has to do it. But on my ride, whilst she was checking bars, the people started batching themselves. Which meant she had to start shouting at all the guests (because the music is loud), the operator had to make an announcement. It was just very disorganised. When the park is this quiet, is it really necessary to stop us at the batching area or still continue to batch people into rows.
 
Breakdowns. Oh boy. Lots of them. We got caught in a Kobra, Rattlesnake and Fury shutdown and we saw many others including being evacuated from Tomb Blaster. To clarify Fury wasn't a breakdown. It was an alignment gate issue. But because of the stupid rules inflicted top down, the attendants can't solve it. An engineer and management has to. So you stand there and wait and three managers turn up. But they cant' do it without the engineer. So you wait for the engineer. But they are probably attending another breakdown. You just wait. It's infuriating that what is a ten second fix becomes a ten minute shutdown. I bet the staff on Spinball, Tarantula, Salama or Winjas don't have to put up with this nonsense. If the issue is mistakes in the past, then have a well experienced platformer there at all times who is trusted to fix the alignment gate. Don't bold up 100's of people. It's so silly.
 
Tomb Blaster evacuation Now, for a company that is obsessed with health and safety and the risk of death, this felt really haphazard and very perculiar. We got stuck in the first show scene and had to walk back to the station area. Yeah that fine. At the time I was slightly amused at the lack of communication from the ride hosts. They didn't tell us to hold onto the handrail or stay away from the big massive drop from the evac stairs to the track trough. This is a ride that 4 year old kids can go on after all, the one in front of us kept veering towards the drop. Towards the station you cross the transfer track and again, massive steps for young kids, no warning signs or communication from the staff. 
 
I had a good day and the work in improving the park has made the place look in parts, much better. But it's quite clear that the park is struggling on a lot of fronts. It was nice to see Mandrill but I'm worried that this shiny new ride will only highlight the sharp edges elsewhere.

They probably could have done a full re-track but they either couldn't afford it or didn't want to pay for it. 
 
I just can't get over the Thorpe park social media team for criticising Alton Towers for retracking Nemesis for marketing reasons. A theme park is a commercial enterprise. It's not done for fun or charity (Efteling excluded). They could have re-sold us Colossus as a revamped experience. Instead it's just partially retracked with the wrong sized track apparently and is just as closed as its commercialised brother up North.