Chessington: First time visitors view

[ThumbRemote]

Hi there

 

I visited Chessington for the first time last weekend. Though you might be interested in a first time visitors view. I live in the north of England, and bought Merlin annual passes for the family for the first time this year. We decided to visit the southern parks at Chessington, Legoland and Thorpe Park over the Easter long weekend, staying in a travelodge locally.

Well, what a massive disppointment it was. From what I can tell the rides must be falling to pieces, given how little they actually seem to work.

Four rides were planned to be closed for the whole day (Black Buccanneer, Griffins Galleon, Rameses Revenge and Rattlesnake) - although there was no notification of this before we entered the park, and the 'queue times' screens in the park had the first three listed as operational all day, with a 5 minute queue. As it happens there was a board outside the park listing these 4 as closed which I saw when returning to the car to get lunch, but it certainly wasn't out at 9:50 when we arrived!

On top of that, Dragon Falls, Dragons Fury, Jungle Bus, Kobra, Tiny Truckers, Tomb Blaster and Zufari were all closed when we got in, leaving us pretty mich wandering round the park to see if anything was actually open! In fact within about 10 minutes of the park opening, Vampire and Bubbleworks were showing 40 and 30 minutes queues respectively as everyone ended up going to those.

 

During the course of the day all these rides did manage to open, for at least some period of time. However Dragon Falls opened for a while then closed fairly soon afterwards. We were actually sitting on Tiny Truckers with our youngest when it was closed and we were turfed off. We were on Bubbleworks when it stopped and got stuck. Looking at some of the comments on Facebook, other people have had similar experiences with other days recently, with numerous rides out of action or closing midway during the day.

 

Now given it was the end of March that we went, and the park has only been open for a few weeks, I can't help wondering what state these rides are going to be come August time!

 

One other thing we noticed was the immaturity of the staff. Most of the park seemed to be operated by teenagers, who just didn't have a clue what they were doing. Take for example the Bubbleworks closure - the boats came round towards the exit and backed up, leaving people at the back in a boat stuck underneath the fountains. The operators made no effort to check people were OK, no-one even walked back along the path to see them, and (despite being told by us what was happening, as we were in the middle of the queue so could see the front and back) they didn't stop the fountains running. Given their complete clueless-ness, I can genuinely see some sort of accident happening there.

 

Finally, the queue times screens, app, and ride notice boards themselves, often all showed different information - rendering it completely pointless. Is someone just making up the numbers they display? When we finally got on Tomb Blaster (after waiting 45 minutes, when the screen said 15) the operator asked how long we'd waited and then went to amend the sign to match that - no taking into account how long the actual queue was!

It was a massive difference to Legoland, where the park seemed well run, everything operated as said and the staff clearly knew what they were doing. I appreciate that in general the rides at Legoland may be smaller than Chessington, but not so much as to cause that amount of difference. We returned to Legoland the following day - we certainly won't be returning to Chessington!

[Mysterio Ka]

What day did you visit? I'm just wondering if this matches with my experience (on Friday & Saturday).

[ThumbRemote]

Saturday 26th

[Mysterio Ka]

I think there are a couple of points to take away from this, however, I do see that that day was quite poor on Chessington's half.

Unfortunately (and it's the same at a lot of parks) engineering time slots means that rides will sometimes open late. If more problems then expected occur, it can lead to more then 1 or 2 rides being open late.

Vampire and Bubbleworks are 2 very popular rides, due to their strategic positioning being close to the main entrance and catering for everyone. Hotel guests tend to be able to get there a little early, and seeing as that particular Saturday was the first peak day of the year, you should've really expected long queues all day.

Dragon Falls can have long periods of down time. I've seen people try to climb out of boats before which I think leads to the whole ride being evaced; mind you the teams tend to do this fairly quickly, but you can only do these procedures so quickly.

Because it was the parks first peak day, a lot of new staff could be seen. I spotted 3 or 4 people shadowing at Vampire, so queues and throughputs may have been a lot longer/slower then usual because new people need to train at some point. This may be similar with bubbleworks, people will have a clue what their doing, its just sometimes especially for new comers it can be nerve wracking to deal with a breakdown (you can see it on their faces). Normally a higher member of staff can be seen helping people out of boats at bubbles (I've been stuck under the fountains before) and they try to move people through the fountains as quickly as possible to avoid getting them soaked. Effects like I assume the fountains are out of control of the operators, and so theres very little they can do to turn them off. I'm sorry to hear that the staff weren't very sympathetic for you though.

As for staff immaturity, you'll see a similar age in staff across Legoland and Chessington. Whilst they might be low in age, they are all trained and tested before they're allowed to work on rides, so unless they were completely abandoning procedures then I don't think that's a fair comment to make.

 

Finally, the queue time boards can take up to 20 minutes or so to change. Last year I had to wait outside of vampire for my friends who had gone through and someone standing at the main gate told me that they had asked for the queue time to be changed but it sometimes takes a while to go through, and different systems do it quicker (so the queue time boards, ride queue times and the app may be a bit out of sync, all be it they shouldn't be too far from eachother).

 

I'm really sorry to hear you had a bad day, as Chessington is one of my favourite parks, however it isn't the best ran, especially considering the state of the things it has to run.

[RobF]

Chessington is dire on so many levels at present from poor ride availability to the inept rides team who would struggle to organise a piss up in a brewery. 20 minute sign in dragons fury took 1.5 hours due to inadequate loading/ opporations ! Whilst money has been spent on the park in places it changes nothing as the surroundings to any area touched brings them back down walls in vampires queue at merge point, the walls opposite vampire ect its just poor :-(

Chessington desperately need a new coaster as vampire is almost dead yet still carries the park after 26 years as a headline attraction.

Merlin sort it out .... I could have been at dismeyland today and been happier

[Coaster]

Unfortunately Merlin seem to have neglected Chessington both operationally and aesthetically, which is a huge shame as it has the potential to be a good family park in the right hands.

 

Theme parks are supposed to be places for people to have a fun day out, well closed rides, slow operations and neglected areas is not the way to do this - granted, they have supposedly improved the aesthetics of the park in places which is good, but why has it taken so many years (and the removal of several theming elements) before this started?

[Matt 236]

The U.K as a whole has mostly stagnated theme park wise. If Paramount were to open tommorow, I would definitely expect most parks to fail this year.

[MattyMoo]

ThumbRemote - many thanks for a detailed post/trip report, it's always interesting (and, very much concerning) to see a theme park without perhaps the rose-tinted spectacles of a theme park fan (although some could argue that the "fans" are far more cutting and unforgiving!)

 

It sounds like a particularly awful day out you've had - again, that's a real shame to read as I have a fondness for CWoA with awesome memories from the early 90s!

[ThumbRemote]

Firstly I should apologise for posting this as a separate thread, and initially in the wrong part of these forums. I hadn't seen this board when I posted.

Just to pick up on Mysterio Kas reply, we visited Legoland on Friday, Chessington Saturday, Legoland Sunday and Thorpe Park Monday. I wouldn't really compare Thorpe Park, as it was nearly deserted due to the storm the previous night. But I couldn't believe the difference between Chessington and Legoland.

Legoland seemed to run like clockwork. It was pleasant to walk round, everything was open, staff were friendly, it was an excellent day out. Chessington was just stressful - walking round with a miserable child while everything seems to be shut, being sent away from rides, staff not appearing to have a clue, etc. It genuinely seemed that the place was on its last legs and about to close down (and I see from some other comments in the Chessington section that if anything it's got worse since). Presumably it was the first big weekend for both parks?

This is nothing to do with new rides - after all, the whole park was new to us. It's just that the ones they have got are in such poor condition.

There's a good chance we'll revisit Legoland in Summer; we wouldn't go back to Chessington if you paid us!