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Chessington Howl'o'ween


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Visited yesterday evening and found the park amazing, a lot of nice touches that beats Thorpe hands down. The market square area look brilliant, the creepy tree in the middle made it, also a nice touch with the colour changing lights around the buildings made the area really light up. Both the hollows and hocus pocus were great but had long queues, wasn't to keen on the show in market square though, the sound was terrible and kept feeding back. Loved the laser on Rameses Revenge, great idea and the music was good, had heard that they were playing club style music but all I heard was Halloween music, shame, but was still excellent. What amazes me with chessington, is the amount of care and thought they put into their Halloween events, compared to Thorpe Park. The parks rides are lit lovely. and the music they play gives the park a great atmosphere, but could do with area Halloween music instead of the same playing everywhere. Will be revisiting again on Sunday for one last time, and will take load of pics.

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The Hotel guests Fastrack till 11am did cause a burden on Scorpion Express as loads turned up all at once, resulting in an entire train and a half to be taken up by them... Perhaps using Towers' method and giving out a free Fastrack package for the day's visit would be a better option for this next year...

Note that Towers does the same method as Chessie from Scarefest onwards - Fastrack until 11am on select rides (not The Smiler or CBeebies Land).

 

When they used to have the whole day thing is when it created those MASSIVE Fastrack queues. Far better having the current system, as at least it only affects the first hour of the day.

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Well Chessington certainly did not disappoint again... The effort put into this event is just outstanding; lighting, in particular black buccaneer and vampire were great again like previous years, and now Rameses with its music and lasers just really made my day - the 2 Halloween scare attractions were brilliant as usual but with such storyline comes a horrible throughput! I do have a short video I recorded of the lasers on Rameses on my phone but will not upload so may have to wait to get home; the lasers are all colours and can pretty much do anything, as well as goes in time with the music, which unfortunately I didn't hear club music but it was playing various music, mainly Halloween.

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Went to Chessington last night - quite a mistake. It was heaving! Did both walkthroughs though.

 

 Mystery of HPH was good, the highlight being the first scene/projection mapping. But the fact that there was no music outside the attraction meant a very boring hour + wait. The throughput is particularly bad, especially because of the disabled entrance being batched half and half.

 

I don't know what was going on with Haunting in the Hollows, again there was no music in the queue and it looked a mess! Cables everywhere, with the tower looking particularly bad. In the first year the drapes cover the doors so you couldn't see the strobe - now you can see it all the way from the Graveyard. Also it meant that the 'children' entering was more of a surprise (because you couldn't see the second set of doors.) Ruins it for me. Also little details missing - like the howl of the Werewolves during the graveyard sequence. It's a shame.

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Ruins it for me. Also little details missing - like the howl of the Werewolves during the graveyard sequence. It's a shame.

The werewolves howling isn't a triggered effect. It occurs right at the start of the audio loop in the graveyard area. (I know this because last year, the werewolves "howled" inside the funeral parlour)

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It is a triggered scene. Triggered by the actor in the castle bit..

 

Agree with comments of it being scruffy. Also serious lack of triggered effects and music in hocus pocus, which was odd.

 

I wonder why the hocus pocus hall music is playing across the whole park, but not outside hocus pocus? What happened to the Chessington halloween music? I'm assuming it's because a new team did it all this year.

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The werewolves howling isn't a triggered effect. It occurs right at the start of the audio loop in the graveyard area. (I know this because last year, the werewolves "howled" inside the funeral parlour)

 

It is a triggered effect, I know this because I was part of the team that set up the attraction in its original incarnation.

 

It is a triggered scene. Triggered by the actor in the castle bit..

 

Agree with comments of it being scruffy. Also serious lack of triggered effects and music in hocus pocus, which was odd.

 

I wonder why the hocus pocus hall music is playing across the whole park, but not outside hocus pocus? What happened to the Chessington halloween music? I'm assuming it's because a new team did it all this year.

 

I know the Ents team always suffered with change overs of staff. What with the department restructure in 2012/13 and then the departure of the Production Manager, Production TL and Operation Manager meant that pretty much everyone doing it this year was new.

 

The music outside Hocus Pocus is controlled from the attraction itself. It could be that, in 'turning off' the original attraction they are unable to play the music. However it could have been done, but would have involved more work in the set up and then after to return it to its normal state.

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  • 2 weeks later...

It's not my video but I feel obligated to share it, it shows an amazing atmosphere and proves how great chessington's Halloween event really was!

http://youtube.com/watch?v=iHtvjTN8HWw

So upset now to have missed it this year but will definitely be visiting next year, hope the attention to detail over the park remains like this. The park looks far superior to both fright nights and scarefest which I both visited this year.

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  • 8 months later...

So in a video released by Chessington recently... Informs us about two new attractions for their Halloween event.

http://youtu.be/HVZ7hLwJEEA

Trick or Treat in the Woods and Curse of the Lost Tomb.

So no other information has been given, but I'm somewhat concerned vampire haunting in the hollows has been replaced, unless the trick or treat in the main square is literally just been given a revamp but seems a bit exaggerated having it in a new attraction release video.

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