September 13, 201410 yr comment_191738 The staggered openings are to encourage guests to spread around the park on quiet days, otherwise you'd get clumps of busy areas and other rides with almost no guests. Griffins Galleon only opens for 3 hours because hardly anybody rides it in the morning or late afternoon anyway.
September 13, 201410 yr comment_191739 The staggered openings are to encourage guests to spread around the park on quiet days, otherwise you'd get clumps of busy areas and other rides with almost no guests. Griffins Galleon only opens for 3 hours because hardly anybody rides it in the morning or late afternoon anyway. Hardly anyone rides Griffins full stop...
September 13, 201410 yr comment_191743 Hardly anyone even knows it's there or how to get to it...! I see Tomb Blaster and Ramases seem to be open again. I shall report back how dead the park is when we go on Tuesday!
September 13, 201410 yr comment_191747 Am I right in thinking that ERT is not available for Merlin pass holders?
September 14, 201410 yr comment_191875 Or Towers opening their HIGHEST CAPACITY RIDES an hour after park opens (Congo River and Skyride!) Skyrides been open since 10 for a couple of months now. It's only the water rides and barely rode first thing which are closed til 11 (A reminder: Rapids, Flume, Terra, Ripsaw and Hex). As for ERT.. there's no Early Rider for Annual Passholders at Chessie.
September 14, 201410 yr comment_191880 I was very impressed with Chessington today. They really have turned things around since last year, especially appearance of the park. However I was not happy that Rameses Revenge and Safari Skyway were closed all day, as well as numerous breakdowns.
September 17, 201410 yr comment_192181 Apologies if this has been answered but I can't see it... Does anyone know why Chessington have changed all the electronic information signs at the ride entrances? Before they used to scroll along, now they are smaller signs with just the waiting time permanently displayed. I guess everyone would just prefer to know how long the wait is without having to wait for the "Welcome to Chessington...." blurb first, but I just wondered what prompted the change.
September 17, 201410 yr comment_192193 I was surprised to see those signs being used. You wouldn't necessarily know they were a wait time as all they say is just a number, not even "minutes" after. I was surprised to see an old-style queue board on Scorpion Express. The new queue summary boards are very good though!
September 17, 201410 yr comment_192194 I really like the new queue boards there, much nicer than Thorpe's IMO.
September 17, 201410 yr comment_192196 In case anyone hasn't seen - new central queue boards, plus the minimal queue time board above Tomb Blaster
September 17, 201410 yr comment_192197 Like the new central queue board however is there still only one of them because I think they need 2/3 planted around the park. Don't really like the tomb blaster one though, are the rest of the rides like this, unclear as to what is '5' as such.
September 17, 201410 yr comment_192200 There's a board at the main entrance by the Otters, there's one near Wild Asia and there's an even bigger board in Market Square. There might be another near Hocus Pocus Hall but I might be wrong! Yes I thought the Tomb Blaster style queue boards need a little more information on them... I mean you'd probably guess that was the queue time, but you'd be forgiven for not realising. Also - the queue times were more like 0 minutes yesterday, not 5 - yet CWoA doesn't seem to like saying 0 minute queues
September 17, 201410 yr comment_192226 I always take the 5 minute queue thing as the walking through the queue line and the ride itself.
September 17, 201410 yr comment_192241 Don't really like the tomb blaster one though, are the rest of the rides like this, unclear as to what is '5' as such. Wait and see, we may be suprised! There's quite a bit of space around that number display.
September 18, 201410 yr comment_192300 Apologies if this has been answered but I can't see it... Does anyone know why Chessington have changed all the electronic information signs at the ride entrances? Before they used to scroll along, now they are smaller signs with just the waiting time permanently displayed. I guess everyone would just prefer to know how long the wait is without having to wait for the "Welcome to Chessington...." blurb first, but I just wondered what prompted the change. The small boards will have signage around them. Chessie has decided to put the signs in beforehand. These boards are all linked up - you can change them from a central point (or from the rides themselves.. unsure if they have those yet) and then they'll show absolutely everywhere. Alton got this first with the new boards and CBeebies Land. The remainder of the rides will have the same entrance boards from next year I believe. Should lead to better Queue Time information (or at least not having boards saying other things!)
September 26, 201410 yr comment_193057 In other news, seems that Chessie were really in the deep end in 2013... http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-29366602 Chessington fails to ban park safety critic Chessington has lost a court fight to ban an email campaign criticising its safety record.The High Court ruled Dr Peter Cave, a critic of operator Merlin Entertainments, had the right to speak his mind about the Surrey theme park.Dr Cave's survey consultancy Peer Egerton identified 2,000 safety issues in a report for MerlinMerlin said his campaign of harassment stemmed from a financial dispute and it did not agree with the judgement.Dr Cave sent 80,000 emails to Surrey residents and members of Merlin's staff and set up campaign websites.His campaign began after Jessica Blake, of Sheerness, Kent suffered a fractured skull, a bleed on the brain and broken ribs in the 14ft (4.2m) fall while queuing for the Tomb Blaster ride at the park. Judge Mrs Justice Elisabeth Laing told the court Merlin had spent £4.6m on remedial work, some of it urgent.Following financial disputes between Dr Cave's consultancy and Merlin, Dr Cave had unsuccessfully sought a court order banning the park from re-opening after the 2012 winter break. Asking the judge to order him to stop his campaign, Merlin described his "baseless" criticisms as highly alarming, distressing and disgraceful.However, refusing to grant an injunction, the judge said the issues he raised about Chessington's management and the regulation of theme parks were matters of public interest. The judge ruled Dr Cave's statements did not cross the line between robust comment and unacceptable and oppressive personal attacks.Merlin said it was considering whether to appeal against the decision. It said Dr Cave's issues with Merlin date from his "totally spurious" demands for money, which had since been dismissed by the court and his company's appointment was not related to the Jessica Blake incident. "Dr Cave's continuous campaign of allegations concerning the safety of our attractions is entirely without foundation," it said in a statement."As a business, Merlin is governed by very stringent technical and health and safety regulations, and we invest many millions of pounds every year to ensure that our attractions not only meet or exceed these, but also in continually improving our procedures."
September 28, 201410 yr comment_193238 ^ Dr Peter Cave can go suck a dead dogs nose. Why? Considering his job was to survey the park for issues, he found lots, but the park's solutions weren't checked independently whilst Merlin wanted to keep things quiet... Doing his job really...
September 28, 201410 yr comment_193239 No, not really. He was asked to survey the park, nothing more. Bet it was him who banned Vampire and three trains...
September 28, 201410 yr comment_193240 Hang on, park has over 2000 safety issues but he's in the wrong for trying to get the park to sort them out whilst the park and Merlin just want to cover up the problems and pretend they don't exist. Bet it was him who banned Vampire and three trains... Don't be so ridiculous. We'd be having a completely different conversation if because of Merlin's negligence, someone had been killed at the park.
September 28, 201410 yr comment_193243 No, not really. He was asked to survey the park, nothing more. Bet it was him who banned Vampire and three trains... Nope, since Vampire on three trains was stopped in either 2009 or 2010 (I forget which one)... Think you'll also find surveyors will assess the risks of the park (what he was asked to do), but also will look to get the problems rectified... Once the problems are solved they SHOULD be assessed independently, rather than internally, as bias (or Merlin's pursestrings) can be an issue... As said, Merlin wanted to cover up the problems found by the surveyor, which kinda goes against the whole idea of getting the guy in the first place...
September 28, 201410 yr comment_193305 It's hard to judge this matter unless you know the exact context of his concerns, and whether they were genuine danger hazards or not.
September 28, 201410 yr comment_193308 TBH though his appearance may have been for the better though as the park have done a lot of changes for this year and many are strongly positive ones as well, market square 2.0, Mexicana etc. plus this just goes to why 2013 was perhaps the epitome of Chessington's existence. I wouldn't be surprised if this was one of the leading factors to why pass holder weekend was suddenly cancelled last year.
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