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Chessington General Discussion


Ash

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Josh, there is zero excuse for this... Same thing with Thorpe...

 

 

Hiding behind it as a 'preview' weekend shouldn't be the case, especially as who are those visiting? MAP holders...

 

Shocking display from both parks this year...

 

I just find it difficult to slate the parks about ride availability when the park is opening for what is technically a preview day.  It's not something the parks have to do, it's before the park is technically "open" and (in Chessington's case) they did at least make it clear that those major rides weren't going to be open.

 

Maybe they shouldn't have opened as early as they have done, but that's a slightly different story in my eyes.

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I'm more curious about why all the animals in Zufari yesterday had pink darts in them and seemed very relaxed (even coming close to the vehicle!) - presumably they'd been sedated, but whether this was deliberate so that friends and family could actually see the animals, or for some other reason, I don't know. I'm not sure how I'd feel about them sedating animals for the purpose of the public tbh!

Tomb Blaster seemed...cleaner? Fresher? Not sure what (if anything) has been done, but the theming just seemed more noticeable and like things had been spruced up. Some of the targets weren't on at one point though (forget which scene) and I don't think the seats vibrated either :ph34r:

Oh and Ghozi is now an Australian male :P

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I just find it difficult to slate the parks about ride availability when the park is opening for what is technically a preview day.  It's not something the parks have to do, it's before the park is technically "open" and (in Chessington's case) they did at least make it clear that those major rides weren't going to be open.

 

Maybe they shouldn't have opened as early as they have done, but that's a slightly different story in my eyes.

 

I find it difficult to understand why people are defending the parks for all these ride closures, when our parks have these four months of closures every winter. If it's too much pressure to get these rides open for the AP days then they shouldn't be happening. 

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I find it difficult to understand why people are defending the parks for all these ride closures, when our parks have these four months of closures every winter. If it's too much pressure to get these rides open for the AP days then they shouldn't be happening. 

 

You see, this is the thing - I do agree that if the parks can't get everything open in time, then they shouldn't be opening up so early.  But for me as a passholder, if a park runs a preview day for passholders, and not all rides are operating, I'd be fine with that (as long as they've warned in advance, etc etc).  If there was too much closed for me, then it's a simple case of "Thanks, but not thanks".

 

It's different when the park is fully open and, despite what's going on behind the scenes, I totally agree that a significant number of ride closures isn't good enough.  In the case of Thorpe, for example, possibly another week or so should have been given.

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You see, this is the thing - I do agree that if the parks can't get everything open in time, then they shouldn't be opening up so early.  But for me as a passholder, if a park runs a preview day for passholders, and not all rides are operating, I'd be fine with that (as long as they've warned in advance, etc etc).  If there was too much closed for me, then it's a simple case of "Thanks, but not thanks".

 

It's different when the park is fully open and, despite what's going on behind the scenes, I totally agree that a significant number of ride closures isn't good enough.  In the case of Thorpe, for example, possibly another week or so should have been given.

 

 

The event is supposed to be "Look at how nice the park looks this year! You should totally renew!" not "Yeah you already bought your MAPs, we don't actually care about you guys now". It's why cheap +1 tickets used to be offered in the hope they would have a great day and buy a pass.

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Thing is, a few years ago, these Passholder days had 100% ride availability...

 

Then again, what with all the various limitations placed upon passholders, it's no surprise Merlin continually treating their loyal customers with a little bit less disdain...

 

Prescisely. Gone are the days where one ride like Buccaneer are closed, now you're lucky to even get 75% ride availability. Chessington in particular, really shouldn't have opened as it was just a Zoo day with Falls and Rattlesnake thrown in.

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The park was very quiet on Saturday.  No real queues for anything, but that may be because a lot of people left after a couple of hours.

 

I was standing outside the SeaLife centre at about 12.30, waiting for my kids to come out, and there were a lot of people making their way OUT of the park.  I think people had just given up by then as there were so many rides unavailable.

 

We knew that Vampire, Dragon's Fury, Griffin's Galleon and Bubbleworks would not be operating, we found out via Twitter on the morning that Rameses Revenge would also be closed, but to get there and find that Rattlesnake, Kobra and Safari Skyway were closed and Toadies didn't open before 12pm on top of the advertised shows such as the "Wild Factor" not running, and the Zufari water explosion not working - I am not really surprised that people decided to leave early.

 

Chicken shack was also closed all day!

 

All-in-all, it was very disappointing. 

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Rattlesnake and Kobra were open, Kobra opened at 10:15 and died for a few hours straight away but was running in the afternoon. Rattlesnake was open by about 1 but at the entrance to begin with it was on the closed list.

I think the thing that annoyed most people was Fury testing nearly non stop all day for staff training. Couldn't they have got some trained staff in to run that and then have the newbies shadow them and do the rest of the training today? Not an expert on it but everyone kept expecting Fury to randomly open as it was running fine.

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