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Chessington General Discussion


Ash

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In other news today, Chessington have now released their 2014 map, which can be seen below.

http://www.chessington.com/explore/park-map.aspx

The map design looks very much the same as previous years with a few changes including the new hotel, redesigned Scorpion Express (unsurprisingly without rocks) and the empty spot for Creaky Cafe.

The site has had a redesign too, which looks ok, but I certainly prefer the old one.

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You're so boring, I was clearly really enjoying the ever more pixelated enlarged photos we were getting. Was hoping for more :(

To satisfy your fetish...

chescharpix_zpsfab0c0f4.jpg

He looks chubbier now, so he reminds me off Prof. Burp a bit more now.

He's also on the witness protection scheme after being the sole witness to the destruction of Chessington and, specifically, his Bubbleworks factory.

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I adore the Market Square compass.

DSC01862.jpg

Thanks Theme UK.

Thats the kind of thing I adore, that seperates Chessington from the rest. I also like the tree sculptures near Toadies, great work by the park. It's that kind of thoughtful, beautiful work that really shows up the half arsed attempts on Scorpion and lack of work at Falls.

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My observations from my visit on Saturday:

The Market Square looks great! They still don't have enough picnic benches though so the area looks very spacious. I guess they don't want too many picnic benches to encourage people to eat at the restaurants, but a few more in what is a really nice area of the park wouldn't go a miss.

They have moved the electric ride information board next to Sea Storm and it wasn't working on Saturday!

The Creaky Café is a distant memory and it looks like they won't be re-building it any time soon. The floor has been finished with the same brickwork as Market Square so I doubt they would have gone to that effort if they had plans to open another café there. Again, there were just 5 picnic benches (I am not obsessed with picnic benches, honestly!!) so that needs to be addressed.

Bubbleworks was open, there seemed to be little Imperial Leather branding. The boats didn't have the logo on them, and the bottles on the conveyor (just before the ascent) were plain and the logos had clearly been removed. The logo as you enter the ride from the station was still visible though! The ride itself was largely the same, apart from the mirrored wall in the fountain area (the wall backing on to the former Creaky Café!!)

Scorpion Express was a bit of a let down! The pyro was quite good as the train pulled out of the station, but the Scorpion didn't seem to work properly. I think it is supposed to spray water, but there was almost nothing, just a trickle of water which was largely underwhelming. The ride is very open and it really does suffer for the loss of the tunnel the RMT used to have. Chessington are promoting it heavily - "New for 2014" - sort of stuff, when it is a basically a refurbed old ride.

They have done away with the benches (crates) inside the Zufari shack, and replaced them with ugly railings! The pre-ride film with "Chase Van Driver" wasn't shown at all, and we were "treated" to Gotzee for about 30 seconds. I guess they have an issue with people entering the shack after others and exiting towards the trucks before them, but surely they could have worked it out a bit better than shoving in a cattlepen?

Rameses Revenge was open! :)

Finally, the Madagascar show is exactly the same as last year, and the year before..!! Surely they should have changed it by now? Keep the Madagascar characters, but think of a new show!!

Overall, it seems that Chessington is much the same as it was. I do think the Market Square looks nice but the other "improvements" are a bit meh!

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My observations from my visit on Saturday:

Bubbleworks was open, there seemed to be little Imperial Leather branding. The boats didn't have the logo on them, and the bottles on the conveyor (just before the ascent) were plain and the logos had clearly been removed. The logo as you enter the ride from the station was still visible though! The ride itself was largely the same, apart from the mirrored wall in the fountain area (the wall backing on to the former Creaky Café!!)

They have done away with the benches (crates) inside the Zufari shack, and replaced them with ugly railings! The pre-ride film with "Chase Van Driver" wasn't shown at all, and we were "treated" to Gotzee for about 30 seconds. I guess they have an issue with people entering the shack after others and exiting towards the trucks before them, but surely they could have worked it out a bit better than shoving in a cattlepen?

The Imperial Leather Sponsorship ended several years ago, but they seemed to just peel off the Imperial Leather logos and leave the rest of the ride alone!

I quite liked the Zufari pre-show, it was a nice attempt at a Disney-style show, they just didn't try hard enough with the audience interaction to make it an interesting show. Gozi felt a little half-heated. Also the bit with Chase is needed for the set-up of the mystery cave. They needed better staff to voice Gozi and some staff maybe to ask people to leave the rows more orderly. I don't understand the complaints that people were cutting in front of you in the queue if one row of seating got up first, does it really matter if you are 10 people further forward or back in a queue whe you are then that close to the front!

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The Imperial Leather Sponsorship ended several years ago, but they seemed to just peel off the Imperial Leather logos and leave the rest of the ride alone!

I think he was pointing out that more Imperial Leather branding has gone. The ride was still literally littered with it last year (no matter how much fanboys somehow claim it wasn't - it was.)

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