Fred Posted August 21, 2013 Report Share Posted August 21, 2013 Depends how the parks tackle them - clean the place often, keep washing those bins, and put loads of those wasp trap things. Then you'll keep them down and occupied to other things. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MattyMoo Posted August 22, 2013 Report Share Posted August 22, 2013 Just reading some of the horror stories on Facebook posted by guests - 2 rides in a days visit, cracking! Mentions of 4 rides being down - RMT, RR... what else? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt 236 Posted August 22, 2013 Report Share Posted August 22, 2013 2 rides in one day, that is absolutely shocking. Ok it's the summer holidays and the park will be busy but that can't be explained in how bad that is. Chessington's current rides can't hande big crowds anymore plus they're being managed badly and to make matters worse, at least 2 major rides are currently closed. Makes Legoland seem quiet during summer in all honesty which in fact Lego has better throughput rides now too. As far as I'm aware, Fury was down a few days ago and though I think it's running again now, it's certainly not good considering RMT & RR currently being closed. Dragons play house is also currently closed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mark9 Posted August 22, 2013 Report Share Posted August 22, 2013 Count me amazed that people visit Chessington in the first place. Matt 236 and MattyMoo 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Benin Posted August 22, 2013 Report Share Posted August 22, 2013 Who really cares if Dragons Playhouse is closed? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt 236 Posted August 22, 2013 Report Share Posted August 22, 2013 The little kids probably do, not that it's really any special tbh. I think the park with these dire operations need to get better trained staff and as much as it hurts, reduce guest interaction on the ride areas for the purpose of better throughputs on the ride. The amount of negative feedback on Chessie's Facebook just shows how bad operations currently are at the park with many getting on only 2/3 rides in an 8 hour day. Though its not going to work completely, I do think Chessie should increase park hours with 7pm closures during summer/bank holidays and 6pm most weekends as well as closing at 8pm again during Haloween. Whilst the other parks (debatably) move forward, Chessington is moving backwards. TPJames, Coaster and Inferno 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BigBobJones Posted August 22, 2013 Report Share Posted August 22, 2013 There is only one reason people get on so few rides and that is all down to PPP (P... Poor planning) If you ensure you are one of the first guests through the door, run the the biggest attraction, Vampire or Fury, you can get on. Jump off the Vampire and go straight on to the Bubble Works, then jump on the Sky Ride, then on to the Rattlesnake and that is your first hour done. Or you may get two goes on the Rattlesnake. The problem is people do not plan their day correctly, they turn up late hitting the biggest queues and they only go for the main attractions, you really need to balance out the bigger attractions with some of the smaller attractions. For example a few weeks ago I went to Thorpe with somebody who was only 1.2, so that rules out all of the bigger rides. But we got in at 10, had 30 mins for lunch and left a 2 PM. We got on 18 rides in total and could have got on more if we were not queuing for 20 mins to get our drinks filled up each time. Plus you have to have common sense, if you go during the summer holidays you have to expect queues, if you go out of season you expect minimal queues. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mark9 Posted August 23, 2013 Report Share Posted August 23, 2013 I agree partially. It is the Summer Holidays so there will be queues. What is compounding the problem is with no Runaway Train or Rameses, the other rides with their lower capacities due to Chessington being incompetent/stupid/dumb mean whereas in 2008, they could cope, now they can't. So when they say, they only got on two rides I can see why. Especially if things like Monkey Swinger is getting 45 minute queues or Kobra at 2 hours (WHAT?!) then clearly there is massive issues going on at the park, something poor planning will make even worse. People shouldn't have to plan their days to military precision, some families do go just to chill out, something that is hard to do when you're queuing long for flipping diskos or trashed dark rides. pluk 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MarkC Posted August 23, 2013 Report Share Posted August 23, 2013 Went yesterday and Tuesday and Monday and there were queues but not many! The only 'queue' was vampire which peaked 2 hours 40 minutes. Otherwise, the queues were around 30' minutes each! Wasps... Meh:/ There are some but not as many as Thorpe, not at all! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mattgwise Posted August 23, 2013 Report Share Posted August 23, 2013 Well your day was very different to mine on Wednesday. Nothing but queues except of course a couple of the small kids rides. And very different to those commenting on FB. Out of interest how many rides did you get on each day? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Glitch Posted August 23, 2013 Report Share Posted August 23, 2013 I feel really sorry for Chessie. As why the need for all these complaints it's a peak hot summers day. With all these stories of people going "I only got on 1 ride in the whole day" the reason is because you were walking round park all day wasting time going well that queues too long etc. You have 8-10 hours in the park I still think I could do all the main attractions well atleast the coasters anyway in that length of time. However Thorpe and Chessie need to sort out the wasp situation. It's not nice for the staff having to pull the drinks with wasps flying around. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TPJames Posted August 23, 2013 Report Share Posted August 23, 2013 I feel really sorry for Chessie. As why the need for all these complaints it's a peak hot summers day. With all these stories of people going "I only got on 1 ride in the whole day" the reason is because you were walking round park all day wasting time going well that queues too long etc. You have 8-10 hours in the park I still think I could do all the main attractions well atleast the coasters anyway in that length of time. However Thorpe and Chessie need to sort out the wasp situation. It's not nice for the staff having to pull the drinks with wasps flying around. To be fair their operations are really poor and if they had good operations they could have half the queues which would mean less complaints. I'm sure alton towers and thorpe have about double the people of chessie at the moment and they have less queues than at chessie(vampire was 2 hrs 40, nemmy inferno was 2 hours max). I think it really is down to operations. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mattgwise Posted August 23, 2013 Report Share Posted August 23, 2013 I feel really sorry for Chessie. As why the need for all these complaints it's a peak hot summers day. With all these stories of people going "I only got on 1 ride in the whole day" the reason is because you were walking round park all day wasting time going well that queues too long etc. You have 8-10 hours in the park I still think I could do all the main attractions well atleast the coasters anyway in that length of time. However Thorpe and Chessie need to sort out the wasp situation. It's not nice for the staff having to pull the drinks with wasps flying around. Have you been on park? Even without wasting time saying that the queues are too long results in a very small ride count. The operations in terms of batching, loading and dispatching is dire on most of the rides. If run properly the queues could have easily been reduced by a significant amount. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mark9 Posted August 23, 2013 Report Share Posted August 23, 2013 I feel really sorry for Chessie. As why the need for all these complaints it's a peak hot summers day. With all these stories of people going "I only got on 1 ride in the whole day" the reason is because you were walking round park all day wasting time going well that queues too long etc. You have 8-10 hours in the park I still think I could do all the main attractions well atleast the coasters anyway in that length of time. However Thorpe and Chessie need to sort out the wasp situation. It's not nice for the staff having to pull the drinks with wasps flying around. They don't need your pity. The problems they have created are of their own making and people are within their rights to complain if the park isn't delivering because of its own errors. 2 hours and 40 minutes for Vampire? Get out of here there isn't a hells chance I would waste a third of my day waiting for an 'ok' family rollercoaster. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Benin Posted August 23, 2013 Report Share Posted August 23, 2013 If I saw the Vampire queue THAT long (which would probably involve seeing the end from the Bubbleworks entrance) I'd go to the Zoo... That simple... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fred Posted August 23, 2013 Report Share Posted August 23, 2013 Depends how many fastrack and how many people are actually being sent . I can't honestly believe the park is getting queues of 2hrs 40mins and yet absolutely sod all is being done to try and reduce queue times. What the hell?! dragon2000 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Coaster Posted August 23, 2013 Report Share Posted August 23, 2013 Chessington deserve the complaints they are getting. It's summer and packed, they should be running at full capacity! Get Fury on 8 - I don't understand why they won't use 8 cars on packed days. As for Vampire, get proper staff/train staff properly and run the thing at a decent capacity! 2 hours and 40 minutes for Vampire is outrageous and people have a right to complain about that. The fact that other queues were short(ish) shows how badly the ride is being run. They need to pull themselves together, because at the moment that really do deserve the complaints they are getting. And with Rameses and Runaway Train down they should be striving to improve throughput on other attractions to make up for it, not running them at bare minimum! This really makes you wonder what goes through the heads of some people! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt 236 Posted August 23, 2013 Report Share Posted August 23, 2013 Having just been to Thorpe on one of the busiest days of the year (where even the grass car parks were filled up), I found the queues and busyness tolerable. They weren't great but certainly a lot better than Chessie's with the longest queue I saw being 90 minutes. Thorpe tackle crowds better than chessie IMO. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Coaster Posted August 24, 2013 Report Share Posted August 24, 2013 *Everywhere tackles crowds better than chessie. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Benin Posted August 24, 2013 Report Share Posted August 24, 2013 Fury hasn't run on 8 cars in YEARS, like 2005... Mark9 will be able to confirm reasons for it, but I think 8 car operation meant that the was literally no room for error in regards to loading... Which is of course, not the best thing to have in any park due to the unseen factors of idiotic guests, but Mark will confirm the reasons himself... 7 cars is decent enough for Fury, but of course the main issue at the park is that they have a distinct lack of high throughput rides and have done since forever... Fury can get 600 odd theoretically (and used to be able to) whilst Vampire was about the same on 2 trains (with 3 getting over 1000), so the two biggest rides cannot get anywhere near 1000 now on busy days... Then you get rides like Berries, Peeking, Jumbos, Truckers, Seastorm, etc which all have low throughputs and half now have Fastrack on them... Then you have the stupid loading procedures on Buccaneer... Then you have Toadies lowering capacity... It's a comedy of poor errors that has lead to this... I recently saw a fan made design of a Gerstlauer Sky-Fly (the massive multi seat arm one) sitting on the spot of Samurai/Peeking and I went "that's a cool concept and could work for Chessie"... The throughput is however pretty low (about 360) so it's an improvement comparatively, but then again, not the sort of thing Chessie need unless they could double that number up... What the park need to do in future is get rid of every crappy low capacity ride they have (so Toadies, Truckers, Peeking Heights would be my personal choices to get chucked out, with Temple of Mayhem, Playhouse and Capers also removed due to their pointlessness) and replaced with some decent capacity attractions be they unique to the country (like the SkyFly) or generic park rides the park lacks (for example, Teacups)... Then get a high capacity coaster... Thirteen would have been a brilliant fit to the park as an example... I've also always been a pusher of the park getting a Gerstlauer launched coaster, after riding both Anubis and Lynet, I can safely say that either would be an excellent addition (and apparently Lynet gets 900pph, add a short dark ride section pre-launch to fit another train in, and that could squeeze it over 1000)... Hell even a Bobsled from Gerst would get higher throughputs... Another concept I just thought of, would Tomb Blaster be better off being retconned into an Omnimover? The slow nature of the ride is very much an issue in experience and queuetimes, so perhaps a constant motion (with themed buggies a la Laser Raiders or Gardaland's Ramses) would benefit the ride and the park... Finally, get a Madhouse in Wild Asia... If there's one dark ride that loves to people eat, it's that, plus some decent chances for good theming with it too... And of course, it goes without saying that the operations NEED to improve... Get some decent staff and train them up well to sort their lives out... BigBobJones, Luke_A, Matt 236 and 3 others 6 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BigBobJones Posted August 24, 2013 Report Share Posted August 24, 2013 Took most of the words out of my mouth! lol Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Merry-go-girl Posted August 29, 2013 Report Share Posted August 29, 2013 People on Facebook seem to be equating long queues with corporate greed. And yet if anyone of them had been turned away due to the park meeting capacity they would have been just as livid. Were people always this stupid or do you just notice it more as you get old? OldFarmerDean 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Benin Posted August 29, 2013 Report Share Posted August 29, 2013 Both... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mattgwise Posted August 29, 2013 Report Share Posted August 29, 2013 Yes people would be livid. Remember feb half term when they reached capacity for zoo days almost every day? However the complaining of the queue times is perfectly acceptable in my opinion due to the poor operations! So in reality the queues shouldn't be as long as they have been for most of the rides. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MarkC Posted August 29, 2013 Report Share Posted August 29, 2013 What's the throughput of Zufari? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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