It's just too hot for Chessington...
It's just too hot for Chessington...
With the temperature soaring to 30°C, Chessington was clearly having difficulty coping with the heat of a hot sunny June day. Multiple rides were suffering breakdowns or having to close for deep cleaning due to guests throwing up all over them, probably due to the heat and dehydration. Despite the heat and the issues, we struggled through the afternoon with the opportunity to take a look at the park's new World of Jumanji area, ride Mandrill Mayhem and see some of the special Mardi Gras event attractions and decorations.
Chessington's Mardi Grrra! event runs from 27 May until 25 June
I arrived at the park late morning. I walked up to the entrance gates and waited patiently for the two staff members to stop gossiping to each other and check my pass. After standing there patiently for a minute without any acknowledgement, I gave up and walked straight through without anybody having checked my annual pass or prebook confirmation ... what a first class welcome to a "world class" theme park!
I headed into World of Jumanji, Chessington's brand new area which opened a few weeks ago
I met up with my friend Paul outside the entrance to Mandrill Mayhem, the new rollercoaster which headlines World of Jumanji
The ride operates an overly complex virtual queue system rather than allowing guests to queue up normally, meaning we had to sign up for an account on a website and register our group before we could reserve a slot. Not that it is that easy of course ... after registering we found there weren't actually any slots available. New slots are released every few minutes, meaning you have to endlessly check your phone and race the rest of the park's visitors to click a button to get hold of one. A first class experience from a "world class" theme park.
The area's other rides had long waits so we decided to come back later
We opted for an early lunch at Smokehouse which, in contrast to the steep decline in many of Merlin's food offerings this season, is still serving OK quality food. As we were eating, we managed to get a ride reservation for Mandrill Mayhem ... in only(!?!) 2hrs 40mins time! Another first class experience from a "world class" theme park.
Some of the Mardi Grrra performers were out in Adventure Point as we finished eating
Tomb Blaster had broken down
We headed to Zufari instead
There was a tiny queue and it was supposedly only a 10 minute wait ...
... although operations were so slow it took almost half an hour before we got on. Another first class experience from a "world class" theme park.
The giraffes were out enjoying the sunshine
One of them came right up and started licking the roof of our truck!
This rhino seemed to be having fun playing with/chasing the oryx
The waterfall still fails to be the dramatic finale it should be, with the usual "is that it?" refrains from other guests in our truck as we pulled away
Croc Drop was down and being tested with water dummies
At least Tomb Blaster was back open
No repairs to the worn away floor during the off-season, meaning the old Fifth Dimension flooring is still poking through in the queueline
It was only a small queue, but it still took twenty minutes to get on the ride
As we came off Tomb Blaster, we noticed that Croc Drop had just opened so quickly headed to the entrance
Water dummies offloaded
We looked up to see ... the gondola stopped half way up the tower. Maybe those dummies didn't do their jobs that well!
There are some street food stalls setup in the centre of the park for Mardi Grrra, although only a small number compared to the Food Street at Alton's version of the event
Driving through the jungle, and what do we see?
Boats backed up on a broken down kiddle log flume :-(
With just a few minutes to go before our reservation time, we headed back across to World of Jumanji
No thought has been given to providing much shade in the new area, meaning people were crowded into the only real shady spot around the games stalls while they waited for their reservation barcode to appear. Another first class experience from a "world class" theme park.
Finally our time came around, and we made our way across to the Mandrill Mayhem entrance just in time to hear an announcement that the ride was temporarily closed for "deep cleaning" (aka someone had thrown up)
Fair enough, these things happen ... but it then took twenty minutes to get the ride back open!
Only then were we allowed into the main queue after having had our reservation QR codes scanned
More tedious waiting, with sometimes five minutes between trains being dispatched and the queue only slowly shuffling forward
We finally made it onto the ride 55 minutes after joining the main queue. That's not including the 20 minutes wait for the cleanup before that. Oh, and we'd waited for 2 hours and 40 minutes before that in a virtual queue. And that isn't including the time we had to wait before we could even join the virtual queue. Again, a first class experience from a "world class" theme park.
So is the rollercoaster any good? Well yes, it's OK ... but nowhere close to being good enough to justify a four hour wait to ride! Fundamentally, choosing a low capacity coaster to be a major headline attraction at a "world class" park like Chessington seems to have been a decision which, today at least, seems completely bonkers.
Jumanji's Ostrich Stampede ride had broken down (I'd lost count of the number of breakdowns and unavailable rides by then) so we decided to move on to other parts of the park
A small Mardi Grrra show going on in Shipwreck Coast
Gruffalo only had a five minute advertised wait, which of course meant it took fifteen minutes to get on
Sadly the middle section of fountains weren't working in the finale
Even the ice cream freezer couldn't be bothered to show any adverts
We decided to check on Vampire and were surprised to find its queueline almost entirely empty
That turned out to be at least in part due to the fantastic team operating it, who were ensuring trains were speedily dispatched from the station
We were hoping for a ride on Dragon's Fury to end the day, but not with a 75 minute queue!
It was time to call it a day and make our way home, driving down the exit road through the same pot holes which were there last year and haven't been repaired over the winter. Because nothing says thanks for coming to a world class theme park like giving the impression you really can't be bothered to actually make things world class, right Chessington?
If you visit on a very hot day, it's likely there will be a few issues and you should expect the park to be busy. Even so, the experience at Chessington is far from what you'd expect from a world class theme park. The pot hole ridden tracks you have to drive along to get to the car park don't give a good first impression, and neither do the staff at the main entrance who couldn't be less interested in giving any kind of welcome to arriving visitors, nor even bother to check their tickets!
Some staff members were great and working their socks off - the Vampire crew especially were dispatching trains and churning through the queue really quickly - but others seemed pretty disinterested. The operators in the Mandrill Mayhem station lacked much in the way of teamwork or communcation skills which, aside from stopping for puke-cleanup, was probably one of the main causes of the slow dispatches: The ops in the control room were so busy chatting to each other rather than watching what was going on in the station below them that they were oblivious to the hand signals and shouts from the staff on the platform trying to get their attention to do simple things like open the platform gates or release the restraints.
The park was filthy in places too, with discarded litter in queuelines and ride areas, dust and dirt covering theming and station floors, overflowing rubbish bins, and toilet floors awash with urine.
Compared with the other companion Mardi Gras events going on at its sister parks and also its own event from last year, Chessington's Mardi Grrra was lacklustre. The performers were doing their best but they hadn't been given much to work with at the mini "shows" around the park, and the food street had only the bare minimum number of stalls.
Sure it was a hot day, but the sunshine can't be blamed for everything. Chessington really need to up their game: at the moment it feels far from a world class theme park. It isn't even a high quality theme park. It's mainly embarrassing. Contrast this with my experiences at Flamingo Land last weekend: a park that is clearly getting a lot of love put into it, with friendly staff, motivated ops dispatching rides quickly and efficiently, and everything being kept clean and tidy.