Joey said:
Need something more thrilling.
I disagree. What Chessington needs is to find itself a target market and move out of being the 'awkward middle' between Legoland and Thorpe.
From what I've seen and heard and know, Chessington performed as well as (if not slightly better) in terms of visitor numbers than Thorpe Park over the summer. So there's clearly an amazing base to build on should their marketing team eventually decide on actually inventing a target audience. Because that's what they need to do - Legoland took advantage of their own product and its global audience; and Thorpe Park took advantage of modern youth culture to create (on paper) a thrill-seekers paradise.
But at the moment what Chessington does is clearly not working towards that goal. As much as I love Zebras (admittedly they got the wrong ones, but that's beside the point
) and animals in general; that (lots of zoo additions, etc) - combined with new themed lands no further advanced than a child who's just discovered the delights of RCT2 - is not going to find them a market gap and allow them to change away from what they are, which IS the awkward middle-child.
At the same time however, it doesn't necessarily have to. As I've pointed out, it's not lagging behind in visitor numbers compared to its sister park - so it's successful enough to carry on as-is. It doesn't NEED to change into something else, it's just a tad frustrating that they don't.
We all know that they're even more restricted than Alton in terms of what they can get away with building/doing, but I rather liked their idea of making lots of new 'Wild' lands (although I'd hope they'd be a bit more imaginitive in the styling for future theming than Wild Asia), what happened to that? It's not like they don't have the money. I don't know how it works, whether Merlin give money out to each park centrally or if they operate as individual parks within the chain? If it's the former, then OK, that's a reasonable excuse - but if it's the latter, then there's no excuse to be had.
As for Bubbleworks. In fitting with their supposed plan to make lots of different continents/lands then I'd like to just see it fit in better with Vampire and Transylvania.