This trip report is dedicated to Gavin and his love of Chessington.
Saturday 22nd March
The winter season is finally over and the UK parks (however abysmal they may be) are open again to disappoint, surprise and provide us some semi-decent thrills. I had a Patrick stay over at mine the night before and we headed out nice and early to catch the train to Chessington World of Adventures. A Benin and Nicky joined us on the train once we had reached Clapham Junction. The weather was chilly but nice and sunny.
We arrived at the park before opening and decided to just head straight for the "new for 2014" Scorpion Express. A retheme for the Runaway Train. The only people in front of us in the queue was a woman and her two kids. Several staff were mincing around looking cold and told us it'd be starting a little late due to engineer checks. After the 5 engineers finally left the site they tested it once and the ride officially opened for the day.
The new queueline was not that great but shorter than we were expecting. It also creates a new dead end so you can no longer get to the ride from the children's zoo (more on that later). The indoor bit of the queueline was like a mine but felt a little sparse.
The old boiler intact and bellowing smoke!
The tiny new backdrop
So the new retheme is better than we were anticipating (because Merlin are awful at life when it comes to Chessington). The new 'story' is dreadful and makes no sense. There are several signs which are from the Mayor of the town who tells you that despite the gold in the town everyone's left and they decided to leave a giant rusty mechanical scorpion behind to protect the gold. *shrugs*
The best thing about the retheme is FIRE!!!
Clearly inspired by the Creaky Cafe's magical Christmas gift
The Scorpion also squirts water at people on the inside seats. Overall it all looks a little sparse and the backdrop is tiny compared to everything else in the area.
More smoke
We then checked out the Market Square which had a bit of a spruce up. The area looks much better now that it's been opened up a bit but it needs more seating.
The new compass in Market Square
Due to the Creaky Cafe fire in December that area is now just paved with some benches. The Transylvania entrance tower and that end of Bubbleworks has now been redone. They gave the whole Bubbleworks building a repaint while they were at it.
Can you spot the obvious shed from obvious land?
We headed down to Vampire when I got a call from a Joey to let us know he had finally arrived. So we waited around for him to get to us. Vampire apparently had a 70 minute wait but it was probably more 30 or so minutes.
After our ride on Vampire (which was being operated by Matt) it started to lightly rain so we did the sensible thing and like everyone else went on Bubbleworks where we proceeded to get wetter than if we were standing outside.
We then ended up at Rattlesnake where we actually queued! It was running well.
We were all starting to feel hungry so we went to the Pizza Pasta restaurant which got uber busy just as we were seated. The noms were good.
Tomb Blaster was next where I proceeded to do the best (as per). After Tomb Blaster we caught the Madagascar show to show Patrick how awful it was, there was a large crowd, we weren't impressed.
It was then time to introduce Patrick to Zufari. They've changed the pre-show building, for the worse. It now has no seating and instead it has a poorly thought out cattlepen with a section for those who want to stand in there longer? It meant that you could barely hear the poorly animated Lemur, you didn't concentrate on it because you weren't sitting down and forced to pay attention (open doors, occasionally moving forwards etc) and was generally made worse which I'm sure if we had told ourselves it could get worse last year we wouldn't believe it. Merlin doing the impossible: Taking the awful things and making them worse.
We were finally on a truck and going around the exciting ride layout. They had made most of the water dip areas a lot steeper and deeper, our theory is that it's due to the animals. They've also added to the waterfall at the end of the cave, so it stays on at the sides as you go through (thankfully not into the truck).
TREEEEEEEEEE!! Not the tree!!!
Oh no!
Obviously after Zufari we had to go over to the Wanyama village to show Patrick the narrow bamboo walkway. We saw the Lemurs...
Then we saw the Ostriches. One was going mental.
Video
There were a couple of baby meerkats...
On our way to Wild Asia we got our photo taken with some of the Dreamworks characters.
The park got some sculptors to carve some cool animals into a dead tree outside Toadies. It looks cool.
We didn't do a lot in Wild Asia, we looked in the shop where yet again they have a new range of merch for Cobra, I like it. We then went on Jungle bus like goons.
We then grabbed some Ben & Jerrys ice cream in Market square before going to watch the Wild Wood show in front of Hocus Pocus Hall. It's clearly the best show in the UK parks and they got Esmeralda (one of the Binturongs) to come out and strut her stuff.
We then checked out the Children's zoo re-theme.
Obviously made us go... "Big summer blow out"
They had a donkey from Alton Towers...
The pigs made loads of noise, it was gross...
The hotel expansion is coming along nicely
Run away!
The whole of Mexicana saw a little re-do because of Scorpion which is nice.
Part of the old bridge
Detail in the queueline shock
Someone had a design derp
The indoor queue had little holes which you could put your hand in, they're not very noticeable unless you're a small child full of curiosity (literally how we found out, due to the kids behind us making loads of noise).
The area was crawling with these little metal scorpions
The trains new look is nice
FAP FAP FAP
The fire would go off twice every ride cycle which is insane and it worked most times! We give it a week.
When we got on for our second go of the day the cloud decided to dump us with lots of hail, it was burdenous. Obviously it stopped as soon as we got off. I was drenched by the end of the ride cycle but it's ok because it was the 'so wet it's funny'. We then went over to Rattlesnake for our last ride and again it decided to become even heavier hail as soon as we got on. It was ridiculous.
Now drenched we left the park (it was closing anyway) and got the train back into London. Lightning decided to hit the signals at Clapham (one of the busiest train junctions in the UK) which caused issues on all the train lines and was generally burdenous. We finally got to where we wanted though so all was well in our World.
Thanks for reading.
Saturday 22nd March
The winter season is finally over and the UK parks (however abysmal they may be) are open again to disappoint, surprise and provide us some semi-decent thrills. I had a Patrick stay over at mine the night before and we headed out nice and early to catch the train to Chessington World of Adventures. A Benin and Nicky joined us on the train once we had reached Clapham Junction. The weather was chilly but nice and sunny.
We arrived at the park before opening and decided to just head straight for the "new for 2014" Scorpion Express. A retheme for the Runaway Train. The only people in front of us in the queue was a woman and her two kids. Several staff were mincing around looking cold and told us it'd be starting a little late due to engineer checks. After the 5 engineers finally left the site they tested it once and the ride officially opened for the day.
The new queueline was not that great but shorter than we were expecting. It also creates a new dead end so you can no longer get to the ride from the children's zoo (more on that later). The indoor bit of the queueline was like a mine but felt a little sparse.
The old boiler intact and bellowing smoke!
The tiny new backdrop
So the new retheme is better than we were anticipating (because Merlin are awful at life when it comes to Chessington). The new 'story' is dreadful and makes no sense. There are several signs which are from the Mayor of the town who tells you that despite the gold in the town everyone's left and they decided to leave a giant rusty mechanical scorpion behind to protect the gold. *shrugs*
The best thing about the retheme is FIRE!!!
Clearly inspired by the Creaky Cafe's magical Christmas gift
The Scorpion also squirts water at people on the inside seats. Overall it all looks a little sparse and the backdrop is tiny compared to everything else in the area.
More smoke
We then checked out the Market Square which had a bit of a spruce up. The area looks much better now that it's been opened up a bit but it needs more seating.
The new compass in Market Square
Due to the Creaky Cafe fire in December that area is now just paved with some benches. The Transylvania entrance tower and that end of Bubbleworks has now been redone. They gave the whole Bubbleworks building a repaint while they were at it.
Can you spot the obvious shed from obvious land?
We headed down to Vampire when I got a call from a Joey to let us know he had finally arrived. So we waited around for him to get to us. Vampire apparently had a 70 minute wait but it was probably more 30 or so minutes.
After our ride on Vampire (which was being operated by Matt) it started to lightly rain so we did the sensible thing and like everyone else went on Bubbleworks where we proceeded to get wetter than if we were standing outside.
We then ended up at Rattlesnake where we actually queued! It was running well.
We were all starting to feel hungry so we went to the Pizza Pasta restaurant which got uber busy just as we were seated. The noms were good.
Tomb Blaster was next where I proceeded to do the best (as per). After Tomb Blaster we caught the Madagascar show to show Patrick how awful it was, there was a large crowd, we weren't impressed.
It was then time to introduce Patrick to Zufari. They've changed the pre-show building, for the worse. It now has no seating and instead it has a poorly thought out cattlepen with a section for those who want to stand in there longer? It meant that you could barely hear the poorly animated Lemur, you didn't concentrate on it because you weren't sitting down and forced to pay attention (open doors, occasionally moving forwards etc) and was generally made worse which I'm sure if we had told ourselves it could get worse last year we wouldn't believe it. Merlin doing the impossible: Taking the awful things and making them worse.
We were finally on a truck and going around the exciting ride layout. They had made most of the water dip areas a lot steeper and deeper, our theory is that it's due to the animals. They've also added to the waterfall at the end of the cave, so it stays on at the sides as you go through (thankfully not into the truck).
TREEEEEEEEEE!! Not the tree!!!
Oh no!
Obviously after Zufari we had to go over to the Wanyama village to show Patrick the narrow bamboo walkway. We saw the Lemurs...
Then we saw the Ostriches. One was going mental.
Video
There were a couple of baby meerkats...
On our way to Wild Asia we got our photo taken with some of the Dreamworks characters.
The park got some sculptors to carve some cool animals into a dead tree outside Toadies. It looks cool.
We didn't do a lot in Wild Asia, we looked in the shop where yet again they have a new range of merch for Cobra, I like it. We then went on Jungle bus like goons.
We then grabbed some Ben & Jerrys ice cream in Market square before going to watch the Wild Wood show in front of Hocus Pocus Hall. It's clearly the best show in the UK parks and they got Esmeralda (one of the Binturongs) to come out and strut her stuff.
We then checked out the Children's zoo re-theme.
Obviously made us go... "Big summer blow out"
They had a donkey from Alton Towers...
The pigs made loads of noise, it was gross...
The hotel expansion is coming along nicely
Run away!
The whole of Mexicana saw a little re-do because of Scorpion which is nice.
Part of the old bridge
Detail in the queueline shock
Someone had a design derp
The indoor queue had little holes which you could put your hand in, they're not very noticeable unless you're a small child full of curiosity (literally how we found out, due to the kids behind us making loads of noise).
The area was crawling with these little metal scorpions
The trains new look is nice
FAP FAP FAP
The fire would go off twice every ride cycle which is insane and it worked most times! We give it a week.
When we got on for our second go of the day the cloud decided to dump us with lots of hail, it was burdenous. Obviously it stopped as soon as we got off. I was drenched by the end of the ride cycle but it's ok because it was the 'so wet it's funny'. We then went over to Rattlesnake for our last ride and again it decided to become even heavier hail as soon as we got on. It was ridiculous.
Now drenched we left the park (it was closing anyway) and got the train back into London. Lightning decided to hit the signals at Clapham (one of the busiest train junctions in the UK) which caused issues on all the train lines and was generally burdenous. We finally got to where we wanted though so all was well in our World.
Thanks for reading.
but you always add that extra something to the reports that I love, looking forward to more 
