2004
Coaster Trips: 2004: Chessington World of Adventures
Friday July 23rd
A little fun...
As has become traditional with my coaster trips at this point, the day started horrendously early, in this case with a Taxi arriving at my door at 4:45 am. This was not quite the same as past trips though, for one major reason; I was bringing my brother Andrew with me.
After some discussions with my family, we decided to make things interesting. We came up with a good cover story about some charity work in London, and convinced him to take part by telling him it was good for his soul. As I write this, on the evening of Friday 23rd July, he is still firmly convinced that tomorrow morning we will be heading into the city centre to join a group of people helping to refurbish a run down inner city school. He has absolutely no idea that we are booked on a Lufthansa flight to Hamburg. It will be interesting to say the least to see his face when he realises the truth tomorrow.
We checked in for flight BD120 with plenty of time to spare. The plane was boarded and ready to go for its scheduled 7:00am departure. Unfortunately, the captain informed us that we did not have a take off slot until 7:50am. I don't know what it is about this particular flight, but I have taken it a number of times and it is always late. At any rate, we finally landed in Heathrow at 9:15am, some three quarters of an hour late. I had arranged to meet Darren, Andy, and George at the Holiday Inn Heathrow/M4, and we finally arrived there at 10:00am. Check in is not available that early in the morning, so after leaving our bags with the Concierge we headed off to the first park of the trip and the only one in the UK: Chessington World of Adventures.
Chessington World of Adventures
George had prebooked tickets for today well in advance, and with the early booking came a letter giving access to five major rides with no wait at specified times of the day. The first time slot we had was for Tomb Blaster at 11:00am. When we arrived at the ride, it was clear that fast access was not in operation, but as the ride was a walk-on we elected to board anyway. Although I had been to Chessington before, I had never tried Tomb Blaster, which is a Sally Corp dark ride. The targets in this case were relatively easy to hit, but the triggers on the guns were very stiff, giving all of us sore fingers by the end of the ride. I kept up my fine tradition on these rides by scoring the worst in our car, a total of 12,300.
In addition to our preassigned ride times, Chessington allows riders to book a ride time for some of their key attractions. We headed over to Dragon's Fury (#297) to try and do this before joining the regular queue, and thus get two circuits in. Unfortunately, the fast pass machine did not like one of our entry tickets, but we still managed to collect fast passes with our other ones. As my first Maurer spinner, I wasn't entirely sure what to expect. The only reference point I had was photographs (and of course the appearance) of the ride which has a rather unique horse shoe element.
The only other spinning coasters I've encountered before today are the Reverchon mice. While these are fine coasters, they are not in the same league as Dragon's Fury. The car starts spinning the moment it disengages from the (very fast) lift hill, and the seating design - with two riders facing in each direction - means that the balance of the car has a direct effect on the spinning, and as such every ride is different. The ride itself is an absolute winner which we all liked a great deal. Well done Maurer, and well done Chessington.
Our next assigned time was on the Professor Burp's Bubbleworks dark ride, which was unfortunately down for the day. A real pity, as I had been looking forward to this.
Instead, therefore, we headed across to Vampire, which was to my complete astonishment a walk on. The last time I visited this park, back in 2002, there had been a ninety minute wait. I was very impressed to see all three trains in use with the ride so quiet; would this happen in a Six Flags park? We took three rides; in the middle, the front, and then the back. The ride was running quite well, and certainly faster than I remembered from 2002.
Lunch in an amusement park is often an exploration of the many modern uses for plastics. Andrew wanted to eat at Pizza Hut, and as I don't eat cheese that left me eating from the KFC right beside it. While I like fried chicken, I don't much enjoy the pure grease that you get from KFC, but at least it was filling.
Immediately after lunch, we went back to Dragon's Fury for two successive rides. We used the tickets we had booked earlier for our first ride, and then the assigned time letter for the second. The ride was definitely running faster at this stage and I made a note to try it again at least once before leaving.
Rattlesnake, if nothing else, served as a demonstration of how far Maurer Sohne has come in six years of ride development. The lateral forces on this ride were, to be honest, a bit too much for a family park like this one. The tight turns are taken at a pretty rapid speed, and as a result the person on the outside of the curve ends up getting an elbow in the side. Once was enough!
Since it was right beside the coaster, we took a single circuit on the powered Runaway Train. This proved to be one of the longest waits of the day, at nearly half an hour, and was most definitely not worth it. The ride was slow and unimaginative. Another ten miles an hour would make this a much more exciting experience; given the fact that the whole ride is powered, I would have thought this would be not all that difficult to achieve?
Darren wanted to go into the Arcade, so we called in briefly. Andrew played a game of Time Crisis 3; I settled for a game of DDR Euromix. This was the most expensive DDR I've ever seen, at £1 for two rounds instead of the normal three. There was also something wrong with the sound system causing very scratchy sound in a few places. The price was hard to swallow given I was able to play a four round game in San Francisco for $0.75 a few weeks ago.
After a fourth circuit on Dragon's Fury, Andrew decided we should ride the Billy's Whizzer wave swinger. I've never seen a wave swinger with a water effect before, and this one was set up so that there were no dry seats. I think I probably got the worst (best?) of this, with my t-shirt utterly soaked by the end.
A final circuit on Dragon's Fury finished up the day. The ride was running a lot faster than earlier in the day and was really good fun. Not quite good enough to make my top ten steel coasters, but it is certainly an upper echelon ride. I think if anything Andrew enjoyed it even more than I did; the on ride photograph I purchased was certainly testament to that. The picture above is a deeply philosophical Andrew awaiting our final ride on Dragon's Fury.
Returning to the Holiday Inn, we had a quick meal in the Chinese restaurant before retiring for an early night. Tomorrow will be interesting!