I’m not gonna bother to do a full on trip report of chessington, but for those of you who know me, I’m not the biggest merlin fan, in fact this is my first merlin park visit in 4 years.
Having said that, and having really low expectations for the day, I was positively surprised overall.
*Hand sanitiser stations at most ride entrance and exits, they don’t force you to put it on.
*The cleaning cycle every 30 mins is VERY thorough. They are all wearing goggles and from what I could see they were really cleaning high contact surfaces.
-Social distancing in queuelines... well, we just got lucky. I had to ask a family at the beginning of the day to stay on their markers in zufari queueline and then after that I had no issues... well actually I did, the bloody cattlepen was open, so it was impossible to keep distance sideways even if it is forwards. If you’re gonna have a cattlepen open then masks need to be compulsory.
-Mask enforcement was very hit and miss. Went on Kobra and the dodgems and scorpion express, everyone wearing masks, staff didn’t have to intervene at all.
Went on the Gruffalo early afternoon and staff VERY strict on masks, telling people they had to wear them at all times inside the building or there would be consequences. Went back later and rode again on a 5 min wait and they were letting people in with no masks or masks under their chins and couldn’t care less that people were taking them off throughout the duration of the ride- made me very uncomfortable.
-Tomb blaster was the best set up ride of the day. Very good social distancing markers in the queue, and strict mask enforcement. 2 people weren’t let into the building as they didn’t have masks and got kicked out of the line instead.
-Vampire Mask enforcement was really crap. They announced on the tannoy that you needed masks at all times in the building but when it came to it no one gave a crap. Barely anyone was wearing masks in there and no social distancing either. What was worse was the ride broke down just before we were going to get on so we were stuck in the station for a good 30 mins while the engineer came along, and at that point everyone’s masks came off, which really p****d me off.
@Matt N there were no staff in queuelines enforcing social distancing, it was down to common sense, and most people weren’t following markers and just couldn’t have cared less. I was lucky with the people behind me in the queues.
-Single riders are permitted on the dragons fury.
-Queue times were so inaccurate it was hilarious. Dragons fury advertised 40 mins, waited 20. Gruffalo advertised 45, waited 10 mins, vampire advertised 40 but was out of the entrance....
On the flip side of that zufari was advertised to open at 11 and didn’t open until almost half 11, so we were stuck in that line for ages. Operations on the whole were pretty crap, but to be expected. But I didn’t appreciate zufari opening late without any announcement of what the hell was going on.
Final thing: Food in this park is a joke. They had a few takeaway outlets open and that was it. We brought sandwiches, but no where to sit!! In the vampire area they had people sitting on the steps, leaning against the arcade machines eating, sitting on the fences, and couldn’t get past to the vampire because the area was so crowded. It was beyond a joke, just invest in some b****y benches, they have a picnic area, but there were only about 5 benches, and they were all full. Investment needed.
Park capacity was definitely lower given some rides were 100% capacity but some (zufari in particular) had capacity 25-30%. I would say they are probably operating on 60% of normal summer capacity. Park is looking a bit tired but no where near as run down as Thorpe park looks these days.
Anyway, had a good day overall and I was pleasantly surprised with the social distancing measures in the park, and the park itself was more enjoyable than I was expecting it to be, although I feel like I’ve outgrown chessington a bit.
All the staff members anywhere around the park had masks on, which was great. Made me feel so comfortable when boarding onto the rides, so thanks merlin so much for keeping your employees and guests safe in that respect!
