CWOA | Mandrill Mayhem (World of Jumanji) | B&M Wing Coaster | 2023

[JoshC.]

I rode this thing on Friday after work.

First the good stuff. The area looks pretty cool; they've done a great job with the theming. The area needs a few more benches, and a bit more time for the greenery to grow, but aside from that, all good.

I also think it shouldn't be understated how good it is that Chessington have got a whole new land, with 3 new rides, including - at long last - a new coaster.

Now onto the coaster. I got 2 rides; one on row 7, right hand side, and one on row 1, left hand side. First time I sat on the outside seat. Second time on the inside seat. I sat with my 8 year old brother both time, and it was his first launch coaster and his first coaster with an inversion. (Side note: had you told me 3 years ago my first quadruple lunch coaster would be a B&M wing at Chessington, I'd've questioned your sanity).

The idea is novel and fun. The "hanging" on the back row is really cool. The helix is not uncomfortable to stall on, and it's fun on the front row.

But my god, this ride is uncomfortable. On the outside seat it was bumpy and the 'roughest' B&M I've ridden. It was bouncy, juddery and I really struggled to enjoy it. On the inside it's noticeable, but not as bad. Maybe I'm just getting old and funny and want things to be glass smooth. But yeah, it took enjoyment away from me.

On the other hand, my brother loved it. Felt weird seeing him in a B&M restraint. But launches, inversion, winged seating, forwards, backwards. The whole shebang. It's an awesome thing for him.

The Reserve n Ride system was having issues - every booking was being defaulted to a group of 2. Fine on a quiet day, but no doubt could cause issues on a busy day. Operations were okay tbf given the situation; staff really working their socks off. But it's definitely not sustainable, especially at a Merlin park. How often have we seen a (Merlin) coaster running well at first, before it slowly dips over the coming months and seasons?

Also rode Mamba Strike; did not like.
Ostrich Stampede was closed all day, but testing. Seems like that's been having its fair share of issues.

I still have huge questions about the operations of the area. It's a bottleneck area, with a low throughput headline ride currently using a virtual queue system which needs its kinks sorted out, and two support rides which don't feel very supportive. And how will Mandrill cope in the long-term, especially if the park ever decide to, for example, retrack Vampire for a season (or remove it)?

So yeah, not the ride for me. But a winner of an addition, in terms of quality, for the wider audience. But big questions remain.

 

[Screaming Coasters]

Just been and seen it for myself. The whole of World of Jumanji feels like a council estate kids playground. Parts were nice, but for the most part, I just can’t figure out the hype…

On top of that, they haven’t even cleaned the site for that final “polish”. It’s full of building crap, rubble bags, empty bolt bags, and so on… I was quite shocked actually.

Coaster however I found pretty good. Strange operations, but unexpectedly forceful.

 

[Crazycoaster]

I honestly find it laughable that people are spinning this area as a positive step, when it’s just so incredibly budget. It’s not good enough for a company that makes as much profit as Merlin does, while charging the ridiculous entrance fees to these parks.


And before anybody defends the area saying it looks nice, can I remind y’all of what Toverland, a small independent park without the backing of a huge multination corporation, is currently doing with a few flat rides;


There is a HUGE difference in quality, there’s rockwork, themed fences, trees being planted, themed planters, huge differences to the bare look of the Jumanji area.

I don’t know how anybody can defend Merlin and it’s god awful design team anymore. How did the ride’s throughput never come up as an issue during the design stage? How did the issue with airgates never come up during the design stage?? It just seriously baffles me. There is no magic left in Merlin parks and it saddens me.

 

[Joelpagett]

I'm not sure it's down to creative vision, as John Burton seems to be full of it. It all boils down to one thing and it will be budget.

 

[Screaming Coasters]

I'm not sure it's down to creative vision, as John Burton seems to be full of it. It all boils down to one thing and it will be budget.

Nah, it’s down to the fact that Merlin Magic Makers are a fantastic hype machine full of quality concept artwork designers, and nothing more. They always fail to translate their concept work to real world design. It’s all generic crap.

Stinks of rubber.

And in case anybody is interested…. The photos. They even left the pull through clearance envelope hanging around. Like? Really?

 

[Heth]

Nah, it’s down to the fact that Merlin Magic Makers are a fantastic hype machine full of quality concept artwork designers, and nothing more. They always fail to translate their concept work to real world design. It’s all generic crap.

Nah, sorry, hard disagree from me.

John Burton and the MMM team are skilled, but they are restricted by the brief and budget. I think your suggestion that they are just good at concept art is wholly unfair.

 

[rctneil]

I honestly find it laughable that people are spinning this area as a positive step, when it’s just so incredibly budget. It’s not good enough for a company that makes as much profit as Merlin does, while charging the ridiculous entrance fees to these parks.


And before anybody defends the area saying it looks nice, can I remind y’all of what Toverland, a small independent park without the backing of a huge multination corporation, is currently doing with a few flat rides;
View attachment 24990
View attachment 24991
There is a HUGE difference in quality, there’s rockwork, themed fences, trees being planted, themed planters, huge differences to the bare look of the Jumanji area.

I don’t know how anybody can defend Merlin and it’s god awful design team anymore. How did the ride’s throughput never come up as an issue during the design stage? How did the issue with airgates never come up during the design stage?? It just seriously baffles me. There is no magic left in Merlin parks and it saddens me.

I have to 100% agree. The capacity i'm sure did come up at the discussion stage but obviously passed off as "it'll be alright". How on earth they could have accepted it is beyond me. Now they have no choice but to deal with it. Pretty much every enthusiast would have been able to say upfront that a shuttle coaster like MM (with no way of increasing capacity) is a bad idea for a park that gets the crowds Chessington does.


If they really were adamant for this type of a ride, a bit of lateral thinking beforehand could have raised possible solutions. Turntables, a sliding station track. (yes, the wings make it tricker but not impossible. and yes a turntable would be MASSIVE for those trains), But it's not out of the realm of possibility, and if they thought it would not be possible, then choose an alternative ride system.


Some of the details in the area do look nice, but as the photos in the posts above show, there's a lot of leftover stuff strewn around and a lot of the smaller items (fences, gates), all that boring stuff, is just very standard and mediocre, when compared to something like Avalon as shown above.


I know the're not going to admit it now, as it's too late to go back) but surely they can see some wrong choices were made with this project?


I'm sure MMM have a lot of very talented and skilled people in their teams, but every single part of a new addition needs conceptualising and discussion to ensure these issues don't happen. The airgate issue shoudl have been foreseen. If you plan out the route for a guest to get from the midway straight to a seat on the train, that would have come up!


I'll stop moaning now!

 

[Coastiesaurus]

This might be a bit of a stretch, but I do sometimes wonder if these 'resort' parks are incentivised to not really care too much about throughput and capacity, because 'hey, you didnt get on all of the rides today? Next time make it a two day trip and stay overnight in our expensive hotel!'

I'm not really qualified to say who is to blame for this, but my god, anybody who has visited Chessington on a busy day recently would have said that whatever their next addition was going to be, it needed to be a queue-eater of immense proportions. I've said this upthread as well - Merlin just do not seem to care about capacity and throughput issues in their parks.

 

[Screaming Coasters]

Nah, sorry, hard disagree from me.

John Burton and the MMM team are skilled, but they are restricted by the brief and budget. I think your suggestion that they are just good at concept art is wholly unfair.

Paultons have a tighter budget and look what they achieve. The decisions made by MMM are laughable and amateur.

 

[Joelpagett]

Paultons have a tighter budget and look what they achieve. The decisions made by MMM are laughable and amateur.

I think you've hit the nail on the head there. Paultons is an independent theme park with far less red tape, and they have a vision that they bring to life alongside the contractors they use.

I think the problem with Merlin is there are 'too many cooks' and too many factors within the company spoiling the projects.

Marketing wants a gimmick, finance wants it done cheap, big boss is interested in the potential visitors it will bring in, and then there are all the IP factors too. They are realistically stuck between a rock and a hard place trying to put out their best work with the watered-down briefs.

I think if you were to give true, creative freedom, I would have faith that they could come up with something impressive.

But, a little too late for WoJ, as it's built, and the park that desperately needed a queue eater has the total opposite. If I was the GM at Chessington, I would have never even let the idea past my office door, let alone have the thing built.

 

[kayleigh coston]

So I’ve finally ridden Mandrill Mayhem today on a middle row and a ride on the backwards facing row. The launches are snappy, good hang time on the inversion. I found the backwards row to be more intense and better. The rest of the train doesn’t go right to the top end of the helix or not much up the spike. The downside was the throughput. Plus the technical delay that ruined my anticipation of excitement for this ride. Although, I can understand why chessington went for a virtual queuing system It helps to spread out capacity and not leave people waiting in a queue line for hours. I think this rollercoaster is good but it just feels like it shouldn’t be at chessington. Chessington should’ve gone for a full circuit rollercoaster with higher capacity as the throughput on this coaster is a disaster. Plus, yes the flat rides do help a little bit but it doesn’t change the low throughput that this rollercoaster has got. I feel like this should’ve gone to a different park or one that doesn’t have as much capacity as chessington does


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[CineramaMax]

John Burton is very good at what he does. What people aren't realizing though is that these projects are designed to serve a brief, as well as a budget. World of Jumanji isn't awful, there's a lot of good in it, like the detailed theming, paths, cinematic soundtrack, thrilling rides for families and some nice exotic foliage. The issue I have with it though stems from the fact that the land looks like it was deliberately designed with the potential loss of the IP in mind. There are very few berms to elevate the planting (which also isn't fully grown yet so naturally it would feel less like a jungle), there are no water features and there is a very visible green fence for Mandrill Mayhem surrounding the entire land. But what they were allowed to do does not look cheap at all, it's just those few gripes that make the area feel very plonked down.

Comparing to a park owned by a larger operator to a family owned passion project doesn't strike me as entirely reasonable. The creative team are answerable to senior leadership who have to answer to a multitude of shareholders, so naturally they're not going to have the luxury of time on their hands. Toverland is a family owned park, it's very much a passion project as much as it is a business.

In regards to Mandrill Mayhem being uncomfortable, I thought it was pretty comfortable from row 6 onwards, I honestly didn't notice much of a rattle to it at all. The forces in row 7 pushed me into my vest restraint too much, so that wasn't as comfortable, but I didn't think that the ride was rough. I also thought that the ride was great fun, it carried a lot more force and airtime than I was expecting. It's a surprisingly whippy experience for a B&M wing coaster, and the launch was quite snappy too. I came away really enjoying it, I think Chessington have a winner on their hands with this coaster. What is unfortunate though is how Merlin have chosen to run the ride. Batching should be done inside the station, it would really speed up the operations enough, and this is quite vital for a shuttle coaster in a park that does tend to struggle with the large crowds it attracts generally

 

[emoo]

Capacity won't have been a surprise to anyone, it would have been noted from the start, before anyone here pointed it out (which many did as soon as we saw the concept and plans)

What's important was the look and drawing people in with an impression.

Baffling to many sure, but they will get people's money either way.

 

[Bowser]

Finally got to ride Mandrill today.... must say it was absolutely brilliant! We were in the backwards facing row, not sure where that ranks in people's opinion but we loved it.

Probably the smoothest rollercoaster i've been on in the UK too.

 

[I'veGotFourB&MsInMyGarden]

I managed to finally ride MM for the first time about a week ago (first trip to Chessington too).

Ignoring the potential capacity issues and how the area compares to other parks' efforts, I found MM to be a very enjoyable ride. No hint of the roughness or bounciness I've heard others speaking of, would also say that it's probably the smoothest coaster I've been on.

I found the launches to be punchy, especially the second one as you come back through the station. Had 4 rides with 2 on either side (never got the back row unfortunately) and definitely preferred the far side over the closer side. The helix stall wasn't uncomfortable and it's vest restraints tightened much less than The Swarm's. Personally, I thought it was the best coaster in the park and I prefer it to The Swarm.

Virtual queue worked better than I expected and I never had to queue longer than 10 mins after joining the queueline.

Didn't bother with either of the flat rides so I can't really comment on them.

 

[Tonkso]

Ridden this morning, sat in the Smokehouse now.

The good:
The ride is actually fun, it has unexpected pops of airtime... if you told me 5 years ago I'd be riding a B&M and commenting on the airtime during a day at Chessington I'd be checking if it was the first of April.
The land looks good, give it a few years for the vegetation to bed in and it will look incredible.
Ostrich Stampede is a good flat, Merlin are building good flats again.
MM felt faster than I expected, which is a nice surprise.
People seem to like it, that's the important thing.

The bad:
Even on a quiet day like today, the throughput is clearly a problem. Merlin need to stop building low throughput headline attractions. I honestly do question the decision making for a park the size and prestige of Chessington. They should be building a ride that can take two trains minimum. Wings are slow to load already, without the shuttle aspect.
Mamba Strike is out all day.
Ostrich Stampede was very, VERY slow to load today and has two rows out of action.

 

[Bowser]

I honestly do question the decision making for a park the size and prestige of Chessington.

I was thinking about this recently and it made me curious as to how important customer satisfaction is for Merlin parks. Not in a "EVIL CAPITALISTS" sense, just a genuine curiosity if the commercial appeal of a unique enticing ride was deemed that much more important than the obvious downsides.

Appreciate they implemented the Virtual Queue from day one to try and minimise problems but in a park where you commonly see queue times of up to 120 minutes a ride with such low throughput was always going to face issues.

Compare it to say the Disney parks, where for the most part you won't see a queue line longer than 60 minutes and throughput always seems a consideration on major new attractions.

Then again i wonder if these are mostly the concerns of enthusiasts. As a child i just got on with it no matter the queue and always remember being happy/exhausted by the end of the day.

 

[Coastiesaurus]

Compare it to say the Disney parks, where for the most part you won't see a queue line longer than 60 minutes and throughput always seems a consideration on major new attractions.

Or look at some of the recent major additions at Efteling, for example. Their GCI is a duelling one, adding capacity. Max and Moritz - again, a 'duelling' coaster, adding capacity. A trackless dark ride with good capacity per hour (and awe-inspiring theming) - to go along with the absolute ton of existing dark rides which also have good capacity. When you are at that park you can absolutely sense that the management have thought about the park's capacity and they want guests to enjoy as many of the rides as possible.

 

[I'veGotFourB&MsInMyGarden]

I was thinking about this recently and it made me curious as to how important customer satisfaction is for Merlin parks...

Then again i wonder if these are mostly the concerns of enthusiasts. As a child i just got on with it no matter the queue and always remember being happy/exhausted by the end of the day.

Whenever you look at reviews of theme parks (Merlin ones in particular) the biggest complaint always seems to be about long queue times. Given that, it does seem a bit odd for Merlin to add such a low capacity ride at Chessington of all places

 

[Bowser]

Whenever you look at reviews of theme parks (Merlin ones in particular) the biggest complaint always seems to be about long queue times. Given that, it does seem a bit odd for Merlin to add such a low capacity ride at Chessington of all places

Yeah. Appreciate they are (presumably) the busiest parks in the UK but you almost never get comparable queues at places like Paultons and Blackpool.

Does seem like a predominantly Chessington based problem in terms of the worst queue times, which only goes to make the choice more baffling
Did notice they ceased using their Twitter account during the summer holidays too which is suspicious.

It's a great ride and area though, i'm happy it exists. Get the impression maintenance is the biggest issue at Chessington as there are always multiple big rides down every day without fail which obviously has massive knock on effects for the other queues. And putting in 2 new flats that have alternated between closures since opening is fairly absurd.