Written on: 15/04/2013 by TheSpaceJockey (1 review written)
Chessington is outdated. The biggest two rides have been there forever and are looking decidedly worn out. The Vampire needs a good lick of paint, the queue area is dilapidated and uninspiring. The logflume could really use some updated themeing. Maybe some little extra additions here and there to vary something which has pretty much unchanged in years? Bubbleworks is embarrassingly bad. The interior décor and 'theming' are tragic. All that money on a ride system but the detail of what you... (read more)
Written on: 14/04/2013
Over priced Chessington. Treated like mugs (which we are) from the get-go.Paid £120 for 2 seniors and 3 little 'uns yet they still charged £4 for 2 minutes on a trampoline - with signs saying 'No somersaults'. Two balls for £2 in 3rd rate fairground. When I said we had paid to get in the numbskull replied that wasn't for all "adventure rides". £3.50 for kiddy size hot-dogs. It rained yet they wanted £5 for a waterproof cape made of Tesco shopping bag material. They wanted £2 to stand... (read more)
Written on: 27/08/2012 by Josh74 (1 review written)
Visited on 26 August 2012, arrived at 10 am and left at 6 pm, spent over 5 hours queueing for rides. This was mean't to be a treat for my son's 8th birthdy which we spend over £300 pound on. It was absolute torture, a whole group of children left deflated and sad at the fact they only managed to get on 3 rides. The park in clearly unethical and cash focussed in its approach, as they let far too many people in . I have no doubt that many other people feel the same. Travelled a long way.... (read more)
Written on: 25/06/2012 by peternix (4 reviews written)
I've been there whenever I go to England its a very good place to visit. Good attractions there and a fun place ! (read more)
Written on: 22/04/2012
4 adults,£kis & 2 toddlers over £200 and that was with the so called 2 for 1 offer. Park itself was very clean and had some good rides but the lady at the kiosk was next to useless (read more)
Written on: 04/09/2011 by drinmurf (14 reviews written)
I visited Chessington World At Adventures yesterday with my family. In total there were ten of my family members including me, two children, one teenager and six adults. We were thoroughly disappointed. We felt that we had completely wasted our money. Instead of being a nice, fun, stress free family day out it was a boring, stressful, disappointing, frustrating day out that left us all feeling exhausted and annoyed and bitterly disappointed. We were not disappointed at the park itself, it... (read more)
Written on: 26/04/2012
I booked a Thomasland party for my son (who tneurd 3) plus 11 of his friends. Unfortunately it was a complete disaster. There was no designated meeting place, everyone milled around the entrance gates getting in the way of other patrons. The party staff were unhelp & didn't interact with the children, they were rude and snappy. We waited in queues only to be taken out of them as they were considered to long, had we stayed in the queue we would've been next on the ride. As for the supposed queue jumping for 1 ride this didn't happen. I also paid for a birthday cake which was paid for didn't materialise i was informed very rudely that I hadn't ordered one even though it was on the bill. The room set aside for parties leads out on to the balcony the fat controller and others use for their song, they completely ignored the children there for the party completely blanking them, hence to say the children were rather upset.Anyone thinking to booking a party at Thomasland I strongly advise against it, by all means go to there but go as a day trip, it will save you any disappointment.
Written on: 07/05/2011 by coasterjamie (17 reviews written)
Chessington is a great park, with good potential. As it stands today, it's a well themed park but however lacks a big amount of rides.
I would mostly reccomend it to families, although it does have some thrillseeking rides such as ramesis revenge and Vampire.
A bad point is that the height restriction for Dragon falls has been put higher than before, it is now 1m, 20cm although the map still advertises it asd 0.9metres.
I would not reccomend going to the park in the holidays though,...
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Written on: 02/05/2011
chessington was awsome =D i went several times and each time the area were clean the staff were very friendly and there are loads of things to do if the queues are to long such as goin to the sealife centre and the zoo. i also think its a good place because even though the rides are smaller then the ones which i see on thorpe park adverts the rides at chessington are still good fun and they are still give you a thrill anyone would like it. in total ive been 3 or 4 times. once on a school... (read more)
Written on: 10/04/2011
We paid online to go to the zoo just before Christmas but the trains and roads were closed that day due to the snow. We rang Chessington World of Adventures and asked if we could come another day, they said that was fine as the tickets are valid for 6 months.
We decided we would go on a sunny day in April, I rang ahead to double check all was fine only to be told that we would have to pay an extra £50 because the entire park was open now, not just the zoo. I told the lady that we were not...
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Written on: 03/07/2011
That's why you should read the t's and c's.
Written on: 31/03/2011
it was the best the vampire and tomb raideern were asom.
i waold recomend this place for everyone and my brio thrw up on the bounce so long sucka.
the qs were very long i only went on 1 ride the whole day!
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Written on: 10/03/2011
Beware turning up at Chessington and assuming you can go in. We are Merlin pass holders and queued for ages to get in only to be turned away at the gate because they were too full. A 3 hour round trip with small children and no day out is not much fun and Chessington aren't interested. (read more)
Written on: 01/04/2011
I found this review very helpful because... I experienced the same on annual pass holders day, there was a queue of 300 waiting to pay, yet this was advertised as being pass holders only. What a disorganised shambles it is.
Written on: 07/01/2011 by x cherry pie x (5 reviews written)
I went to chesignton world of adventures in the summer. I am eighteen years old and me and my boyfriend loved it there. He usually prefers more thrills, but when we both saw all the animals we thought it was amazing. Like being in another world. They have such a variety of animals, they had a dolphin show going on aswell where they performed tricks. We also went on the rides which were fun. I will definently go back there and most probaly take my niece to see the lions! They also have... (read more)
Written on: 02/11/2010
Rides were unavailable despite paying extra money for specific for passes related to those ride. Asked for a refund and was refused, then they had the cheek bring in security with a prompt security escort out of the venue. Appaulling customer service, read the full review: http://dixonjones.com/dixon-jones/bad-chessington-review/ (read more)
Written on: 29/10/2010
We took two grandchildren aged 8 and 10 to Chessington World of Adventures and were appalled by the experience. We arrived at 10am and the queues for rides were already horrendous running at around 90 mins. As the day progressed the actual queue time extended to 105 mins. So based on this it takes approx 2 hours per ride. We found this totally unacceptable and don't understand how they can expect people to tolerate this. Overall the place was a shambles, the Kobra closed for about 2 hours... (read more)
Written on: 18/10/2010 by claudiasteelx (1 review written)
I find Chessington awful! The staff are so rude! The ques are massive! I had the annual pass and it didn't do anything! Awful! ABSOLUTELY AWFUL (read more)
Written on: 14/10/2010
Dreadful day out,it was my daughter's birthday aswell. I spent
£95 on tickets and the kids only managed to get on a few rides and the rubbish ones at that.
Reason being that loads of the best rides broke down, Bubbleworks had no lights, Asia World was closed for a private function at 3.30. As a knock on affect with the closure of so many rides the queues for anything else was horrendous, you had to wait over an hour and half for the only good ride still working. What a rip off, especially...
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Written on: 11/10/2010
I Went during the summer holidays and on a Saturday, and reading all these bad reviews i was not hopeful. But When we got there the car park was a bit difficult to manage but we did get it and as we came as soon as it opened we had no time to wait at the entrance. The view as you came into the park was beautiful as you could see the scary-looking Dragon's Fury right in front of you. We decided to get on all the good rides first. First we went on Vampire which only had a 10 MINUTE queue! And... (read more)
Written on: 09/10/2010
i have recently visited the chessington theme park and was extremely disapointed i have been to many theme parks in my time but this was by fare the worst possible.
It started with the car park being a shambles and no-one knowing what was going on. Then we had pre-booked tickets but still had to wait atleast 30mins to get a ticket ust because i ahd not printed the tickets off!!!
We had a wander around the park which was a mannic and you just could not walk around properly as their was just...
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Written on: 02/10/2010 by sarah x (2 reviews written)
i went last year in august and the queues were ridiculous and the rides that didnt have such a long que were the rubbish baby rides and i think it was only 3 rides i got on in the end and that didnt include a big ride :( i dont think it is really worth the money but the big rides there do look quite good- it might have been cause we picked a time that it was the busiest or whether it is always like that- but i could think of better theme parks such as thorpe park (which is amazing) and alton... (read more)
Written on: 03/09/2010
We are a family of four with 2 children aged 13 and 10. We visited Chessington world of sdventures on 31/08/2010. We thought we would go the day after the bank holiday hoping it would be quieter, how wrong we were. We arrived at the park at 10.00 and left at 6.00, in that time we managed to get on 6 rides. The length of the queues were horrendous. My daughter really wanted to go on Dragon's Fury, we joined the queue at 2.50 and it took until 4.20 before actually getting on the ride. All the... (read more)
Written on: 02/09/2010
A vast improvement on Legoland (which we had visited the day before). The Queues were ridiculously long so we opted for the express pass tickets which came to £40 for the four of us and allowed each person one go on 8 or 9 rides. It didn't seem too bad when compared with the Legoland QBot, however it wasn't as "express" as I had imagined and certainly nothing like the systems they have in Disneyland (which are free by the way). When Queuing for the Kobra in the express queue, we waited... (read more)
Written on: 16/08/2010
Myself and my husband took out 1 year old to Chessington as we booked a package through Lego Land for overnight accomodation, a day at Lego Land and a day at Chessington. It was £165 for the three of us staying at the Crowne Plaza Marlow which was a really nice hotel so good value for money (only let down by a disappointing Lego Land)
It rained on the day but it was mainly overcast so it didn't hinder the day too much but if it does rain the Safari Skyway and Dragons fury stop running until...
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Written on: 15/08/2010
Been here many times - BUT NEVER queued as long as we did this day!!! the park was no where near full capacity - its this new thing they have where you pay a lot of money to basically QUEUE JUMP in front of many irrate people who have paid a lot of money to get in the park in the first place!! While in line for the new KOBRA ride - i counted at the most 16 people being let on in one go - so you end up with a queue not moving and VERY irrate people!!! this ruined our day and people we spoke... (read more)
Written on: 12/08/2010
I thought that chessington was very good. I almost went on every ride and usally I don't go on any rides at all!! As we arrived at about half past nine we didn't have to queue up. The rides are all execlent but as the waiting time for nearly all the rides was 1 hour, we got fast passes. They are really good because you only have to wait 2 minutes. I would recommend everyone to get them. It gets you in to the top six rides. (you can only go on each ride 1 time with the fast passes) the... (read more)
Written on: 10/08/2010
I really enjoyed my day out at Chassington. I for one plus my partner, we are not really friends of huge thrill rides, we like the mildly thrilling ones (like Ramses' Revenge or Dragon's fury). So we took a look at the website and we decided that Chessington suits us a lot more than Thorpe Park. I think Chessington offers exactly what they are promising on the website. If you want more thrills go to somewhere else. If you just wanna have fun, take a walk in a zoo and go on rides that won't... (read more)
Written on: 31/07/2010
The rides were great. Lot to do for everyone. Food courts were also good. However, the park is dirty, as if, it has not been cleaned for a long time. There is litter every where. If you take a look at the wealkways, you will find them very dirty and sticky. why they do not pressure wash teh paths as well as teh rides, is beyond me. I was surprised that smoking was allowed in the park. I whould rate the park 8 out of 10 for the rides. 4 out of 10 for hygine and value for money 8 out of 10 too.
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Written on: 29/07/2010
Chessington, as all theme parks is very expensive. As we our a family of 6 the tickets came to £200. It was worth it as some members of my family don't like rides and they went to the zoo in the meantime. The best part was when a nice person passing by who was leaving gave us his express passes which made our queuing much shorter for the Vampire and Dragon's Fury. I am quite upset that they got rid of Beanoland though which was our family's favourite part of the park. It definitely made me... (read more)
Written on: 18/06/2010
!!!! GREAT DAY OUT !!! prices absolutley brilliant!! when we went water ride broke and had a power cut so we wrote a note and we got free tickets. i loved all the rides they were amazing !! not many rides for younger chuldren !!! (read more)
Written on: 30/05/2010 by hydrodragon (1 review written)
if you are thinking of going to a theme park then go to chessington world of adventure it is a superb park and this is why
PRICE
nothing much to say here appart from it is a supperb value for money.
however you can have a better deal by having vouchers
RIDES
all of them were functioning and well maintained. in my oppinion the best rides were tomb raider and bubble works however u may thing differently. they were unfortunately no driving school or go karting rides however these are the...
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Written on: 24/05/2010
I went to chessington on a school inset day meaning no one was there. We came at 11 which we thought was really late. We did not to que longer than 10 mintues for any rides. all the big rides were empty as the people in the park had little kids. We ate a cheap lunch and we downloaded a 2 for 1 ticket online and split the price. the chessinton website do the cheapest online tickets so my ticket was 12 pounds. we stayed an extra hour when the park had already closed to see the animals and they... (read more)
Written on: 10/05/2010
We have merlin passes so visit the park once a month!
I love chessington, the zoo is great and the new sea life centre is lovely, we spend ages in there!
The rides are great my 1 yr old has loads to go on but so does my 8 yr old!
Dont go in school holidays though, its very busy!
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Written on: 04/05/2010
I found Chessington very commercial, always trying to get more money out of you. You go for the big rides - you wouldn't pay £30 odd for a ticket otherwise - but they have this nasty system of selling so-called "Express Passes" to people allowing them to jump the queues. We were there the full eight hours from when it opened to when it shut, and we got on six rides.
The whole idea of paying to get in and then going on as many rides as you want only works if you have a decent chance of...
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Written on: 27/04/2010
I have been there with my two children aged 14 and 6.It was a totally waste of time and nerves.We went in one ride only as the waiting times for a 2 Min.ride were 80 Min.We have bought the photo passes also for £20 to use it on rides as a normal photo was £7 but as no 6 years old will wait over an hour for a ride we lost more money.
I have e-mail them to complain and maybe give me a refund for the photo pass but never heard anything back.
I am sure they can do something about the park being...
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Written on: 17/04/2010 by mossyjanet (1 review written)
We went to Chessington as we had a 2 for 1 pass. Yes this was good value for money but when we arrived there were several notices about an express pass that we hadn't accounted for. There was a bit of confusion about these passes as the sign read £6 for express pass and not available for the Cobra. We asked the lady at the kiosk who confirmed that these passes were unavailable? We took this as we had to pay extra for the cobra and avoided this ride until we asked somebody who knew what... (read more)
Written on: 14/04/2010 by bradandkate (6 reviews written)
We paid approx £120 for a family of five to get in. What we didn't realise was that once we were in there we needed to pay up to £40 per person more for express passes. Without these express passes the queue time for the rides was between 60 and 90 minutes per ride. The way it works is that there is a two way swing gate immediately infront of each ride. An operator swings the gate to allow either express pass holders through or people without express passes. The problem is though that so... (read more)
Written on: 27/03/2010 by angela shendy (1 review written)
I went there with my mum, dad, borther and sister. My sister could go on hardly any of the scary rides and only went on 3. YES 3 WHEN WE WHERE THERE FOR 6 HOURS! Becasue of the hight restriction. The qeues took for ever (but it was a school holiday) He waited about 30mins for toom blaster and when we were like 4 metres away they said it broke down -_-. The line for dragons furery was massive at least 1 1/2 hours and the line for Vampire ride took 40mins. Overall the food was unberlieveable... (read more)
Written on: 04/03/2010
Chessington World of Adventures is a very good theme park for young children who want to start going on scarier rides. I have been going since i was about 5, im 14 now and i'm planning another trip this April. I think this theme park has something for everyone, all ages! The gate price can be a bit expensive but its worth the money! The only thing i would like to see more of is roller coasters. There is only Vampire, Dragons Fury and Rattlesnake, they are all awesome but i love roller... (read more)
Written on: 05/11/2009 by binky652 (3 reviews written)
I found chessington a great place to go with the family but it also can be very disapointing for some. I found it good but the amount paid and for the
effort.
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Written on: 26/04/2012
Having been a visitor for years to the plausere beach my family finally ran out of patience with it last year. Crazy prices, ridiculously convoluted entry security and que systems and a sense of poor value for money once i finally means we go to alton towers from now on. The entire blackpool resort must rely to some degre on funfair goers as other attractions cease to be (fewer shows etc) and every effort should be made by the local council to pressure the plausere beach to stop alienating visitors. We went to the winter wonderland a couple of years ago to find only a few rides open at one end of the park, with brides breaking down regularly while we were there. again poor value and then the addition of the silver pass just for the priveledge of walking round the fairground. Add the pathetic search for a packet of crisps in your bag to this and I will certainly not be back to the plausere beach. My poor grandparent who forst took me would be turning in their graves if they could see such a regular childhood pass time turn into such shamefull profiteering.
Written on: 01/11/2009
I would firstly like to remind everyone that this was during half term and it was alot busier than disneyland resort Paris.The rides were very short and you had to wait more than 60mins minimum.When me and my family went, we only got on 2 rides. We were there for 6 hours and did not think it was value for money.You had to pay for express passes to jump the big big queues and food was very expensive plus the park was full of things you had to pay for as extra. My advise DO NOT GO!!!!!!!!!!! (read more)
Written on: 27/10/2009 by Fifififi (1 review written)
The Hocus Pocus ride was a shambles. We waited 90 minutes. The 'queue jumping' system of paying an extra £4 per person by obtaining a Pumpkin Pass upset a lot of guests that had queued for ages.Those guests were being ushered in by the dozen and the normal queue was stagnent for 25 minutes. Many people complained and were getting rather irrate but nothing was done. What a complete waste of time and money. That ruined our day. The beautiful animals were the saving grace. (read more)
Written on: 26/10/2009
A lot of things to do, and some fun/interesting rides, but the queues were a nightmare, especially for Hocus Pocus Hall, which is rubbish and not worth the 60+ minute wait, a view heard time and time again from exiting 'guests'.
Also, hated the 'fast track' pass idea, which allowed queue jumping by the rich, whilst forcing those who did not want to fork out a further £20 to wait even longer.
Would recommend Bubbleworks and Tomb Raider, but be prepared to wait a long time - or don't arrive...
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Written on: 22/09/2009
Chessington World of Adventures was dissapointing, rides were closed, half of the animal at zoo were out of display, service was really bad, we had to wait a lot for our food to come. Waste of money, i'd never go back there, i would not recommend it to anyone. (read more)
Written on: 12/09/2009
We are a family of 4: 2 adults and 2 under 3s. The 2 for 1 voucher we had meant that we did get value for money. We also took advantage of Chessingtons brilliant idea allowing one adult to queue with the toddler for the ride. Then when the ride is over the 2nd adult waiting with the buggy can enter using the exit (jumping the queues) and go on the ride. The toddler was thrilled as it meant he got to go on the ride twice.
We went with friends, although the toddlers are above the 0.9m...
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Written on: 03/09/2009
First of all we arrived at Chessington World of Adventures at 8.45am we had to wait over an hour before we was allowed in. Once we got into the park we had to wait another 20-30 minutes for them to open the gates to the rides. When we finally got into the park, there was a lot of people there, the queues for the rides were extremely packed. But, once we eventually got on to the rides, they were good rides, the rides we really enjoyed were: dragons fury, rameses revenge, dragon falls, billy's... (read more)
Written on: 29/08/2009 by lisag1408 (1 review written)
Visited Chessington World of Adventures from Bristol with my family, what a waste of time. Spent most of the day waiting in queues.
Only went on 4 rides due to queues, by the way if you buy fast track you will probally go on the ride about 4 times while people like us queue in the main queue just once as they take priority ( I know you pay extra but the staff let them in all the time instead of making it abit fairer like 1 set of fast trackers to 2 main queue). Also took 15 minutes to get a...
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Written on: 25/08/2009
Chessington World of Adventures - good rides nice staff ,would not recomend going in the school holidays.took alot of time queing and i mean alot of time.!! (read more)
Written on: 12/08/2009
I went to Chessington today with a friend and 2 children (both under 6) it took ages to get into the park and the staff wasn't very helpful either.
The lady at the ticket office seemed like she didn't want to be there and just wanted the day over. We arrived just after 10am and left at 5.30pm during that time we only went on 5 rides yes FIVE the queues was massive (average 40-50 mins) per ride. For lunch we ate at this chicken place in the park and the food was awful we hardly ate any of...
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Written on: 12/08/2009
Absolute waste of a day - my partner was too tall to get on any of the decent rides (he's only just over 6ft!) and then some wouldn't let him on because the harness didn't fit over his shoulders!
The Chessington World of Adventures staff were a bunch of school leavers who only wanted to chat amongst themselves or chat up the guests!
Only plus side was the Zoo and sea life centre
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Written on: 06/08/2009 by Tom Mitchell (2 reviews written)
We had a great day at Chessington World of Adventures, the staff were great they were very kind to children they made the rides more exciting and the best thing was they keeped asking what is your favourite ride. We enjoyed Dragon Fury,Dragon Falls, Runaway Train,Vampire and Bubble Works.We did not like Hocus Pocus Hall and Safari skyway. (read more)
Written on: 05/08/2009
Chessington is a wonderful experience for ALL ages. If your a thrill-seeker, you may not want to read on, Chessington has a few rides such as ramases revenge, rattlesnake & dragons fury which may scare but the others are reasonable and fun.
I took my 9 year old, my 12 year old, her friend, and my 18 year old to chessington world of adventures a few months back. But this review is on the trip I took just last week.
I would have liked to known that you could get discount 2 for 1 vouchers from...
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As rated by real users
"Poor value for money" Read More
"Adventure ballons waste of tim..." Read More
"Nice Day Out" Read More
"Excellent Value" Read More
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Guest's Comment
Written on: 30/04/2012
Went to Chessington on Saturday 28th April whilst visitin family in London. There were 4 adults and 1 child. we had a couple of two for one tickets but the admission was still £110. Without those 2 for 1 it would have been £190 .They still had the nerve to demand £2 to park the car !! meals in the pizza/pasta "hut" was a further £54. I felt like I'd been mugged. Was it worth it? definately not.
I presume the price will just keep going up so will never ever go back. They need to take a long hard look at their pricing structure as it's beyond the ridiculous stage. Maybe they should revers the policy and charge per attraction you wish to go one or use. .