Chessington World of Adventures Resort

[Owen]

What seems to be a Howl-o-ween teaser has been posted by the MAP page. It's saying that Friday at noon something creepy will be announced at Chessington...

[jackf1tz]

So is AT the only one not announcing until september? Anyway, in all seriousness chessington does need something new this Howl-o-ween. :?

[Owen]

I don't think Alton have anything major enough to warrant a big announcement. They've previously stated they're happy with their line up as it is.
The most I could see is a new scare zone.

It seems like Chessington might head in a more adult direction this year which I don't think is a bad thing. Maybe one 12+ maze along with the standard family friendly experiences would pull in a new audience...

[Dom]

It will be very interesting to see what they do with Howl'o'ween. I doubt we will see anything too scary given its Chessington though, so don't expect anything too major. 

[jackf1tz]

An over 12 maze would definitely add to their line up, but that would seem to be out of their target market, and given that they added the gruffalo this year I think they could be doing something with that, or similarly family friendly. Also, with Thorpe park being less than half an hour away, it makes sense from a business perspective for Chessington to concentrate on the under 12's. Saying this however, i would want for them to make a proper maze, because them at least there is one more thing to do

[Burniel]

I believe last year's lineup was fairly poor, even by Chessington's standards. If I remember correctly, they had Curse Of The Lost Tomb, which had its entrance where the entrance to the Explorer Outpost Restaurant now is in Wild Asia, alongside Trick Or Treat Wood, which ran in the field to the east of Hocus Pocus Hall. I haven't properly investiagted, but it may be that the explorer outpost restaurant blocks the Curse route, which may lead to a new attraction. I'd expect Trick Or Treat Wood to return, possibly with some Gruffalo tweaks.

Some things I'd like to see which may actually happen:

Bring back The Mystery Of Hocus Pocus Hall
Extend the event so that it covers the weekend before October Half Term as well as the half term week - the event was only about 10 days last year!
Extend closing times to 9pm on peak nights
More family-friendly attraction down the Haunting In The Hollows route, a bit like the 2011 era.
The return of and possibly a step up in the roaming actors around the park.
The return of a kids' show in Adventure Point, like when we had Boo in Market Square.
The return of that beautiful IMAScore soundtrack they had blasting around the park for Howl-o-ween 2014/15.

Not too sure about the 12+ maze personally. If you look at the average Chessington Howl-o-ween guest that goes into the 8+ attractions, they're usually 12 years old at most, so I do question whether there's the demand for it. I personally thought Haunting In The Hollows from a few years back was quite extreme for how they marketed it and I could see something on that scale being added, but I think a full-on scaremaze is unnecessary.

[Owen]

I think people have taken the 12+ comment a bit to literally. I was just throwing a number out :lol

I could see a more 'intense' version of House of Monsters with a couple scenes which may make kids jump :P

[Burniel]

I took 12+ as a Fright Nights level attraction, as that's the number thrown around with a lot of those scaremazes. I'm no expert on such attractions, so I assumed you were referring to a high level maze, which would be far too much.

Again, I think Haunting In The Hollows was about right for an "older" attraction, provided you had enough of a lineup below that to keep the younger audience satisfied. Hollows, Hocus Pocus and Trick Or Treat Wood would probably be the ideal lineup for Chessington in such a case, as that provides one high-quality attraction for each of the park's three bat ratings used to rate the intensity of their attractions.

[lewis97]

Full details of the 2017 line-up have been added to Chessington's website, confirming the addition of two new attractions.

'Creepy Caves Unearthed' is said to be the resort's "scariest attraction yet" with it given a 10+ age rating. It will also incur an additional charge of £6 (or £4.80 for annual passholders), and timeslots can be booked for 15 minute intervals from 12pm.

No one knows why the famous reptile and creepy crawly exhibit in the Zoo closed its doors at the end of 2016… until now.

Secret Agents will lead you through the quarantined attraction for your exclusive look at the newly discovered plant species, found in the snake enclosure.

But, with Zoo Keepers missing and strange things happening, who knows what powerful properties might be unearthed.

Also new is 'Room on the Broom Spooky Story Time', which is another of Julia Donaldson's stories following the opening of The Gruffalo River Ride Adventure earlier this year. These new attractions will feature alongside returning attractions 'Curse of the Lost Tomb' and 'Trick or Treat Wood'.

[Owen]

That's more like what I was thinking. It sounds quite interesting! Almost like a baby Sub-Species :lol

There is also a decided Creepy Caves Unearthed website which can be found here.

[ThemeCrafter264]

Woo, I was right about it being in Creepy Caves. It certainly sounds interesting and hopefully will help to create a better line up for the whole family.

[Burniel]

This looks fairly promising, and means that the park actually have one of the strongest lineups they've had for a while now.

I'll be interested to see how well this sells, considering that the park has never done paid halloween attractions before. It will also be interesting to see how the relatively short layout of Creepy Caves is used enough to justify the £6 price tag. However, perhaps the main flaw I see is the lack of space at its entrance - they'll be prebooking, eliminating the need for a long queue, but there will still undoubtedly be a lot of activity outside the entrance. Given its close proximity to Sealion Bay (which I'm assuming will still be open and running its afternoon shows), the crowds will need to be very carefully handled.

On the whole though, exciting news!

[hursty]

I'll be interested to see how well this sells, considering that the park has never done paid halloween attractions before.

Creepy Caves doesn't have a lot of space, so I wonder what could feasibly be achieved, that a family would find reasonable value.

Alton definitely went to some considerable effort to create House of Monsters, which was around this price level.
That was a really decent offering - something that I could see at Chessington in the future if they have the space.

[Burniel]

Yeah, as I said, I don't really know how they plan on doing that. I know I go on and on about the past lineup, but I think bringing back The Mystery Of Hocus Pocus Hall and charging for that would have been a better shout, or even Haunting In The Hollows. Both were much longer attractions for which an upcharge would be more justified, and had (I assume) higher throughputs, so the park could sell more tickets and potentially make more money? I don't know, the whole concept of using Creepy Caves seems a bit desperate to me, which is odd, given the number of other suitable locations. I'm trying to stay open-minded though.

[hursty]

Building plan for reference

[Luce]

I quite like the sound of Chessington's line up and I'm tempted to go back to their Halloween event this year as I haven't been for a few years.

[Dom]

The following image was posted onto twitter earlier today with the following caption - 

Don't touch the plant...

Now, i'm going to speculate that the story of this will be that a plant has taken over the creepy caves, although i'm not quite sure :lol

[jackf1tz]

Who you gonna call? Plant Busters!

:lol

[Wumbamillo]

Instead of the taped-from-cassette internet download they're playing now on a dodgy loop, the Vampire station music used to sound awesome. It actually had the organ part (solo) playing from the organ, in sync with the rest the music (the original mix) coming in for the chorus through the rest the station. It sounded much more dramatic.

The downloaded music is now played all outside in the queue from cheap speakers too, so you are long since bored of it before you even reach the station. This completely amateaur approach to themed audio takes a very jaded & clueless attitude, same with what happened to Tomb Blaster in 2016.

When guests are paying more than ever, it's terrible how pathetic Vampire feels now when it used to be brilliant. Very poorly lit with colour LEDs flashing on demo mode, stripped back broken scenery, wobbly organist and the once-cool music now feels token and lame.

[Chris]

The park is just not given the budget to keep the ride looking nice. For example the chandeliers are still sitting by the brake run. On our event a few years ago the head ride engineer said they had hoped to put them back, but I don't think it is really their responsibility to maintain things like that. Similar Merlin wide really..