Our third day of Halloween park visits was to Chessington World of Adventures to see what their Howl’o’ween event had to offer!
Park entry was a smooth affair this time, no lengthy queues as we’d arrived early so we had plenty of time to do all the things we wanted to do and headed straight to Dragon’s Fury.
Once again we had to wait a little longer for our ride as it ran into technical difficulties, which means we’ve had two breakdowns in as many visits to the park. I wonder if something is really wrong with Dragon’s Fury and it needs a good refurb, or maybe it’s starting to show its age? Either way, we did eventually have a great ride, collected our photo and digipass and moved onward to Scorpion Express.
We were intending to get on Rattlesnake, but it was closed for the day so instead opted for Scorpion Express which was advertised with a 20 minute queue, but was actually a walk on. No complaints here!
Next we headed to Tomb Blaster, one of my all time favorite rides here. After queuing for about 40 minutes, we were in the final straight to the air gates only to have the station lights come on and the operative announce that they’d run into technical difficulties.
So on our visit we’d had a breakdown on Dragon’s Fury, Tomb Blaster is having issues, Rattlesnake and Seastorm are closed and we’d also noticed that Croc Drop had stopped operations. I put it down to bad luck as I’ve never been to a park with quite so many rides closed or having issues before, and both Tomb Blaster and Dragon’s Fury were working again shortly after.
We waited a bit longer for the ride to start working, and after about 20 minutes or so, ride vehicles were being dispatched and they loaded us up and off we went. Pretty much all the effects were working, aside the boulder and a few banks of targets here and there. This was also the closest we’ve ever had our scores to one another! Tracy’s really getting into it now!
Our next stop was the Yoohoo Children’s Zoo, the parks small animals attraction. I’d only been in here once before, but I do remember there being more animals wandering about! It was still nice to see the donkeys, pigs and the ferrets doing their stuff, but it did feel a little lacking in any real atmosphere today!
On our way towards the zoo entrance, we stopped off in the Education Centre next to Room on the Broom. In here they have various creepy crawlies for you to see, and a few you can handle. These being cockroaches, giant snails and stick insects. Earlier in the year when we visited, the same lady was out letting you handle their stick insects so we passed up this opportunity and moved on to the zoo and Sea Life.
A few of the tanks had been updated with halloween theming but overall it was still the same Sea Life we know and love! More photos for the digipass though, as they have since started taking your photo at the start, the same with Gruffalo River Ride Adventure, which is great to see!
After Sea Life, we wandered around the front lawn area, watched the otters frolicking about and watch an animal talk about their owls and tortoises. This was particularly entertaining as the tortoise they had wouldn’t behave and kept running off, but the keeper kept it light hearted and informative!
Next we found Forgotten Forest, a small walk through attraction that was included in park entry. As there was no queue we went in to see what there was to see.
The area is a nice little walk through attraction, decorated to feel spooky and has the occasional funny moment here and there to make it more light hearted. It did feel very much like a Christmas walk through that had had halloween theming slapped on top of it in my opinion, but it was still a nice and pleasant walk through.
We then headed into Trail of the Kings in the hopes of seeing all of the big cats today. We did manage to see the serval, caracal and both lions, but the clouded leopards were hiding again. Nice to finally see their caracal though!
Our next ride was on Gruffalo River Ride Adventure, a nice family water dark ride, and another photo for the digipass! I enjoy Gruffalo a lot. Its a pleasant sit down with elegant scenery and, although the sound effects can sometimes play over each other depending on spacing between the tubs, its got good ambient audio.
Once we’d made our way through the exit shop, we tried our first Howl’o’ween scare attraction called ‘Vile Villagers’. This small walkthrough attraction is just behind Vampire and sees you walking through a ghostly village and its inhabitants. The actors will try to scare you a bit, but generally we were left alone to walk through until instructed by the final actor to pass through the final tunnel to rejoin the world of the living.
This felt like a very watered down Platform 15 without the train set piece, and was enjoyable enough, especially with it being free. It wasn’t as scary as The Crows of Mawkin Meadow at Thorpe Park had been, nor was it just a walk through like Forgotten Forest. A nice balance between the two.
By this time we were getting to our time slot for Creepy Caves: Resurgence, the parks only upcharge scare maze. This was nothing like what I’d expected from Chessington at all. It wouldn’t have been out of place at Alton Towers or Thorpe Park with how intense it was in places, and great to see from a park that’s recently been dialing back the thrills!
The maze sees you walking through a series of caves and rooms that are heavily themed and filled with actors who will make you jump on more than one occasion. I never experienced The Creepy Caves so I don’t know if the story follows on, but here the Caves are filled with a resurgent group of rioters, lots of loud noises and shouting and a final scene with real pyrotechnics included, as well as a decent soundtrack following you through!
This was great to see from Chessington and hopefully we’ll see more like this next year. It felt like they were finally looking at targeting some of the older guests who visit the resort since there aren’t too many big thrills at Chessington overall. Well worth £6.
Once we’d done in the caves, we had dinner at the Pizza Pasta Buffet and then wandered about, hopping on rides here and there and watching the shows as they played out during our travels. Most notably where the Wild Witches in Adventure point and the show in Wild Asia.
We also fell extremely lucky on this occasion with the tigers as three of them came out just as we were passing through, and at one point, all four were out and about, lounging in the evening sun and posing for photos!
As the sun started to set, we tried for a quick queue on Dragon’s Fury but as it was operating so slowly, we abandoned it in favour of the big event for me, Vampire in the dark.
We queued for around 40 minutes, and by the time we were in the station it was as dark as it could get and we managed to get a back row seat. The last two rows are usually reserved for ride access and disabled guests, but there was no one left in queue so the trains were being filled with regular queuing guests.
Vampire is so much smoother on the back than it is mid train or front, and you get plenty of whip over both lift hills. This feels like the proper way to experience Vampire for me. Coupled with the darkness and the whole atmosphere about the Wild Woods, this was one of the best rides we’d both had on this Arrow suspended coaster!
To top it off, when we got into the station, we found there was no queue and were asked if we’d like to go around again, as the staff were hopping on for their final ride of the night too. We were moved up to middle of the train, and it did get rougher than our previous run, but still a great time had here. The only negative was that one of the photos was lost by the photo booth operator, but we still managed to get one, so I’m not complaining too much!
Overall, Howl’o’ween was a good time, not quite as good as Scarefest last year or Fright Nights, but still a great time. We were due to stay another day but ended up changing the plans to head to Legoland instead. This was due to us both wanting to visit Legoland for a second time, and feeling that seeing more of Legoland was better than revisiting Chessington again.
Brick or Treat to follow!
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