Our visit to Chessington for Wilderfest was a pretty quick decision. I’d thought about it, Tracy mentioned it, and within minutes we’d booked the hotel at Cobham services (again) and prebooked our passholder tickets.
We hadn’t planned in for another Chessington until Howl’o’ween later this year but they announced Wilderfest, seemingly out of nowhere so off we went.
We went over 2 days on a Saturday and Sunday, in the summer holidays so we fully expected it to be very busy, but bad weather forecasts, or a bit of luck meant that it wasn’t quite as busy as it had been on our last visit!
Day 1 was the wetter day, but we came prepared this time with a change of clothes, ponchos, towels and umbrellas and even though it was wet most of the afternoon, we had a great time! Our first ride was Dragon’s Fury as we went straight there to dodge the long queue later.
We had our first backwards facing ride and it was the single best ride on any Maurer spinning roller coaster that I’ve ever had. It not only got a decent photo of us, but it spun well, but still gave us a break before it spun off again. Back seats definitely seem to be the way to get a better ride from these!
After we’d gotten off Dragon’s Fury, we begun our usual saunter around the park, having rides on Croc Drop, Tomb Blaster, Vampire, Rattlesnake, Scorpion Express and Gruffalo River Ride. as well as searching for QR codes for a promotion Chessington were offering.
They hide boards in all the areas of the park for you to find and scan, which added pages to a book that you could buy at with little avatars of you in cartoonised versions of Chessington’s themed areas.
Tracy went first, and I ended up buying one the second day so we both have one. You can edit your avatars in the app so you can make them look something like yourself. It’s a nice bit of fun, and would be nice if they did more things like this in future, maybe for cheaper rewards such as pop badges or other park merchandise.
Wilderfest itself was good, but not as good as I’d expected. The main draw was a show on the ‘Mane Stage’ that involved 3 different acts, Led Zebra, DJ Sharkey and Lady Ra Ra. We sat and watched one of the shows, and the acts were entertaining and well done, though Led Zebra was playing Bon Jovi’s music rather than any of Led Zeppelin’s music!
After each act had performed, there was a voting stage that was based on the noise the crowd made when prompted to vote for each act. DJ Sharkey, who was the most entertaining of the 3 definitely won on our show, but Led Zebra was awarded the win, even though there was barely any voting for them!
As the show plays at 3 different times in the day, I assume it’s scripted that each act wins once which is a bit of a shame that they don’t have actual interactivity in that regard, but it was enjoyable, and it does give off a faint hint of being at a live music show, so I’ll give them props there!
The other big side of Wilderfest takes place on the grassy area beside the Land of Dragons, where a few wooden huts and games have been put up. The selection was a little lacking, especially when you compare it to Food Street at Alton Tower’s Mardis Gras. There was also a hut selling specific Wilderfest merchandise such as T-shirts and badges. Though once again I found no T-shirts above XL in size so I only ended up with a badge this time around.
Finally there were various pop up acts around the park playing music and singing popular songs for the crowds, as well as a group walking around with animal puppets called the Groupie Troupe.
The animals that the puppeted were really quite believable and they looked the part, and there was always a crowd around them whenever we saw them, so I ended up not getting any photos of them in action!
Overall Wilderfest was a good time, but not as good as Mardi Gras, and neither as good as Scarefest at Alton Towers!
For our second day, we largely skipped the Wilderfest shows in favour of rides. We had another ride on Dragon’s Fury to start with, and did the same as the day before, sat on the back to see if it was a similar experience, which it was.
Well, it was after we got going! Our train was dispatched and then got stuck at the bottom of the lift hill, but they sorted the problem within about 15 minutes and the operators kept checking on us to make sure we were ok, and both of us were of course. Almost excited to be involved in a breakdown of sorts is in the same vein as a rollback on Stealth for me!
We once again wandered around, jumping in queues that were short, or took our fancy at the time. We ended up in queue for Vampire before long as it’s was for the longest time both of our favourite rides at Chessington. It’s still a great family ride, but now the over shoulder restraints and the age are seemingly taking its toll as it does rattle about its course a lot more than it used to, and we got quite a bit of head banging from our rides.
Hopefully a decent refurbishment and maybe new restraints will bring Vampire back up to the excellent ride it once was. It’s still more than worth queuing for as it does feel like Chessington’s signature attraction and we both still love it, but for me Tomb Blaster now takes the top spot at Chessington as I really do enjoy that too!
To close I’d say Wilderfest does fit in Chessingtons calendar well and for a first year it was good, but I’d love to see it expanded in future with more going on and a bit more of a festival vibe around the park too!
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