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Coaster
Kingdom Chessington World of Adventures
would like us to think that their new rides for 2001 were another
pageant of their unwavering devotion to investing in new rides and
attractions.
Beanoland uses colourful
comic-strip architecture and an abundance of Dennis the Menace
characters stalking family members to divert their attention away from
the complete lack of substance and innovation in the area. The area is
great in that it entertains the naïve with just a Wave Swinger and
Dodgems; it is flawed in that it fails to divert from these people those
who have done Dogems and Wave Swingers at about a thousand other
locations around the world.
It was the latter that had the
most potential. A certain guestbook on the internet was excitedly
looking forward to the park completely gutting it, rebuilding it,
perhaps even enclosing it. Although many childrens rides are
hardly meant to be a grand, auspicious affair, they should at least
entertain the parents enough to at least make it worth having children.
Many fail, and until recently, each childrens ride was about as well
thought out as a politicians manifesto. Re-theming Old Crocks was a
strange thing to do. The Vintage Car ride is always considered a small,
insignificant attraction just to sit your kids down on to reassure them
that you haven’t visited the park just to queue. By re-vamping the ride, it
invariably attracts people to what is basically a third rate attraction,
and by doing nothing outgoing with regards to the theming, we are still
left with an over-marketed mediocre ride that offers absolutely nothing
in addition to its’ pre-curser. The ride starts off in a
colourfully painted sheltered queue line. One joke that will begin to
grate is the references to toads. One such example is ‘slippery
roads’, where the ‘r’ is crossed out, and hand written on in
place, a ‘t’. Truisms like this frequent the ride, and probably over
the heads of the target audience, and come across so shamefully to the
parents that even a smirk is a waste of breath. As you pass a boarded up window
approaching the cars as they roll across the slab of concrete that forms
your platform, you wait as pokerfaced families leave the ride. As your group gets in, front seat
drivers have the wobbly excuse of a steering wheel, plus a red button
for the horn, whilst back seat passengers have nothing – expect a few
family feuds and cantankerous children to be jettisoned to the back
seat. It is silly things like being able to steer the car that children
look forward to. Whilst invariably it is the parents who get the back
seat, a small group of children will be left bickering like the cast of
Big Brother. As the car moves off, a
none-too-subtly hidden speaker bursts into life with a charming and at
the same time, cheesy sound track. It is a sing along theme that will
suitably annoy parents, but entertain children. The attraction is in disarray.
Every scene contradicts the last. Although the park have no qualms in
taking nearly £20 off every person who isn’t approached by a ticket
tout, this ride must have been on a shoestring – and it shows. The negations start with
inconsistency in relative scale. In other words, whilst petrol pumps are
scaled down to a shameful two-foot 2D wooden cut-out, hedgehogs and
frogs tower at the dizzy heights of three or four foot. Why are the petrol pumps painted
ply-board? It is even painted authentically as if we’re not supposed
to notice. This is almost as glaring is the lack of investment. And so, with everything on
different scales, you ponder why each character is detailed to an
acceptable scale, yet the scenery is as detailed as a map of the Sahara
Desert. How much is a brick? According to
Builder Centre’s ‘Brick Selector’, an average brick costs little
more than 39 new-English pence. Yet, Chessington feel it necessary to
construct an archway out of ply-board, and through the audacious use of
pink and yellow paint is styled to look like an archway. It isn’t even
styled to look droll; it just looks like a cheap and tacky prop from a
low-budget pantomime. And so this theme continues –
erratically. A boat sinks. It is 3D, full scale and done quite well. As
fractured wood sticks up, water sprays into the air. This is what the
ride should be like throughout, not this mottled mess of
oversized-undersized, 2D-3D, realistic-unrealistic scenes that occurs
throughout. Most of the turns on the ride
seem to get very close to the pathways surrounding it. Where the
surrounding flora isn’t thick enough to shield the atrocities from
potential riders, bamboo fences have been put up. Therefore, many turns
are spent watching this wall of canes go past. Agitated teenage riders
will probably pick away at these until they’re broken down. When the children begin to get
bored of the dead-spots between each stippled scene, the red button that
operates the horn will fail to entertain – your hearing needs to be
more sensitive than that of a bats’ to hear it. Other features include passing a
pond where water sprays out from the side like a water-splash. Whilst a
good idea, the side of the lake is hardly close, and this subtle effect
will probably be misunderstood by those who would be interested. A small one-foot wall of
mud-scattered ply-board is meant to be a bridge (despite bridging
nothing) and then the remainder takes you past small five-foot wendy-houses
before you enter a barn. Finally, a scene that makes
sense. Just about, anyway. You enter a barn through which you slalom
around toad who is sitting pretty on the bonnet of his car. He is
looking suitably dazed, having crashed through the walls. To keep in with the consistent
inconsistency, this toad is a fully-blown animated toad, moving and
everything – in complete contrast to every other character encountered
so far. He is also as glossy as the lips on the female members of Steps,
something which none of the others are. Loitering around the exit, even
children are bored of this ride. Whilst they don’t pick up on these
shoestring show-ups, it is boring. Sets are boring, uncreative, and too
sparse to hold their attention. The ride has been completely re-turfed,
with new ponds, new shrubbery – in this respect, it looks really nice.
But when you notice the grass and not the characters, something is awry.
The characters are too far away and hardly interact with the ride (if
you notice them at all), there is no plot and the whole ride feels like
a charity gnome garden at a garden centre, not a new lease of life for a
Vintage Car Ride at an arrogantly rich theme park. The ride is a lost opportunity.
Tussauds shouldn’t need to make archways and bridges out of ply-board
(£20 a sheet) – in two years it is going to look even more of a mess,
just not through the bad crafting of the ride initially, more through
weathering. The ride is just following a
concrete road through green grass and ponds. The music is an aspect that
really helps the ride – although it is cheesier than Wallace and
Gromits’ perception of the moon, it helps the kids through what is
otherwise a traumatic and ham-fisted attraction. I am struggling to see why the
park wasted what little money was spent on the ride, when it is no
better than what forewent it.
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Chessington WOA 
