We arrived there about 10.30am and did not leave until nearly 7pm and not for a moment were we bored. We easily could have made use of the fab deal that they have to buy another entry ticket for the next day for just a fiver! How excellent is that?
The thing I really like about Chessington is how family friendly it is. Today we were a group of Daddy (avid theme park goer, likes the big scary rides and happy to tackle anything), Mummy (big fat scaredy cat who likes the calmer rides and really just goes for the kids), JJ who is 6 and thinks he is about 14 (he enjoys everything), Miss M, who is 3 and brave and wants to be big like JJ and is happy to give things a try and Miss E who is Miss M's twin and does not even like to go on the £1 moving ride on toys at the shopping centre!
In our time at Chessington today we managed to go on loads of the rides - Peeking Heights, Tuk Tuk Turmoil, Safrai Skyway, Bubbleworks, Tomb Blaster, Toadie's Crazy Cars, Dragons Fury and the Carousel. We also watched a super puppet show, had some fun in the soft play and visited the animals and sealife centre. It was a full on day!
I am trying hard to think if I have any complaints about the day and frankly I don't. The staff were amazing, courteous and chatty, they would not have been out of place at Disneyland. There were plenty of toilets and minimal queueing (well, you do expect some with 11,000 people in the park today). The food outlets were varied and not too busy and I really appreciated the free lost children wrist bands and parent swap voucher that we got so dh and I could both do BIG rides without both queueing. Things do seem pretty well thought out at Chessington.
We opted for a pic-nic today, deciding that the money we would have spent on a lunch out for the 5 of us could be better spent by being donated to Save the Children and their work in Bangladesh. There was lots of good grassy areas where we could have sat down together but we opted to use one of the multitude of pic-nic tables that are across the park.
If I had come to the park to go on all the BIG popular rides then I might have been slightly peeved at the amount of express tickets that had been sold as basically there ended up being a two tier queueing system on the popular rides. Dh and JJ found this on Dragons Fury where they waited for about 1.5 hours as so many people were expressed to the front of the queue. To be honest if you were paying the full price of £26 for a child to enter the park, could you really afford another £10 on top to miss the queues and have an express ticket, we certainly could not.
So if you are paying for your tickets to come to Chessington, it is still a great place to go but make sure you look out for the deals. You can often find 2 for 1 tickets or discounts online. In fact at the moment Chessington themselves are offering 2 for 1 on adult tickets. Without any discount our day would have cost £60 today as both our girls are still under 1 metre and are therefore free. Once they get bigger the day would cost £95 at current prices as you get 25% discount by booking direct with Chessington online.
I asked everyone what their favourite part of the day was and here are their answers -
Me - Watching my girls enjoy driving in Toadie's crazy cars
Dh - Driving the Dogems (aka Tuk Tuk Turmoil) with Miss M and JJ
JJ - Tomb Blaster, shooting the guns and scoring more than Dad!
Miss M - Having her face painted 'like a Princess'
Miss E - Playing on the soft play and having chips!
Pros: Variety of rides and entertainment, free face painting, loads of toilets and baby change, good food outlets, excellent little sealife centre, good variety of animals and animal shows, quick entry and exit by car with ample parking, good services for families such as the lost children wrist bands and parent swap vouchers to minimise queueing
Cons: Queueing, Dragon Falls being closed
I have written this post as a review but I was not paid to do so, this was just something I wanted to do after a great family day out!