As announced on the Merlin Annual Pass Facebook page:

Saturday 9th March is Chessington World of Adventures Resort's 2019 Annual Passholder Day! You can also get a sneak peek of their BRAND NEW Room on the Broom – A Magical Journey from noon onwards ahead of its official launch on Sunday 10th March. Remember, you must be a valid Merlin Annual Passholder and pre-book a ticket to attend the Day – tickets will be available to book soon – keep your eyes peeled on our Facebook page…

Also confirmed this morning is that ‘Room on the Broom - A Magical Journey’ will officially open on Sunday 10th March.

Has anyone heard anything further on what exactly the new room on the broom attraction will entail? Obviously from the concept art it looks as if there is going to be a riding the broom type element, "is there room on Witch's 'truly magnificent broom'" as quoted from the CWoAR website. I'm guessing perhaps something similar to that of the bus in Shrek's adventure. HPH was definitely due a replacement, it is just a shame it had to be another IP, but at least this should hopefully mean it is done properly.

With Room on the Broom, I think we are on to a safe IP. We can see what they have done with Gruffalo and Shrek, so it will hopefully it will be a quality experience. 
We should know more on the preview day, so watch this space

Justin wrote:

With Room on the Broom, I think we are on to a safe IP. We can see what they have done with Gruffalo and Shrek, so it will hopefully it will be a quality experience. 
We should know more on the preview day, so watch this space

Completely agree, credit where credit is due, they actually did a pretty good job with Gruffalo so hopefully this new attraction will compliment that.

I'm quite looking forward to seeing what they've done with Room on the Broom. As people have said, they've done good work with the Gruffalo so I am confident this will be completed to a high standard too. Even if it is mainly a walkthrough attraction, as long as they've paced the narrative correctly it should work well and keep people's interest for long enought to get the most out of it.

I do think Chessington have done well to secure two of Julia Donaldson's most popular works - they are ideal for Chessington's target market and should be popular for a good while yet. however I do think they need to be a little careful not to over saturate the park with these IPs - two attractions is probably enough, anymore and it'll risk being too much.

A walkthrough is pretty much all I'm expecting for this. I would have thought adding any 'ride' component may have caused bottlenecks, as they don't have much space to play with. Nice scenes, music and sounds should make for a nice small relaxed attraction.

Technically, wouldn't this be the third attraction, with the Grufallo theatre being the second?

Well there is some very useful free marketing about Gruffalo, with thw launch of a 50p coin that was launched especially for 20 years of the Gruffalo. It seems to be proving extremely popular!! Very useful for Chessington with the Gruffalo IP and of course the Room on the broom coming this year!

Chessington have announced that they have reached car-parking capacity for the day. This is partly due to only the hard-standing car park at the hotel being available, with the Explorer grass car park currently closed for renovations, including the laying of tarmac entrance roads to replace the old gravel ones.

The park is currently advising anyone wishing to visit the park today, to arrive by public transport. It is also advising those who wish to arrive by vehicle on subsequent Animal Adventure days, to arrive at the park early to avoid disappointment.

It's weird to think that the hard-standing north car park used to be the main car park, with the grass south car park used as the overflow parking on super busy days. Now they reach capacity of that car-park when the park is barely open.

Indeed - but bear in mind that about 50% of that is used as hotel parking now.

Some updates on the Explorer grass car park. It's not finished. But, it is overall in a better state than last year.

The park is in the process of laying a proper hard standing road and path. The core of this will lead from the entrance road, presumably around to Go Ape, on the park side of the car park.





On the entrance road that winds around the back of the car park, they have leveled the road and filled all of the potholes. I'm unsure if this will also have asphalt laid on it, but it seemed like it should. Either way, road quality is massively improved over last year.

A high grip free standing roadway has been placed to mark the parking rows, but something has already churned up the ends of each row. Meaning I saw a car get stuck with wheels spinning, whilst attempting to park at the end of the road. The side access tracks to each row in the car park I was in, had not been repaired and were still very bumpy.



Finally, getting out of the park. There was barely any queue to get out, I had maybe 3 cars in front of me at the barriers. But it still took me around 25 minutes to get out, because only the exit at the car park entrance was used, which is a nightmare for traffic. I suspect that the back exit is currently inaccessible due to the new road being laid.

Thanks for the photos, Chris!

I am so pleased that they have taken the times to address the problems of the field car parks. Honestly, considering the size of some of the potholes, you could have easily mistaken them for sinkholes! Basic maintenance that will make a massive difference!

So it seems Black Buccaneer, Seastorm and Tiger Rock still haven’t completed winter maintenance which is disappointing considering Chessington has been open for the 2019 season for a bit now. Has anyone got any updates on these. I’m going on Weds but looks unlikely they’ll be open soon from what I’ve heard from those that have visited so far.

ProfBurp wrote:

So it seems Black Buccaneer, Seastorm and Tiger Rock still haven’t completed winter maintenance which is disappointing considering Chessington has been open for the 2019 season for a bit now. Has anyone got any updates on these. I’m going on Weds but looks unlikely they’ll be open soon from what I’ve heard from those that have visited so far.

Tiger Rock is due to re-open in May due to large refurbishment works on the ride system, which has seen all new controls, ride sensors, conveyors and alike installed. It's part of the rides 2 year renovation project. Seastom shouldn't be too much longer, engineers were installing new posts for the boats to sit on, as well as what looked like refurbished motors onto it last weekend. Black Buccaneer will be delayed opening again due to large amounts of refurbishment work going on with the rides frame.

Jared wrote:

ProfBurp wrote:

So it seems Black Buccaneer, Seastorm and Tiger Rock still haven’t completed winter maintenance which is disappointing considering Chessington has been open for the 2019 season for a bit now. Has anyone got any updates on these. I’m going on Weds but looks unlikely they’ll be open soon from what I’ve heard from those that have visited so far.

Tiger Rock is due to re-open in May due to large refurbishment works on the ride system, which has seen all new controls, ride sensors, conveyors and alike installed. It's part of the rides 2 year renovation project. Seastom shouldn't be too much longer, engineers were installing new posts for the boats to sit on, as well as what looked like refurbished motors onto it last weekend. Black Buccaneer will be delayed opening again due to large amounts of refurbishment work going on with the rides frame.

Awesome thank you so much for this update. If that is the case for Tiger Rock, why don’t they update the website to say that it’s opening in May, rather than completing winter maintenance.....which for another month doesn’t sound very good! Sounds like it’s work that needed doing though, so definitely a positive move.

According to the Chessington app, Tiger Rock and SeaStorm have re-opened, leaving Black Buccaneer as the only attraction still undergoing winter maintenance.

Was at the park yesterday and Tiger Rock was open until it broke down in the afternoon. They were sending round empty boats at around 5pm so not sure if it reopened. SeaStorm Open but Black Buccaneer in pieces, boat in place, A frame absent.

As posted on SouthParks News, Chessington has submitted plans for a new mini log flume ride as well as a reconfiguration and re-theme of Toadie’s Crazy Cars.

I think Chessington will do a fantastic job with this! Now we know Toadies Crazy Cars is staying and it has been given a new lease of life.

I am not sure exactly what theme the area will be, but we know its safari theming throughout both rides

As long as the hilarious looking chickens stay I’m happy