Chessington World of Adventures · Theme Park & Zoo

Craig’s review… The last time I went to Chessington World of Adventures it was still called Chessington Zoo – that was thirty years ago. The most exciting ride they had back then was the spinning teacups, but now they’ve got rides and rollercoasters, shows and hotels, and the animals have been demoted to a sideshow.

I’m not really looking forward to the rollercoasters, by the way. I’m willing to give them a go, but I’m at an age now where the ground is my friend. I’ve had a quick look around and I can already see about twenty different ways to die. I don’t mind ending my days in a theme park, but I’m not spending my last five minutes on planet Earth whizzing around a tubular track in a plastic bat. If I’m going to die here today then it will be in the lion pit, or by being ripped apart by the tigers or something like that – something manly. A man shouldn’t die with a smile on his face. He should die in battle, fighting off the talons of a big cat attack.

Why am I talking about death already? I’ve only been here for five minutes! That’s why I’m such a good reviewer, you see. If an attraction can break through my wall of doom and gloom then you’ll know it’s worth a visit.

Fastrack tickets

I’ve bought myself a two-day ticket because I’m not sure that you can complete it all in one day. I am expecting big queues for every ride, but we’ll see how it goes. You can buy something called a Fastrack ticket which allows you to jump the queues, but check out the price: if you want to jump the queue on every single ride then that’s another seventy quid on top of the entry cost (no joke). It seems like a bit of a con to me, so I will take my chances with the queues.

I’ve decided to start off with the monorail (the Safari Skyway). This is my kind of ride: nice and gentle, not too high up, no loop the loops… just a gentle chug around the treetops. And it’s safe (very important). The chances of you dying on this one are very slim.

Scorpion Express runaway train

My first proper ride of the day was the runaway mine train, the Scorpion Express. The queue winds for miles around a rickety old path in a Wild West town but thankfully it was totally empty this morning. I used to be scared stiff of this ride when I was little but I must have steeled myself as I’ve grown older, because I hardly even broke a sweat this time around. No tears. No screams. I didn’t even wet my trousers. I’m quite proud of myself.

Rattlesnake & Tomb Blaster

After that came the Rattlesnake. You start very high up on this one, and then barrel your way down in a little tin bucket rocking and rolling over some rusty iron pipes, shaking from side to side and pitching quite violently… I was actually worried that the cart was going to break loose and launch me into the nearest tree. It didn’t seem very tightly secured to me, but I am still alive so I guess it was okay. If you’ve got your kids with you then you might want to test it out on them first, just to make sure that it’s safe. If you’ve invited your kids’ school friends along then that’s even better. Send them up first. They are expendable. If they come back crying then you can make your excuses and move on to something else.

Tomb Blaster gets the prize for being the most boring ride in the park. On paper it sounds quite exciting: an Indiana Jones–style adventure through an ancient Egyptian tomb filled with mechanical snakes and robot mummies, and you have to zap them with your ray gun as your bejewelled cart trundles past. But in reality it is very slow, the robots are about as scary as a fairy, and it hurts your finger pulling the trigger ten thousand times. After two minutes I thought sod it, let the mummies kill me, I don’t care.

Dragon Falls log flume ride

Chessington’s log-flume water ride is called Dragon Falls. You sit in an open-top coffin as it bounces down a raging torrent of bright blue water. It’s quite a nice scenic ride until you reach the drop, and then all of a sudden it turns into a living nightmare as it plummets from the summit and you can’t back out. Screaming doesn’t help (I tried that). Crying doesn’t either because everyone just stands at the side laughing and pointing at you.

Dragon’s Fury is probably the worst ride in the park. They belt you inside a four-seater turntable that spins round and around as it simultaneously loops and swoops along a tubular track. It’s totally relentless, and I felt like a ball of socks knocking around inside a washing machine. When I got off I had to wait five minutes for my brains to stop spinning inside my head.

The Vampire rollercoaster

The Vampire ride is my favourite. I like it for two reasons: firstly, because I am actually a vampire in real life (I haven’t told anybody that yet, so please keep it a secret) and secondly, because your feet seem to get awfully close to the rooftops and treetops – you think you’re going to kick the chimneys and instinctively raise your knees up! It also has one of the best queues in park where you walk through a pine forest into the pitch-black tunnels of a Transylvanian castle, and then you’re greeted by a demonic Beethoven-like guy pounding out a symphony on his smoking, glowing organ.

That is actually one of the best things about Chessington World of Adventures: they’ve really made an effort to theme the zones properly. They’ve got an Aztec jungle, an old Oriental zone, a medieval market with a castle gatehouse, and a Wild West outpost with saloon-style shops and funfair games (including those rifle ranges where you have to make all the characters move – I love those!).

Once you’ve had a go on all the rollercoasters you can finally check out the animals (it’s easy to forget about the animals with all the rollercoaster rides). They’ve got some lions, tigers, a gorilla, a children’s zoo, plus some penguins and a SeaLife Centre. But the biggest surprise is the Zufari ride.

Zufari safari ride

What they do here is stick you in a safari-style truck with open sides and then ride you through a desert terrain of tall grasses, dusty mud and water. Your truck rumbles right into the animal enclosures so you can get close to the zebras, giraffes and rhinos. And here is the unbelievable thing: there are no fences!

Three big rhinos were standing twenty feet from the side of our seats with literally nothing between them and us – not even a ditch. If one of them had been in a bad mood then I would not be here to tell you the tale. The giraffes wouldn’t have cared. They would have probably joined in as well, just for something to do… let’s eat all the humans, yeah, come on fellas! Someone give Mr Lion a ring and get him over here as well. I’m telling you the truth… if the rhinos had charged across in a blind fury then you would now be seeing horrific pictures of me on the evening news. And my truck was full of kids and little old ladies so of course it would have been down to me to fight them all off single-handedly. I’m not saying that I couldn’t have done it (I could have, easily), but it’s not the kind of thing you want to do on a day out. And then if that wasn’t bad enough the truck then drives straight through a waterfall and soaks your clothes!

Now that I’ve spent an entire day here I can confirm that it definitely is possible to see the whole place in one day. I managed to do all of the major rides, the Scorpion Express and Vampire rides twice, plus the zoo animals, in a little under 5½ hours (plus I had some dinner as well). And that still left me with 1½ hours to spare before the park closed.

But you have to get a bit lucky with the queues because you can easily spend thirty minutes waiting in line for the big rides. They had some signs up suggesting that sixty minutes isn’t out of the question either (although I didn’t have to wait any longer than thirty, myself). So my advice is to stock up on Coke cans and sweets for the queues and try and do the biggest rides first before they get too busy.

Worth a visit? ★★★Value for money? ★★★Good for kids? ★★★Easy to get to? ★★☆

I also recommend… If you enjoy this then try SEA LIFE London Aquarium and London Zoo. Two more theme parks relatively close to London are Thorpe Park and Legoland Windsor

The author Craig Cross owns city-guide.london and has spent the last decade reviewing the capital’s landmarks, attractions and hotels. His guidebook London Squire is available from Amazon