I visited Chessington World of Adventures about 20...

I visited Chessington World of Adventures about 20 years ago and thought this would be a wonderful place for the children to go. Sadly my recent visit was extremely disappointing. Dispute booking in advance there were large queues on arrival. This added a further 50 minutes in total. I appreciate that due to Covid measures must be taken and I understand this. The temperature checks actually seemed quite fast and I dont think made a huge delay. The baggage checking did slow the queue somewhat. I would understand the safety measures and if this had been the only complaint for the day would have dismissed it without hesitation.

Once through the queue, before going through the gate, my 8 year old asked to go to the toilet. This was understandable considering the hour long car ride to get here then the nearly hour long wait. We then had to wait a further 25 minutes for her to use the nearest toilets by the entrance. These were so dirty and not well maintained which in these times is not good enough.

I found the park itself to be filled. It made it difficult to maintain social distancing. I had hoped as tickets were booked in advance part of this was to limit numbers so safety could be a high priority. Sadly, this was not so. I will say the markers were good so when queuing people could maintain their distance. On the note of queuing I would then add another 25 minute queue for another toilet stop. One of the toilets had someone be very unwell. A lady informed a member of staff while I started to queue. This had not been dealt with by the time I was leaving. Cleanliness and hygiene should always be important but in these times I think even more so.

The first ride the children wanted to go on was a small circuling pirate ship one. We watched them go and queue. It took 25 minutes for the 1 minute ride. It took another 25 minute ride for the merry-go - round ride. These are not main big rides.

On a positive not we found a green space to sit away from everyone else while we had our packed lunch. We considered buying some doughnuts but the queues for these too were very long so we decided against and this point.

We continued to try and encourage the children to remain positive as they were clearly getting disheartening queuing and waiting. They asked to go on a big ride and I went with them. We walked to the ride and went to join the back of the queue. We were then told by 2 ladies that they wanted to move the queue to the entrance so asked us to go away for 5 minutes. This was completely pointless. The queue just moved to the side as people queued to re queue. The children getting more frustrated. We then queued and followed the distancing while waiting. The gardens surrounding the ride and bridges made this a reasonable experience. While waiting we felt the queue moving and the hour long queue once allowed to queue went reasonably smoothly. The children throughly enjoyed the ride.

We then went to get doughnuts at the nearby stall. There were only three people in front at this time do it seemed a good time to do this. This was sadly very slow and took another 20 minutes. I'm glad we queued when we did though as following this the queue had grown greatly.

By this time we had spent the best part of an hour queuing to enter the park, 25 minutes for a toilet, 25 minutes for a pirate ride and a further 25 for a merry go round. Another 25 for a different toilet and over an hour for a key ride followed by another 20 minute wait for doughnuts. In the best part of 4 and 1/2 hours we had entered the park, gone on 2 family rides lasting total 1 minute and 2 minutes, gone to the toilet twice, been one one main ride and got some doughnuts. 3 rides in this time is not worth the huge cost to enter the park. The children would have got more value for money at a local fair.

I hope this helps someone else.