Chessington world of adventures is a family theme park full of great fun activities. It is part of the Merlin Group so Merlin passes are a great way to expand your fun. It was Halloween and like many other Theme parks and events, they also changed their fun towards that while they celebrating Howloween, but did it boost your experience? did add extra? was it worth the visit at this time of year? that’s the question?
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We like it
Chessington for us has become one of the better places to visit for its variety of activities and rides, especially across 3 different age groups which can be difficult in other parks. With it being Howloween though it was nice for us to visit literally at Halloween and see how they have celebrated it. We have Merlin Passes and often make sure these type of days are looked at, however like most events nowadays it was booked up, and something when your planning any events like this in the future in any of these parks etc.
At its main entrance is a great Howloween sign to really set the stage for the resort, across the resort is a mixture of pumpkins and decorations that continue this feel but I would point out there not everywhere, but still pretty good. For the most part, though its a normal theme park day, almost all of the rides with only the usual odd ride closed for a variety of issues, for example, Dragon Fury was closed almost all of the day, this meant the rides for older kids/adults were limited and made them much busier and long queues.
However, even a normal day and a booked day means many of these rides and activities are busy, queue times for most are way over 30 minutes with only really young rides with slightly better times, perhaps Halloween putting off more of the youngsters.
Whats added
There are a couple of additional activities to do just for Halloween, the Forgotten forest is a free adventure for younger kids, it’s a nice something extra, but for the older ones the Creepy caves resurgence is a more mature scarier activity, however, this one is for over 10’s and a paid activity. There is a show on the main stage featuring witches, we personally tried to watch any shows when we visited but for some reason, we seemed to miss everyone even when we were there at the times, it was a little odd, however, we did catch a mini-performance with fire and dancers in Aztec area.
The last notable extra was the variety of actors around several zones, they were dressed up as characters and were involved within the zones, however, this is my big negative, every time we saw these entertainers they were sat or standing and talking to each other, not for the characters just having chats together, at one point within the pirate area i saw 4 just sitting on a kiosk all talking for about 30 minutes, unfortunately, this was common and saw very little interaction with the public.
Overall
It was still a great day out for the family, and the extra Halloween stuff was also good, there’s plenty of Halloween fun around with decorations etc, the actors were disappointing and for kids, they are probably not bothered as they didn’t interfere in there day, but that’s not the point,. ITs obviously busy and if you have been on half terms etc then this is a typical day, so you have to plan your times and rides well, but the music and public dressing just adds a little difference, and that’s good and a fun way to celebrate Halloween.
