Is this the height of craziness? Families queuing for two hours at chessington…

[shewalkslikerihanna]

On a boiling hot day
To have their temperatures checked?
Just what is that going to prove?
I feel sorry for the poor children caught up mine this craziness.
They’ve suffered enough

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9660859/Chaos-Chessington-World-Adventures-families-queue-two-hours.html

@GNCQ

It's crazy to take your children to Chessington at the beginning of another wave, yes.

Ok I’ll bite.

When will it be ok to take your kids out for the day, because if it’s when there are no cases you’ll be waiting a long time?

We went to a farm park yesterday with hourly entry slots. The majority of the park was outside. It was a lovely day and I enjoyed seeing my children run excitedly from animal to playground to tractor. It was a lovely taste of normal.

The issue here is chessington not controlling arrival of guests properly, no time slots, not enough staff and of course the weather won’t have helped.

@spanielstail

The children have been through enough?? What sort of hyperbolic crap us that.

Yes it's less than ideal that they have missed school and been home more but it's hardly been a great ordeal for them. Christ people love a drama. This is why we have anxious kids as so many parents cause a drama out if everything.

I was about to say something similar but Spaniel has nailed it.

Suffered enough? Ridiculous thing to say. Especially in this context. FFS, sometimes the pearl clutching is overwhelming.

Checking your temperature is a complete waste of time as not everyone who’s positive has a temperature and let’s face if you do have one the last thing you would do is queue to go in a theme park .
Queuing at theme parks has been the norm anyone but usually to get on rides .

@Daisyhoney

This is one of the things I'd like to see scrapped asap - having to pre-book everything. It's a pain, you don't know what the weather's going to do. Can't wait to be able to just wake up and decide to just go somewhere and actually pay at the gate, like the old days. And don't get me started on time slots - some places only give half hour options. What's that about ?

Pre booking has been a thing for lots of places before covid too! Yes, it's annoying, but busy venues need to control entry and spread bookings across all available dates/times.

A few years ago, we had to pre book York's chocolate experience, we had to pre-book stadia tours like Anfield, Wembley and Newcastle. In Amsterdam, you have to pre book Anne Frank House weeks in advance, likewise Park Guell in Barcelona.

There were fewer and fewer places to "just turn up" before covid.

Sounds just like Drayton Manor and before anyone starts, they claimed to be running at 50 percent capacity (hence less crowds). This was a lie.

@GNCQ

It's crazy to take your children to Chessington at the beginning of another wave, yes.

It's madness.

And exactly why is it mad? I would think if crowds are properly managed and numbers kept well below capacity (which maybe they weren’t), then riding a rollercoaster outdoors is much safer than sitting in a pub. Chessington isn’t all that well managed at the best of times though so that’s perhaps the root of the problem!

Can't believe people are getting blamed for prebooking tickets to an outdoor attraction.

Chessington knew exactly how many passes they had sold. Temperature checks aren't new, they knew how long it would take. They just didn't bother managing the queues properly because fuck the customers, they've paid already and aren't likely to turn round and go home so will wait and fork out more money despite terrible service, bollocks to them. This is all on Chessington being shit, not at all the fault of people trying to do something enjoyable.

Yes I agree Kazzyhoward that some places had prebooking before covid - Harry Potter Studio Tours being one - but loads didn't including theme parks,zoos,anywhere National Trust/English Heritage ( we've had passes over the years for all of these and you could just turn up on the day ).
So there has always been loads of places you could 'just turn up' .

Why are places still insisting on a temperature check? Absolutely useless.

I am was among wed that Chesingyon’s excuse was that everyone unexpectedly arrived at the same tune -surely most people buying expensive day tickets choose to arrive good and early ie the same time

I do suspect the fact that so much more is pre-booked is encouraging these attractions to be lazy.

The temperature checks are utterly pointless so YANBU.

We were at Chessington for a couple of days over half term. It was crazy, none of the rules made any sense at all.

We didn't get temperature checked until the evening when we checked in to accommodation, we had been in the park all day by then.

This was my kids' Christmas present, already rolled over from February. On the Tuesday:

Skeleton staff, because COVID
All queues for rides 75minutes +
Queues to spend more £££ on fast passes over an hour to then be told all the fast passes for that day had been allocated
Sanitising some rides (dodgems) between each ride making queuing even longer but not sanitising any other rides
Having to give track and trace details to get in the arcade, but not anywhere else
day visitors had to pre book tickets and apparently numbers were limited but there were perhaps more people in the park than I have seen before on normal half term days
Absolutely ZERO social distancing. Some people wearing masks on rides, not others.

The next day was slightly less manic but it really was a shambles. And bloody expensive too.

I’m disappointed by the lack of sad-face pointing in the article. It’d be good to have at least one person pointing at the queue.

It’s appalling, but sadly not surprising for Merlin who are utter crap

Oh dear, DS has asked to go to a theme park for his birthday in a couple of weeks' time (not yet decided, but probably Alton Towers). All theme parks at least a 2 hour drive for us, so this fills me with dread (we've done quite well to avoid theme parks in the UK as we regularly visit Florida so sometimes do Disney/Universal).

I've had my temperature taken once and that was going into a furniture shop! I can go for pregnancy checks in the hospital and just walk in.

Pointless! They didn't need to cause that queue. I think some of this is so they look like they're doing everything to be covid safe.

@Daisyhoney

Yes I agree Kazzyhoward that some places had prebooking before covid - Harry Potter Studio Tours being one - but loads didn't including theme parks,zoos,anywhere National Trust/English Heritage ( we've had passes over the years for all of these and you could just turn up on the day ). So there has always been loads of places you could 'just turn up' .

Yes, but they were getting fewer and fewer as the years pass. A decade or so again, you would just turn up on the day, for more or less anything you wanted to do. Yes, you may have had to wait. Years ago, we were in Florida and went to do an air boat ride in a swamp - we just turned up and had to wait about an hour. Five years ago, we took or son to the same place and were turned away - we arrived mid morning, but that day was fully booked. Just shows how things have changed.

The internet changed it as venues discovered they could set up pre-booking systems cheaply which gave them guaranteed income and the ability to spread visitors numbers more evenly. They'd deliberate restrict the number of tickets for sale for peak times to "persuade" visitors to buy tickets for less popular days and start/end of day times.

Of course, lots of places still have ticket sales available for the day itself, but it's getting fewer and fewer, especially the busiest places who know they can sell all their tickets in advance. Why wouldn't they? The less popular places still need the ability to sell on the day - why would they turn people away if they aren't full?

@Girlmama3

I've had my temperature taken once and that was going into a furniture shop! I can go for pregnancy checks in the hospital and just walk in.

Pointless! They didn't need to cause that queue. I think some of this is so they look like they're doing everything to be covid safe.

Hospitals can be just as bad. My OH has cancer. First time he went for his day treatment to the oncology unit, they insisted on a covid test beforehand. Just him, not me, even though I was going in with him! Doh! For subsequent visits, they've not wanted one!

Then for subsequent visits, sometimes they take his forehead temperature, sometimes they don't. Sometimes they take mine too, sometimes they don't.

It's all a fiasco really. No consistency. It does seem to be all about looking to be taking precautions rather than actually doing it properly.

Wembley Stadium was a joke for the play offs last weekend.

The usual jobsworth stewards were telling people to sit at least one space apart in the side areas, and not listening when people were saying they were husband/wife, father/son etc and didn't need to be social distancing from eachother.

Then behind the goals, it was a huge mass of supporters sat/stood immediately together, not social distancing at all. But the stewards were too scared or couldn't be bothered to tell them to separate.

This "one rule for one, a different rule for others" really grates after a while. All because stewards/security staff are too scared/lazy to deal with the "hard" targets and spend their time on the easy targets instead. It's really time that kind of thing was stopped.

We do temperature checks at work. Didn't pick up a positive case. And I'm apparently so cold, I'm almost dead!

Lol. I have a naturally low temp, it only goes to 37 with a fever. Unless you know someone's normal temp then unless the reading is sky high it's fairly useless.

Chessington (and indeed the other merlin attractions) requires pre booking only at the moment.

They are advertising themselves as covid secure and limiting ticket numbers to allow for social distancing.

This is clearly not happening. I appreciate they have taken a massive hit with the amount of closures and restrictions in the past year-18 months, but it's irresponsible to be selling the volumes of tickets they are selling.

Wow - can't believe that anyone still thinks there's a point in temperature checks.

Particularly among children, very few report high temperatures.

Still provided the whole thing is outdoors, it's unlikely to result in a surge in infections.

I'd say it's the height of irresponsibility to take your children to a crowded visitor attraction when cases are rising exponentially.