Chessington ! First timer ....

[BeaLola]

DB wants to take my DS for the day this coming week. Is it worth buying the ticket online the day before to get in hour earlier and save bigger queue than queuing onday with a cereal voucher offer? Also os it worth paying the £34 to get a voucher towards food and drink ? I am not going as its a boys treat day out !

Went to a Chessington last wed with a friend and our 2 toddlers. We arrived at 9.45 and parked really close to the entrance. No queue to get in, we were pleasantly surprised! Queues for the rides didn't start to build up until about 11 but that depends on the day I guess. We used sainsburys buy one get one free vouchers to get in with no problems. We ate at the pizza place in the market square, good value for money and not as expensive as other places we've been. Food was good quality too.

We normally take sandwiches for lunch and then do Vampire burgers before going home, after 3 pm kids eat free if an adult has a meal as well.

I think it is better taking food and drink with you and buying an icecream or similar.

The sandwich stall near the soft play is quite decent though.

If you buy ticket online is it more expensive? I think it is about the same as using a voucher? I would just go with whatever is cheaper. But if about the same price then online will save time on the day as you print it out at home and then just go in. You will need parking voucher too.

If you get there reasonably early like about 9:30 (when they start selling tickets) or 9:45 you can usually get tickets fairly quickly and then go in. How old is DS? Old enough (and 1.4m tall) for the "big" rides like Vampire? If so, get going to those ones first because the queues for Vampire and Dragons Fury and Cobra are the 3 that get really long later on. If he is younger then he wont want to go on those - Zufari has horrific queues later on (best avoided in my opinion once the queues get long), I don't know if many of the other younger rides have such bad queues.

I wouldn't get food vouchers - would just take some food or buy what you feel like when you are there rather than being forced to buy whatever the voucher is for.