Chessington World of Adventures, situated in Surrey in the UK, has a new Reserve and Ride system which has replaced Fastrack for 2022. Using their smartphone, guests use Reserve & Ride to wait the queue time for the selected ride virtually, freeing up their time to visit other attractions, restaurants or the zoo, instead of waiting in line.
The system has 3 tiers, with the higher (and more expensive) levels giving shorter wait times.
- Regular offers the same wait time as the physical queue
- Express cuts the wait time in half
- Ultimate gives minimal waiting time and also includes the Rattlesnake coaster which can have very long waits at busy times.
The online price of the 3 tiers depends whether you go to the park in an off-peak day or at the height of the season, and ranges from £15 to £25 per person for Regular, £30 – £50 for Express, and £70 to £95 for Ultimate.
We recently tried out the Regular Reserve and Ride (at a cost of £15 each) on a quiet mid-week day in early May. Having made the purchase, we had to visit chessington.reserveandride.co.uk on our smartphone to LOGIN and then on arrival at the park we REDEEMED our passes and selected the ride to use it on first. It then told us how many minutes before we could get on the ride (this was the same time we would have had to wait if we had joined the main queue without a pass). When the time was up, we went to the “Reserve and Ride” gate, showed our pass QR code and were allowed into the queue (pretty near the front). The system knew how many passes we had purchased and displayed this on our phone.
The day we tried out the Reserve and Ride, the park was very quiet and so all wait times were short (less than 15 minutes). Nevertheless, it was still useful having the pass, and knowing exactly when we could get on the rides. On a busy day, the Express pass that halves the virtual queue would be a good idea if you wanted to increase the number of rides you could fit in during the day. You would have to be really keen to justify the cost of the Ultimate pass.
The Regular worked well for us on a quiet day. On relatively busy days there are plenty of other attractions to visit at Chessington whilst you wait for your entry time, in particular the Zoo. Without this system, you could spend a long time waiting in queues. If you want to use this system, just make sure your phone is fully charged at the start of the day.
