Mentioned it in the Project Amazon thread, but I visited Chessington yesterday on a very quiet Thursday (but with very hot weather), and we actually had a really lovely time.
The park is really quite lovely in parts, but as I mentioned in the other post, it does feel like it needs more of a revamp in parts. The place had a lovely atmosphere though, I really love the area with Rattlesnake, Croc Drop, and the old Rameses queue line winding above, and I do wish Croc Drop took advantage of it tbh.
They had the Mardi Gras event on (in June, weird...) and if I'm honest it's not my cup of tea at all. The performers were great and are obviously good at their job, but they felt awkwardly placed. I wasn't a fan of the pop music playing around the park, or the event's food offerings either. We ended up at the place beside Tomb Blaster and the Veggie Deluxe burger was a surprise hit, actually delicious and not what I was expecting at all.
Operations weren't great but on a day where all of the major attractions were at a 5/10 minute wait or walk on, it didn't really matter. I don't know if anyone can enlighten me as to why, but they were running two trains on Vampire but sending one of them around empty every time? Odd.
But overall a lovely day, but I'll be glad to see a revamped entrance area and the Jumanji expansion or whatever it is. I do sort of wish they'd skip investments in new attractions for a while and spend a load of cash just theming the crap out of the place. It has so much potential, and the themes they have are great, I just think if it had top tier theming, it could be something really noteworthy, something Animal Kingdom-esque, but on a much smaller scale of course.