Is a theme park FAST PASS worth it?

I try to review as many Chessington World Of Adventures rides as possible, with our very first VIP Lane Fast Pass Reserve and Ride Virtual Passes.

Is a Fast Pass for a Theme Park worth it? Join me, who hates theme parks as I put Chessington World of Adventures' Virtual Reserve and Ride VIP passes to the test! Discover if spending extra money on queue jump passes genuinely improves the theme park experience, even on a quieter day. We'll explore popular rides like Mandrill Mayhem, Dragon's Fury, Gruffalo River Ride, Tomb Blaster, and Tiger Rock, cost up the infamous unlimited drink refill, and share an honest review of the VIP fast pass queue jump system. 

Is a FAST PASS worth it? (Chessington Theme Park Reserve & Ride Virtual pass!)



TRANSCRIPT: (CLICK PLAY ON THE VIDEO ABOVE)

THIS IS THE TRANSCRIPT - CLICK PLAY ON THE VIDEO ABOVE!

Hello, welcome back to the channel. This is the Dad Delivers vlog, where we try new things to make your family happy. And the new thing I'm trying today is taking a dad who hates theme parks to a theme park with VIP passes. Ah, so I don't know what it is about theme parks, apart from the sensory overload and the enormous cost. I think the biggest problem is that you have to, obviously, you have to queue for everything. That's, you know, they charge for that scarcity, but then that's the whole VIP ride situation, VIP pass. Now, we've never had a VIP pass until today. This is our very first time. We've gone for a VIP pass. We bought them for the kids. So, we have two teenage kids. Oh, ow. So, we've come to Chessington World of Adventures, where they have three tiers of passes, and what we've tried, which is a virtual reserve and ride, and I'll explain that as we go. It's actually quite clever, and I think it's working out for us quite well today. So, it's a Monday, and it's quieter than usual, so that's a good thing already. But I'm going to show you as many of the rides and features of Chessington World of Adventures as possible. Here's the entrance. Got to find our tickets.

Now, this is the Vampire ride. My son has taken the camera on board, and I think he's going to get this a shot right now. There we go. So, I've hit 'Reserve and Ride' for Mandrill Mayhem, and it's a 40-minute wait. So, it's counting down from 40 minutes now while they're in the queue over there for Vampire, which is this ride. It's just all this administration you've got to do. It's just like being at work. I just want to sit down. So, you just got off Mandrill Mayhem. I swear when we went backwards, my eyes were like forced to close. It felt... it felt like I was going to black out. It just went like that, very fast. It forces you to scream because it's so quick. It's just kind of like a shock, and then when you look down at the height, it's terrifying. What... what score would you give it? 10. 10. 10. 10 for Mandrill Mayhem. That's just... just behind us.

So, this is how the virtual reserve and ride works. I think I'm just doing this for the first time. You can reserve your place in a queue ahead of time, but you can obviously only do that once. So, you can only be queuing for one thing at any one time. So, we've got the virtual passes for my two kids, which cost us £25 each. So, for £50, they are going to queue slightly less. We've never done this before, so it is good to try it once in your life, I guess.

Dragon's Fury. How much for Dragon's Fury? Not how much. Can you describe it? What is it? You're in a carriage of four. Yeah. And as soon as you get on the ride, it's this steep track, and then you just drop and go up and down and up and down again, but 'round. It's hard to explain. And what score would you give it? A nine and a half. Nine and a half. 10. Solid 10. It was very quick though. I'm going to have some. So, we've already hit the thing I love most about theme parks, which is the misleading wait times. I just got a call from the... from the line to say it wasn't 35 minutes. It was, and I've looked at the app, it's now 75 minutes. So, the time that you see when you go in isn't accurate.

This is the Blue Barnacle. Oh, that was really fun. This is the pirate ship where it goes back and forth and back and forth. Yeah. When you... when you're not at the front of the queue, you're guaranteed to not get at the back of the pirate ship. But if you can get at the back of the pirate ship, that's the best place to be. Then you have the biggest swing. Oh, that's cool. But I rate it like an eight and a half. Okay. There's no signal. There's no mobile signal. So, you can't set the pass. So, the pass that you paid £50 for, you can't use because there's no phone signal.

It's the Gruffalo River Ride Adventure. We're entering the world of the Gruffalo. Oh, look. Gruffalo. It's like Gruffalo.

Owls like ice cream. This is good. We're... we're learning about literature.

So, score out of 10. What would you give that? 10. What would you give it? A nine and a half. Nine and a half. 9.75. 9.75. I give it... I'll just put a cap over the camera. I'm going to give that a solid 10 because you get to sit down and you get a nice little rinse.

Now it's the scariest ride of all. The one I've been dreading: the unlimited drink. So last time... So, we've never... It looks like we're a couple of high ballers. Last time we got the dreaded unlimited drink just to see if it was worth it. I can't remember how much we paid. I've got it. I've got the actual footage from that here. So, we're trying to guess. We sent our son in to find out. We're trying to guess how much the refresh refill cups are. I reckon it's 15. I reckon it's eight. You reckon it's 8? 12? 12. Okay. 15. 8. 12. Let's see who's right. Okay. We've come in and actually it's £16. So, I was right. I won. And we know that the prices have gone up since last year. So to buy one of those cups today, at the time of filming, is £18. £18 for unlimited drink. But we managed to keep the cup and bring it back. And I think to reactivate it, it doesn't cost £18, but we don't know how much it costs. You went to the till. I... I'll reveal how much it costs. "Present them this. Ask if they can react." Yeah. They say, "Okay, you pay £12." £12? It used to be 10. Oh, brilliant. So, for £12, you get unlimited refills at the filling stations. So, when you buy it once, save it. But when you come here next year, it'll be 20.

So, this is an investment, right? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So, there is a catch. The catch is you have to wait 5 minutes before you can refill it again. 6 minutes. What is this place? They're just obsessed with counting down time. So you need a 5-minute countdown to... you need to factor that into your queue time on your Reserve and Ride virtual queuing pass.

So this is my favourite one of the whole park. It's my only request that we do this twice. It's Tomb Blaster.

Right. Got my gun, and there's a display down here that shows you your score. So, the idea of this is to get your laser gun and to shoot at the... at the flashing targets and obviously try and hit as many of the targets as possible. I think I've got a bit of a weak laser, unfortunately. I'm blaming it down to my poor... my poor laser sight. So, we got some coffee and donuts. We got five of these donuts for £8.50 for the donuts. So, it's £15 for one latte and five of these mini donuts, which is a bit crazy 'cause we got the unlimited cold drink. What's the donut taste like? Is it good? Yeah, it's good. Try it. Oh, fantastic.

We're just right next to a tiger. That's really cool, and it's my favourite bit. I'm giving that a 10. Tiger Crossing gets a solid 10. So, this is the Rattlesnake. It's like a winding roller coaster. It was really jolty. It was so jolty. Each turn I felt like I was getting punched. I hated that. That was like five. A five. It was really quick. It was really quick, and it was really jolty. And it's a... what a roller coaster, and it was just you and then two random people in front of us 'cause there was only two of us. That's a four actually. Four. So, you make it a four out of 10. Yeah. It wasn't... it wasn't great. It was funny. It was funny, but it wasn't maybe like a six. A six. It was less for like the thrill of it. More like it wouldn't be worth the queue. It wouldn't be worth the queue. It's too... But we've been on that like last year. We like... It was a lot fun. It felt a lot more fun last year for some reason. So that's the Rattlesnake. Not a very high mark. That's probably the lowest so far.

This is a bench. Give the benches a 10. The benches are brilliant. They need more of them. I'd have a 'ride and reserve' pass just for the benches. What's this called? Um, Tiger Rock. Tiger drop. Tiger rock. Tiger rock.

Where am I? So, this is Tiger Rock. We were on this last year. I think we were queuing for this about 90 minutes. Today, without any kind of reserve ride, it took what would you say? Half an hour. And that sort of feels worth it. Oh, here we go. First drop. Oh, no.

Okay. I didn't think you'd get that wet that quickly.

You did the intro at the top of that. I did. I should. Okay, I'll do the intro. I'll do the intro. "Taking a dad who hates theme parks to a theme park with VIP passes."

That was absolutely brilliant. So, I think that was the second ride that we've done. What would you give that? A two and a half? Seven. We did kind of wait 40 minutes for it, but I... I'd give that a solid 10. I love that. If the wait were longer, the score would be lower, I think. Oh, toilets.

So, here's a review of the Chessington World of Adventure Reserve and Ride virtual queue pass. I don't know if it's because the park is quieter today, but it just feels so much less stressful being able to queue in advance and not having to wait 90 minutes on every ride and then only getting four or five rides in a day. I... I just never thought that spending £50 to queue jump one queue at a time would actually feel this good. It does actually improve the experience, and it massages my downer on theme parks. We did only get them for the kids though, and the kids are now teenagers. I think if you had younger kids, you'd probably want four passes, which would obviously double the cost, which this year, at time of recording, would have made it £100. Yeah, £100. So spending 50 so the kids can run off, the teenage kids can run off, go on the rides that I really don't need or want to go on, it's been absolutely fantastic. So maybe our case scenario is unique, but getting two passes so that you can jump on the really popular big rides has really helped. And it's been enough to get through the day. I don't know if it's going to be different if it were in the middle of the summer season, and this place behind me would be completely rammed. Today, it's been really pleasant, and actually, we've done enough rides, coming up to 4:00 now, and it really feels like we've had almost £180 worth of entertainment, and this has been used quite a few times as well. So, that's worked out about £3 each for unlimited drinks, which that's pretty good actually. So, my downer on theme parks on this one visit has, I think, it's kind of been cured. So, the day at Chessington, I'm calling this a Dad Delivers success!

I'm calling this a dad delivers success. Thank you for hitting the thumbs up or the subscribe button. It really helps me to keep this channel going. So, thank you. I'm soaked. Uh, leave a note in the comments, what's your favourite ride? And right here is what YouTube knows you want to be watching next.

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