Chessington History 1997

The biggest news for 1997 was the removal of the Chessington Railroad, the Railway used to take guests around the theme park (instead of Safari Skyway taking you around the zoo) but had become un-popular and also went straight through several areas which would stumble on future developments.

Instead, Chessington decided to open another children’s attraction on the site of the old station area, the attraction being Action Man: Critical Mission.

Action Man was essentially a walk through adventure for children with climbing, obstacles and much more. The use of Action Man also meant new merchandise coming to the park and with Action Man being quite big, it would certainly attract families to the park and the gift shops!

Also noticeable for 1997 was the change in the map design. Apart from being slightly shorter, Rameses Revenge still dominated the front, but as seen the actual map design could have been the worst ever! Particularly noticeable would be Smugglers Galleon taking up more room that the Vampire and in terms of navigation the appearance of there being no walk from Smugglers Cove up to the Circus. Where other maps really captured the detail (yes they’re only guides), the 1997 map failed to capture much at all.

The Animal Land which the park used to advertise the Zoo areas was re-named to Animal Experiences, a name for the area that would be changed a lot over the next few years.