Winter's Tail Chessington World of Adventures 2024 Review

By Scarlett Shepherd

A Winter’s Tail is back at Chessington World of Adventures for 2024, and below you can find our full review of the experience, including everything from the shows, some exclusive food and the Christmas village with Santa’s Grotto and Enchanted Hollow Toy Workshop.

Shows

Starting off with the shows on offer at A Winter’s Tail, and we feel that there was a good range of options for the whole family.

For the little kids there was a CoComelon Christmas sing along, which was very interactive and got all the kids up and dancing in front of the stage. This show was not very long, only lasting about 15 minutes, but this felt like a good amount of time, and there was also a chance to get your photo taken at the end with JJ and Cody.

The big show this year was Seatopia Robin Hood, which was the pantomime style pantomime taking place at the Seatopia stage. This was the biggest production that was taking place at A Winter’s Tail this year, and was complete with bright colourful costumes and interactivity. This was a good show for everyone to enjoy from the kids to the adults.

The last show that was taking place this year was Jingle Voices, which was a singing show in front of the Christmas tree. This was a fun musical performance that included a range of different Christmas tunes and hits throughout the ages.

Attractions

At Winter’s Tail 2024 the amount of the park that was open with attractions felt a little disappointing, due to the very limited offerings and large amounts of the park that were closed. This was also made worse on the day which we visited due to the high wind, which caused most of the rides to shut down for large parts of the day. However, Chessington did activate their return promise, so everyone who bought a ticket will be able to return for free.

The attractions open this year are:

Adventure Tree Carousel

AMAZU: Treetop Adventure

Dragon’s Playhouse – Soft Play

Elmer’s Flying Jumbos

Jungle Rangers

Room on the Broom – A Magical Journey

Sea Dragons

The Gruffalo River Ride Adventure

Tiny Truckers

Treetop Hoopers

Barrel Bail Out!

Griffin’s Galleon

Trawler Trouble

Blue Barnacle

Mamba Strike

Mandrill Mayhem

Ostrich Stampede

The attractions that were open felt tailored more towards smaller children, as most of the big rides such as Dragon’s Fury and Vampire were closed. However, there were a few attractions over in Jumanji that were operating, including Mandril Mayhem, Ostrich Stampede and Mamba Strike which the bigger kids and adults could enjoy.

One of the great things about visiting Chessington during A Winter’s Tail, is that the wait times for attractions were much lower than at other times throughout the year when the whole park is open. This was most evident with Mandril Mayhem, as it had a very short wait time of between 5 and 20 minutes (when it was open), as normally this attraction has a 45 minute or more wait time throughout the rest of the year.

However, one other attraction which would have been nice to see operating during A Winter’s Tail is Tomb Blaster, as this is an indoor ride that is great for all the family, and with the UK weather being a bit cold, wet and windy in the winter, it would have been nice to have another indoor attraction open which would be unaffected by the weather.

Christmas Village

The real highlight to A Winter’s Tail at Chessington World of Adventures was the Christmas Village, which had Santa’s Grotto and Enchanted Hollow Toy Workshop.

Unfortunately, the Christmas Village was a paid upcharge if you are an annual pass holder of £10 per person, but, if you are buying a day ticket then it was included in the price. However, it is also important to note that at the time of booking you need pick a time slot for when you are going to enter the Christmas Village area, so it is good to have an idea of when you might want to visit Santa before booking the tickets.

When it comes to the Christmas Village, we think that Chessington did an amazing job with it this year. The whole area felt very festive, and there were loads of elves around the area to point you in the right direction.

When you enter the Christmas Village, the first thing that you need to do is pick up your passport, as you will need to use this to get two stamps, one from Father Christmas in his Grotto, and the other from the Elves in the Toy Workshop. Once you have the two stamps you can then show this to the Elves at the end of the Toy Workshop where the kids can then get an early Christmas present. This included a choice between a reindeer or gingerbread man soft toy.

When it came to going to see Santa, Chessington had made the boring task of standing in a queue as fun as possible. This was because they were handing out silent disco headsets when we entered the line so that we could listen to some music and have a dance while we waited. Overall, the line was not too bad, as there were some photo ops along the way, and it kept moving at a constant pace, so took us around 20 minutes to get through it. Once we got to the front of the queue and it was our time to meet Santa, we were taken by an elf through a forest of snow covered trees to Santa’s Grotto. When we went inside we met Santa himself, and had the opportunity to take a photo and get the passport stamped. The whole Santa experience at Chessington was very good, and getting to walk through the forest with an elf to the Grotto made it feel very magical.

After meeting Santa, the next place to go is to the Enchanted Hollow Toy Workshop, and for us this was by far the highlight of the day (even better than meeting Santa!). When we enter the toy workshop we were greeted by an elf who gave us the second stamp in our passport, and then we followed the trail around the Toy Workshop to meet all of the different elves. Meeting all the elves was great fun, and they all had a different story to tell us along the way. They were all great at interacting with the kids, and the whole experience made it feel like we had been transported to the North Pole and were walking around a Santa’s Toy Workshop meeting everyone who made and wrapped the presents. At the end of the Toy Workshop the final elf will looked at our stamps and gave our daughter the option of which soft toy she would like.

Overall, the whole Christmas village experience was excellent, and definitely something that we would go back and do again next year.

You can check out our full video from A Winter’s Tail at Chessington World of Adventures 2024 which shows you all the details and walk through of the Christmas Village and the other offerings around the park.

Cookie Corner

When entering the park for A Winter’s Tail, make sure to pick up a copy of the map which also includes the clues which you need to answer in order to get a free cookie from the elves at cookie corner. If you miss picking this up at the entrance, then you can pop into cookie corner, which is opposite the penguins and next to the Christmas Rhino, in order to get a copy.

We had a great time keeping an eye out for all the different clues when we were walking around the park, and once we had completed them all, we took the completed sheet to cookie corner to get a free cookie.

The cookie offerings available were very good, as we received a large chocolate cookie which was decorated in a Christmas theme too. They also gave us one for everyone in our group. The cookie was very tasty and it was definitely worth completing the clues in order to get one.

If you have any allergies, then just let the elves know, as they also had some free from options available too.

Food

The Christmas food offerings available at Chessington this year did feel somewhat limited, especially because a lot of the food venues available at the park were closed.

For lunch we went to the smokehouse, where they had two Christmas themed foods, these were either turkey loaded fried or pork loaded fries. Both were priced at 14.75.

We opted for the pork loaded fries, which was a base of chunky chips covered in pigs in blankets, crispy pork cubes, stuffing and cranberry sauce. This meal had loads of meat on it, which was really good especially given the price point was quite expensive.

Summary

Overall, we had a great time at Chessington A Winter’s Tail 2024, but by far the highlight of the day was the Christmas village with Santa’s Grotto and the Toy Workshop. It would have been nice for a few more attractions around the park to be open, however, the ones that were operating all had very reasonable wait times. Given the lack of big rides open, except the ones in Jumanji, this event definitely feels more tailored towards families with younger children. However, there is still lots going on around the park which everyone can enjoy, including the shows and completing the clues on the trail to get a cookie from the elves.