Theme of despair: Drop’N Chicken at Chessington reviewed

Chessington World of Adventures sits in a bowl near the A3. I went in the 1970s when it was a zoo, home to some unhappy orangutans who lived in a cage which made me scream. Being a lonely sort of child, I hugged concrete dinosaurs in the rain. Now it is owned by Merlin Entertainments – a sort of National Trust for people who prefer rollercoasters to country houses – which is owned by a hedge fund that employs teenagers.

We are here to feel fear because my son, who is nine, has never really felt it, which is a good thing: and Merlin Entertainments monetises this, offering fear for a price, with parking. I am Jewish, and queuing for fear isn’t my thing, but I like to consider myself a loving mother so here we are. Except the queues for the Vampire – a rollercoaster – and Dragon’s Fury – another rollercoaster – are 80 minutes long. I once cruised the Bahamas and went to the Atlantis resort to interact with a sort of dolphin prostitute that pushed me along with its nose for a fish. Then I watched fat adults in rubber rings get sucked up a slide. But this is substantially more insane. They queue dressed as witches – they are small, heavily made-up and very dedicated witches, gilded with lanyards to indicate that they come here all the time by choice – for 80 minutes to be dropped down a hole, and then retire for theme-park food, which is food that will kill you in the right amounts: fish and chips, hamburgers, chicken in a bun, pizza and pasta, sugar.

If 80 minutes in a queue is too long to bear, you may upgrade to fast pass for £95 a head online in a VIP centre with potted plants and catalogues offering an experience with a giraffe where there is almost no mobile tele-phone service. I had to beg them to take my money.

The pot plants remind me of the Jurassic Park and Jurassic World trilogies which, after visiting Chessington World of Adventures, I am convinced were funded entirely by Merlin Entertainments. Because if you aren’t eaten by the exhibits, you will take anything, and these people do. ‘It’s a good day when no one dies.’ Put that on your tagline.

There is always something despairing about theme parks. I wonder if it is the cognitive dissonance between what people want and what they get. Parents have despairing faces; children are seeking. We go on the Gruffalo River Ride Adventure, an indoor river with lights and sounds and plastic animals, which I enjoy, and then Zufari: Ride into Africa! in which we sit in a bus which does a three-point turn in front of some giraffes. Then food, which is terrible. I thought nothing could match Winter Wonderland’s chorizo pretzel, which I can still taste a decade on, but at least a chorizo pretzel has ambition. Drop’N Chicken is a restaurant that has given up. It is near some plastic boulders, and it has a velvet rope across the entrance, as if for warning, which we ignore.

We order chicken burgers and fries. I can’t fault the staff – they are charming in the face of hell – but this is not food. It is sugar and bindings and matter: heavy, greasy, loveless chips; sad lumps of cool breaded chicken; the world’s worst bun. You might say: what do I expect? It’s a theme park! To which I reply: elitists. The day of wonder cost me nearly £200, and I have one child. I left not only hungry but genuinely angry. People deserve better than to be stripped of their money for this, even if they do want to be dropped down holes. That’s a choice.