Chessington has told you what its new Minecraft coaster is called, where it goes and when it opens. It has not told you what it actually is, and that is the more interesting question.
Merlin Entertainments and Mojang Studios have named the ride Escape the Nether, the centrepiece of the £50 million Minecraft World land due at Chessington World of Adventures in 2027. The £50 million covers the whole land, not the coaster alone. Blooloop reports that the ride takes guests through dark mines before they emerge through a Nether portal into an Overworld-themed area, and that Merlin billed it as the world’s first Minecraft-themed roller coaster. New footage was shown at Minecraft LIVE on 26 September, and contractor Glencar reported in October that track was in place on site.
The detail
The park has not named a manufacturer or published any dimensions. Two other sources fill the gap. RCDB lists the ride as an Intamin Multi Dimension Coaster, and a planning application for the project reportedly names Intamin as the designer of the coaster. Treat the manufacturer as strongly indicated, not announced by Chessington.
| Spec | Detail |
|---|---|
| Ride | Escape the Nether, Minecraft World, Chessington |
| Opening | 2027 (no date given) |
| Reported manufacturer | Intamin, Multi Dimension Coaster (RCDB; not park-confirmed) |
| Reported vehicles | Single cars, 12 riders, four across in three rows (RCDB) |
| Inversions | None (RCDB) |
| Height, length, speed | Not published |
| Layout | Indoor and outdoor sections |
I have left height, length and speed out because none has been published. A forum figure of 72 m (236 ft) is circulating; it has no source behind it and would be wildly out of keeping with a ride built largely inside a show building.
What it actually means
Most coasters are defined by their biggest element: a lift hill, a launch, a drop. Intamin’s Multi Dimension Coaster, or MDC, is defined by the opposite. Intamin’s product page calls it a “special effect element coaster”: a dark-ride coaster assembled from a menu of track sections that do something other than carry the train along.
That menu includes a 360° turntable (a section of track that rotates the train on the spot), a gyro table that tilts it on a motion platform, a free-fall drop track, a teeter-totter that tips the track like a seesaw, and a side drop that sends the train down a slope sideways. Between those, the train is launched by linear synchronous motors (LSM, magnets in the track) or friction wheels, forwards or backwards, or lifted conventionally. Vehicles range from two to 16 riders, some of them spinning.
The design suits a Minecraft ride for an obvious reason. A coaster that mostly happens in the dark, with scenes, switches and surprises, can be themed like a story rather than a track layout. It also suits a London-edge site, where a tall structure invites planning arguments and a 15 m (49 ft) show building, the height the planning documents reportedly give for the main coaster building, does not.
Intamin’s own comparison point is Movie Park Germany’s Studio Tour, which opened in June 2021: a 12-seat train on 532 m (1,745 ft) of track at up to 60 km/h (37 mph), billed as Europe’s first double-launched indoor coaster, with a 360° turntable and a high-speed switch track. Intamin’s page lists Th13teen at Alton Towers and Uncharted at PortAventura among other MDC installations. If Chessington follows that template, expect a gentle-to-moderate speed and a lot of theatre, not a record. That is an inference from the model, not a statement from the park.
The “world’s first” claim is narrow but fair as worded. Merlin says first Minecraft-themed coaster, not first indoor-outdoor coaster, and a licence is the only thing that makes it a first. The engineering is established Intamin kit.
The Dispatch verdict
The ride is more credible than the headline suggests. Intamin’s MDC has a proven record of reliable, high-capacity dark-ride coasters, which is exactly what a family park wants from a licence-driven attraction. What we cannot yet judge is the layout, the intensity or the height restriction, and nothing official exists on any of them. Treat 2027 as a theming story built on solid machinery, and wait for the numbers.
Further reading: How launch coasters work · How trackless dark rides work · Who builds the world’s roller coasters? · Why parks soft-open rides