CHESTER Zoo is to consign its famous monorail - once ridden by Royalty and a member of Take That - to the history books.

On the zoo's website, visitors are told that no visit is complete "without a ride on our Zoofari Monorail".

But with several multi-million projects in the pipeline the zoo has outgrown the monorail system, first opened in 1991, and it "no longer fits our vision for a world-class modern zoo".

The Queen took a trip on it when she visited in 2012, and it has allowed visitors to take in the black rhinos, Tsavo bird aviary, roan antelope, zebras, capybaras, tapirs, bats bridge, lions, giant otters, penguins, flamingos, lemurs, onagers, camels, greater one-horned rhino, Philippine spotted deer, and Asian elephants.

Gary Barlow and Peter Kaye are among the famous people who have taken a ride.

In 2009, music mogul Pete Waterman relaunched the service but just a week later eight passengers had to be rescued from the monorail by Cheshire Fire and Rescue Service.

In this month's members magazine, a zoo spokesman said: "It has been part of the zoo for nearly three decades but since its installation in 1991 the zoo has grown in size and the transportation system now doesn't even cover half of the 125 acres."

In recent years the monorail has been plagued with reliability issues.

And even when the monorail was opened by the Duchess of Kent it broke down on its first ever trip around the zoo while the duchess was still onboard..

The spokesman added: "Over the last few years we have experienced both system and train failures so this once state-of-the-art system is proving costly to maintain and unreliable for visitors."

One of the main reasons for the closure is current expansion plans for the zoo, including the new 'Grasslands' habitat which includes a hotel and lodges overlooking giraffes and zebras.

Its centrepiece would be an open African savannah habitat which would be home to rare species such as Rothschild's giraffe and Grevy's zebra as well as ostrich and antelope.

On the edge of this habitat, Chester Zoo hopes to create a restaurant with balcony views across the savannah.

CGI of what the new Grasslands habitat could look like

The hotel has been described as 'discreet, overnight accommodation' and will boast 42 rooms, including lodges overlooking the savannah, enabling guests to wake up to sunrise views over Grasslands.

The new area would be bordered by the zoo’s large, existing African Tsavo reserve area for Eastern back rhino and African painted dogs.

Visitors could also come face to face with some of the world’s smallest grassland creatures in a specially designed indoor habitat and the zoo hopes to inspire a nation of conservationists by connecting more people with nature offering close-up encounters with species such as cranes, vultures, aardvarks and warthogs.

Grasslands is the latest stage in the zoo’s strategic development plan and is being designed to help the zoo continue to push boundaries of world-class animal care and welfare.

The zoo monorail will operate until the end of August.

Monorails have never really caught on in the UK. The oldest can be found, and ridden, at Beulieu National Motor Museum and monorails, or skytrains, are part of the transport networks in larger cities like London and Glasgow.

And further afield, the monorail has put places like Brockway, Ogdenville and North Haverbrook on the map.