News, Views, Reviews, Photos

Alton Towers Theme Park Visit

ByKevin Simon

Oct 11, 2012

We recently went to Alton Towers theme park as we had collected token in the sun newspaper earlier in the year, you had to send off so many tokens and choose a block of dates unfortunately the dates we got through wasn’t a time we take the kids as this was in the first week back at school after the six weeks summer holiday, so we decided just to go as a couple.

We got there just as it opened, it because the missus is classed as disabled we got to park in the disabled / exclusive parking, and normal parking price is £6 for both normal and disabled, and the priority parking is £12, this car park is only about 50 yards from the entrance gates. On the subject of disabilities if you have a disabled badge make sure you go to guest services with your disabled badge and you can get priority queuing on rides the person with the disability will get a wrist band that allows that person and upto 3 other people to go priority queuing for free as anyone can pay for priority queuing for an additional cost, and not sure how much this was as I didn’t look. The the priority queuing works on most rides by you going through the exit of the ride. On the day we went it wasn’t that bad so this didn’t make that much difference on queuing times.

Now I’m not one for theme park rides so we didn’t go on the larger rides like TH13TEEN, Air, Blade, Nemesis, Oblivion, Rita (though this wasn’t working the day we went) Ripsaw, Submission and Enterprise, but we did go on some of the smaller rides, I know we are wimps really 🙂 As we mainly went to see what it would be like for the kids as there ages are 7, 10 and 12, and middle youngest dosnt like rides at all, even the small rollercoasters. So we was seeing would it be worth the money taking all the kids.

The park is set out in about 8 sections with different themes, In each section is at least one of the major thrill rides. The rides and attraction we went on included:

RUNAWAY MINE TRAIN, one of the smaller roller coaster, but great fun goes around twice and does go through a small tunnel. NEMESIS SUB-TERRA, you go into a room with seats around a egg and you get jolted about a bit in the dark with the seats moving, wind and water, its set out like a military base, could be scary for younger children. CONGO RIVER RAPIDS, normal water rapids of cause you can and will get wet the same as THE FLUME, which is a great log fume and you do get wet, but of cause this is what you go on these rider for 🙂 CHARLIE & THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY, great for all the family you start in a bout going around with moving characters from the story book with singing etc, then see a tv section then into the magical Elevator, which does move around a bit with moving images all around you. SKYRIDE, the cable cars that can get you from one side of the park to the other, nice and relaxing and great views of the park and gardens. ICE AGE 4D EXPERIENCE, a short from the ice age series of films with water, light, bubble effects etc and the 3D experience using 3D glasses. SHARKBAIT REEF by Sea-life, a small sea life centre aquarium, well set out and great waterlife and fish to see. BATTLE GALLEONS, you get into a boat that is guided around on rails that you can shoot with water guns around the boat at targets, though people waiting in the queue can also get you wet by the same guns around, now this is the ride we got most wet on as you cant easy move out of the way of these and when you get people doing it on purpose you get soaked as our water guns don’t seem to reach them (not a ride I would recommend) HEX – THE LEGEND OF THE TOWERS, this is where you are told the legend of the towers in which you sit in rows and in the middle is a chained up branch of a tree and as the commentary goes the room spins around so it feels like you are upside down at somepoints, this can make you very disorientated.

For the younger children there is a small farm with smaller rides aswell as seeing different animals, though i would say this would only appeal to the under 4 or 5’s. If you are older and want a more relaxing time then there are the gardens, but be warned these are in the centre of the park and do have some step slopes to get down and back up, but is well worth a look. There is also the main tower at the time we went this wasn’t fully open it looks like you will be able to go in and look at the history of the house etc.

There are different shows that go on around the park, the time we went there was two pirate shows in that day. this was very good and funny. If you are a smoker then you cant smoke unless in designated areas, these are shown on the map. As a smoker I didn’t mind this though at lot of people didn’t care about this and we seen a lot of people smoking while walking around, which I think was wrong as there was enough smoking areas with seating etc, and these inconsiderate people give us all smokers a bad name.

We did enjoy the day at Alton Towers theme park, but really for younger children or kids that don’t like rollercoasters etc but if you are visiting Alton Towers Resort this is really what you we be coming for, I wouldn’t recommend it for families with smaller children, as closer to us is Drayton Manor theme park and when I went with just my daughter 2 years ago we enjoyed the visit there and I did prefer Drayton Manor as more than just the larger rides, though was a nice day out.

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By Kevin Simon

I run this blog & also self employed cleaning out fish ponds, but due to spinal problems not able to do as much, now started a youtube channel showing my converted Peugeot Partner micro camper also as interest in photography so now vlog about the trips and of course Lego figures out in the wild photos.

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