Project Sunshine Development

Plans & Concepts

In December 2024, Alton Towers announced their intention to build a new coaster in CBeebies Land ready for the 2026 season. The full planning documents state that:

The proposal is for the removal of an existing attraction and to replace it with a new attraction and ancillary buildings (station and maintenance buildings) within the CBeebies Land area of Alton Towers.

Shortly afterwards, documents related to ‘Project Sunshine‘ were uploaded to the Staffordshire Moorlands Planning Portal, and have since been significantly updated in April 2025. The planning documents confirm that the new coaster is set to be built on the site currently occupied by Postman Pat’s Parcel Post.

The new coaster looks to be a reasonably tame layout, suggesting it will be a junior coaster aimed at a younger age group than Octonaut’s Rollercoaster Adventure, the other coaster in CBeebies Land. Its high point will sit slightly above the height of the station building, before the coaster turns around a short loop of track back into the station.

To accommodate the new coaster, the park will completely remove the existing Postman Pat ride along with all the current buildings on the site and the new coaster’s track will mainly occupy the end of the site where the current ride’s station and queue line are located. The end of the site nearest to the entrance to CBeebies Land, including the current Corner Coffee terrace, will be used for queue lines and associated theming.

Get Set Go Treetop Adventure also passes through the site of Postman Pat’s Parcel Post and the plans show that the aerial railway would clash with the new development. Get Set Go’s track does not feature on the plans, but it understood that the ride will be shortened to make space for the new coaster.

Postman Pat’s Parcel Post was one of the headline attractions of CBeebies Land when it first opened in 2014, and was a new ride system reusing the path of the former Old Macdonald’s Tractor Ride.  The ride system is therefore still relatively young, sparking speculation that it may end up in storage pending a retheme and relocation somewhere either within Alton Towers or one of the other Merlin theme parks.

Whilst Postman Pat is arguably one of the more famous faces on CBeebies, due to his familiarity with multiple generation, the current iteration of the popular IP, Postman Pat’s Parcel Post, is no longer shown on the CBeebies TV channel and the final episode was made in 2017. The character is therefore prime for removal to bring fresh IPs into CBeebies Land.

Since the announcement there has therefore been much speculation that the new coaster could be themed to a more current IP such a Bluey, currently one of the most popular shows on CBeebies. Bluey arrived in CBeebies Land at the start of the 2024 season, but so far the park have yet to make much use of the IP, other than a small-scale show in Big Fun Showtime and accompanying Meet and Greet.