2013 has been a very busy year for Alton Towers, and TowersStreet have been bringing you all the latest news from the Resort. Take a step back in time for our first 2013 roundup, where we remind ourselves of what happened between January and March…
January
January kicked off with exciting news for the park’s popular maze The Sanctuary when it won an award for ‘Best Scaremaze’ from the popular ScareTOURS website. A few days after this though came some bad news, when things began to look bleaker for the park as we noticed the first hints of a delayed opening date for The Smiler as the construction countdown was removed from the official website. This didn’t dampen spirits though, as we were proud to announce the winner of our SW7 competition, alongside announcing that X Sector would receive much needed TLC during the 2012/3 closed season.
Equally exciting news in January surrounded The Smiler, when its national marketing campaign kicked off with viral news articles relating to sheep! We also exclusively broke news of the ride’s official name before letting you all know the operating dates for the 2013 season. Unfortunately though the good news did not continue for long, as we discovered that The Smiler would officially be delayed by at least two months. It was a sad way to leave January, but we are certain that the wait for the ride was worth it in the end!
February
February started brightly when we brought you details of the revamp of some of the rooms in the Alton Towers Hotel into Moon Voyager rooms – the first room refurbishments for many years. We also showed you plenty of updates to the park and hotels when we took a trip to the popular February Half Term event – the first time the park opened during 2013. Exciting news on The Smiler continued when John Wardley talked about the ride on Bolton FM and the official game for the ride was released. 
The game provided us with the first insight into what the ride and theme would truly be like, and was a landmark in the ride’s marketing developments.
February also brought us news on the return of Alton Towers Live as well as some interesting planning applications for new fencing in the park’s famous gardens.
March
The month of March is always exciting for Alton Towers fans as it signals the start of a new season! At the start of the month we brought you two roundups of the latest news as we counted down the days until the park opened. Following on from the roundups was official news of The Sanctuary’s temporary return as well as the official park opening times for the new season.
In slightly more exciting news, we published speculation on The Smiler possibly featuring a world-beating number of inversions – a piece of speculation that turned out to be true! However, after this high came a few lows for the park as we announced that X Sector would feature a reduced ride line-up whilst construction continued on The Smiler. This bad news continued as snow disrupted the park during the end of the month and actually caused the park to close its gates on more than one occasion!
The start of the year had many ups and downs for the park, but it was an exciting time for fans with the variety of news stories that kept interest high.
Stick with us here at TowersStreet as we revisit other months from the 2013, summarising the events of the season. We hope to bring you more exciting news during 2014! Why not reminisce about our past news stories on our popular TowersStreet Talk forum.
