Quite a few reviews now starting to appear on TA about the traveler weekend, this one goes into some detail about their visit...
Score 2 out of 5
Bare knuckle fighting traveler boys, weed and unhappy families
We felt bad for the staff members and young families attending the scare fest on Sunday the 15th 2017.
We left super early to get to Alton towers due to long drive and knowing it would be busy on a Sunday afternoon.
Upon arrival we were very excited having been here before but we had came for the mazes in particular, we went straight to book our scare maze times and all was well however later that day it went downhill very quickly.
There seemed to be an arranged traveler meet up and they were not the friendliest: it was intimidating to walk past huge groups of them running around shouting abuse, saying they were going to beat up staff members, pushing each other about, throwing rubbish and spitting in directions of the general public. We noticed once the travellers came a lot of families went which was a shame really.
One staff member looked very frustrated after cleaning all the continuous mess in the fountain and around them as they caused more mess than normal. The park soon looked a tip once they smashed the pumpkins and distorted bean bag toys.
We witnessed a bare knuckle fight from young traveler boys then watch them chased by security.
We saw security catching traveler boys trying to sneak into the maze line without paid tickets, they also tried to go into the actual maze itself before a staff member caught them and rounded them up while everyone in line watched.
While in one line for 40 minutes a groups of traveler girls behind us in line noticed people they knew at the front of the line and push through everyone to the front, a few people commented but they still went on the ride before those waiting in front of them, after this it was apparent that there was a lot of line jumping. Also while in line we pushed and knocked on many occasions by the travellers around us, this made us feel uneasy and unhappy making he experience poor.
We tried to enjoy our visit and get to all our mazes on time as we were advised by staff members to go early to our mazes (15-20mins before) in which we did and the lines were up to an hour long, some more.
With the amount of people attending it was hard to get seen for food and drinks as most refreshment stands had 1 sometimes 2 staff members running them. They had sold out of the normally refillable bottles. We paid less (£5, normally £7)for a little water bottle which the lid did not fit on correctly, therefore leaking into our bags, thankfully a staff member in the smiler shop gave us a new one and said we wasn't the first to return the bottles.
Walking to the freak show to go home we saw people getting taken away by police, not to mention a lot of people were happily smoking weed, smoking around families and also smoking in the line for rides.
The were no staff dressed up around the park other than for mazes and not many decorations apart from the entrance area.
With all the overcrowding we did not have enough time to make all the scare fest mazes we had paid for especially the new one we paid extra for which was very disappointing we left happy with the mazes we had experienced but unimpressed by the overall day.
Would recommend the mazes, they say you may be separated however that doesn't really happen much. They are good but Thorpe park is a bit better.
You could see some of the actors worked hard to stay in character however their ear pieces could of been better covered and some parts of the maze there were people chilling.