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Fireworks 2024

I enjoyed the show and the narrative was OK, but personally would prefer more focus on fireworks. Jubilee Fireworks are fantastic at pyromusical displays, getting the fireworks timed perfectly to the songs, but as the display this year featured a lot of alien fight chaos it just didn’t feel like the actual fireworks could be the star of the show. Still a great display, but more of a fantastic spectacle show than a fireworks focused thing.
 
QTXAdsy said:
Regarding Nemesis in the show...
With Nemesis being released from the pit to protect the Earth from the spaceship, does this mean that Nemesis has become an anti-hero Godzilla who now protects the planet? Very 90s Heisei era Godzilla storyline there which Godzilla fans will know what I'm talking about.
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That's how I took it, and I love it! Finally living up to the Secret Weapon moniker too
 
Mykeprime said:
That's how I took it, and I love it! Finally living up to the Secret Weapon moniker too
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And the moral of the story...
So I case of emergency of another space monster, send in Nemesis to fight like a good old Kaiju flick.

Seriously, with all this lore they've done with Nemesis regarding Phalanx and all, Merlin if they played their cards right could licence this out for a Netflix series of Nemesis being an anti hero monster defending the Earth like a classic Godzilla film if this is what I'm interpreting the new storyline for Nemesis. And to think Nemesis was the 'evil' ride after all these years, does this mean Smiler and Oblivion and the villian rides then?
 
Really enjoyed the display this year, I think what really stood out for me were the lasers- incredible surely the best we’ve seen at Towers? And the humour of this year’s display- I don’t think they’ve ever really gone for the tongue-in-cheek sort of humour we got this year.
John Dalton’s entrance with the pictures of him at various landmarks really tickled me. His whole character was brilliant- a great mix of taking the mick out of types like Musk and Trump! I hope they bring him back next year for Project Ocean opening.
 
lee2804 said:
Hopefully last yr of them. Given the location they are devastating to local wildlife. They must kill hundreds of animals from the noise of them.

Yes you can moan at me and stuff but dont really care. They are a menace to wildlife and pets.
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I can only speak on behalf of my fellow geese. Having previously worried about my cousins and fireworks, I contacted Alton Towers and the RSPB about the steps taken to protect the water fowl.

Rigourous risk assessments are taken every year, and the safety of all living beings is paramount during the display.

I appreciate your concern though.
 
VerticalLoop123 said:
Really enjoyed the display this year, I think what really stood out for me were the lasers- incredible surely the best we’ve seen at Towers? And the humour of this year’s display- I don’t think they’ve ever really gone for the tongue-in-cheek sort of humour we got this year.
John Dalton’s entrance with the pictures of him at various landmarks really tickled me. His whole character was brilliant- a great mix of taking the mick out of types like Musk and Trump! I hope they bring him back next year for Project Ocean opening.
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From the videos I’ve seen, he’s not a parody or anything recently political. He seems very much like a Tony Stark figure before he became Iron Man, an arms dealer complicit in profiting off of war.

Towers, as a brand, would never go near anything remotely political when your job is to entertain millions a year.
 
Just back from my visit tonight, and thought the show was absolutely superb. The theatrics, the story telling, the effects, song choice, Easter eggs etc etc

It reminded me a lot of “the first shadow” stranger things stage show for anyone who’s seen that. Ironic given the heavy influence it’s had on TCAAM and NRB. Also seemed heavily influenced by “Stark Expo” and the Iron Man movies, again no bad thing at all. The tone was spot on and left me grinning from ear to ear.

All of it was exactly Alton at its best, that blurry line between reality and fantasy.

The JW appearance, the mentions of horizon, the fireworks “appearing” to come from the nemesis area with it exploding into life, the laser sky defences, flamethrowers, the John dalton entrance and hype video, John daltons mid show explosion tarnished face, the “attack” explosions, crazy horses with squealing fireworks, the new towers street theme, the phalanx logo on the stage, the 2025 promo video and the “Alton towers presents ITHOMK”, the use of the nemesis theme ITHOMK at the end of the show, the consistent broken screens and accompanying effects, the phalanx guards, the one off merch, the story videos throughout the day, the phalanx logo on the stage, the changed towers street theme. All of it pure theatre and really well done.

The best show for me since 2021 that I thought was excellent.

If this is what we can expect moving forward every few years instead of the standard “power of the towers” juke box show I’m all for it to keep things fresh.

There’s lots of other Merlin owned IP they could use, pirate takeover, beornen ritual, ministry of joy tests, algenon adventures, talbot earl experiments, Alton family new years party, Henry hound jukebox etc

The other positives for this as others have said is the permanent lighting around the park and the general organisation and execution.

I just wonder where they go from here!

That was the good part of the day…

As for the latter part of the season. Even with gold fast track today we only managed Nemesis, Galactica, Wickerman, Smiler, TCAAM (still no trommel), Hex and Sharkbait Reef. I shudder to think how that would have felt for a visitor on a one off annual visit.

Hour long plus queues everywhere, queues at food outlets, cars still getting off the meadows, monorail on 2! trains with 4 sat in storage, thirteen down all day, rapids shut and large ride outages all day. This isn’t enjoyable and I shudder to think what long term damage it’s doing to the brand. At this point I’d rather they put prices up to keep numbers down instead of the current model.

The place needs 2 new attractions for a couple of seasons with few removals. When you just don’t want to do coasters all day, you are really struggling as an adult or family thrill range. The place desperately needs flat rides, dark rides, cinemas and general attractions (sea life etc) The rumour of toxicator opening and blade closing is a terrible decision.

And I wouldn’t be surprised if this is why we are seeing increased down time in the coasters, because there is nothing else and they are taking the major strain. They are machines getting used day after day.

Even from the start of the day, to arrive at the monorail to be told “don’t bother it’s an hour wait” just walk, (due to terrible capacity) is a miserable start. And as improved as the “the path” is, there is still a need for lighting throughout. Dare I say a cover? And what’s with all the harris fencing all of a sudden? It’s like arriving at a building site.

On a tangentially related topic, for the past 4 fireworks myself and a few friends have done the fireworks VIP ticket, we enjoy the warmth, food and the bells and whistles as a treat as we don’t visit that often. But much like everything else, we can honestly say the food offering post Aramark has become awful, thinking about what you could get in a real restaurant for £50ph it seems utterly absurd. Even the tea/coffee/hot chocolate have become noticeably worse and the marquee remains full of cobwebs and looks generally tired.

If this is what they are offering corporate clients it feels borderline embarrassing, although given a recent corporate visit to Warwick castle. Merlin’s event delivery appears omnishambolic from my experience.

I should add is was great to see part of towers street family restaurant bar reopen. Dear god please get it open next year, it’s a prime location that could and should be making lots of money. If they had any brains they’d add some bigger windows/balcony to the towers suite for a meal and a show offer. Giving money away. Same goes with the Swiss Cottage.

Luckily for Alton the fireworks were brilliant and covered over a lot of other large noticeable cracks. Hopefully the only way is up next season.
 
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Ash said:
Just back from my visit tonight, and thought the show was absolutely superb. The theatrics, the story telling, the effects, song choice, Easter eggs etc etc

It reminded me a lot of “the first shadow” stranger things stage show for anyone who’s seen that. Ironic given the heavy influence it’s had on TCAAM and NRB

All of it was exactly Alton at its best, that blurry line between reality and fantasy.

The JW appearance, the mentions of horizon, the fireworks “appearing” to come from the nemesis area with it exploding into life, the laser sky defences, flamethrowers, the John dalton entrance and hype video, John daltons mid show explosion tarnished face, the “attack” explosions, the 2025 promo video and the “Alton towers presents ITHOMK”, the consistent broken screens and accompanying effects, the phalanx guards, the one off merch, the story videos throughout the day, the phalanx logo on the stage, the changed towers street theme. All of it pure theatre and really well done.

The best show for me since 2021 that I thought was excellent.

If this is what we can expect moving forward every few years instead of the standard “power of the towers” juke box show I’m all for it to keep things fresh.

There’s lots of other Merlin owned IP they could use, pirate takeover, beornen ritual, ministry of joy tests, algenon adventures, talbot earl experiments, Alton family new years party, Henry hound jukebox etc

The other positives for this as others have said is the permanent lighting around the park and the general organisation and execution. And at least

That was the good part of the day…

As for the latter part of the season. Even with gold fast track today we only managed Nemesis, Galactica, Wickerman, Smiler, TCAAM (still no trommel), Hex and Sharkbait Reef. I shudder to think how that would have felt for a visitor on a one off annual visit.

Hour long plus queues everywhere, queues at food outlets, cars still getting off the meadows, monorail on 2! trains with 4 sat in storage, thirteen down all day, rapids shut and large ride outages all day. This isn’t enjoyable and I shudder to think what long term damage it’s doing to the brand. At this point I’d rather they put prices up to keep numbers down instead of the current model.

The place needs 2 new attractions for a couple of seasons with few removals. When you just don’t want to do coasters all day, you are really struggling as an adult or family thrill range. The place desperately needs flat rides, dark rides, cinemas and general attractions (sea life etc) The rumour of toxicator opening and blade closing is a terrible decision.

And I wouldn’t be surprised if this is why we are seeing increased down time in the coasters, because there is nothing else and they are taking the major strain. They are machines getting used day after day.

Even from the start of the day, to arrive at the monorail to be told “don’t bother it’s an hour wait” just walk, (due to terrible capacity) is a miserable start. And as improved as the “the path” is, there is still a need for lighting throughout. Dare I say a cover? And what’s with all the harris fencing all of a sudden? It’s like arriving at a building site.

On a tangentially related topic, for the past 4 fireworks myself and a few friends have done the fireworks VIP ticket, we enjoy the warmth, food and the bells and whistles as a treat as we don’t visit that often. But much like everything else, we can honestly say the food offering post Aramark has become awful, thinking about what you could get in a real restaurant for £50ph it seems utterly absurd. Even the tea/coffee/hot chocolate have become noticeably worse and the marquee remains full of cobwebs and looks generally tired.

If this is what they are offering corporate clients it feels borderline embarrassing, although given a recent corporate visit to Warwick castle. Merlin’s event delivery appears omnishambolic from my experience.

I should add is was great to see part of towers street family restaurant bar reopen. Dear god please get it open next year, it’s a prime location that could and should be making lots of money. If they had any brains they’d add some bigger windows/balcony to the towers suite for a meal and a show offer. Giving money away. Same goes with the Swiss Cottage.

Luckily for Alton the fireworks were brilliant and covered over a lot of other large noticeable cracks. Hopefully the only way is up next season.
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Did that VIP pen get a little too warm during the fireworks? I had visions of glow sticks melting and singed eyebrows AOTS 😂
 
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Definitely the best show of the ones I've been to. The story was fantastic campy fun and the fireworks, lasers, lights and music were all really well done.

Noticed how they just skipped over Sub Terra in the 'looking back' bit lol
 
Manchester1894 said:
Did that VIP pen get a little too warm during the fireworks? I had visions of glow sticks melting and singed eyebrows AOTS
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At the end of the ITHOMK segment it was incredibly hot, and we weren’t at the front of that section so god knows what that felt like. I was surprised how close we were. Same for part of the battle sequence, it seemed a missed moment that the explosions that went off three in a row getting progressively closer to the crowd, and these weren’t the normal flame machines.

Still good fun and I still have my eyebrows
 
I'm going to post a full trip report later, but this was my first AT trip in five years and we also did the Fireworks VIP.


Ash said:
As for the latter part of the season. Even with gold fast track today we only managed Nemesis, Galactica, Wickerman, Smiler, TCAAM (still no trommel), Hex and Sharkbait Reef. I shudder to think how that would have felt for a visitor on a one off annual visit.
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Don't know if entering via the Galactica gate helped but felt like we did better on the ride count. In the 11 hours on park (with a combo of using the gold fast track and queining) we did Nemesis and Wickerman twice each, Curse, Galactica, Gangsta Granny, Hex, Rita, Oblivion, Smiler, Spinball, Sharkbait, Flavios, Mine train and took good sized breaks.

Ash said:
On a tangentially related topic, for the past 4 fireworks myself and a few friends have done the fireworks VIP ticket, we enjoy the warmth, food and the bells and whistles as a treat as we don’t visit that often. But much like everything else, we can honestly say the food offering post Aramark has become awful, thinking about what you could get in a real restaurant for £50ph it seems utterly absurd.
Click to expand...

This was my first time doing VIP and the buffet exceeded my expectations, everything seemed well cooked and there was plenty of variety for meat eaters. I set my expectation low but it was decent.

I'll post a longer review on the trip report board later.
 
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So I just got back and at the end of the fireworks people were referring to me as "the compound guy" and whoever made the nickname thanks
 
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