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2025: General Discussion

Alsty said:
Park has been pretty quiet today considering it's the bank holiday weekend. Most rides had short waits, walk on for Thirteen and Oblivion. Wicker Man and Smiler had the longest queues of the day (about 45 minutes).

Curiously though the hotels are only for residents only tonight? I've only known this on traveller weekends, but they're normally Easter and Scarefest. The staff at the hotel said it was residents only because of how busy the hotels are, which based on the park I find hard to believe.
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Bank Holidays are usually quiet anyway
 
Hid said:
Bank Holidays are usually quiet anyway
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The bank holiday Sunday (i.e. tomorrow) & Monday will be moderately busy. It will be Tuesday when Towers get it, as everyone avoids the bank holiday weekend and goes on the Tuesday as they think they are being clever and it will be empty. Wrong! Has always been the case for years.

I would suspect any "hotel residents only" in the hotels restriction to be more likely down to staffing. Recruitment in the hospitality sector is a nightmare now. Towers / Aramark will be paying the minimum wage, or very little more. Staff than have to take off tax / NI / transport costs etc. No doubt more jobs closer to home in the Stoke area that pay the same, but with fewer costs.

My employer is in the short break / hospitality business - recruitment for us is a nightmare too.
 
Kraken27 said:
The bank holiday Sunday (i.e. tomorrow) & Monday will be moderately busy. It will be Tuesday when Towers get it, as everyone avoids the bank holiday weekend and goes on the Tuesday as they think they are being clever and it will be empty. Wrong! Has always been the case for years.
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Also the fact that the August BH weekend is blacked out for gold MAP. Platinum and day tickets only.
 
Kraken27 said:
The bank holiday Sunday (i.e. tomorrow) & Monday will be moderately busy. It will be Tuesday when Towers get it, as everyone avoids the bank holiday weekend and goes on the Tuesday as they think they are being clever and it will be empty. Wrong! Has always been the case for years.

I would suspect any "hotel residents only" in the hotels restriction to be more likely down to staffing. Recruitment in the hospitality sector is a nightmare now. Towers / Aramark will be paying the minimum wage, or very little more. Staff than have to take off tax / NI / transport costs etc. No doubt more jobs closer to home in the Stoke area that pay the same, but with fewer costs.

My employer is in the short break / hospitality business - recruitment for us is a nightmare too.
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Well, guess I should buckle up for my visit on Tuesday...
 
AT86 said:
Anyone know why the park is closed Sunday 7th Sep? Presumably a corporate buy out of some sort?
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It’s for a buyout day for a big phone network company.

Received this email last week.

‘Dear Local Resident,

We wanted to give you some advance warning that because of a private hire event we are hosting on site in early September by a leading mobile phone provider, we will be supporting their event by allowing the installation of a temporary mobile phone mast on site located on one of our car parks for a 2 week period.

The mast is 24m in height so might be able to be seen or glimpsed from some areas outside of the resort ownership boundary, but we want to reassure you that this only a temporary mast and will only be on site for the period 26th August to 9th September, at which point it will be removed.

Thank you

Alton Towers Resort’
 
Amazing how money can be found - presumably by the mobile company - to improve the mobile phone network infrastructure when it affects themselves but when it's the general public, there's no money available with seemingly no investment! (yes I know one temporary mast is not the same as improving the network across the country!)
 
Steve74 said:
Amazing how money can be found - presumably by the mobile company - to improve the mobile phone network infrastructure when it affects themselves but when it's the general public, there's no money available with seemingly no investment! (yes I know one temporary mast is not the same as improving the network across the country!)
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Having curiously checked Ofcom's mobile signal coverage checker, I'm hazarding a guess that the telecom company is likely to be the newly merged Vodafone / Three.

Each of the mobile operators has reasonable mobile coverage in the park, but only Vodafone and Three fail to decently cover the resort offerings.
 
GooseOnTheLoose said:
Having curiously checked Ofcom's mobile signal coverage checker, I'm hazarding a guess that the telecom company is likely to be the newly merged Vodafone / Three.

Each of the mobile operators has reasonable mobile coverage in the park, but only Vodafone and Three fail to decently cover the resort offerings.
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I disagree somewhat with that - O2 is terrible everywhere I have been in the UK including in central London, so I have 2 SIMs - O2 for calls (still in contract) and Voxi (Vodafone) for data. In Towers, O2 is near enough no signal everywhere but Vodafone is far better - not brilliant, but better!
 
Steve74 said:
I disagree somewhat with that - O2 is terrible everywhere I have been in the UK including in central London, so I have 2 SIMs - O2 for calls (still in contract) and Voxi (Vodafone) for data. In Towers, O2 is near enough no signal everywhere but Vodafone is far better - not brilliant, but better!
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I can understand why you would disagree, as personal experiences can differ. Mobile signal coverage is only one piece of the puzzle, the type of modem you have in your device will play a major part too. I have issues on Vodafone with 5G enabled in my device, to a point where nothing loads and it becomes unusable, so I have to constantly have it disabled.

The point here is that there is only one mobile network operator who would need an additional mast to ensure blanket coverage across the whole resort, for reasonable coverage indoors and outdoors: Vodafone.

I'd have posted photos of the coverage to demonstrate, but I cannot be bothered to faff about with a third party image hosting service. You can check Ofcom's mobile network coverage map here:
 
I think it would be O2, they have recently added a priority line for the entrance security at Alton if you have an O2 phone, would deffinatly make sense if these two are linked (what are the chances of 2 separate mobile networks within such a small amount of time). here are some details:

 
IIRC, O2 hosted an event back in September 2019 where they did a park buy out as part of a competition for O2 customers to win Alton Towers tickets. I’m not an O2 customer so can’t confirm if this is happening again this year, or whether this is an internal staff event.

I assume the temporary mast is so their customers or staff can use their phones without experiencing signal blackouts. Wouldn’t be a great look to win a competition or attend an event hosted by O2 only to realise you can’t use your phone.
 
s_g_k said:
I assume the temporary mast is so their customers or staff can use their phones without experiencing signal blackouts. Wouldn’t be a great look to win a competition or attend an event hosted by O2 only to realise you can’t use your phone.
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And that reinforces my original point - when it affects the company because the signal is poor, they'll install a mast. Complain as a customer and you'll just get redirected to their website that brags about 98% UK coverage blah blah blah and your voice gets ignored.
 
Steve74 said:
Amazing how money can be found - presumably by the mobile company - to improve the mobile phone network infrastructure when it affects themselves but when it's the general public, there's no money available with seemingly no investment! (yes I know one temporary mast is not the same as improving the network across the country!)
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Alton the village itself is lucky, they get to benefit from all the mobile network infrastructure at Towers. Go down the road to Oakamoor and it’s a dead zone for phone signal in most places.

Vodafone in my experience has been decent in the resort itself and the village, but then I’m comparing it to no service at all a a mile or so away which is what I’m used to
 
There is a Vodafone mast on site at towers which is permanent and ive never had a issue with them on site.

All 4 networks eventually 3 networks all have permanent masts on site with Vodafone and o2 sharing the same masts, ee and 3 the others
 
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