Best of 2016 - Alton Towers

With the 2016 season coming to a close, I was wondering what your best moments/highlights were from Alton Towers this season. Let's look at the best of Towers.

I have two highlights from this year, one being spending some quality time with friends and family - it really does feel like your a world away. The second being Nemesis in the dark - the best ride I've ever been on!

Look forwards to hearing your highlights of the 2016 season, maybe not the best year for the resort, but there's lots to look forwards to!

*Tumbleweed rolls across the page*

I suppose if there's a bright side, it's that things surely can't get much worse.

Despite some positives (some of the TLC work, Rollercoaster Restaurant and Galactica being fairly well executed) there has not been much to shout about in 2016. I have been far less this year than in any other year since I started visiting reguarally.

For me the biggest problem by far is the closed rides. It has meant that almost every visit has been near identical with coaster after coaster after coaster. Only Duel and the Rapids have really broken them up. There should always be more to theme parks than coasters.

Towers/Merlin - sort it out!

My highlight will be when the park officially closes its gates for the year. What an awful offering this has been from the UK's supposedly premier theme park. We should all vow never to talk about 2016 at Towers again after this season has ended. As was mentioned above, one good thing is that surely it can't get any worse than this year has been.

For me it's always the Scarefest and fireworks (yet to take place this year). I always look forward to riding the rides in the dark. I also have plenty of friends that work on the park and it's always a pleasure to see them with each visit.

I also enjoyed staying at the lodges in the enchanted village and eating at the rollercoaster restaurant both of which was a first for us this year and we manage to stay in the lodges and eat in the rollercoaster restaurant on two separate stays this year.

Also not forgetting the purchase of my digi photo pass

But like Rob and Barry has said above, I think the lack of rides (and not forgetting the closure of the courtyard BBQ + pirate show) outweighs any positives.

Its gotta be the benches...surely

Nemesis' paint job would of been nice, if they'd finished it.

If they don't have more rides open next year then people are going to just not bother coming, especially if they're not into roller coasters.

2016 Highlights:
Nemesis (as always)
Nemesis repaint
Smiler back open
Rollercoaster restaurant
Spinball back to its original theme

2016 Lowlights:
Closed rides
Bad opening hours and too many closed days


From a personal perspective, I've really enjoyed Towers in 2016, as I do every year. Apart from Hex, none of the closed rides have bothered me so I don't feel like I'm missing out on too much. The lack of live entertainment doesn't bother me either, as I go to theme parks to go on rides, not to watch shows (I genuinely mean this, ents at theme parks have never been a big deal for me). Atmosphere is what you make of it - I go to Towers with people I care about, and we always have a great time and the atmosphere is upbeat and fun. We create the atmosphere.

The main attraction for me regarding Towers is, and always has been since I went on Nemmy in 1994, the coasters. Towers still has an outstanding line up of coasters for a UK park, and honestly, riding them alone equals a great day out for me. I consider myself a coaster enthusiast over being a theme park enthusiast, and a visit that just consists of riding them is enough (as is the case for me where any theme park is concerned).

I get that from a wider persepective, this hasn't been a great year for Towers - visitor numbers still being low, closed rides, bad opening times and hours etc. But from a purely selfish viewpoint, I've enjoyed it.

Only ever visited once this season and I liked seeing the TLC in person, didn't get the chance to try out Galactica or the Roller Coaster Restrauant.

So apart from that, nothing.

The 2016 was HUGE a let down... However Galactica, RCR and Scarefest made up for that.

The Smiler being open, don't need to say anymore.

Scarefest! Weekend just gone, we go every year. This time there was a group of 8 of us, the mazes were jumpy and very entertaining but its the laughing and the joking about certain members of the group and their reactions within the mazes that makes it AWESOME!
Otherwise Alton Towers has been pretty average this year but i keep the faith and look forward to next years Scarefest and SW8!

Quite hard to think of a highlight. What a terrible year for The Towers they should be going all out to get visitors back not drive them away. Ride closures a disgrace and Alton is not Alton Towers without Hex.

Would have to say the slight improvement / highlight was the improvement in night lighting for this years Scarefest.
Nemesis Repaint another but yet again only half a job.
Will be interesting to see if they keep their promise and complete it over the closed season.

I have only been twice this year, very rare for me. Mind you a year that should have been Thorpe's has turned out a flop for them too. What a terrible year in all for Merlin. No wonder other places are doing so well as Merlin has become a joke.

I think we can all agree that the park hit a new low this season. However I suppose the positive overall would be that the park itself has shown both a realisation of how bad things are and a genuine desire to sort things out. The depressing thing is though, the parent company seems to see things very differently.

I think this is evidenced in what Towers have done. The cutbacks have been massive, almost unbearable for park management, yet I think they've done everything they can to shield us from it. Despite some of the massive losses incurred in the way of closed rides and incredibly reduced opening hours, the following points are noteworthy-

# The roller coaster restaurant was well done and a lot of love and affection has gone in to it.
# The TLC work so far has been very good, particularly the work on the Nemesis station and the 2 buildings on Towers Street. It all seems like a drop in the ocean however and moving at a woeful snails pace and some of the work is just standard cleaning and fixing that should be done anyway.
# Dark Forest has gone from being Ug Land stripped of most of its attractions repainted in dark colours with hideous scaffolding - to Ug land stripped of most of its attractions repainted in dark colours with a fence that is less hideous than scaffolding. So an improvement at least!
# Scarefest was very good this year in my opinion. Particularly loved the addition of House of Horrors and the lighting on Nemesis.
# Visiting on off peak days this year has meant that I've never had so many rides on the coasters, with most being walk on pretty much every weekday early season. Mind you, this was also helped by the fact there was little else to go on but the coasters.
# I stayed in the enchanted village in the height of summer and I must say, the while family loved it!
# Galactica theming and music.
# The music overall is about the best I've ever known it. That's probably the best thing about the park this year, the variety of atmospheric music scores played around the park this year have been excellent.

I've visited 7 times (9 days on park due to 2 over night stays) and have enjoyed the park more as the season went on, but then I suppose my expectations lowered as the season went on. Been to Thorpe 4 times and actually got more and more annoyed with the place as the season progressed (various operational and DBGT related reasons) so I suppose that's a positive for Towers isn't it?