• ℹ️ Heads up...

    This is a popular topic that is fast moving Guest - before posting, please ensure that you check out the first post in the topic for a quick reminder of guidelines, and importantly a summary of the known facts and information so far. Thanks.

2025: General Discussion

Rob said:
I'm unsure if Towers have used AI to create that promo image, but it would certainly be a pity if they had. But also not a surprise with how Merlin operate these days.

There have been some good points made on the use of GenAI, but if we can now stick to Alton Towers discussion then that would be great!

Good news that Fireworks is back to 3 nights, they should never have cut it to 2 in the first place. I still have no plans to renew my MAP once it expires later this year though, needs the likes of Oktoberfest to return for me to feel like I am going to get value.
Click to expand...

Same, for the first time in a long time I no longer have an annual pass.

In some ways it’s weird as certain elements of the park is better than its been in a long time (general theming maintenance and investment in ride refreshing), they appear to also be working on uptime and operations to their credit.

But fact is what kept me vaguely interested was events, and since they brought Aramark in and cut the event calendar I have just lost interest.

Will I still visit Towers? Yes, maybe once or twice. But that’s not justifying an annual pass, and the rest of the Merlin portfolio just doesn’t interest me anymore.

If Merlin had kept the events and not outsourced food in such a sham way they would have probably kept me but there you go.
 
I had an annual pass for over 10 years, something like 2001 to about 2013 (can't remember exactly) and I've not really missed having it.
Since not having a pass we still did Alton Towers for fireworks in many years. Also done Thorpe Park 3-4 times. But I don't actually miss going 2-4 times to each park in a year really. I think we did each ride so many times when we had annual passes that I feel its very "been there done that" now. I slightly miss the spontaneous trips to Warwick Castle (when we lived in Birmingham) or walking along the South Bank and popping into the aquarium or onto the London Eye (when we lived in London).

But overall, I think an annual visit to Alton Towers and once every few years to Thorpe is plenty for me now.
 
Last edited:
I'm going for the first time in 3 years (Last went in April 2022) next week. Will it be busy next week? we're going on a weekday. Are there any differences that I need to know since 2022.
 
Hazza said:
I'm going for the first time in 3 years (Last went in April 2022) next week. Will it be busy next week? we're going on a weekday. Are there any differences that I need to know since 2022.
Click to expand...
It depends on whether school trip season has started yet. I seem to remember hearing that it doesn’t typically start until the end of June, but I could be wrong there.
 
Matt N said:
It depends on whether school trip season has started yet. I seem to remember hearing that it doesn’t typically start until the end of June, but I could be wrong there.
Click to expand...
From stories you hear throughout the year, I think the school trip season starts the first week of the autumn term.

"Welcome back to school, as a thank you for coming back after the summer break, have a trip to Alton Towers."
 
DistortAMG said:
Interestingly, www.altontowers.com has been down all evening, still down now. I wonder what the cause is, it is unusually long for such a website.
Click to expand...
Google Cloud was down last night, affecting a significant part of the internet, including Cloudflare, which I believe Alton Towers use to prevent DDoS attacks and use for load balancing.
techcrunch.com

Google Cloud outage brings down a lot of the internet | TechCrunch

Google Cloud seems to be at the core of a major outage affecting popular internet apps and services on Thursday.
techcrunch.com techcrunch.com
 
GooseOnTheLoose said:
Google Cloud was down last night, affecting a significant part of the internet, including Cloudflare, which I believe Alton Towers use to prevent DDoS attacks and use for load balancing.
techcrunch.com

Google Cloud outage brings down a lot of the internet | TechCrunch

Google Cloud seems to be at the core of a major outage affecting popular internet apps and services on Thursday.
techcrunch.com techcrunch.com
Click to expand...
Cloudflare's blogs are always a great read when half of the internet goes down

blog.cloudflare.com

Cloudflare service outage June 12, 2025

Today, June 12, 2025, Cloudflare suffered a significant service outage that affected a large set of our critical services, including Workers KV, WARP, Access, Gateway, Images, Stream, Workers AI, Turnstile and Challenges, AutoRAG, and parts of the Cloudflare Dashboard.
blog.cloudflare.com blog.cloudflare.com
 
What’s happened to Bianca has she just ran away and has anyone seen her?

The 2 seasons prior she did so much publicity for the park, behind the scenes videos, went on a lot of vloggers channels etc. I really enjoyed following her instagram and her insight knowledge of addressing certain issues, it felt like a shift of optimism for Alton how it’s just feels abit dead and no one that bothered about attending or excited for anything or maybe just me?
 
I think this is the first time in a while that there aren't any good new projects (that we're aware of) either in the planning stages or physically being built. There's less of a buzz generally. Even some of the vloggers have left the official 'content creator' program because it was 'not for them anymore' because of the way it was being run etc etc. Funny how their morals weren't a consideration when they had juicy preview nights and access for Nemesis Reborn, Hyperia and Toxicator. Now there are no big privileges available they suddenly find their moral compass and make videos about why they are no longer aligned with Merlin/Towers. I think that having projects on-going and to look forward to somewhat masked all the tragic stuff like F&B, ride unavailability etc etc. Management have probably got bored of trying to promote it now too after the initial burst of enthusiasm of the new boss. Can't get blood out of a stone.
 
BarryZola said:
I think this is the first time in a while that there aren't any good new projects (that we're aware of) either in the planning stages or physically being built. There's less of a buzz generally. Even some of the vloggers have left the official 'content creator' program because it was 'not for them anymore' because of the way it was being run etc etc. Funny how their morals weren't a consideration when they had juicy preview nights and access for Nemesis Reborn, Hyperia and Toxicator. Now there are no big privileges available they suddenly find their moral compass and make videos about why they are no longer aligned with Merlin/Towers. I think that having projects on-going and to look forward to somewhat masked all the tragic stuff like F&B, ride unavailability etc etc. Management have probably got bored of trying to promote it now too after the initial burst of enthusiasm of the new boss. Can't get blood out of a stone.
Click to expand...

Indeed, the turnaround now required, I think at Alton more than any other Merlin park is huge.

The lack of long term planning for ride investments combined with bad decisions (a Bluey coaster nobody asked for being the latest)

They’ve made a lot of staff redundant across marketing, events, MMM etc recently.

Up charge to get into the Towers, the woeful state of F&B, the second rate offering at the hotels, consistent inability to keep rides open (I’m still refusing to go back until Spinball, NST, Skyride and Rita are all open) and the national disgrace that is the state of the gardens.

It’s a big ship to turn around.

They built a business model around MAP and then events to encourage repeat spend, then scrapped most of the events.

Serves them right.
 
Ash said:
Indeed, the turnaround now required, I think at Alton more than any other Merlin park is huge.

The lack of long term planning for ride investments combined with bad decisions (a Bluey coaster nobody asked for being the latest)

They’ve made a lot of staff redundant across marketing, events, MMM etc recently.

Up charge to get into the Towers, the woeful state of F&B, the second rate offering at the hotels, consistent inability to keep rides open (I’m still refusing to go back until Spinball, NST, Skyride and Rita are all open) and the national disgrace that is the state of the gardens.

It’s a big ship to turn around.

They built a business model around MAP and then events to encourage repeat spend, then scrapped most of the events.

Serves them right.
Click to expand...
Alton doesn't really need much to become a good park again better availability and food are the 2 big ones and to their credit the park does feel fresher this year.

As for the new coaster it's a new ride something we have been asking for something new.
 
Ash said:
The lack of long term planning for ride investments combined with bad decisions (a Bluey coaster nobody asked for being the latest)
Click to expand...
To be honest, the issue isn’t with the IP and choice of attraction, it’s the fact it’s replacing Postman Pat that seems to be the issue for most people.

It wouldn’t surprise me if they got handed the coaster from elsewhere in Merlin and decided to use the Pat land out of planning convenience. I’ve seen comments on Facebook posts saying that it was the BBC’s decision to remove Pat, but that should come with major questions around validity of that rumour, of course.

However from a ride lineup perspective, they’ve removed a popular attraction for families, one that had some of fewest restrictions on-park. If you have a newborn, there’s very limited options on what you can do as a whole family. There will also be children that don’t simply don’t want to ride a rollercoaster of any scale, meaning families will be split up for most of their day(s) on what should be a family getaway.

The ride system for Postman Pat is such a theme park classic, and parks of every scale have their own version of an antiques car ride. There needs to be a replacement of some form, because this will just further enforce in the minds of the public that Towers is a coaster park. At a time that other UK theme parks are diversifying their attraction lineup to be more than primarily rollercoasters.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top