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2026: General Discussion

Craig

Craig

TS Administrator
A new year and a new season approaches! The park reopens briefly for the annual Pirate Takeover February Half Term event from the 14th-22nd February, where a small selection of rides will be available to both hotel and day guests.

The main season kicks off on Saturday 14th March. The park’s new for 2026 addition, a Bluey themed coaster over in Cbeebie’s Land doesn’t yet have an opening date, but is currently due to open in “Spring 2026”.

Elsewhere the resort’s new Vice President, Howard Ebison (formerly VP of Chessington) officially took the reins on 1st January following the departure of Bianca Sammut last year. There’s been big changes in the background at the resort, with restructuring across the wider Merlin group also sadly affecting teams at Alton Towers. The group’s outsourcing drive has continued, with support teams such as security and cleaning to facilities giant. The changes join those made to food services which previously moved to Aramark, and entertainments which were moved to RWS Global.

It remains to be seen when the park’s next big addition, SW9 will open following a presumed slowdown in the project’s progression since planning permission was first submitted.

We’ll add links to the usual queue time and other dedicated discussion topics as the season approaches. The full event schedule and dates are yet to be announced, although it’s presumed Scarefest and of course the annual Fireworks event will return at a minimum.
 
How do we think the season will go, will Bluey open in March or later, will the operations and refurbishment be sorted out or will galactica remain looking sorry
 
It’s round about now, when it’s freezing cold and we’re in the post Christmas lull that I start to long wistfully for the days of being able to visit the park, despite its many faults that we all know and will moan about.

On the face of it it seems like this is going to be a very quiet year barring the kiddie coaster, but a lot can change quickly. Let’s just hope no existing attractions fail us in 2026.
 
djtruefitt said:
I imagine we won’t see rapids open at the start of the season, purely on cost cutting measures as the ride shut much easier last year for maintenance so there shouldn’t be any reason why it isn’t open in March.
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Hoping they return the wave machines on Congo and allow to be at full force once again. Also station could use some theming upgrades always thought the roof should be a thatched roof or some wooden roof as the area is based around African Mining village. Maybe some animatronic animals could be cool dotted around the ride
 
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Bowser said:
No plans to visit this year, much like last year, predominantly as it’s virtually impossible to get a RAP slot and ride availability is so poor, particularly when you can’t access the 1.4m attractions. Hopefully at least the latter is improved this year and we get some Horizon news.
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Ride availability wasn’t that bad last season, it still wasn’t back to pre-Covid standard but better than 2024.

I however, have no real hope for 2026, I think Merlin have taken another nose dive in a desire to operate quality attractions and it will likely show.
 
This is a post that I drafted yesterday, and at the time decided against sharing, but after watching a YouTube video shared below, I’ve decided to amend and fine tune my post a bit.

Will be interesting to see whether people note any changes with any operations next season with the restructure. I suspect most guests won’t notice any difference, but I suspect there might be a few niggles as staff get used to moving around different areas of the business. Like when staff get pooled across different positions as they learn the new roles, you’d definitely expect them to face a learning curve if they regularly get moved between Admissions/Rides/Retail. I know they’ve had multi-skillers previously, but having that expectation across all guest-facing staff might play out differently, with Ride Operations especially having had some issues with it previously.



This video is from an esteemed game developer talking about institutional knowledge in video game development, and why I’ve decided to share this post. A lot of what he says in the video can be switched from being about video game development to theme park operations. People across the park will be switching roles and if there’s any struggles with operations next season it’ll be in-part because of a loss of institutional knowledge. Think this is most appropriate to ride operations, as small hiccups can have the most adverse impact on guest experience.
 
Benzin said:
Can't wait for those 2 hour queues for Bluey Cred.

Though currently any visit for us won't be a weekend because of the current RAP nonsense.
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We don't know if the queues will be 2hrs for Bluey that is assuming. It will be high but unlikely 2hrs.

How is RAP nonsense it had to be setup the way it is because you look back at 2022 the queue lines were getting ridiculously long for RAP so something had to be done
 
Hid said:
We don't know if the queues will be 2hrs for Bluey that is assuming. It will be high but unlikely 2hrs.

How is RAP nonsense it had to be setup the way it is because you look back at 2022 the queue lines were getting ridiculously long for RAP so something had to be done
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RAP wasn’t sustainable and they had to do something, both disabled guests and other guests were being impacted in the old system. That said it is argued the option they have gone with was not the best option, but better solutions would have been more expensive. Particularly at Towers as really you need a digital queuing solution and that would require infrastructure works because data is so ropey in the area.

They still should have invested in it though, you do need a total cap on RAP tickets but it could be much higher if the queue system was better managed.
 
Dave said:
RAP wasn’t sustainable and they had to do something, both disabled guests and other guests were being impacted in the old system. That said it is argued the option they have gone with was not the best option, but better solutions would have been more expensive. Particularly at Towers as really you need a digital queuing solution and that would require infrastructure works because data is so ropey in the area.

They still should have invested in it though, you do need a total cap on RAP tickets but it could be much higher if the queue system was better managed.
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AT and Thorpe have introduced a digital queue system for 2026. It’s via a separate app as opposed to replicating the Chessington and Legoland system.
 
Notice I said the current RAP nonsense, which is that pretty much every weekend for Towers is currently booked up when none of the others parks have released theirs.

No issue with the cap but given I've had no issues booking dates since the system came into effect clearly something has gone wrong. Either the days shouldn't have been put up or people are mass booking to such a degree that it makes the system fail. But I've mentioned it at length in the topic before.
 
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