Christmas Season 2024

[jon81uk]

I was under the impression that Alton Towers were aiming for 365 operations with their ride additions including Project Horizon.

An article has mentioned this as well although take with a grain of salt: https://blooloop.com/theme-park/news/alton-towers-plans-year-round-theme-park/

Having read the article in the Stoke Sentinal, its not Alton Towers aim. The local council want more visitors year-round and think working with AT would help so that. https://www.stokesentinel.co.uk/whats-on/whats-on-news/alton-towers-could-open-365-8274181. Its nothing really, they are just trying to get businesses to invest in things that would drive tourism in the off-season. If Alton Towers were truly aiming for this, they wouldn't have closed one of their main winter options, the spa.

 

[James]

I'm not bothered by 365 openings. They can barely manage current seasonal operations.

I would rather see the main season sorted and an expanded Christmas/November/December event explored, including the opening of a coaster or two (Wicker Man and RMT, for example).

 

[AltonLover123]

Wouldn't make any sense to have Sub-Terra open as it is aimed at a much older audience than the rest of the attractions. But yes the Walliams stuff should be open.

Walliams world was previously open with Xmas events and I assumed with Hex coming back this year that would have been a nice addition to the line up over Xmas in the part of the park so I was shocked they decided not to open Walliams at Christmas this year.

It’s clearly not a maintenence issue as they’ve never struggled with winter maintence in the previous years that area was open.

So I can only assume it’s budgetary.

 

[owenstreet7]

Walliams world was previously open with Xmas events and I assumed with Hex coming back this year that would have been a nice addition to the line up over Xmas in the part of the park so I was shocked they decided not to open Walliams at Christmas this year.

It’s clearly not a maintenence issue as they’ve never struggled with winter maintence in the previous years that area was open.

So I can only assume it’s budgetary.

My thought is that it's so Flavios can leave and go back on the fair circuit?

Although I swear those rides are set up quickly?

Or there's something happening in Walliams World that we don't know about yet i.e. Monkey Swinger and Tuk Tuk Turmoil from Chessington going onto the Flavio and Carousel site with a relocation for the Carousel and Raj being removed. A soft retheme for the area so only GG remains as is?

Unlikely but maybe.

 

[AltonLover123]

My thought is that it's so Flavios can leave and go back on the fair circuit?

Although I swear those rides are set up quickly?

Or there's something happening in Walliams World that we don't know about yet i.e. Monkey Swinger and Tuk Tuk Turmoil from Chessington going onto the Flavio and Carousel site with a relocation for the Carousel and Raj being removed. A soft retheme for the area so only GG remains as is?

Unlikely but maybe.

Flavios will have taken mere hours to remove. Maybe the additional fencing that added around needed removing but even then, that’s a couple of days tops.

Perhaps? That area certainly needs something. Ripping the entire thing out and starting from scratch would be preferable.

 

[Themeparksandy1981]

I think the park don’t really know what to do for a Christmas event.
You only got to look at Paulton’s on how to operate a Christmas event with roughly 75% of the park open.
Even Drayton increasing there Christmas ride line up with Frontier Falls (minus the haunting) been open as well as Thomas land.

 

[flyingguitar]

I think the park don’t really know what to do for a Christmas event.
You only got to look at Paulton’s on how to operate a Christmas event with roughly 75% of the park open.
Even Drayton increasing there Christmas ride line up with Frontier Falls (minus the haunting) been open as well as Thomas land.

true, but a lot of the rides being open are lower force and complexity compared to Alton.

The reason the park closes over winter is for maintenance to be preformed on all the rides and typically they will have to do many things, for parks with a lot of rollercoasters (such as alton) this will be a long list of things, worsened due to the fact the have 2 very complex rides (Gal and rita).

for ryan the ride mechanic (
From: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCws2gu55s4
) each rollercoaster needs:

Anything that moves on the track is torn apart and inspected and refurbished. (lift gearbox, chain, breaks, booster wheels (including gearbox), air gate hardware, station hardware, contactors, compressors etc.)
someone has to go around and manually inspect the entire track, via boom lift, crane etc.
The trains also have to be refurbed, tearing it down till there is nothing left, inspecting and then reassembling it including: NDT on the chassis, pins the wheels are checked and replaced if needed, wheels bearings are checked. all the restraints are checked and inspected. then it is reassembled.
Then they load test the train to allow the bearings to bed in (to put it simplistically)
Then block testing.
and possibly some extra inspections.



Needless to say this all takes a while, and for smaller rides with less vehicles and ride hardware it can take less time.

 

[MrTowers]

Unfortunately Alton is too big this time of the year to operate how somewhere like Legoland and Paultons are able to. Also most of the areas only have big coasters in them anyway so not worth opening unless something drastically changes with the maintenance.

They have realised that people don't want to walk miles between areas during the winter and as such have created a wedge shaped park taking in cbeebies, towers street, the lawn and mutiny bay. For the winter event to work the investments need to be in these areas.

Granted there doesn't seem to be much room for expansion but there must be more towers can do to improve this rather embarrassing event they are putting on compared to the competition.

A few ideas spring to mind:
- Converting the lower end of Cbeebies into something more grown up, including spinball whizzer.
- Fair ground rides and food stalls on the lawns (think winter wonderland) this would need the lawn protecting
- Trying to open spinball and wicker man out of season, I know spinball always used to. I'm guessing WM would be a challenge but it's close enough to mutiny bay to feel like it should be included somehow if they prioritise maintenance on this.
- Relocate some of the back of house facilities behind mutiny bay / remove the arcade and add some indoor rides. Maybe something like a flying theatre would be good in this area.
- Turn Justin's House into a soft play with indoor seating a somewhere to get a coffee (it can be very cold in winter and kids / parents want to get in the warm)
- Make towers street more of a bustling place, it feels so dead and just used a walkthrough. Surely it could feel more exciting, maybe even move the carousel onto the bigger part of lawn so there is a ride in this area.

I know some of this would be a challenge with planning etc but I hope towers are already thinking about how these events could be improved.

 

[tech]

Unfortunately Alton is too big this time of the year to operate how somewhere like Legoland and Paultons are able to. Also most of the areas only have big coasters in them anyway so not worth opening unless something drastically changes with the maintenance.

They have realised that people don't want to walk miles between areas during the winter and as such have created a wedge shaped park taking in cbeebies, towers street, the lawn and mutiny bay. For the winter event to work the investments need to be in these areas.

Granted there doesn't seem to be much room for expansion but there must be more towers can do to improve this rather embarrassing event they are putting on compared to the competition.

A few ideas spring to mind:
- Converting the lower end of Cbeebies into something more grown up, including spinball whizzer.
- Fair ground rides and food stalls on the lawns (think winter wonderland) this would need the lawn protecting
- Trying to open spinball and wicker man out of season, I know spinball always used to. I'm guessing WM would be a challenge but it's close enough to mutiny bay to feel like it should be included somehow if they prioritise maintenance on this.
- Relocate some of the back of house facilities behind mutiny bay / remove the arcade and add some indoor rides. Maybe something like a flying theatre would be good in this area.
- Turn Justin's House into a soft play with indoor seating a somewhere to get a coffee (it can be very cold in winter and kids / parents want to get in the warm)
- Make towers street more of a bustling place, it feels so dead and just used a walkthrough. Surely it could feel more exciting, maybe even move the carousel onto the bigger part of lawn so there is a ride in this area.

I know some of this would be a challenge with planning etc but I hope towers are already thinking about how these events could be improved.

Thing is, if the Christmas offering was CBeebies, Mutiny Bay and Spinball (Wickerman would be a cheeky bonus) then I could accept that.

Problem is this year we didn’t even have all of CBeebies - Get Set Go closed, Octonauts closed, Duggie playground supposed to be open but…..closed. No sign, no staff member, no apology, just closed. Lightopia going out of business obviously wasn’t Towers fault, but no replacement for it in sight. Visits to Santa inexplicably restricted to hotel guests again.

I think Christmas is falling slowly into that terminal cycle of “yes but nobody comes so we can’t afford to offer more” instead of considering that if attractions were open - maybe more people would turn up.

 

[jon81uk]

Visits to Santa inexplicably restricted to hotel guests again.

I wouldn't say it is inexplicable. Its a very low capacity experience, therefore they don't have space for everyone. 5+ years ago they didn't allow day guests at all for the Christmas and winter events.

 

[tech]

I wouldn't say it is inexplicable. Its a very low capacity experience, therefore they don't have space for everyone. 5+ years ago they didn't allow day guests at all for the Christmas and winter events.

Meeting Santa on a Christmas event, that’s pretty core to me - and certainly in the eyes of a 4 year old that has seen Santa at AT as a day visitor previously but is no longer allowed.

Last I heard they were actively looking to increase capacity on their Santa visits. If it’s still not enough then either make it an optional upcharge or come up with an alternative, surely?

 

[MrTowers]

Meeting Santa on a Christmas event, that’s pretty core to me - and certainly in the eyes of a 4 year old that has seen Santa at AT as a day visitor previously but is no longer allowed.

Last I heard they were actively looking to increase capacity on their Santa visits. If it’s still not enough then either make it an optional upcharge or come up with an alternative, surely?

There is an ongoing planning application to add more santa huts. I imagine they had hoped it would be approved before this Christmas with it submitted back in September I think. This will certainly make a difference if approved probably allowing them to offer day guests a visit to see santa as well.

 

[AltonLover123]

Problem is this year we didn’t even have all of CBeebies - Get Set Go closed, Octonauts closed, Duggie playground supposed to be open but…..closed.

I thought these were open for some of the event? Apologies if I am wrong.

 

[djtruefitt]

I thought these were open for some of the event? Apologies if I am wrong.

Octonauts was open before Christmas but seems it has to close as techies don’t have enough time to do all it’s maintenance for Feb half term.

I guess the other two will be shut if it’s bad weather.

 

[jon81uk]

Meeting Santa on a Christmas event, that’s pretty core to me - and certainly in the eyes of a 4 year old that has seen Santa at AT as a day visitor previously but is no longer allowed.

I don't think day guests have ever been able to meet Santa at AT, expect maybe during 2021 lockdown periods where things were very different to a normal season. For the majority of the 20 years or so they have been running the Santa Sleepover event day guests have not even been allowed in the park, let alone to meet Santa. Its a pretty core part of the Santa Sleepover event, but not the day guest Christmas opening.

 

[djtruefitt]

Personally if I was towers I would offer the day guests the option to upgrade their ticket to include a visit to Santa and even offer it to pass holders.

But I guess by doing that it could put people off from stopping over if it’s get cheaper to just buy a day ticket and Santa ticket.

However towers have always had issues with capacity on the grotto so unless that was improved then I cant really see a way

 

[rob666]

There is an ongoing planning application to add more santa huts. I imagine they had hoped it would be approved before this Christmas with it submitted back in September I think. This will certainly make a difference if approved probably allowing them to offer day guests a visit to see santa as well.

More Santa huts?

I hope we aren't inferring that there is more than one Santa?
Again.

 

[GooseOnTheLoose]

More Santa huts?

I hope we aren't inferring that there is more than one Santa?
Again.

There is no Santa. There is only Father Goosemas.

 

[Ash]

Personally if I was towers I would offer the day guests the option to upgrade their ticket to include a visit to Santa and even offer it to pass holders.

But I guess by doing that it could put people off from stopping over if it’s get cheaper to just buy a day ticket and Santa ticket.

However towers have always had issues with capacity on the grotto so unless that was improved then I cant really see a way

Although I partially agree with the point, I don’t think the general public understand the different options.

I agree with you it would be better for them to offer it on the day and make it clear to the general public what the “Christmas event” is, who it’s for and what it can be.

 

[James]

Santa is an upcharge at some attractions across the UK. The best example nearest me is Longleat during their Christmas/Festival of Light event. Everything is included in the day ticket apart from Santa, which is an upcharge. It would be simple enough for Towers to do the same.