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Extreme Weather at Alton Towers.

Jables

Jables

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After seeing flooding photos of todays huge downpour at Towers, I was wondering does anyone else have any cool photos of extreme weather at Alton Towers? Why does the park seem to have very bad methods of battling the weather. I assume most of the problems come from the very flat areas of the park, like The Smiler's queue line. Here's an example of Sharkbait Reef's shop flooded.

Photo credit to The Alton Towers Guide

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I filmed way back in 1997 the rain running down Towers Street from inside 1 of the shops it was so heavy you could not see the floor but I love looking at it it was so unusual I also love when theres a power cut for some reason it seems so isolated brings back memories of Towers for different reasons.
 
When the group finished the TotT run earlier, it was already showering a fair bit until we split wherein the rain became much heavier and decided to include hail, a lot of which is still evident on park.

This all culminated in the annual Towers ruins river coming back to life at a great speed (2-3 cms worth) and meandered down towards Carnival of Screams and the Gardens bridge.

A group of us went over to X-Sector and did Oblivion though that queue now greatly consists of massive path obstructing puddles and The Smiler's pit has inevitably become the lake we all joked it would become.

I wonder if the Resort can rent some of the water hoovers used for the boats on Blackpool's Valhalla to at least help with this drainage conundrum? ;)
 
One thing Alton Towers fails at is drainage. I find it a part of the Alton Towers experience when you get a huge downpour resulting in shops and buildings getting packed with people and/or flooded. That with powercuts and you know you've been to Alton. :p
 
Yes the park has flooded massively and whilst there is not much they could do in the immediate downpour, this rain just highlights just how bad the park drainage is. The water was just sitting there with nowhere to drain off. The main bypass from the gates to the carparks is MASSIVELY flooded and I wouldn't be surprised if there is not an accident there at some point.

The park really need to pull their finger out over closed season and do something about the poor drainage in certain areas of the park. Extreme weather is happening more often and the park are literally doing nothing about it!
 
I don't have any photos of it but I remember the day that Alton closed due to high winds in 2002. Apparently there were gusts of up to 70 mph that day. You couldn't go anywhere without coming across a fallen tree or telegraph pole. I believe it was the first time that Alton had ever had to close due to weather.
 
Oooooooooohhhhhhhhhhhh. That looks bad, Alton really do need to sort out drainage problems. Its getting worse as they don't look after the few drains they already have. How fast were the rides going after that downpour?
 
To be fair the rain this afternoon was a massive downpour and I have never seen weather like that at Towers before. Every footpath was like a river.

But it certainly highlights areas of the park that need sorting, The Smiler being the main issue! The queue line was so flooded, around 4pm they were only using the smallest part of the queue line, then all the temp cattle pen outside as the whole queue line was just flooded.
 
Jared said:
Pfft. Only a little bit of rain.
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You weren't there so you have no say, lol.

Anyway, not entirely sure where all that rain came from but damn, those hail stones hit me hard whilst running towards Burger Kitchen. Was hilarious seeing the Smiler queue like a lake though... :p
 
It really REALLY poured down yesterday. Ruined most of the stuff in my bag including my portable DVD player...great :/
 
TedTheHuman said:
It really REALLY poured down yesterday. Ruined most of the stuff in my bag including my portable DVD player...great :/
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Unlucky there, Ted!

I always put my belongings in plastic bags to make sure they don't get wet (usually for rides but possibly because of the weather too). I double bag my electronic items and wallet as they're the items I need most.
 
I have never been so drenched due to rain in my life. It was torrential. I decided the best option was to run to Burger Kitchen as quickly as possible. Thankfully it was nice and warm in there. There's not much Towers could have done at the time, it really was torrential. However drainage clearly is an issue that they need to look in to in the long run.

:)
 
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