• 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.

Feuer und Coasters

MattyH

TS Member
Favourite Ride
GIIBBB
Normally Tom writes the trip reports. But he doesn't write trip reports about Towers, so I decided to give it a go, I mean what could possibly go wrong? *Looks at the forum* oh... ANYWAY...

This trip started out as Tom going to a Rammstein gig with a mate and me meeting him and going to towers...

Then things quickly started getting silly. 3 days before the gig I got a fire zone ticket then Tom's mates lift pulled out so he ended up in the hotel room with us; the poor guy will never be the same. The gig was epic and so loud it could be heard ELEVEN miles away.

So fast forward to a Monday morning in our premier Inn somewhere near Coventry and we awoke sometime about 8/half 8 in the morning.

After spending some time we managed to get out of the hotel and got to the cars at 10am. Tom took his mate towards Birmingham while I took a more direct route to Towers.

So direct I ended up coming down the lane next to Towers, an amazing route in the Micra. I arrived onto Alton Towers property about 11:30 am and joined the queues to the hotel car parks

At this point my car decided it was very upset and missing Rammstein and decided it wanted to join in with the FUEGO, luckily I managed to just about park up before the worse happened.

received_2145300905641588.jpeg
Oh dear, that's not good.

After that little incident and not wishing to queue an hour for the monorail we headed to the park. Entering through the turnstile at 12:05 we headed towards our first stop of the day. Mutiny bay toilets, these were in good condition and had hot water! Maybe I don't rank the toilets high enough, I'll have to reconsider my rankings...

After a quick stop we realised we were starving and headed to our first themed attraction of the day. Pizza Pasta which had a 10 minute queue so we decided to give it a go.

We paid at 12:18 and were seated by 12:22. We then began to really feel the effects of the previous night. While sat here and admiring the mediocre one train operations on the mine train we took a look at queue times and found to our horror that the park was in fact rather busy.

received_1617406395311959.jpeg
Mmm pizza

By 13:10 we had finally eaten enough pizza that we drcided to go and explore the misery of the queues. We eventually arrived at Duel a ride that's rumoured to be closing soon and for good reason as the queue was well out the door, so we decided not to bother.

Continuing onwards we headed for the best ride in the park, unfortunately the queue for Blade was at least 20 minutes so we decided not to bother.

The other ride we considered was Nemesis, as it appearently gets a really good throughput. However the queue looked to be at least an hour so we decided not to bother.

By 13:20 we had enough so decided to stop to take some photos of the nemesis ride

IMG_20220627_132802.jpg

After a short photograph session we decide to head to our first ride... Haunted Hollow, an often under appreciated attraction at the Alton Towers resort, bill and Ben gave us a joke that was was extremely topical as it was about trains.i loved the phrase the British Rail Company as a real throw back

We decided to divert left after the haunted hollow to visit something that had come to our attention that was extremely exciting.

We were amazed to see the amount of new progress on the construction site here but more on that later.

We were on a roll, and having thoroughly enjoyed our time in the haunted hollow and the construction site decided to head on over to find the stepping stones. After a few minutes we located them.

IMG_20220627_134916.jpg

Overgrown. Great. Tom went first and crossed successfully. I on the other hand well obviously it didn't go so well for me...

received_1103303230225827.jpeg

We then walked over past battle galleons to Wickerman. At this point we saw them setting up the stage and hoped they were preparing for Rammstein

received_420076060036326.jpeg

The queue was in the extension and nearly back to the entrance, so we decided not to bother. Looking at queue times and saw 13, Rita, Spinball and skyride shut we were struggling.

So we did what we thought was the sensible thing and headed into Shatkbait Reef, entering at 14:05 Haven't been in here for several years now, and I don't think much has changed, my favourite was the spider crabs memorial tank

IMG_20220627_140732.jpg

However after stopping to watch a talk we quickly realised that it was too hot in here so we headed out through the shop.

We then saw that Spinball was testing so we headed across to ride it. Eventually the Spinball queue was reopened and we queued 10 minutes for it... This was a mistake. We had underestimated how badly we hurt, I managed to somehow nearly throw up after a ride on Spinball.

This lead us to Towers Trading co to purchase a drink. After spending some time buying my drink, buying this at 15:00, I attempted to use the toilets by the entrance, however these were in an absolute state so we decided to walk down to Mutiny Bay to use the superior toilets.

We considered a ride on Marauders but realised it would be horrific in our conditons. After this I noticed people were on the skyride so convinced Tom to head to the skyride to die in peace.

IMG_20220627_152931.jpg
Is the skyride a ride? No Patrick the skyride isn't a ride...

We queued about 10 minutes for this and ended up in the pod with a member of staff. As we floated along we were really beggining to regret our ride on Spinball, deciding we were feeling how certain older enthusiasts on this forum feel.

We then spotted the construction site that we had visited earlier and were amazed to find out that the staff member in our pod could neither confirm nor deny that it was going to be the site of SW9

IMG_20220627_134206.jpg


SW9 coming soon.

Anyway after a quick pause at the midway point we were off again over the valley, with a good day for glorious views.

Arriving at the cloud Cuckoo land station we then took the opportunity to look at the quietest attraction on park, the Alton Towers Dungeon which looked like it would cost money so we decided not to give it a go. Moving on from here at 15:34 we walked into David Williams World where we promptly collapsed onto a bench.

After spending some time on the bench, we then headed on further through David Walliams World, admiring the "themeing" on flavios, looking in with horror at the. gangsta granny queue and realising that the best ride in the area was Bouncy burp.

Dragging ourselves over the bridge we noticed that the driving school fence was plastered with Danger of death signs.

IMG_20220627_155744.jpg
DANGER OF DEATH.

I had come up with an amazing idea, we walked past Rita and a closed 13, back past Wickerman and over to our second actual ride of the day. Congo
River Rapids, which had a 10 minute queue. We actually encountered the mine train in the tunnel which is a very rare move

Feeling compelled to keep going with our very sensible mood and with queues decreasing we headed for Nemesis but before we got there we couldn't resist a ride on Duel! The ride was on a 0 minute queue so we decided to give it a go!

We walked straight onto the ride and sat down, enjoying the surroundings of Duel and admiring it in what may be one of our last rides.

We left Duel and headed to Nemesis, where the queue was just up the hill, advertised at 30 minutes so we decided to give it a go!

Unfortunately just before we reached the merge point the ride experienced technical difficulties meaning it was down for 10 minutes.

Eventually the staff got Nemesis up and running and we got a ride on row 7 before walking round and queueing 5 minutes for another go this time on row 8.

This was the last ride we did before heading back to the cars.

Overall I'd rate my day as a significant 9/10!

I decided to do an analysis on our day
Our day was spent as follows

80% hurting and wandering around doing not a lot
10% was spent in pizza pasta
5% was spent queueing for things
3% was spent doing walk through attractions
2% was spent on actual rides.

I would say this is a surprisingly high percentage of rides in our day, significantly boosted by Nemesis and Duel at the end of the day

Credit to Tom for some photos too
 
Last edited:
Everything still hurts.

Rob you have my sympathy for feeling like this every day.
 
Did you sneak the photos in on a sneaky edit?
Shocked to see the state of the stepping stones...see why I whinge about the state of the gardens?
Really nice hidden feature of the gardens that should be a magical little treat for kids big and small, instead, a bunch of water grasses and weeds in a swamp.
 
Did you sneak the photos in on a sneaky edit?
Shocked to see the state of the stepping stones...see why I whinge about the state of the gardens?
Really nice hidden feature of the gardens that should be a magical little treat for kids big and small, instead, a bunch of water grasses and weeds in a swamp.

To be fair someone said a few weeks ago they were clear. Yes I had to sneak the photos in. Really adds to the report.
 
Top marks, @MattyH - perhaps you and @Poisson can share trip-reporting duties in the future?

Sounds like a pretty typical day at Towers to me - the sort of day when you debate whether Haunted Hollow and Sharkbait Reef can be added to your ride count!

I think Sharkbait does have some new-ish stuff - the leafcutter ants are fairly recent I think. (Wonder if they've fixed the 'Solider Ants' typo yet!).

Re: the overgrown gardens, everything goes completely nuts at this time of year and I've abandoned all hope of keeping my postage-stamp-sized garden under control, so maybe cut the gardeners some slack?

You guys really need better cars - sort it out!
 
Quality landscaped gardens should not become overgrown.
I do twenty odd gardens, not one is overgrown in the slightest "at this time of year".
It is a well known garden, the stepping stones looked like they are done once a year, but should be checked every week, it is a renowned heritage landscape, a few minutes a week would cost very little when the team is already there.
The vast part of the garden valley is now overrun with native wild plants, not the original specimens, which have been choked out.
 
Top