Skyscraper
TS Member
- Favourite Ride
- Nemesis
I've heard that the grass overflow parking is being used today, it's that busy! Last time it was this packed was Fireworks apparently.
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Scarefest 2022
- Thread starter Skyscraper
- Start date
Doesn't look too bad looking at the queues. It just shows they don't have enough parking
And following yesterdays torrential showers. I bet some cars will have fun getting out of the grassed parking field.
Steve74
TS Member
They have laid down some parking matting, I saw it there last week. Not sure if they have on the parking spaces as well as the areas you drive on to get to the spaces though
They made a slightly pass agg announcement when the ride broke down saying "can we remind riders to wait for the restraints to raise by themselves when the ride has finished and not to try and pull them up yourselves". So I guess someone was doing that and got themselves stuck? There were about 3 people I think (I couldn't see everything) that they couldn't get off the ride for some time and a car was stuck out in the rain for at least 30 mins affording to my boyfriend, before they walked them off at the side.
Skyscraper
TS Member
- Favourite Ride
- Nemesis
The op had to do a passive-aggressive announcement when I was in the queue line on the 8th, because some idiots decided to smoke in it. They told them off then threatened to send someone out with a bucket of water if they didn't stop lol.
George W
TS Member
They said the same thing when I was there in August caused for a few chuckles in the smiler station
Benjsh
TS Member
- Favourite Ride
- Steel Vengeance
It was really really busy yesterday but yeah sounds even more hectic today which isn't a surprise given its a Saturday.
People are turning up for the longer opening hours though and rides in the dark rather than the woeful scarefest offering. That was certainly my impression yesterday. The mazes looked dead all day if you pardon the pun.
LordOfDarkness
TS Member
- Favourite Ride
- Nemesis
Come back from a good day at scarefest.
It was busy, but didn’t stop me from having a good day.
Wish there was more roaming actors but, this will always be my favourite event of the year. The atmosphere and lighting on the rides at night is just chefs kiss
It was busy, but didn’t stop me from having a good day.
Wish there was more roaming actors but, this will always be my favourite event of the year. The atmosphere and lighting on the rides at night is just chefs kiss
How long did you wait for the rides?
LordOfDarkness
TS Member
- Favourite Ride
- Nemesis
Probably about 70 minutes on average for every coaster. Missed out Rita and Galactica.
Agree that the actual Scarefest stuff has really declined. We only started going about 8/9 years ago, and you had scare zones and other roaming actors. There would be a bit of a surreal atmosphere about the place.
Now it's a pale shadow of what it was. Didn't even see the Ancestors.
The lighting this year in some areas seemed dimmer, which is no bad thing. But no great theming overall.
Now it's a pale shadow of what it was. Didn't even see the Ancestors.
The lighting this year in some areas seemed dimmer, which is no bad thing. But no great theming overall.
Charlie1910
TS Member
Scarefest Review – Monday 24th October.
I thought as I have read so many reviews and tips over the last few weeks, it was only right to put our collective thoughts on our visit yesterday for others.
We visited yesterday, (24/10/22) as a group of four adults.
We don’t do the scare mazes, we go to enjoy the extra ride time.
We arrived at 9:45, and was straight through into Express parking, bag search and into the park very quickly and efficiently.
Towers Street was nicely themed and it was a great addition to see some scare actors in this area, we actually got photo bombed a couple of times by these actors too!
We did find the queue times shorter in the morning, but then did get longer into the afternoon,
We rode as follows –
Wicker Man – 60 Mins
Rapids – 5 Mins
Runaway mine train – 30 Mins
Nemesis – 45 Mins
Galactica – 80 Mins – Then the ride closed and we left
Hex – 45 Mins
Fandango - 45 Mins
Roller Disco – 45 Mins
Spinball (Dusk Ride) – 65 Mins
Nemesis (Night Ride) – 50 Mins
Wickerman (Night Ride) – 90 Mins
10 Rides in Total.
We thought that with the footfall, being half term, and Scarefest, we got our monies worth, and did OK.
However, we did notice that rides were constantly closing, re-opening, and we spoke to many people in the queue lines, and heard there frustrations, “We queued 2 Hours for 13, only to be told it was now broken” for example. We did experience this with Galactica, it cannot be helped, but it did seem to be more noticeable than previous visits. Mix of weather, (Although yesterday Glorious, Sunday not so!) and end of season,
Maybe more use of the tannoy system in the queue line to voice the delay or closure would be a better way to handle the situation too, keeping people standing with no info other than "Trains have not gone passed for a while" is not overly great! Rides close down and as much as your looking forward to riding, it gives you chance to use the time better elsewhere on park,
Food & Beverage. We ate across from Rita, very good Sausage Baguette, and at £8, I thought was reasonable. We did visit various drinks stands across the park, again the staff we friendly and prices were fair IMHO. Maybe some more themed food and drinks would be good to around the park, to align with the event,
One thing that was did put some negativity into our visit, and other’s that we spoke too during the day, also had that similar view is the high usage of Fast Track. AT see the Fast Track system as a process to increase revenue, do they over sell it? Yes. Is it worth it? Maybe. Everyone has their opinion on it. We pay for Express parking for example, we pay the extra not to have the queue into the car park, the long walk to the entrance, long walk back/queue for Monorail and then the queue to get out the car park. That is our “Upgrade”. Everyone has a different opinion on FT, even within our group yesterday. I would of paid for them as I only visit AT once/twice a year. Two people out of our group have Merlin Annual Passes and go more often so don’t feel the need to.
What we found to be an issue, and this view is not made to cause offence to anyone, is the RAP queue throughput process.
I 100% understand the reasoning and applaud the system of RAP. But, one thing that I don’t think AT does well is the throughput on the loading of the rides from this queue. Many times we witnessed loading of the rides 50, 60, 70% of capacity from this queue, then the FT queue, then the standard queue. I also presumed it was the RAP qualified person and one other that are loaded onto the ride? Again, many times we witnessed large groups being loaded with one person who had the RAP access.
I want to point out that this view is not written to cause offence or be of any judgement who should and who should not of had or did have the access pass, and agree that the RAP policy/process is a positive thing, we just believed that the loading process needs to be looked at. For instance Nemesis was loading the back two rows with RAP access. This worked correctly…..other rides need some improvement.
Overall we had another fantastic day on park, lots of great memories, although the last ride on Nemmy before the update/re-structure was a sad one....But ALWAYS a good one!
I thought as I have read so many reviews and tips over the last few weeks, it was only right to put our collective thoughts on our visit yesterday for others.
We visited yesterday, (24/10/22) as a group of four adults.
We don’t do the scare mazes, we go to enjoy the extra ride time.
We arrived at 9:45, and was straight through into Express parking, bag search and into the park very quickly and efficiently.
Towers Street was nicely themed and it was a great addition to see some scare actors in this area, we actually got photo bombed a couple of times by these actors too!
We did find the queue times shorter in the morning, but then did get longer into the afternoon,
We rode as follows –
Wicker Man – 60 Mins
Rapids – 5 Mins
Runaway mine train – 30 Mins
Nemesis – 45 Mins
Galactica – 80 Mins – Then the ride closed and we left
Hex – 45 Mins
Fandango - 45 Mins
Roller Disco – 45 Mins
Spinball (Dusk Ride) – 65 Mins
Nemesis (Night Ride) – 50 Mins
Wickerman (Night Ride) – 90 Mins
10 Rides in Total.
We thought that with the footfall, being half term, and Scarefest, we got our monies worth, and did OK.
However, we did notice that rides were constantly closing, re-opening, and we spoke to many people in the queue lines, and heard there frustrations, “We queued 2 Hours for 13, only to be told it was now broken” for example. We did experience this with Galactica, it cannot be helped, but it did seem to be more noticeable than previous visits. Mix of weather, (Although yesterday Glorious, Sunday not so!) and end of season,
Maybe more use of the tannoy system in the queue line to voice the delay or closure would be a better way to handle the situation too, keeping people standing with no info other than "Trains have not gone passed for a while" is not overly great! Rides close down and as much as your looking forward to riding, it gives you chance to use the time better elsewhere on park,
Food & Beverage. We ate across from Rita, very good Sausage Baguette, and at £8, I thought was reasonable. We did visit various drinks stands across the park, again the staff we friendly and prices were fair IMHO. Maybe some more themed food and drinks would be good to around the park, to align with the event,
One thing that was did put some negativity into our visit, and other’s that we spoke too during the day, also had that similar view is the high usage of Fast Track. AT see the Fast Track system as a process to increase revenue, do they over sell it? Yes. Is it worth it? Maybe. Everyone has their opinion on it. We pay for Express parking for example, we pay the extra not to have the queue into the car park, the long walk to the entrance, long walk back/queue for Monorail and then the queue to get out the car park. That is our “Upgrade”. Everyone has a different opinion on FT, even within our group yesterday. I would of paid for them as I only visit AT once/twice a year. Two people out of our group have Merlin Annual Passes and go more often so don’t feel the need to.
What we found to be an issue, and this view is not made to cause offence to anyone, is the RAP queue throughput process.
I 100% understand the reasoning and applaud the system of RAP. But, one thing that I don’t think AT does well is the throughput on the loading of the rides from this queue. Many times we witnessed loading of the rides 50, 60, 70% of capacity from this queue, then the FT queue, then the standard queue. I also presumed it was the RAP qualified person and one other that are loaded onto the ride? Again, many times we witnessed large groups being loaded with one person who had the RAP access.
I want to point out that this view is not written to cause offence or be of any judgement who should and who should not of had or did have the access pass, and agree that the RAP policy/process is a positive thing, we just believed that the loading process needs to be looked at. For instance Nemesis was loading the back two rows with RAP access. This worked correctly…..other rides need some improvement.
Overall we had another fantastic day on park, lots of great memories, although the last ride on Nemmy before the update/re-structure was a sad one....But ALWAYS a good one!
We were there yesterday and totally agree with Charlie above regarding the RAP queues.
We did Rita first and thought we would save our fast pass for later as the queue was only 25 minutes first thing …… 70 minutes later - basically they were letting on 2 full queues of RAP guests, then a full queue of fast track between every one full queue of normal queue. They are not mixing the queues in any way.
I understand the RAP queue for for people with specific needs and disabilities, but the size of some of the parties getting on together yesterday did seem a bit large and couldnt help feel that the system was being abused.
Anyway - trick or treat town yesterday - blooming marvellous. We paid £12 for one bag and the little one loved it. We did too the sets are great inside, some great actors especially the girl in the graveyard set, and we got a decent amount of sweets.
Only negative, the video at the stay where you are asked to give a 5 star review on Tripadvisor. This is a kids attraction, come on!
We did Rita first and thought we would save our fast pass for later as the queue was only 25 minutes first thing …… 70 minutes later - basically they were letting on 2 full queues of RAP guests, then a full queue of fast track between every one full queue of normal queue. They are not mixing the queues in any way.
I understand the RAP queue for for people with specific needs and disabilities, but the size of some of the parties getting on together yesterday did seem a bit large and couldnt help feel that the system was being abused.
Anyway - trick or treat town yesterday - blooming marvellous. We paid £12 for one bag and the little one loved it. We did too the sets are great inside, some great actors especially the girl in the graveyard set, and we got a decent amount of sweets.
Only negative, the video at the stay where you are asked to give a 5 star review on Tripadvisor. This is a kids attraction, come on!
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Danscott22
TS Member
- Favourite Ride
- The Smiler
I can vouch for the same thing about Rita from October 14th, there is one male staff member on there in particular who filled rows 4-10 with RAP guests (had RAP because of my cousin), and I did find it very strange to be honest, as there were probably 3 parties in front of us, we expected to wait around 6/7 trains worth, but we were straight on because of how they were doing it. We were only a 2, and party wise the max seemed to be a 4.
BigShadowtinytree
TS Member
I think he said ‘trick advisor’ rather than Tripadvisor. That’s what I heard anyway! Hard to tell as people were talking.
My point above was with regards this weekend at Scarefest which was stupidly busy and in particular the Rita queue I experienced where the queues were not being mixed at all. The guy trying to manage the queues was actually shouting at people to hurry up to get through the queues. It was not very family friendly put it that way (nor were some of comments written on the Rita queue line when you are with a small kid)
Wickerman at the end of the night was just chaos. The poor girl just had all 3 queue lines open and it was just a free for all trying to get to the bag drop point. I think any hope of trying to manage the three queues was just abandoned and who could blame her.
I think this Scarefest has highlighted how the current system needs some rethink, because not only is the normal queue huge, and the fast track queue huge, but the RAP queue which, is containing people who have an ailment meaning they cannot wait in the normal or fast track queue is also huge, somewhat defeating the object of it.
Thirteen at 7pm last night had a 90 minute normal queue, the fast track we gave up on because it was 30 minutes and way out of the station, and the RAP queue looked even longer.
Dare I say but the huge queue times the past week are not mainly due to visitor numbers, but the staff attempting to merge three large queues into one.
Ive been going to Scarefest every year since it started and yesterday was the worst I have seen the queues for the main rides.
Without buying Gold fast track yesterday there is no way we would have done the rides we did.
We did pop into the hotels in the evening for a look around. My partner who hasn’t been to Scarefest before said “not much Halloween stuff is there”. Park looked good around towers street and on the lawns and the rides and towers lit up were great. But apart from the main area, not much else in terms of Scarefest themeing around the park.
Those little touches years ago made such a difference such as the skeletons on rapids, ghosts dancing in towers windows, weird writing on the walls around Hex, fountains lit up red etc. and most of all, a free scare attraction/area!
Wickerman at the end of the night was just chaos. The poor girl just had all 3 queue lines open and it was just a free for all trying to get to the bag drop point. I think any hope of trying to manage the three queues was just abandoned and who could blame her.
I think this Scarefest has highlighted how the current system needs some rethink, because not only is the normal queue huge, and the fast track queue huge, but the RAP queue which, is containing people who have an ailment meaning they cannot wait in the normal or fast track queue is also huge, somewhat defeating the object of it.
Thirteen at 7pm last night had a 90 minute normal queue, the fast track we gave up on because it was 30 minutes and way out of the station, and the RAP queue looked even longer.
Dare I say but the huge queue times the past week are not mainly due to visitor numbers, but the staff attempting to merge three large queues into one.
Ive been going to Scarefest every year since it started and yesterday was the worst I have seen the queues for the main rides.
Without buying Gold fast track yesterday there is no way we would have done the rides we did.
We did pop into the hotels in the evening for a look around. My partner who hasn’t been to Scarefest before said “not much Halloween stuff is there”. Park looked good around towers street and on the lawns and the rides and towers lit up were great. But apart from the main area, not much else in terms of Scarefest themeing around the park.
Those little touches years ago made such a difference such as the skeletons on rapids, ghosts dancing in towers windows, weird writing on the walls around Hex, fountains lit up red etc. and most of all, a free scare attraction/area!
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Matt.GC
TS Member
In the final queue of the day here and I have to say this a very lackluster Scarefest. Even if I park all the serious long term issues of lineup and food and bev offering (which is really biting now), the event itself is beyond stale now.
I'm so bored of the maze lineup, I skipped Darkest Depths. I only did Skin Snatchers because it's likely to be it's last year and I wanted to give it a send off because of how good it was in its first 2 seasons. Shouldn't have bothered, it was the worst I've ever known it. The Attic was far superior but doesn't exactly set the world on fire. I wasn't going to bother paying them to sit on a bench with some headphones on. Who remembers mazes like 1000 screams and Sub Species when mazes offered something unique and different from each other? Now they're all just a pre story section followed by actors jumping out doing an Oogy Boogy on you and that's pretty much it. Very little imagination and drama to them.
Aside from whispering soles (which is amazing by the way I'll give them that), you wouldn't know it's Scarefest beyond Towers Street and the Lawns. No roaming actors, the mazes all concentrated around the Towers, no extra bits and pieces anywhere. Unless you consider a black plastic bat hung on the door in the back area of the doughnut shop in Mutiny Bay Scarefest theming.
I'm so bored of the maze lineup, I skipped Darkest Depths. I only did Skin Snatchers because it's likely to be it's last year and I wanted to give it a send off because of how good it was in its first 2 seasons. Shouldn't have bothered, it was the worst I've ever known it. The Attic was far superior but doesn't exactly set the world on fire. I wasn't going to bother paying them to sit on a bench with some headphones on. Who remembers mazes like 1000 screams and Sub Species when mazes offered something unique and different from each other? Now they're all just a pre story section followed by actors jumping out doing an Oogy Boogy on you and that's pretty much it. Very little imagination and drama to them.
Aside from whispering soles (which is amazing by the way I'll give them that), you wouldn't know it's Scarefest beyond Towers Street and the Lawns. No roaming actors, the mazes all concentrated around the Towers, no extra bits and pieces anywhere. Unless you consider a black plastic bat hung on the door in the back area of the doughnut shop in Mutiny Bay Scarefest theming.
siralgenon
TS Member
Speaking of Halloween theming, does anyone know where all of the pumpkin men and scarecrows have gone? They used to be all over Towers Street, the Alton Towers Hotel and Splash Landings and I've not seen any this year?