Th13teen Smiles September 16th

[Doddy]

Hello. This is my first time posting in ages but I'm finally going back to the towers after 5 years to hopefully tick off wicker man and the curse at Alton Manor my to ride list.

I will be traveling solo from Devon but will be meeting up with the your experience guide group for the Th13teen Smiles event to celebrate the 13th birthday of Th13teen as well as the smilers 10th birthday. This will be my first meet up with this group and I have to admit I don't know anyone there.

I will report back how the event goes. And would love to know if anyone else is going.

 

[Doddy]

**Update**

So this was my first time being back on park since 2017 and my first Oktoberfest so lots of changes and lots new experiences.

Spoiler: If any wants to see the event plan here it is.

Meetup Time: Between 8:40am and 9am underneath Corkscrew at the Alton Towers main entrance for event registration.

During event registration, our events team will be handing out lanyards with an event pass, it is important to keep this with you during the day and have it on display during all scheduled event activities. It will not be possible to access the ERT sessions or Q&A session without your lanyard and event pass. If you have a lanyard and event pass from last Saturday at the Pleasure Beach please bring those with you.

Following recent events it is important for me to stress that arriving on time is vital, if you arrive late the group may have already been escorted into the park and we'd not be able to get you into the park in time for the first ERT session. If you are unable to attend, or think you may arrive late please let us know in advance of the day.

An Alton Towers event rep will be taking us into the park shortly after 9am ahead of our Smiler ERT which is due to start from 9:30am and last approximately 30 minutes time. Once this ERT session has finished, the Towers Suite located at the end of Towers Street will be open all day for our group to use.

At 12:30pm we have a talk from Bianca Sammut in the Towers Suite, the current Alton Towers divisional director. Please arrive and take a seat for this from 12pm onwards, the talk will begin at approximately 12:30pm. Once the talk is finished, an optional takeover of the Rapids will take place, it wouldn't be an event with Your Experience Guide without a water ride takeover.

Park close is currently scheduled for 6pm (subject to extension), with the Th13teen ERT session due to begin at 6:30pm and last for approximately one hour.

Ok first off I have to say how good it felt to be back at the park after being away for so long. The weather was good partly cloudy but without being grey and not a spot of rain where as in contrast in my native Devon there had been thunderstorms, landslides and flooding so looks like I lucked out there.

The event started with a everyone meeting up under the corkscrew where event lanyards where being given out along with tickets... apart from not everyone got a ticket and that included me. The thing is when you book you are given two separate tickets these are 1 for the event and 1 for the park they are for your experience guide only and not for the turnstiles I didn't know this and for what ever reason whilst my tickets where scanned I was not given a actual alton ticket. Thankfully this was sorted quickly but did involve me confusing the guy working the ticket counter with my your experience guide ticket.

Smiler ERS
As part of the event we had a morning ers on the smiler for a half hour. With our numbers being about 80 or so this meant about 3 goes despite people legging it up and down those stairs. As for the ride its self I was surprised by how smooth it was on the front as I had remembered the ride to be .......well just rough but then I rode on the back and was swiftly reminded why I had felt that way so clearly nothing had changed there then.

After our ers it was free time on the park and so I headed over and joined the shortly to open queue line for oblivion at this point it stretched from the entrance to the back of the drop but oblivion is great at getting through queues and so that wasn't a issue at all. So shortly I was once again plunging in to a small amount of mist I'm sure I've seen more in the pit before but I've also done it with none so no real complaints from me here.

Dark Forest
Rita was next purely to tick it off before the crowds got bad and I wasn't going to bother with Th13teen that was going to be the ers for after closing.

Gloomy wood
So here we get to the main reason why I ended up going I wanted a good excuse to ride The Curse at Alton Manor I love roller coasters but I adore decent darkrides. Wickerman had been on my too ride list since it had opened and I had always thought to myself I would eventually get out to ride it but the second I saw that the curse had opened I knew I had to return.
I had managed to avoid all spoilers for the ride its self but had seen things about the exterior and the queue line. I will avoid spoiling anything here but I loved the ride especially the mirror and shadow effects. I ended up going for 3 rides in the end before moving on I'm very impressed with the ride but will say that one of my goes around missed basically all the effects.

Wickerman
What can I say apart from I waited 55 minutes in that queue the ride is good and made up for the fact I missed out on megaphobia this year because of a illness. I had managed to avoid spoilers about the preshow and was pleasantly surprised by it the ride packs a punch and the big bob theming element looks great especially at night. It just felt like I was waiting for ages to get a go on it. It also didn't help that I realised about half way through that the talk from Bianca Sammut was going to happen and I was cutting it very close and in fact ended up missing part of it and sneaking in part way through.

Rapids Takeover
After the talk it was decided that we would do impromptu rapids takeover. The waterfalls are back on!! It took them long enough but they are back. Our take over probably pushed the queue time up for some unfortunate guests and due to a loading issue we ended up with 8 people on one boat which resulted in the ride stopping on the boarding are for it to be rectified.

It was then on to the curse again for one of my re-rides and then we continued on to forbidden valley for a ride on air which we joined at 30 minutes that soon went up to 70 mins. Sub terror was about 60 mins as well but thanks to the generosity of someone in the little group we had passes to get us in so we experienced the very brief terror of the nemesis creature hatchlings. Honestly I remember the ride cycle being much longer maybe its just me.

We ended up at the lawn watched a bit of live music and getting food I'm not sure what to make of the live action I didn't know dodos where particularly German to be honest. Another go on wickerman and then it was time for our ers on Th13teen. This happened after the park had actually closed and so we ended up walking against the stream of people leaving which is always a odd feeling. We had a full hour of riding but sadly not late enough for it to be truly dark and despite the best efforts in the group we didn't end up at 13 goes each.

After a group photo it was time to make our way out of the park and this did mean navigating the empty park in the dark and I was going to be a trek as we where being let out via the entrance in forbidden valley. All in all a good day and I'm so glad I went.

 

[Jb85]

Appreciate the review, thanks. Any Q&A details you may wish to share?