Alton Towers Visits:

3rd June, 2005

We arrived around half an hour after opening - navigation issues again, despite using the satnav which sent us down single track lanes. There were celebrations on due to the 40th anniversary of the Sound Of Music, so people dressed as nuns got in for free. We saw a few nuns around, decided not to do that though.

We went on the skyride (with a couple of nuns in our car) to Forbidden Valley. We checked out the Air queue and decided to get fastpasses and go on Nemesis. The queue for Nemesis was quite long, but of course it's always worth it.

Next was Duel - not a bad queue for this one, virtually straight on.

rita

food

hex

rapids

air

8th April, 2004

Aiming to arrive around the time the rides open, we arrived an hour or so late due to navigation issues (I knew we shouldn't have trusted the directions from a well known web-based mapping service... it is amazing how on the route we took we only saw 3 signs to Alton Towers and that was once we were very close).

The queue for the monorail into the main park wasn't too long and we were soon at the park and through the gates.

We decided to head straight to Air, via the Skyride. The queue time for Air was about 50 minutes, not too bad atall and certainly well worth the wait as it's a pretty unique ride.
Next we headed for a quick lunch (as mentioned, we were pretty late getting into the park!).

The next stop was Oblivion, the vertical drop rollercoaster. The wait wasn't too long, about half an hour or so. It did break down briefly during that time but was quickly up and running again. Next up was Black Hole, the coaster in the dark, which again was about a half hour queue.

After Black Hole we were going to take the Skyride accross the valley (there are some pretty spectacular views) but there was a long queue so we decided to try out the new spinning coaster Spinball Whizzer. This was a good ride but has some strange sensations because of the spinning and angles - definitely one where you have to hold tight!

After Spinball Whizzer we headed across to Duel, which used to be the haunted mansion. There was virtually no queue for that one as we went straight through. It's quite fun because you get points for shooting things, but unfortunately I got the lowest score in our carriage, losing to a little kid and his parents...
Anyway moving on, next we went on the legendary Nemesis coaster which had about half an hour queue, always good fun.

Nemesis was followed by the pirate ship Blade (this does seem a bit tame compared to ones in other parks now), and then we went back to see what the queue for Air was like, but decided it was too long. We did want a go on the Runaway Minetrain too but the queue was way too long, so we just called in at the shops and then headed home.

It was quite a full day, fortunately the weather wasn't too bad, no real rain just a bit of drizzle, and the queues weren't bad atall considering the kids were off school. The main addition here was the Spinball Whizzer, spinning coaster, which gives very strange sensations due to the different directions.