Disclaimer: New ride spoilers and large amounts of hype-generation ahead.
On Wednesday myself, Tommy and Turtle ventured to Alton Towers attempting to experience Marmalisation for ourselves. After sadly missing the Moo-norail, we got the Splash monorail to the entrance where there was no major knowledge as to whether The Smiler would be open. For context, on the previous day it had stalled during testing and been closed all day along with the rest of X-Sector due to crane needs... SMILE ALWAYS. There were a few small signs suggesting it would closed, probably brought on by the words "THE SMILER WILL BE UNAVAILABLE", but we still had some optimism. Once in, we remembered our keeno-persona's and ran towards THE SINISTER INTAMIN WOODLAND AREA!!1!, before realising that Alton Towers is pretty big and no one has such energy at 9am. So Rita wasn't doing anything, and Th13teen was 'broken', oh you pesky Intamins you.
So our gardens visit occurred a lot earlier than expected as we hiked for three whole days to Nemesis. I think Mark9 nailed it when he called this 'rollercoaster crack' sometime ago. One ride simply isn't enough. There must be two. Or five, as it happened to go on the day. It just seems to get constantly better with every ride, I could have kept going but there was more to be seen and done so we left it at that. Air was unfortunately not ready at 10am and as a result we wouldn't get on it at all. We waited 5 minutes for Sub-Terra to open instead, which is still such a good attraction. There was a new smell I'd never smelt on it before too, highly unpleasant! Back at Intamin forest INTAMIN'S WERE RUNNING so we went on some Intamin's. I'm actually quite fond of Rita despite it being a bit of a shaker/neck-basher. Whilst as an attraction I can acknowledge it's fundamental flaws, the whip you get going over the first hill and the following turnaround is pretty damn fun so I always like to give it a go each visit. Then, Thirteen, oh Thirteen. I'll probably be doing another blog on this ride sometime since there's always so much to talk about, but anyway, it was good on the day, aided by the rag-dolling and the confused stranger with Tommy. Blah blah, Hex was next, blah blah, then we finally went to check out X-Sector where at around 11:45am, The Smiler appeared to be waking up. We managed to walk past the queue at just the right moment, and despite the horrifying amount of people in the extension queue we, it only took 75 minutes to queue for our first ride. Turns out they were batching pretty heavily at the ride entrance. This brings us onto the part of the report where I talk about
THE SMILER
: )
The first thing you notice about it is well, how much you... notice it. It was great moment to see it whizzing around it's track for the first time, accompanied by cheers of relieved guests who'd be queuing for hours already! It is a fabulous spectator ride, and I was absorbed watching it for the first time when we reached the queue by the main fence. The music here plays very loudly, but it's a very decent soundtrack indeed. It sets the tone for the ride well and whilst I love the main theme, it perhaps could have more variations. It remains very samey (or just short) when it had the potential for a lot of development. I might try and remix it a bit to show what I mean, but fundamentally it's still a great theme and I didn't get sick of it at all for the many hours I heard it throughout the day.
Through the main entrance and down the steps, the view of the whole ride and the Marmaliser is majestic. The outside queue starts of fine, going under the Marmaliser and many of the rides elements offering a great view, however the second half does get very tiring in the hideous cattlepen. Shoutout to the Smiler staff member 'Tim' who happily provided the 'smiles', constantly, harassingly, and quite unsettlingly to whomever he took a special interest in. The specially dressed Smiler staff in general did an excellent job all day, dealing with immense crowds and interacting with those in the queue. Had fun looking at the flying butterflies created by scanning the eye's with The Smiler app, and then we made it inside. I'd thought this would be the end of the cattlepen torture but alas... it's a shame really, the projection mapping does look very cool but it was overridden by feelings of UHCATTLEPEN COULD YOU NOT. PLEASE?! I feel that something more immersive could have been done here, but I guess it's not a major thing. Anyway, queue done, baggage done, and we're up the stairs into the station. Whilst it is fairly simple and bare, I liked the lights in here, which were very reminiscent of The Sanctuary so I was happy to see that continuation. Enough ramblings, the ride...
The first drop is just excellent. I knew it was coming but I wasn't prepared for the sheer suddenness of it. Sitting in the back row first time definitely helped, and the smoke effects as you leave the station make it hard to see what the rest of the train is doing so their was definitely a lot of surprise in that drop. No smoke effects inside for us unfortunately, but the barrel roll with strobes was made no less dramatic. Already I'm loving this, and we haven't even gone up the first lift hill. The first small drop off the lift looked like pure RCT awkwardness, but it was also surprisingly satisfying. I could keep dissecting every element from here on, but I fear my ability to talk for ages about this ride will make reading it a bit of a drag, so I'll skip to the point: Alton Towers are onto a winner. It's just excellent fun. The first half is smooth and quite disorientating, and everyone seemed relieved to have a break in the middle! The double dive loops were definitely a highlight of this half. The first airtime hill was unfortunately too trimmed to have any, however the second one was much better, aided by the hilarity of the Inoculator sending everyone into frenzy. Before that, the sea-serpent is another excellent manoeuvre, falling out of one inversion and soaring straight into another. The cobra roll part of the Staffordshire knot definitely has a major 'janky' moment, however I didn't find this to be anything as *painful* as Saw's and I thought it actually benefitted the forcefulness of that section. However, not all in my party agreed so I guess it's an individual thing. The first of the final two inversions is very forceful whereas the second is more 'graceful'. The ride's final sections are as satisfying as it's early ones, and the bits in the middle weren't exactly bad either...
Late season opening, unclear opening date, further weeks of delays... so was it all worth the wait? Unquestionably, convincingly, categorically; yes. It's an excellent addition to an already excellent line-up of rollercoasters. The reaction we saw of other people returning from their rides was always just as joyous. The exit corridor is fabulous too, but I'll let you all discover that for yourselves. Once it opened, there were no breakdowns during the day however this hasn't always been the case. Hopefully it beds itself in quicker than Saw did, and downtime remains minimal. Of course, this is early days. Saw wasn't great when it opened anyway but it has aged even less gracefully. I pray that this ride does not follow the same path as at the moment I simply yearn to ride it again and again. I'm not claiming it's perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but if you take away the 'OMG 14 INVERSIONS OMG REVOLUTIONARY WORLD FIRSTS' mindset, it's an enormous amount of fun.
I won't ramble about the next part of our day since I've covered the main headline, but we then ate at FCC by the window with an excellent view of The Smiler, whilst discussing it for a fair while. Then came Oblivion (still bloody excellent), The Flume (which was my first ever ride interestingly enough. I now understand why no one was really that keen to get me on it on my previous visits...), Runaway Mine Train and Duel. We checked Air's queue which was beyond an hour, so we had the choice of that or jumping in the 150 minute queue for The Smiler again. The Smiler it was... it's testament to the attraction's quality that I was happy to queue such an amount of time after my first go when other options were available. I'd probably do it on my next visit too. Watching the really cute trains whizzing around the circuit, interacting with one another, is merriment for any enthusiast.
Dan9 - Smiling advocate, for the moment.
8.5/10
