Robert.W

There's good reason people are against Alton Towers new pods. Looking at it purely in comparison to what Premier Inn are planning -
 
Premier Inn:
- Designed by PriestmanGoode
- twin beds that can be pushed together to create a double
- a bathroom with power shower
- free wifi
- a TV
- power sockets
- air conditioning
From £19 a night
 
Alton Towers:
- Bare Pinewood "minimalistic theming"
- fixed twin beds & small double taking up most floorspace
- free wifi
- power sockets
- convection heater
- Shared bathroom facilities a short walk away in "pod camp"
- Breakfast bap
(Currently free mini golf offer)
From £88 a night off peak
 
Purely on value for money, Premier Inn's luxury pods wipes the floor over Alton Towers pods.

Nemesis is the best invert I've done. Although I've only done 3.
 
Black Mamba is great but the second half is noticeably weaker than the first. Inferno is good but not as good as Nemesis. Simple.

Another FF classic - Inside Alton TooT
 
 

Wanted to make a comment about Towers really as its the first time I've really seen the place busy since 2015. Operationally they were spot on. Full capacity on everything (aside from Galatica which we didn't go near, stupid VR) and near perfect operations. Nemesis dispatching before the second train hits the break run, Oblivion using both stations, Wicker Man dispatching quickly with minimal stacking. Blackpool was much the same on Saturday. UK operations blow American operations out the water. I was really impressed with Towers and its fantastic to see them back on form. Wicker Man has really done so much more for Towers then people realise. 
 
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It felt like nothing more than a censored advert for Towers backed with screen time of enthusiasts. Probably the strangest part was where one of the staff was saying the Wickerman launch night was going to be a disaster. Then after the break there was no mention of it again and the whole incident was unexplained and forgotten about. There were no insights or honest interviews with ride hosts. It would have been nice to see more construction milestones. Also more insights into the artwork, design and IMA Score soundtrack. Overall it was very bare of an actual behind the scenes in favour of excessive screen time for enthusiasts who were more likely to have nothing but praise for Towers. I wanted to hear from more of the day to day staff and engineers from a first hand experience working there. I want Towers to embrace the criticism and explain exactly HOW they are going to improve. WHY are they closing outlets and staggering ride openings? - That’s the kind of documentary I was hoping for.

They really should get rid of those tragic queue line vinyls while they're at it... And that boring projector pre show. Honestly, the themeless 'Air' aesthetic was much better than the silly 'words as theming' approach they took with the re-theme, its so pretentious for such a mediocre pay off. With that in mind, I'd rather it go back to being Air; no false promises, no over-hype in the queue line, just a solid ride experience. I think it'd be better off for it. 

So proud of Colossus for becoming a Great British icon.

Yep, because Wicker Man should’ve clearly been operating in cold snow temperatures. 
 
Some things do happen from time time to time resulting in things not going as smoothly as they could be. 
 
Mack are indeed reliable at the best of times. 

The entrance feature looks so tacky  
 
Shame that the station building is a bit bland though...

Ah, phew.
I have to say the website really confused the hell out of me, I think the park really should of perhaps made it MUCH more clearer.
 
I really hope BPB succeed with Icon but with the butchered USP in the advertising, the website, and a real lack of strong marketing (not yet anyway)  I think Blackpool really are hanging on by a thread here, hopefully the Mack greatness will sell the ride in itself.
 

Odd choice to remove Spinball from ERT, but otherwise all good news.
 
One can only hope that this works out for them and they can bring this sort of operating schedule back for the rest of the year. Or at the very least the summer...

It's not helped by the personal point scoring that seems to be going around a LOT of Twitter accounts recently... I'm not a fan of Sanbrooke or TPW but another account did basically grass them up for the image in question (why I'm not sure, I'm 100% certain Towers keeps tabs on plenty of relevant media accounts themselves), for some reason... I've unfollowed the account as a result because it wasn't needed to be done in such a public setting (if Towers REALLY cared about it, they would have contacted Sanbrooke directly to discuss it) and for such blatant point scoring (it's not the first time I've seen them do such nonsense)...
 
It's sad to see the UK scene becoming really petty these days...
 
 
Regarding cameras on rides, it's gotta be a common sense thing right? A flat out ban on all rides is just an over-reaction (so expect Merlin to do this) and will not be a great sign when someone gets berated for taking pictures of their kid on Sea Dragons...

Exactly this. AT are wrong to have tried to publicly chastise someone who has in reality followed their own rules. 
 
As Barron says, to put it down as 'all rides and attractions' would include monorail and skyride. But that is clearly a nonsense, so clear unambiguous signage at each ride entrance is how it should be managed.
 
There's nothing wrong or inherently dangerous with filming on the rapids.

I don't think this is being emphasized enough here.
 
Towers' responses are blunt and edging towards rude. Regardless of what the rule is or isn't, their tone of voice over Twitter stinks in this instance, and in many others. Saw a tweet where someone was asking for bus times to/from the park, and their response was effectively 'Google it'. That's dreadful.
 
The team running responses to social media posts clearly are terrible this year and need complete retraining on basic customer service and basic social media skills. Terrible image for the park, despite being so easy to get right.

Tower of Terror has an even lower height restriction and thats far more ominous then any of Wicker Man. 

YAS! I have never seen a UK ride receive this much love and excitement for since well, Nemesis. It's an absolute pleasure to ride and it to me is the single most important ride built this century. (hyperbole necessary). I'm so glad it comes across as so middle of the road because when you get off the thing, you're blown away by how good it is and Alton fully deserve the praise.
 
And here's what bugs me. Wicker Man is excellent but it cannot paper the cracks of poor decision making. On a hot day the park should never close at 5. Oblivion only runs two stations on absolute peak days, thats crazy. Wicker Man is clearly having a big effect on the park, more people are visiting and therefore the park should be reacting quicker to this stuff. Galatica is a mess. The quicker the VR goes the better.
 
The sad thing is Saturday was a travesty but I went on Monday and at one point WickerMan only had a 5 minute queue, was running three trains all day and had no breakdowns. Thats the kind of guest experience the park should be delivering every day and a 4/5pm close to me seems no longer warranted or excused.

I was lucky enough to ride Wicker Man last Saturday - I say lucky because the ride's availability was like a yo-yo all day.
 
It's a winner. It's not going to win any awards for being the most extreme or "world's first <who cares>" or the fastest or the tallest... but of course it doesn't need to, to be a solid ride. It carries an excellent - and consistent - theme, complete with theatrical pre-show, matched with a comfortable and yet still out-of-control ride. Signature GCI. And the clear, standout highlight is that first drop, which starts tame, becomes more exciting with the airtime hill, and then totally surprises with the fast banked right-left turns. Outstanding.
 
The slow turnaround in the back half feels a bit of a waste to me, and I would have loved for it to have been longer, but all Wicker Man really had to do was show the UK market that wood can compete with steel. And with recent reports that guest feedback has been stellar, it sure does that.
 
Unfortunately, I can't speak of 2018's Towers with the same affection. Last Saturday was a sunny 21 degrees, and the crowd levels reflected that. A 10am - 5pm opening in these circumstances is inexcusable. There was no closing time extension, despite queues of over 60 minutes on all the coasters, all day. Smiler hit 100 minutes, Wicker 150. The crowd I was with had never been to Alton before, so we took the early call to invest in Gold Fastrack (at £60 each) to enable us to actually ride all the big rides in this shorter time frame. And even with the Fastrack, we found it more than a little stressful to get round the park in one day (ride breakdowns didn't help - and Rita eluded us altogether).
 
Not only that, but operations in places were abysmal. Oblivion was on one train loading, with just 3 platform staff; throughput can't have been more than 300 per hour. Galactica's queue was crawling (with the VR payoff far from a good enough justification). Congo River Rapids was closed all day. And with no Sub Terra, no Ripsaw, no Charlie, no Submission, and no Flume - not to mention the closed stalls & eateries - you can't help walk around the place wondering where all the magic has gone. Depressing stuff.

The biggest problem with this refurbishment is they seem to have spend the money in all the wrong places. Of all the ride’s flaws, why’d they bother fixing up the zombie tomb at the entrance? It’s looked cheap since the beginning of time, reparing part of it wasn’t going to fix that. Demolishing it really would’ve been better, as it makes the ride seem super tacky, hence most guests don’t bother riding. The space it’s in would serve much better as a proper entrance sign. Likewise, the money for those TV’s in the queue was a huge waste, they’re too bright, and distracting from the proper portraits. While on their own they’re a nice touch, they certainly should not have been a priority. The lighting in most places is still tragic, especially the timing. The great hall demon is only lit up towards the end of its movement, yet we see the whole thing reset.  The same can be said for plenty of the effects. I think the only one that disappeared on time was electric bill?
 
On the topic of the ride’s exterior- while it’s pleasing to see they’re now diverting guests though the woodland queue, rather than just shoving them though by the side of the house, the entrance really could benefit from having a proper sign to make it stand out, it sort of just seems like a gap in the hedge at the minute. Oh, and please change the name. No guest reads “Duel” and thinks ‘ghost train’. If it had a name that actually told you what the ride was, maybe it’d be more popular 

Got to ride Wickerman on Friday at Towers - I was very concerned we weren't going to get on after travelling 200 miles to get to Towers - but, fair play to Merlin, as despite being down from 1.30 ish, they re-opened at 3.45 with officially 15 minutes of queue-open time remaining - and then stayed open until 4.45pm. In the morning - the ride didn't open until AFTER ERT (oops) and the queues in the morning were peaking at 60-80 minutes so we decided to wait until the afternoon and do the 0 minute queue rides instead, which nearly ended in our downfall
 
Anyway - have to say that I think Merlin are on to a winner with Wickerman here. The queueline is the best I've been in some time in terms of setting you up for the ride, the Wickerman statue looks awesome, and the coaster as a whole is stunning. It really does roar round <3
 
The pre-show was spot on and sets the scene perfectly. The ride itself I loved (got to ride twice!) - screamed and laughed around the track, fantastic stuff - you can really feel it slide into the corners and it's pretty relentless, and picks up decent speed - it's pitched perfectly if you ask me, a properly fun and thrilling ride, that looks incredible and rides just as well. Great attraction to the lineup, and glad it's come to fruition as I wonder if it was close to getting shelved due to the Smiler accident.
 
Well done Towers - now just fingers crossed the Wickerman starts behaving itself and has less down-time. 
 

Disagree. Yes Alton are running on a shoestring budget but they're still trying to recover so it's expected. But that aside; they're trying. Yes there's lots of downsides, but look at Nemesis. It's looking great and they've invested into its future. Something keeps occurring around Sub Terra so we can only hope there's a future plan for it. There's murmurs of work being done to Cloud Cuckoo Land to bring the area back and re implement CATCF as an attraction (albeit without the Charlie IP). Yes things aren't great but with a park like Towers it doesn't phase me the staggered openings as most guests are heading straight for Wicker Man anyway, and its no different in my view as Blackpool's staggered openings. I'm just thankful that we've now got a more-or-less full ride line up again (bar CATCF and 4D as we know ST is dead) and that cuts were made in Splash and Tree Top Quest over the theme park experience.
 
Thorpe is doing good in my opinion. They've made the entrance look acceptable from something very run down and grubby; they've tried with TWD - and I'm still happy its not VR on a ride, plus I haven't ridden it yet - and their operational calendar is amongst the strongest it's been for years with late night openings in Summer, and frequent 6pm+ closes. Great hotel rates to drive footfall which reflect the product offering in price and the return of the Annual Pass deal which is welcoming for the general public.
 
And I'd argue good for Chessington too. Yes there's flaws, but again, they've not had a bad start to the season. People are very quick to highlight the negatives but aside from Tomb, the park isn't looking too bad. I for one am excited for Land of the Tigers, and I think this year they've really tidied up the park somewhat, to a degree I've already visited twice and usually I go once a year.
 
I 100% respect, understand and see your viewpoint. But I feel there's too much negativity for the parks which are all trying really damn hard to recover, rebuild, and carry on after having budgets slashed left right and centre, when on reflection, we've seen Towers add one of their best coasters in the last decade, whilst refurbishing attractions back to a fresh state; Chessington bring a needed area refurbishment with new experiences to help themselves grow; LEGOLAND riding on the back of Ninjago: The Ride with the Haunted House breaking ground finally; and THORPE utilizing assests they have to hand in the form of Walking Dead and looking at their marketing and operations to grow themselves as a park.

Comparing Merlin to Disney in some ways is a bit like comparing Tesco to Waitrose. There’s some similarities between the two, but the latter generally offers a more premium price and one could argue is more upmarket.
 
Whilst Merlin will never be up there with Disney, there’s no doubt that they can create  quality attractions. Swarm, Wickerman and Gruffalo first come to mind. However what’s affecting these are limitations in budgeting, marketing and structure. 
 
The parks desperately need a complexion of themes that are upbeat, comical and mysterious. Less-so modern day dark/abandoned and bright garish themes. I understand the demographic have previously asked for these, however what was hot topic five years ago may be relevant today. 
 
Budgeting is another thing, as the parks typically only get funding for new attractions (investment levels rotated), basic maintenance and ‘essential’ safety improvements. Sometimes the parks really have to push for extensive upkeep (see the TLC scheme) which should never have to happen like this. The under prioritised upkeep from Merlin is the real reason little things like Vampire’s chandeliers and mothballed/removed rides have been happening.
 
Merlin have the full ability to run all parks as high-level leading european Parks. Whilst they may not necessarily reach the heights of say Efteling or Phantasialand (which are operated differently), they have the potential to be near their league if they willing to pull out the right stops. It’s such a shame they choose not to and continue to tighten already stiff budgets, just because they want to make a massive profit, please shareholders and build dozens more Legolands. 
 
The parks themselves have a difficult fime through such limited budgets, however there are people who work in these parks that are definitely trying the best they can, even though they are basically expected to clean a toilet with just a broken toothbrush and almost empty cleaning bottle.  

I rode Duel mulitiple times on Tuesday and Wednesday of last week. Overall, I'm actually very pleased with all the changes and improvements. 

The façade looks much better with the ivy trimmed back, and the new outdoor music really sets the spooky atmosphere well. On to the queue inside, the new portraits, while they are just a little too bright, are still a nice addition, giving the queue something new for guests to look at. The new queue and station music is nice too, even if I was a bit disappointed to see they had removed the old announcements in the station.

On to the ride itself, there were certain scenes which had improved dramatically! The first scene with the moving walls and thunder looked much better than before. Another was the Screaming Heads room, the actual heads looked much fresher, and the overall effect was a much better experience than before TLC. Another of the areas which I really enjoyed was the garden scene, where the new lighting has been very effective in my opinion! I was also very impressed on how many of the effects were working too, although, on some of the later rides on Wednesday, one or two of the effects had seemingly been turned off or had broken. One of the best things to come from the TLC has to be the new soundtrack though. It's just what the ride needed, and anyone who isn't sure of it now, I'm certain you'll grow to like it. It really is much more atmospheric, and I found it worked very well, along with the old sound effects, and certainly wasn't too quiet, which I have seen some criticism of. If there was one thing I'd change about the soundtrack, it would be that I would bring the old spider soundtrack back to the giant spider scene, as I always thought that worked pretty well, and was actually surprised it had been removed in the first place.

All in all, I'm very pleased, and with further tweaking as the season continues, I'm sure it'll only get better and better! (And I can't wait for them to get that Trommel Tunnel working again!)  

I messaged Alton Towers about this and they said that marked up merchandise was better than nothing 

Usually there’s a re-validation fee to
change the date (£5 I think) - judging by the late reply I guess the responses got them to think twice on this one!
 
I still don’t think the original reply came across how they intended it mind!