Alton Towers General Discussion

[Morgan]

The main difference was the sizeI think, Black Hole was the Jet Star II, and Beast was the Jet Star III, which had an extra drop. The Jet Star II typically only ran one car trains, but Towers had it modified to run two car trains to boost capacity, so this made them even more similar.

They both offered different ride experiences though, purely from Black Hole being enclosed, which worked really well with the fast turns it made.

[Toby Tidal Wave]

Does anyone have a rough idea of how busy it will be towards the mid/end of September? Its past the school holidays and a couple of weeks before Scare Fest?

[TimmyJimmy86]

hey guys, hope you could answer a quick question for me, how busy do you reckon it wil be during the 22nd october, keeping in mind it will be scarefest but not during half term which will be the week after, really excited to be going this year as havnt been in a few years, thanks

[Fred]

Toby - end of september is a great time to visit midweek. Weekends are still quite busy dependant on weather.

 

Timmy - First midweek of Scarefest is fantastic to visit, hugely recommend it. Queues are usually 0mins in the evening too!

[TimmyJimmy86]

sounds great, was thinking about purchasing fastrack gold which is £52 but now might give it a miss, do you think it will be pretty quiet then ?

[Project LC]

Before buying a fastrack please do the maths behind it. There is no way a fastrack gold would ever be worth it. 

[Fred]

There's never any point in getting Gold. But yeah only buy Fastrack if worth it.. it's not really worth it on first week of Scarefest (just get loads of maze tickets!).

 

Fastrack I'd recommend is Silver+ - the 6 coasters for £30 - if you actually wanted to buy Fastrack

[TPJames]

Will definitely be quiet... Was going to visit this time last year however unfortunately several factors meant I couldn't attend the week. It must be one of the quietest days of the year I think but not entirely sure. Rollercoasters will be on one train and rides on slower operations I would imagine just like Thorpe however I definitely wouldn't expect queues over 30mins(except maybe smiler as that's always busy!). However most of the time I would expect things to be walk on/short queues. There is definitely no point in buying fastrack on the first week(especially mid-week).

 

Don't rely on my information however expect short queues, and don't buy fastrack as it will be very empty, especially considering as its scarefest event.

[TimmyJimmy86]

thanks a million guys, some extremely helpful information, was expecting it to be busyish but by the sounds of things it will be pretty quiet which is great, suppose it will be a school day the day we go so that will help towards the lack of queues, think I will give fastrack a miss as it won't be worth spending money on it, cannot wait now 

[Fred]

 It must be one of the quietest days of the year I think but not entirely sure. Rollercoasters will be on one train and rides on slower operations I would imagine just like Thorpe

You don't know Towers then.. they don't DO one train operations, even on the quietest of days!!

[MattyMoo]

Yep we went the first week of Scarefest last year, and with the exception of the Smiler which had a bit of a queue first thing, it was so dead! We're going this year on October 21st

I personally wouldn't recommend buying any Fastrack whatsoever, but then I hate it with the fire of a thousand suns  

[Coaster]

Yesterday the ticket machines broke outside the park, meaning that nobody apart from annual passholders and prebooked tickets could get in for an hour and a half!  

As well as this, The Smiler did NOT open for ERT, and in fact didn't open until about 10:40am.  It then closed once to take a train off, and again to change trains, both whilst I was in the SRQ meaning that it took an hour!  Duel also broke down.

In light of this, they did extend to 7pm leading to me getting an insane ridecount on Nemesis! 

[stretchy]

Ever wondered just what an average day at Towers looks like, plotted on a map? No nor me, well not till yesterday when a friend of mine GPS tracked the day. This was a quite chilled day, so not rushing to do rides.

http://gps.motionx.com/maps/89f3c79025329ce73009e25e715e7032

Date: 30 Aug 2014 10:33 am

Distance: 7.06 miles

Elapsed Time: 7:27:41

Avg Speed: 0.9 mph

Max Speed: 30.9 mph

Avg Pace: 63' 23" per mile

Min Altitude: 508 ft

Max Altitude: 633 ft

Start Time: 2014-08-30T09:33:47Z

Start Location:

Latitude: 52º 59' 19" N

Longitude: 1º 53' 19" W

End Location:

Latitude: 52º 59' 30" N

Longitude: 1º 53' 32" W

[dragon2000]

I always wondered how many miles you cover in a day - seeing the map and data is really cool, thanks!

[Benin]

According to Towers Street the ERT lineup for the rest of the season (discounting Scarefest dates) will be:

 

• Nemesis
• Air
• Blade
• RMT
• CBeebies Land

 

Needs more Mutiny Bay tbh...

[Tom]

That's grim and suggests you won't be able to even use ERT to queue early for Smiler anymore.  Cannot be dealing with Towers for the rest of the season now.

[Kerfuffle]

That's a shame. I won't have my wristband next year (now that I'm at college) so it's going to be a problem getting on the likes of The Smiler! Of course, I would use single rider, but then again, I'd rather be on the rides with my friends.

[Coaster]

Nice to see Nemesis back on the ERT, but it's a bit strange that they have removed Oblivion.

[Coaster]

Something I picked up on during my visit recently.  A lot of people argue that extending the ride close is pointless as everyone leaves at the previously advertised closing time.  I noticed that, unlike most other parks, none of the ride entrance signs state when the ride opens and closes.  Therefore, how is anyone going to know that they have extended?

[Project LC]

There is very little ways to know if alton extend opening hours. If they extended opening hours until 9 at summer I'm sure people would stay. Cedar point is in the middle of no where and people stay until midnight there. I'm sure the british public would be willing to stay until 9.

[Benin]

Wouldn't say Cedar Point is in the middle of nowhere, given that it's located on one of the biggest tourist spots in the state of Ohio...

 

Problem is with Towers is that the locals would probably oppose any form of later opening, plus it's not easy to tell whether or not people would stay till 9pm either, given that even during Halloween events the latter hours (apart from the REALLY busy days) tend to just have people leaving rather than staying around...

 

Wouldn't any extended opening times be put up on the big old queue boards? Perhaps they need the Europa method of deciding on the day and then sticking up a piece of paper by the op box on every single ride...

[Cernuschi]

The only place I have ever seen it advertised is on the big queue boards. I think its at the bottom underneath all the queue times.

[Fred]

It's only advertised on the Queue Boards - didn't think anyone paid attention to the ride entrance ones (where you can change them anyway?).

 

Staff ask too. But when they were extending til 7pm the overwhelming majority of queues were 0mins at the 6:30 ride times update. Not to say it was still dead, but shows that people dont tend to stick around.

[Benin]

Meanwhile, in the Dark Scaffolding Land...

 

Credit to TowersStreet Facebook

 

Just when you thought it couldn't look any worse... Can we just get rid of Rita?

[Project LC]

Fine bit of theming there. Disney could learn a lot.