Splash Landings
As mentioned in my Oktoberfest Review, we stopped for two nights at the Splash Landings hotel.
The check in process was excellent! You can either do it the conventional way by talking to a receptionist, or by using a touchscreen machine. It was easy to use and it spits out both your room number, and asks you whether you want 1 or 2 room keys which is handy! As well as that, it also emails you all the details you need such as you room number. Thoroughly impressed!
After finally finding out which direction to go to find our rooms (really helpful staff again), we dropped our things off and had a wander about.
The hotel itself is really well themed to a wacky caribbean resort, which flows through not only the rooms and public spaces, but the corridors as well, right down to the carpets. Really impressed with the effort here!
Flambo’s Jambo
The hotel offers a bar on the ground floor, and a restaurant, Flambo’s Jambo, on the floor below. We hadn’t booked Flambo’s for tea but they were able to accomodate us anyway as there was plenty of room in the restaurant.
The restaurant itself continues the theme, even down to the food being served. Though for the price of entry, I do feel that the offerings were a little lacking and the food itself wasn’t the best unfortunately!
I would recommend trying somewhere else, at least for your evening meal as there are a few other options either in room service, or in the other Hotel. Breakfast in the mornings is perfectly fine however!
After dinner, we took a walk around the resort, and popped in to see the water park and Alton Towers Hotel along the way.
The following day we had our day in the park for Oktoberfest, which you can read about here!
Waterpark & Extraordinary golf
For our second and final day at the resort, we had a round of minigolf and a few hours in the excellent water park.
The minigolf course they have is quite good fun and each hole is themed to a ride or attraction, either past or present which really adds character. Some of the holes could really do with a little attention though as they do seem to have been put in and forgotten about over time. Oblivions hole comes to mind as well as the Old MacDonalds farm one.
Its certainly worth a visit if you enjoy minigolf as 9 holes come with your stay, and you can then pay £2 for the additional 9 too. This £2 fee is also eligible for Merlin annual pass discount weirdly!
Once we’d had our round of golf, we headed into the water park. The park offers a shop that sells towels and swimwear which was excellent as I managed to put a hole in my swim shorts playing golf.
The changing rooms are fine too, though the double cubicles are a bit on the smaller side as we had trouble getting changed in one and opted for separates on the way out. Lockers are a 20p charge that is refundable which was nice!
As for the waterpark itself, it was fantastic! The park offers 3 flumes that require you to ride on rubber rings. The first is Master Blaster, a master blaster powered flume that is the UKs longest at 682ft. This is a good fun, thrill ride that sees you being powered along a flume by jets of water on a rubber ring, traversing both upwards and downward sections, helixes and enclosed parts. The only negative I have with the ride is the camera at the end doesn’t ever seem to photo anyone coming out of the flume!
The second and third flumes come as a pair next to one another allowing for racing of sorts. Called Rush and Rampage, both require rubber rings too, and both ride very similarly with one being enclosed in a dark tunnel (rush) and the other being more light and airy (rampage). Personally, I preferred Rush as it allows you to select a music track to play while you slip and slide down, which was a nice touch.
Moving away from flumes, the water park offers a few different areas of interactivity starting off with Lagoona Bay.
Lagoona Bay is the main central area of the water park and offers a large pool with a giant geyser in the centre, waterfalls and water cannons to play around with, as well as a sectioned off area to play balls games in.
Next there’s the Wacky Waterworks. Think of a climbing frame but with water jets and a giant tipping bucket. Here there are plenty of interactive elements to mess around with, such as water jets, buckets and troughs to fill, and various wheels that turn effects on and off, allowing you to thoroughly soak other in the area.
At regular intervals, there is a large bucket that drops a huge amount of water down from the top of the structure and this does come down with some great force! Smaller kids could easily be knocked about in the torrent, but there is nothing that can hurt anyone up there.
Then there’s Calypso Creek, a small lazy river that circles around the back section of the park. It’s quite relaxing to float around here but it’s not all too big but there are various waterfalls dotted about to interact with.
Finally, there is a small area for younger kids to enjoy called Little Leak. It features lots of interactive elements for young ones to play with and get used to the water, as well as a small slide to play on!
Heading outside you’ll find the Flash flood pools and Bubbly Wubbly, a large outdoor jacuzzi. Flash flood is a series of pools connected by slides which get a little longer between each pool. There are 3 tiers, starting at the top and working your way down, giving you 5 different slides to try out.
The only issue I saw with Flash Flood, was that to go back to the top required you to go back inside and walk all the way back to the top. There isn’t a way up while you’re outside.
You are also encouraged to move down the pools quite quickly as each pool doubles as a splash pool for the slides too, so the lifeguards want you out of the way pretty quickly. It wasn’t rushed or anything, but the temperature of the water was just prefect, not too hot, and a bit cooler than other parts!
The best part about our visit was that everyone was there to get wet. Many times were we climbing up a set of stairs, only to have a bucket of water dropped on us, or someone shooting water towards us out of a cannon. That’s not to say we weren’t doing the same! It really did feel like everyone was there to make sure everyone else was enjoying their time, which these days, is a rare thing!
I should also mention that there are two places to grab something to eat inside the waterpark itself. There’s a small cafe that sells drinks and pre packed sandwiches, and a small restaurant selling burgers, hotdogs, jacket potatoes and kids meals. It wasn’t too expensive to eat here and the food was of a good quality too!
I can highly recommend Alton Towers Waterpark to anyone who’s never been to one before. It’s certainly best enjoyed with a group of friends or family who can all take turns trying to soak one another! We stayed in for about 4 hours or so, and after that, we’d certainly had our fill of wacky watery goodness!
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