Alton Towers – Fireworks!

Our final visit for the 2022 season was, of course, to the Alton Towers Fireworks Spectacular!

I was very excited for this display as I’d read that it was a celebration of the big 7 coasters and though they did a similar thing last year, I really enjoyed it!

The show starts off, a little prematurely I might add, with a drone display. The lights go out all across the park and just before 7pm when the fireworks where due to start, the drones began and I wasn’t ready for them!

The drone preshow was good, though leaned into the demonstration of what drones can do, rather than a display that matched up with the theme of the fireworks. for example they drew out a version of the Towers, and a rollercoaster and moving train and such, but not specific ride logos or links to anything else from the park.

They also showed a 3D cube and spiral which was great to see, it really was, but it felt like they were showing off the drones as apposed to using them to further the fireworks story.

As for the fireworks, they were much longer than Legoland’s, clocking in at around 30 minutes. They were well choreographed and timed to the music great, as Legoland’s were.

As I mentioned earlier they were a celebration of the big 7 coasters, Nemesis, Th13teen, Rita, Galactica, Oblivion, Wicker Man and The Smiler.

Each segment had its own theme to it, such as Nemesis being a bit harder and more serious, where The Smilers was upbeat and a little silly.

The star of the show was actually Oblivion as it played music that fit on with Oblivions theme and the show was just spectacular to see, especially the laser and lights.

I feel that Nemesis was done alright but could have been so much better. They also did Nemesis first and I feel it should have gone last, you know saving the best until last and all that.

I didn’t really like Rita’s section as it felt a bit out of place. I know Rita I’d supposed to be a drag racer and even had an opening featuring drag queens but I didn’t really enjoy the music featured here.

Rita should be classic 80s rock, big and bombastic, but they went with Abba and Kylie Minogue. They were remixed versions too. Shame really but it can’t all be perfect!

It was also nice to see Galactica get a mention and a decent segment too. Very predictable space themed tracks though, which leads me onto the the lack of each attractions own themes or voice lines. Rita has the ‘You must escape’ and Oblivion has ‘Don’t look down’, Galactica and The Smiler both have excellent scores and none of these were utilised which in my own opinion, was a missed opportunity.

The show finished with a quite emotional part paying homage to the Towers themselves and the music and fireworks used were very well done. The climax was of course set to In the Hall of the Mountain King as usual and I felt the final barrage of fireworks was a bit of let down. I love it when the sky is filled with lights and colour, and the finale here didn’t really do that unfortunately!

Though I’ve been critical and I might sound a little negative, it was still arguably the second best display I’ve ever seen. 2021s display was so good that I think it’ll take some topping!

Once the fireworks had finished we headed off towards Nemesis as this would be our final ride of the beast until 2024.

I feel like we missed out massively as we went on Saturday the 5th but Sunday the 6th had so much more going on around Forbidden Valley. I wish I could have been there to see that but what will be will be!

Our final ride on Nemesis was great, the queue wasn’t anything like as long as the 75 minutes advertised and the only negative was that the camera didn’t flash for our ride so we missed out on our final on ride photo. There was a lot of mist around the park after the fireworks so I assume that was causing the sensors to go amiss! The mist also caused my DSLR to fog up and meant that most of the photos I took ended up looking terrible so apologies for the image quality!

I’ve written a dedicated blog for the sending off of Nemesis 1.0 and I’m also working on a video for it too, I’ll link it here when it’s done, but you can watch the fireworks here!

We had another great day at Alton Towers and though our season is now over, I’ve got loads of stuff still to talk about to keep me busy until March next year!