I feel like that title pretty much sums up Alton Towers opening day. For it’s first day of full operations as well as the opening of Toxicator, the park has been severely lacking.
Let’s just go through our visit starting with Friday night and our arrival at the hotel. The first issue was getting a flat tyre due to the appalling state of the main road into the park. You could say I should have been paying more attention but I am human and I wasn’t looking out for a pothole on a road that should be well maintained! We’ve never had any issues before.
I’ll update here as I spoke to a lovely pair of staff members last night in the hotel about claiming back the cost of the callout to sort my tyre, I’m not expecting to get anywhere, but I have hope!
The hotel after that was excellent, great company and the entertainment was decent too. Drinks were pricey but that’s not a new thing with Alton Towers.
We had a decent night’s sleep, not the best but that’s not the fault of the hotel or anything, but upon waking up, the kettle in the room wasn’t working! A very British issue indeed, and a small one, but an issue nonetheless. Breakfast was excellent, well layed out, staff were friendly and it was tasty too!
Getting into the park was dead easy through the Galactica gate, where we joined a queue to enter the park. There was another queue to get on Toxicator, but we opted to decline and head to Nemesis first.
We started to queue for Nemesis around 9:15 and we’re hoping to see the beast testing and take photos and videos during the process. By 9:45, there hadn’t been any movement at all. Toxicator was running but Nemesis was still silent.
We were then told by a member of staff that the ride would have a delayed opening and we could wait, or try other attractions. We waited and literally 5 minutes after we were told it was going to be delayed, they opened the queue line where we meandered to the start of the ride, and waited to board. And we waited and waited and then waited some more until 10:35 when the ride finally started taking guests for the first time.
This wasn’t a great start but we had our turn and got our photos before heading to The Curse at Alton Manor. Curse was running brilliantly, all effects working as intended and operations like clockwork and the same can be said for the second ride we had later on in the day.
After that we headed up to Towers street to have a look at the new merchandise, another area where Alton Towers does well and once again, we were pleased with offerings and made a good few purchases!
Dinner was next in the agenda and food has been a bit diabolical since Aramark moved in so we headed into Cbeebies Land and to the Lunch Box for some jacket potatoes. Ordering has been somewhat improved with tablets on each table, but it does require staff intervention in order to get annual pass discount.
Postman Pat’s Parcel Post is next (and the last ride we hadn’t already done). Postman Pats Parcel Post isn’t anything special by any stretch, but we like it for the sit down, the on ride photo and the pleasantries that the attraction brings.
After this, Alton Towers seems to go downhill, massively.
Each time I looked in the app, Oblivion and Th13teen were closed. Rita then followed, and Spinball Whizzer seemed to spend more time out of service than in. Wicker Man suffered yet another fire alarm activation and Galactica and Nemesis also spent a lot of time out of action throughout the day.
I understand that things go wrong but all of these attractions have just had nearly 4 months of downtime to be taken apart, old parts replaced and issues sorted out in time for opening!
Between this and the complete lack of atmosphere around the park made today feel like the worst day we’ve had at Alton Towers since we started going in 2019.
As more and more rides went down, queues for the remaining rides got longer and longer. This was further exacerbated by a literal sewage leak below Toxicator which meant that Forbidden Valley pretty much went into a lockdown and everyone was made to leave the area.
No entertainment through the park also highlighted the need for this as there was absolutely no atmosphere whatsoever! No actors around The Curse and no Phalanx extras around Forbidden Valley, as well as a complete lack of any characters about too!
It is such a shame that Alton Towers is going down hill from the 2019/2020 high it was riding. The UK’s premier park definitely didn’t feel that way at all and I’m hoping that things will be a little better today when we’ll finish our videos work and hopefully ride some of the rides we missed today!
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