All the blogs and reviews from Britain’s Greatest Escape!
Alton Towers is home to some of the best attractions in the UK, from the world renowned Nemesis, to Galactica, Oblivion and Wickerman. There is something for everyone here whether its launches, inversions or great nature walks!
A Thrill seeker’s guide to Alton Towers
Alton Towers is set well into the Staffordshire countryside amongst the ruins of the famous Alton Towers stately home. In this guide, I aim to give my own tips and suggestions of how to get the most out of a day at Alton Towers,…
Nemesis Reborn – Review
In 2022, Alton Towers closed Nemesis and launched an exceptional marketing campaign, building anticipation for its reopening in 2024. The park’s attention to detail in revamping the Forbidden Valley area with new features and effects has been praised. Despite some minor issues with the ride, the improvements are evident, solidifying Alton Towers’ status as a…
The Loops & Lapbars 2024 Season!
So I feel the blog took a massive back seat last year thanks to YouTube and I hope to get back to writing about our exploits more regularly this year! So what better way to start than by having a brief run through of the season ahead. Starting off, there’s the new additions to the…
Alton Towers – Festival of Thrills – The Smiler Takeover 2023
This is Alton Tower’s first event this year and the second time we’ve had the Festival of Thrills. In this blog, I’ll compare it to last years event, see what worked and what didn’t and give my verdict. As it’s The Smilers 10th anniversary this year, Alton Towers have branded this years Festival of Thrills…
The Curse at Alton Manor – A Review
I’d like to preface this review with two things, firstly I really liked Duel and never rode the original Haunted House. Secondly, I’ve only ridden The Curse at Alton Manor twice, so I might not have seen everything the attraction has to offer. With that being said, The Curse at Alton Manor is a great…
Alton Towers – The Your Experience Guide Secret Weapon Saturday Enthusiast Event
Such a long title for a blog, and a long day too! This was our first ever theme park enthusiast event and was hosted at Alton Towers and put together by the fine fellows at Your Experience Guide(YEG) (Formally Pleasure Beach Experience). The day started off early at 8am where we all congregated around the…
The Retro Squad. Weighing in my opinions!
Recently I’ve been seeing more and more people voicing their opinions and concerns over the Retro Squad at Alton Towers, and I thought I’d put my thoughts out there too. To be completely blunt, I think they’re good and certainly do their intended job of helping with capacity. Don’t get me wrong, it would definitely…
Wicker Man and the UK Woodies
There are plenty of rides in the UK offering new and exciting ways to thrill you. The smiler can send you upside down 14 times, Stealth can launch you to 80mph in 1.8 seconds and Odyssey can take you to heights no inverted coaster in the UK gets close to. However sometimes you have to…
2023 Season plans!
This is quite an exciting blog to write as we’ve somewhat finalised our plans for the coming year This year, as I put down in my 2023 resolutions blog, we were hoping to get across to Europe and thanks to our latest bookings, we now shall be! I’ll go into a little detail later but…
2022 Season review
Though we haven’t had quite as many brand new attractions to ride this year, we’ve visited more parks and done more events than last year. As with last year, I thought it would be fun to look back at the 2022 season, rank the events and new attractions we rode this year and reflect on…
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…
Halloween Holiday 2022 summary
Now that all the individual blogs have been written, I’d like to summarise our holiday and get any last bits out that I may have forgotten! Though each park did a great job of their own respective Halloween events, the standout one for me was Fantasy Island’s Fear Island event. This is followed closely by…
Alton Towers – Scarefest 2022 15th Anniversary
Our next visit was to Alton Towers, stopping on site in one of their Star Gazing Pods for 2 days and nights. We wanted two days to make sure we get the most out of Scarefest as well as ride the great selection of rides! I’ll do a separate little review of the Star Gazing…
A farewell to Nemesis…
Remember remember the 5th of November, our last ride of Nemesis 1.0. The ride is set to close on the 6/11/22 for a retrack, encompassing everything between the top of the lift hill right up to the final brake run. I’m a relatively recent first time rider of Nemesis, riding it first in June of…
Halloween Holiday!
This year, we thought it would be a good idea to have a week away visiting various parks for their Halloween events. We were impressed with Alton Towers Scarefest in 2020 and last year’s Fright Nights at Thorpe Park, so it makes sense to have a tour of the big parks! The parks we’ve decided…
Alton Towers Oktoberfest 2022!
Last year we visited Alton Towers for their Oktoberfest event and thoroughly enjoyed it (you can read about it here), so it was a certainty that we’d visit this year! I’ll go into the actual event elements as I run through how our day went, but first we visited Oblivion! Oblivion We usually head into…
Alton Towers – The future of the Towers!
There’s quite a bit of buzz happening at the moment surrounding Alton Towers. Firstly there’s the closure of Duel, which officially happened on the 6th of September and I’ll go into later. Then there’s a consultation being held on the 19th of September with regards to a new attraction going in beside the Alton Towers…
Let’s talk Vekoma Madhouses
As mentioned in a previous blog, I’d like to break down the various Vekoma Madhouse attractions that the UK has, compare and contrast their ride mechanics and themes and finally rank them. It won’t be that hard though as there are only 3 currently in the UK. Firstly I haven’t ridden Impossible at Blackpool Pleasure…
Alton Towers Festival of Thrills!
New for 2022 is Festival of Thrills, where Alton Towers pays homage to their big 7 roller coasters by inviting acts to perform on stages around the resort. Stages were setup in X-Sector, Dark Forest, Mutiny Bay and Forbidden Valley, and hosted a varied range of talent, from 80s rock, to acoustic folk music. The…
Alton Towers – What I’d do if I were in charge
Here’s a big park to tackle with this blog series. Alton Towers. For me, the park doesn’t really do many things wrong, it has some of the UKs premier attractions such as Nemesis and The Smiler. It’s also been a testing ground for many worlds first attractions such as Air, Oblivion and Th13teen and I’ve…
Alton Towers March 2022 – With Others!
Alton Towers’ first day of the season. March 19th 2022. The first time since I started this blog that I’ve had the pleasure of visiting a theme park with more than just Tracy! For this very special visit, I was joined by longtime friends Tami, of The Tami Journal and Pedro, who I went to…
2022 season
This year, there isn’t as much to be excited about as there was last year in terms of new rides, but there are still plenty of new attractions coming to look forward to! Valhalla and Enso at Blackpool Pleasure Beach are probably the best that we have this year, with Valhalla being regularly rated as…
Nemesis: Inferno or The Original?
This is a pretty big discussion within the theme park community. Which is better, the original Nemesis, or its newer younger sibling, Nemesis Inferno? In this blog I’ll weigh up the pros and cons of both rides, and see which one I think is better overall! To start with, anyone who’s seen my other blog…
2021 Season Review
What a season this has been! Starting all the way back in April at Drayton Manor, and finishing at Alton Towers for their incredible fireworks! I thought for this blog I’d do a mock awards ceremony, giving me chance to talk about highlights of specific parks, rides and attractions, and to voice a few opinions…
Fireworks Spectacular – Alton Towers
Our final visit for the 2021 season was Alton Towers for their Firework Spectacular event. Our intention was to ride as many rides as we could before the fireworks closed most of them at 5pm, then head to the lawns for a good spot. Our day started like most at Towers, getting onto Wicker man…
The fate of Galactica….?
When Galactica opened in 2002 it opened as Air, the world’s first Bolliger and Mabillard flying rollercoaster and Alton Towers’ secret weapon number 5. It features 2 inversions, a top speed of 47mph (75km/h), climbs to 66ft (20m) and is 2760ft (840m) long. It seems to have been a well loved rollercoaster in its early…
Splash Landings Hotel & Waterpark- Review
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…
Alton Towers – Oktoberfest 2021
Last year, Alton Towers launched a new event, Oktoberfest. Unfortunately we didn’t manage to get to it, but heard great things afterwards so this year, we made sure to go and visit and see what the event was all about. We made a small break of it by stopping in the Splash Landings hotel for…
Attraction soundtracks
One of the things I rarely ever hear anyone talk about are attraction soundtracks. The music that plays in the queue line, station building or themed area. Something that adds ambiance to an area, or builds up excitement for the ride you face! I don’t know why this is as there are some excellent scores…
Battle of the two top tier thrill machines – The Smiler and Stealth
I’d really like to get to the bottom of which is the best, in my opinion, out these two excellent roller coasters. I’d like to break them down into component parts and decide overall which one will finally take the top spot for me, as it’s so close between them! Theme Let’s get the big…
Holiday 2021 in Summary
As I stated in my previous blog, I’d like to summarise our trip away and add any advice to others planning on the same sort of trip. The Parks Over the course of the holiday we visited 8 very different parks around the country with our standout favorite of the trip being Paultons Park, with…
Stafford & Alton Towers – Stop 2
After leaving Blackpool, we headed on to Days Inn at Stafford M6 southbound services. The rooms were standard rooms, twin beds, desk and the like, with an excellent shower but a lack of air conditioning. We had a very good nights stay here. The following morning we were up, fed and on the road again…
2021 Summer holiday
Over the summer Tracy and I did an epic 1600 ish mile trip around some of the UKs best theme parks. Over the course of two weeks, we visited: Blackpool Pleasure Beach Alton Towers Oakwood Paultons Park Thorpe Park Chessington World of Adventures Dreamland Adventure Island Fantasy Island As well as the above, we also…
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