Alton Towers - Friday 29th March 2019!

Post number 2! The first one seemed to go down alright; so lets go for number 2. So on Friday 29th I had a very out of nowhere trip to Alton Towers! This was my first proper UK theme park trip of the new season. I did go Chessington World of Adventures on opening day in early March; but yeah... probably best to forget about that; what a disaster that was. So lets count this Alton Towers trip as the first proper UK theme park day of the 2019 season. Was always planning on going Thorpe Park on this day as it was the parks first day of the season; until a certain @CoasterJayUK (follow on Instagram) was quite easily able to persuade me to take the trip up to Alton Towers a few days before! Like a gent he offered to drive the near 4 hours from down south up to the towers! So myself, Jay, his girlfriend Lottie and @RichT1987 (follow on Instagram) hit the road nice and early.

We made sure to arrive nice and early to get Merlin Pass Holder extra ride time. If you didn't know, Alton Towers offer Merlin Pass Holders and hotel guests 30 minutes of early entry before normal day guests, with a selection of rides opening early. The main draw for this is Wicker Man being part of the early ride offering! We arrived in plenty of time for the early ride offering to the sight of a lovely and empty car park! Just what you want to see when you arrive at any theme park. Parked up; we got on the 'Magical' monorail over to the park entrance, scanned our passes and headed straight for Wicker Man!

Wicker Man is easily one of the best, most fun rides that the UK has to offer! And just look at it... The theming is top notch, nothing in the UK can beat it. Even if the pre show does get rather repetitive and dull after having to watch it before every single ride on the GCI wooden rollercoaster. It may not be the tallest or longest rollercoaster out there, but its just so fun! The whole experience from walking into the area, to the pre show, to the great quick turns, pops of airtime and head choppers from the Wicker Man (Big Bob) himself. And when you walk up on the ride entrance and see only a 5 minute queue... it feels good! We got two rides on this top quality wooden coaster before the park was technically open. For me Wicker Man is definitely now the best rollercoaster at Alton Towers and very high up there in terms of the whole of the UK. Only one or two coasters can just top it.

Best way to do Alton Towers; if you have a Merlin Pass of course. After making use of the early ride time on Wicker Man, head straight to the back of the park towards Nemesis and Galactica in Forbidden Valley. We got over into Forbidden Valley for 10 as the park was opening to both Nemesis and Galactica on 0 minute queues. Was great to get back on Nemesis, which turned 25 years old this year and is still as smooth and as forceful as ever! Even though the majority consensus between the group is that Inferno is the preferred B&M invert. However back row on Nemesis is one of the most forceful rollercoaster rides you can get! After getting a ride of the 25 year old beast with a walk on queue we headed over to the now VRless Galactica. As of the 2019 season Alton Towers have completely removed the virtual reality from the ride; which for me is great news! Quicker loading times = shorter queues! And after another 0 minute queue we got a good ride on the B&M flying coaster. I always enjoy a ride on Galactica, even if it can be a bit uncomfortable. I do like the flying coaster type; Manta at Sea World is my top one! So after riding Galactica we has ridden Wicker Man twice, Nemesis and Galactica by basically 11am!

So next best thing to do is continue the circle around the park by next heading to Dark Forest for a ride on Rita and Thirteen! Unfortunately for some reason Alton Towers don't run the sky ride until 12, which means we had to take the long walk (which is basically anywhere around Alton Towers) back to the Towers before heading through to Dark Forest. Dark Forest is home to the Intamin Accelerator coaster Rita, and the Intamin Family Drop Coaster Thirteen! Both coasters when we headed on down to the entrance plaza for both was under 15 minute queues! Thirteen is one of my top family rides and I always love riding. It may only be 65.6 foot tall and go 41 miles per hour, but on the back row you get some good airtime and the ride is just so smooth. The drop track is a nice unique element and the backwards section is enjoyable. And even though I love Icon at Blackpool Pleasure Beach, I have to admit to defeat to Rich and say that they short section of track at the end of Thirteen which is purely to get the train back into the station has a better launch and force than Icon... However Icon still is number one in the UK. However when it came to riding Rita, im not as big of a fan. To be honest after riding Red Force at Ferrari World, Stealth has not been the same as before either. Rita is a Intamin Accelerator which goes 0-60 mph in 2.5 seconds and goes through some less than comfortable banking and twisting elements. However the worst part of this ride is still coming off and looking at the on ride photos... F**k me. Hideous.

From here we headed onto one of the best themed yet probably boring rides at Alton Towers... and that is Hex. Hex is a Vekoma mad house that has two really good pre shows before the 'ride' element. Its a good ride, however its not for everyone as Lottie found out on our trip. For me, its rather dull boring; however a good sit down after walking around way to much at Towers. After learning about the legend of the towers on Hex we headed over to X Sector for two of my top 3 rides at Towers! X Sector is home to Oblivion and the Smiler! Up until this trip and getting many more rides on Wicker Man, the Smiler was my top coaster at Towers; and I still do love this coaster, even if it does rattle you round a bit. Our ride on the Smiler was probably the longest queue of the day for us; yet we didn't wait no longer than 30 minutes for the pleasure of flying upside down 14 times in the rides layout. We didn't ride Oblivion after the Smiler as it actually had a queue... But I might as well talk about the B&M dive coaster now. For the first one of its type it really is a great ride. It may be a one drop wonder of a coaster but that one drop is great. It gives airtime and true speed flying through the tunnel. I still prefer the drop of Oblivion to other dive coasters I have done including Sheikra and Valkyrie.

After leaving X Sector the rest of the group wanted to head towards Cbeebies Land and have a ride on Spinball Whizzer on the way! Due to my height; I am technically too tall to ride Spinball Whizzer and normally am turned away when trying to ride. But I managed to blend in between the group and get my first ride on the spinning coaster for a good few years! Still not as good as Dragon's Fury at Chessington though.

Now... Before this trip there was only one coaster credit that I did not have on my list from Alton Towers. And that rollercoaster was located in Cbeebies Land; a place I had not even stepped foot into before this trip. But a cred is a cred and we went for it. So we got in the walk on queue for Octonauts Rollercoaster Adventure. A fun kids ride that was really really smooth and annoyingly got me rather moist. To be honest it wasn't the worst thing, it was quite a warm day and it was the closest thing we was getting to a water ride at Towers unless we wanted to ride a splash battle.

So pretty much at this stage at the middle of the day we had done all the major rides at the park apart from Oblivion! Why its great to visit the parks on off peak days midweek. Even though the park is only open 10-4 you get everything done multiple times. New for this year though at Alton Towers is the Alton Towers Dungeons. A around 45 minute dungeons experience. We didn't do this on this visit due to wanting to get back on the rides and the reduced opening times during midweek. Definitely something to do when going back on hopefully longer opening hours during the summer or Scarefest. Closest we got to the Dungeons experience was looking at the vegetarian burgers Jay and Lottie got... That's a scary sight for me.

After the bite to eat the park was empty enough to go around and get re rides on our favourite rides. More rides on Wicker Man, Nemesis and the ride on Oblivion we didn't get earlier. We ended the day by joining the queue for Wicker Man one more time. That last ride that we got on Wicker Man at the end of the day really cemented to me how good a ride Wicker Man really is. The ride really was flying by the end of the day and threw us around, up and down. Its just fun. Really, really, extremely fun. This caused all four of us to end up opening up our wallets to purchase yet more merchandise from the park. Hoodies all around!

It was a really really good day at Alton Towers. The rides was running amazing, the operations was on point with all coasters on two or more trains, and there was not even a breakdown that we was aware off or got caught in. Towers is just a really nice park to walk around, with its gardens, the towers itself and just many many grass areas. Its nice sometimes to go to the gardens and take yourself out of 'theme park mode'.

The company made the drive there and especially back go rather quick as well which makes the day that much better when the 4 hours off driving each way doesn't feel like death. That may also have been due to the 3 or 4 pit stops we did seem to have coming home. Overall it was a near 10/10 day at Alton Towers and I definitely recommend going on a off peak midweek day for the best experience. Saying that I can not wait to get back up to the Towers in the summer and hopefully to my first Scarefest too!

Thanks for reading!