Recently I saw a quote; “Alton Towers, where the magic never ends! – Imagine my surprise at finding that it closed at 7pm” – given our experience last Saturday this should also be re-written as “Alton Towers, where the queues never end”… or some other witticism regarding the outlay from one’s wallet never ending.
.
The place opens at 10:30 – we got there at 11:00 and joined a traffic jam which took us till 11:30 to get to a space in car park (car park K as it happens). Open exiting the car there was not a sign, map or single piece of information regarding where the theme park was. So we headed off vaguely in the direction we thought best. After walking several minutes we began to wonder if we were actually heading in the right direction, we’d seen some signs but non of them were for the theme park and we began to bump into other people who were milling around, also unsure which direction to go; then a cry went up that someone could see the monorail through the trees. Finally we arrived at the ticket office at the park entrance and joined a queue; it seems the booth we selected to stand at was having problems with the credit card scanner… but then non of the other queues seemed to be going any faster either. One hour after getting out of the car, we stepped into the theme park.
.
And we were now (£38×2) £76 + £5.00 (to park) worse off for the experience. Wait a minute £5.00 to park, wtf is that about? They’re charge you the best part of £40 each to get in, then want to charge you £5.00 to park 30 minutes walk away at a theme park that is in the middle of nowhere: Out and out banditry?
.
Having feeling suitable reamed at the experience so far off we toddled towards the first ride the….. And we waited 90 minutes for the experience which lasted approximately one minute thirty seconds.
.
We noticed whilst we were waiting that of the 4 seats in each carriage – only 3 of them were filled at any one time and there seemed to be two queues; one for couples and one for single riders. The single rider queue got on the rides considerably quicker than the couples queue and we weren’t sure why that was. We did pass comment that given 1 of the 4 seats in every carriage was empty, if they filled that seat then surely the wait for the ride would have been 25% less (i.e. approximately 22 minutes less). I’m sure there is a valid reason for not filling every carriage; it can’t be just because it caused maximum annoyance and they think people love standing around for 90 minutes to get on a roller coaster.
.
Figuring it was just the way of things, we then scooted over to Rita the Queen of speed and being a bit canny (given our previous experience) joined the single rider queue. This did not move at all. It seems the slack-jawed inbred who was managing access to Rita was only taking people from the other queue (couples) and oblivious to the fact that we had stood for 70 minutes only some 20 people from the front of the single rider line. Then Rita broke down. Some serious looking men in overalls did stuff and after a short while Rita was going again. Thankfully the dim-eyed bint who was letting people on the ride was replaced by a chap who took people from both queues. I was quite pleased about this, as I was that frustrated I was on the point of committing violence to or about some unfortunate member of staff.
.
It was now 15:30 in the afternoon; it had cost us £81:00 and we had been on 2 rides: An outstanding experience but for all the wrong reasons, which prompted us to stump up another £10 each to get fast track tickets on Air, Oblivion and Nemesis… so let’s just put that into perspective; we pay £76 to get into the park but then have to pay another £20 to buy tickets for rides that we’ve already paid for because the queue’s are so mis-managed. Excellent, KY Jelly anyone?
.
And with said fast track tickets we did indeed get on Air, Oblivion and Nemesis in a lot less time than 90+ minutes of the first two. We also managed a quick go on the Rip-Saw just before the park closed. We would have liked a go on lots of other rides, but we had spent so long standing in queues that we ran out of time, we would have liked to meander around the gardens, or spend some time at the stalls, but it seems the magic does end at 6:30pm.
.
So we walked back to the front gate and the mono-rail to be advised that there was a 45 minute queue to get on the train back to the car park: Totally unf*cking believable. So we then walked some 30 minutes back to the car, and then sat in a traffic jam for another 30 minutes trying to get out of the car park.
.
Total cost of the experience £101 (plus 3 hours worth of petrol) for 6 rides – that’s £16.83 per ride. Total time spent on rides probably less than 10 minutes out of the whole day: Total time not on rides (excluding car time) – something in the order of 7 hours. Magic never ends my *ss.
Advertisement
