Alton Towers – My Return Visit

Last week, during some much-needed time off work I took a 3-day trip back to Alton Towers, as I had not been there since September last year.

It was very nice to be back, this time during Mardi Gras and I stayed at the Splash Landings hotel again, as this is not a bad of a priced hotel for being on-site and after enjoying the hotel last year.

The visit didn’t disappoint again, with the Wednesday being very hot weather and the Thursday and Friday being a bit cooler.

Due to some of the year groups having finished their year at school and allot of school trips, the main ride queues were in excess of 1 hour so there was a bit of a wait for the rides, I still managed to get at least 10 rides each day I was there so I was still able to have a very enjoyable visit with plenty to do.

Of course, this year Gangnam Granny had opened, on Thursday I managed to get a ride on it, but sadly on Friday after waiting 2 hours with my friends Gareth and Adam, they decided to fully close the ride after it had broken down twice. (the good thing is we got fast-track as a result, so I was able to get my one and only ride on The Smiler during the visit!)

On the Thursday morning as well, knowing the park was going to be busy after the Wednesday, I went straight to the queue for Rita and was first in queue waiting for the ride to open and had a nice chat with one of the staff while waiting for the queue line to be opened, I was then able to get 2 rides on Rita and Th13een all before the mass queues started which was a great start!

Of course, with the visit being during Mardi Gras as well, I was able to see some of the roaming act’s which were around the main food area. Unlike Oktoberfest, the food area for Mardi Gras was on the other side of the like where there isn’t much seating.

Overall, I had a great trip back to Alton Towers despite arriving 1 hour later than planned on the Wednesday due to my train breaking down on-route, which resulted in being unable to catch the bus so had to take a taxi and then on the way home, the train was over 30 minutes late running as well (although, I did get some money back for both delays which is good!)

I was still able to make the most of the trip to Alton Towers and being able to enjoy as much rides as I was able to.

As you can see above, I even managed to get 15 rides on the Thursday which was a great achievement and infact even with my trip in September I managed to get on similar number of rides. Alot of this as well was avoiding the rollercoasters at peak times.

I was able to make most of queue times by enjoying the Retro Squad rides, I will be talking about this in another post coming soon!

I am very much hoping to get another trip back to Alton Towers later this year, so watch this space!