jayjay
Giga Poster
Today, I went to Alton Towers with 6 other friends. It's a visit that we've been planning for ages as a sort of after exam day out. There were supposed to be 8 of us going, but Scott dropped out after whining constantly about not liking rides that much. I picked today to organise the trip because I thought that schools wouldn't organise many trips about 3 weeks before the end of term. This assumption was of course wrong.
So, the day started with me getting picked up to be taken to Matt's for breakfast. Unfortunately, my lift was late so the bacon butties that we were getting abnormally excited about were cold, but still nice
We left to go to the park using Laura's satnav. This satnav decided that my usual big roads route wasn't good enough and took us on a weird trek through Blythe Bridge and Cheadle. At about 10.30, we finally arrived. Being a coaster enthusiast, I was not used to arriving at Alton Towers after 9.30.
We decided to start with Air. Nothing interesting happened on Air. We queued for about half an hour and then had an enjoyable (as much as Air can be enjoyable) ride. The next logical step would be Nemesis. Unfortunatly, by lunch, Nemesis had acquired an hourlong queue. Instead, we did Duel, where I once again failed to beat my highscore but managed to get the highest score (41000) in the group.
During the day, we found the best way to use the park's unlimited refills deal. By sharing the bottle around everybody, we managed to refill the bottle about 8 times. Much better value than the £1.60 bottles of coca cola.
For the people who hadn't had the good sense to bring their own lunch (me included), a bog standard Burger King meal was had. This of course was boring so we took the skyride over to do Rita. The queue for Rita took an hour to clear, which was not a favourable situation, but the wait was worth it because Rita was running fairly well today. It wasn't too rough near the front, so fun was had by all.
I was turned off by the size of Th-thirteen-teen's queue length. I reasoned that since there were a lot of schools here, the queues would go down a lot at about 4-5pm (this theory also ended up being complete crap :evil: ). The alternative plan ended up being to do Hex. Hex was crap. But this wasn't because it's a crap ride; the effects were mostly not working. The preshow ended up being an audio show because the projector wasn't working. There was no strobe lights in the octagon room and all the effects apart from ambient lighting and music were off in the final ride
Oblivion was done next. Three of the group sat out of it, but the rest of us that did it decided to single rider it. Unfortunately the small wait that it should have taken (probably about 20 minutes) became an hour wait due to Oblivion deciding it was a Thorpe ride every so often.
The hope that Th13teen's queue had gone down went out the window when we joined the queue at 4.30. It was almost at the entrance and ended up being just over an hour long. My friends had not done Th13teen before, and considering most of them like big thrills, they were very impressed with the indoor section of the ride, contrary to what a lot of public opinion has been of it. But Laura did comment that a lot of that was the shock and the "not knowing what's about to happen" factor. Overall, good ride but not worth the hour wait.
The day ended with a zip over the skyride to do Nemesis. A short 10 minute wait was had. We planned to do front row but we got there too late and it closed :x . Angry ride op got angry at people who tried to sneak under the barrier onto the front row queue and threatened to get security. Instead, I went for back row and it was a very good choice. The ride was on steroids and was running extremely well. The trains were being really thrown around the rolls and the forces were great!
Overall, despite the park being packed, it was a good day and the company of friends made the long queues bearable.
Ridecount and ratings based on today (for those who like to skip the large body of text... lazy sods.)
Nemesis x1 - 10/10
Rita x1 - 8/10
Oblivion x1 - 7/10
Air x1 - 5.5/10
Duel x1 - 6/10
Hex without effects x1 - 6/10 (but with, would be a 8 or 9/10)
Th13teen x1 - 7/10
So, the day started with me getting picked up to be taken to Matt's for breakfast. Unfortunately, my lift was late so the bacon butties that we were getting abnormally excited about were cold, but still nice
We left to go to the park using Laura's satnav. This satnav decided that my usual big roads route wasn't good enough and took us on a weird trek through Blythe Bridge and Cheadle. At about 10.30, we finally arrived. Being a coaster enthusiast, I was not used to arriving at Alton Towers after 9.30.We decided to start with Air. Nothing interesting happened on Air. We queued for about half an hour and then had an enjoyable (as much as Air can be enjoyable) ride. The next logical step would be Nemesis. Unfortunatly, by lunch, Nemesis had acquired an hourlong queue. Instead, we did Duel, where I once again failed to beat my highscore but managed to get the highest score (41000) in the group.
During the day, we found the best way to use the park's unlimited refills deal. By sharing the bottle around everybody, we managed to refill the bottle about 8 times. Much better value than the £1.60 bottles of coca cola.
For the people who hadn't had the good sense to bring their own lunch (me included), a bog standard Burger King meal was had. This of course was boring so we took the skyride over to do Rita. The queue for Rita took an hour to clear, which was not a favourable situation, but the wait was worth it because Rita was running fairly well today. It wasn't too rough near the front, so fun was had by all.
I was turned off by the size of Th-thirteen-teen's queue length. I reasoned that since there were a lot of schools here, the queues would go down a lot at about 4-5pm (this theory also ended up being complete crap :evil: ). The alternative plan ended up being to do Hex. Hex was crap. But this wasn't because it's a crap ride; the effects were mostly not working. The preshow ended up being an audio show because the projector wasn't working. There was no strobe lights in the octagon room and all the effects apart from ambient lighting and music were off in the final ride
Oblivion was done next. Three of the group sat out of it, but the rest of us that did it decided to single rider it. Unfortunately the small wait that it should have taken (probably about 20 minutes) became an hour wait due to Oblivion deciding it was a Thorpe ride every so often.
The hope that Th13teen's queue had gone down went out the window when we joined the queue at 4.30. It was almost at the entrance and ended up being just over an hour long. My friends had not done Th13teen before, and considering most of them like big thrills, they were very impressed with the indoor section of the ride, contrary to what a lot of public opinion has been of it. But Laura did comment that a lot of that was the shock and the "not knowing what's about to happen" factor. Overall, good ride but not worth the hour wait.
The day ended with a zip over the skyride to do Nemesis. A short 10 minute wait was had. We planned to do front row but we got there too late and it closed :x . Angry ride op got angry at people who tried to sneak under the barrier onto the front row queue and threatened to get security. Instead, I went for back row and it was a very good choice. The ride was on steroids and was running extremely well. The trains were being really thrown around the rolls and the forces were great!
Overall, despite the park being packed, it was a good day and the company of friends made the long queues bearable.
Ridecount and ratings based on today (for those who like to skip the large body of text... lazy sods.)
Nemesis x1 - 10/10
Rita x1 - 8/10
Oblivion x1 - 7/10
Air x1 - 5.5/10
Duel x1 - 6/10
Hex without effects x1 - 6/10 (but with, would be a 8 or 9/10)
Th13teen x1 - 7/10
