Re: First Trip to Europe PTR - Day 5: Friday the Th13teenth
Yeah I know, this took a lot longer than I thought. I took a lot more pictures, so this report's even longer. Probably should've split this up into two parts...but for some reason I didn't really feel like it.
So again, sorry for the length...
Day 4: Friday the Th13teenth
We woke up bright and early at half past six, and immediately got going. Our train to Stocke on Trent was at around 7:20. We got a quick breakfast in King’s Cross (I got a cinnamon roll, my mom got a croissant). Train ride was over an hour, not too bad. We had arranged a cab ride to pick us up at the station. It was about a half hour drive, but driving through the hills and winding roads was really pretty and the rolling hills never seemed to end. The steep, narrow, and curvy roads made it even more exciting/scary. As we got closer I remember trying to find the actual park—see if it was in a valley or something—even though I knew it’d be hidden under the trees.
After an amazing visit to Thorpe Park, I was wondering if Alton Towers could top it (both the quality of the park and the visit itself). Well guess what? Alton Towers just blew me away! And the despite it being Friday the Th13teenth
(even though I’m not superstitious), the visit was still pretty great.
Before long, we finally arrived.
The first thing I saw (besides the monorail
) was this tribute to the Corkscrew. I thought it was pretty sweet, and loved how it was plonked right in front of the entrance. Is this the actual track it ran on?
Now it was 9:30, and the park doesn’t officially open till 10. The park let everyone in the main area anyway, but blocked the people off from the actual rides. We bought our tickets online (with another nice little discount) and I forgot that that gave us ERT, which was a bonus. We were actually in no rush to get everything done. Unlike the day before, we spent the entire day at the park until closing.
Now up until a few weeks before our visit, I didn’t know that there was a real castle/towers in Alton Towers (duh). I dunno why, that just never really occurred to me. My mom was surprised by this too.
Anyway, if I didn’t know that Alton Towers was a theme park, and I visited for the first time, I would’ve thought it was a national park. ‘Cause this place is **** beautiful.
I had no idea there was this big, cleared out field. I’d never seen or heard anything like this at a theme park. I thought it was genius. They could’ve easily plopped down another world class roller coaster in this big open space, but I’m glad they didn’t. It looked like a great place to just relax, have a picnic, et cetera.
The Towers also looked amazing in the distance. At that moment I didn’t know if they were real or not. Turns out it was some lord’s countryside or whatever, which I thought was pretty cool.
Duckies! <33333
Sonic Spinball was poking its head out of the trees (so was Smiler and Oblivion).
So you’re probably wondering what that big group of people is in the photo above ^^^^.
When I first saw it I thought it was some big school getting a picture or something, but then I realized it was just the line to get to Smiler :lol:
It probably would’ve been a good idea for us to use our ERT to get to X-Sector. Even though Smiler wasn’t open for ERT, 10 o’clock opening wasn’t that far and it we would’ve been able to beat the crowds. But I actually didn’t think to do that until it was too late. Wasn’t a big deal though, we still got to do Smiler…
Plus I wanted to get some rides in on Nemesis. While it does run better in the afternoon, it’s freaking Nemesis and I wanted to ride it.
So the staff let us into the left side of the park (Katanga Canyon?), which I thought was the best themed area of the park. Very interesting to walk around.
I forget what this was called, but we weren’t interested to go on a slow boat ride just to get soaked by other sneaky people. The ride seemed fun and stupid.
I knew the park was pretty large, but not THAT huge! After a day at the small Thorpe Park, I wasn’t “prepared” for these long pathways. But they weren’t bad at all. Everything was really pretty—especially the narrow, foresty pathways in Katanga Canyon—and I was really intrigued by the spread out design.
It took us forever (by forever, I mean like five minutes) to get to
Runaway Mine Train. I realized we were only halfway to Nemesis, so it was a good idea to pick up RMT on the way while there was no queue.
Besides Big Thunder Mountain, I had never been on another mine train coaster. I had no idea what to expect, so we just hopped right on the long train. The ride ops were filling up the rows from front to back, even though nobody was there. There were two girls sitting in the front, so I sat in the second, and my mom sat in third (don’t think there were anyone else on it).
What a fun ride! Zooming through the turns a little hills were a blast, but the best part was the helix down into the tunnel. We even got to go around twice without stopping (choo choo!)! I was wondering if this normally rides two cycles, or the ride ops just let us go around again because it was still early. Either way it’s a well-themed, fantastic family coaster.
7/10. Shame that was the only time we did it (We easily could have done it again, but I think I was busy riding Nemesis
) Probably would’ve done it again later if the line was less than five minutes
So kept walking through the narrow woods. We passed Duel (which I’ll get to later) and eventually I started hearing a B&M roar in the distance (but it’s definitely not as loud as some other B&Ms). We were ready to face
Nemesis…
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Like it’s little brother at Thorpe, I really liked Nemesis’ color scheme.
We didn’t waste any time and immediately walked through the empty line. At the moment there was only about a few people in the entire area, so I made sure to get a few rides in.
I love how the first drop dips right over the queue line. It looks pretty good.
For out first ride we did the front. I knew later in the day the GP would wait for the front, and not caring for the back seat. So this was the perfect time to try out the front car, and plus I wanted to check out all the footchoppers and show my mom how much of a terrain coaster this is. I couldn’t tell if we were the only ones on the train or not (I thought I heard like two people toward the back), but it felt like we had the train to ourselves.
So, for our first ride… it was really, really, great. Whenever you weren’t upside down, there were constant footchoppers throughout the entire ride. The inversions were fantastic, giving lots of B&M snap, and the forces were excellent. Also, the first dip into the first corkscrew gave us nice floater air. Airtime on an invert? And in the front row? This coaster knew what it was doing!
The best part: it can only get better. It was still mid morning and we weren’t even in back row. Coming through the brake run, I knew the ride would be even better later in the day.
We immediately did two rerides. Since nobody was there, I asked a ride op if we could just stay in the station and hop right back on. Unfortunately they had us go all the way around through the queue again, as expected.
Now that we got front row out of the way, it was time to do back row as much as possible. Much better than the front! Each ride was better than the last. In the back, the turnaround after the lift hill as actually quite good and whipped us around. The snaps in the corkscrews and zero g roll were amazing. Once you’re halfway through these inversions, the train unexpectedly whips you around even more. I found that the right-most seats gave the most snaps as well. The helix gets better and better; it’s one of the best turns I’ve ever been on, right up there with Boulder Dash’s turnaround. I also find the helix a great place to let out and scream.
The loop, like the other inversions, really pulls you through the second half of it. I'd say the zero-g roll was my favorite part of the ride, and probably my single favorite inversion on any coaster.
As soon as we hit the brake run of my third ride, I heard myself say, “Perfect.” I had a huge smile on my face. Best invert I’ve ridden by far, best looper, and my new favorite B&M.
10/10
For now I’ve put this at my #5 spot, and as I write this I’m wondering if I’m even ranking it too low. A couple weeks ago I was sort of tempted to go back to SFNE just to see if Bizarro could keep its spot above Nemesis. But I’ll keep Nemesis at a “safe” #5 as I don’t have any plans on hitting SFNE this summer because it’s crap (next year might look good though
).
We easily could’ve done more rerides...
...but we had some business to do. By now the park had opened, and more people slowly made their way over here (still wasn’t that crowded though).
Our next ride,
Air, was conveniently in the same area.
I like how it interacts with Nemesis with by rising above Nemesis’ final turn.
Another walk on (no surprise). I loved Manta when I rode it a few years ago, so I knew I’d enjoy this one. Sure, it doesn’t have a pretzel loop or anything too intense, but the point of the ride is to just be graceful and fun. Being in the flying position is just a blast. Like Nemesis’ first drop, there’s a bit of airtime on the dip before the first inversion. The lie-to-fly half-inversion thing (where it pushes you on your back) is the best and most intense part of the ride. Other than that the coaster doesn’t actually do much. But, like Swarm, I found this just fun. The inline twist is enjoyable and the close terrain is a bonus. We did two back-to-back rides (I think once in the very back) and I found it a fun, re-rideable, large scaled family coaster.
8.4/10
Throughout the day I kept comparing it to Swarm (as they’re both floaty, smooth, and “gentle” B&Ms), and I decided that I preferred Swarm as it has a bit more to it.
After riding Air I also decided to drop Manta down on my favorites list, something I expected to happen.
Three creds down, five to go. Our next stop was the Dark Forest, only problem was that we didn’t know how to get there. The skyride to the Dark Forest from Fobidden Valley wasn’t open for some reason, so we made an effort in figuring out how to get there. I thought there was some direct path, but we got lost in in the big garden valley between the two themed areas. But I’m glad we winded up in this area because it was the prettiest part of the park. Actually, it was the prettiest area of any theme park I’ve been to!
Besides the skyride (which decided to start operating as soon as we passed it :roll: ), there wasn’t a single ride to be seen. Not another person to be seen. Again, you wouldn’t even know that this was a theme park.
I even lost my sense of direction up until we spotted the Towers again. We couldn’t see anything else. We did however hear riders’ screams coming from the other side of the valley (the rides were calling out to me
).
So we headed toward the Towers, and eventually got back on track. We then knew where we were.
We headed toward the Forest, and we finally came across some red intamin track around some trees, which belonged to Rita.
So we did
Rita, second longest line of the day at 20 min (behind Smiler).
I had heard that this one wasn’t so great, so I held on tight for our ride. I actually wasn’t sure what to expect. I didn’t think it would be that bad.
One thing I noticed about Rita and Stealth, the last two rows share one big gate at the station. Why is this? Just out of curiosity.
We were assigned somewhere in the middle, didn’t really care (front looked like it would’ve been an extra half hour). Train design is pretty much identical to Stealth’s.
So the ride itself isn’t bad. The launch is the best part of the ride by far (held my arms up for that). Right before we entered the first turn I braced myself. An intense jerk but I could see it being a lot worse if you didn’t expect it. Surprisingly, the first two hills had a bit of nice airtime. The turns were filled with tons of gs, but they weren’t “pleasant” g forces… I guess Nemesis has pleasant gs but the ones on Rita aren’t as fun and a bit too much. They forces also seem to last long and has some rattle to it.
After the two big hills, the rest of the ride is kinda meh. No airtime with some jerkiness. And pulling into the final brake run before the station, I found a big jerk and I slammed my head against the restraint. Not cool.
I think the intense launch and the fun airtime hills save Rita from being a bad coaster. The problems I had with the are the rattley turns and sudden jerks/headbanging (the headbanging actually isn’t too bad if you hold on). It’s not great, but it’s not bad either.
6.9/10
We got off that, we headed over to the next cred, which was sitting awkwardly close to Rita.
Just random open fence in the queue line in case anyone wants to go run away into the forest. No big deal.
Th13teen’s queue line did give us some pretty cool shots of Rita (which I think is a nice to look at or watch).
The line would’ve been another walk on, but due to another bag check, we had to wait a painful five minutes.
So, onto the ride…
Think we were assigned second to last row. After going up the lift hill, we went down the medium sized drop which briefly lifted us out of our seats. I was surprised that the outside hills actually gave us some gentle floater (but weak floater). It’s nice and smooth, but nothing particularly exciting in the first half.
I’m pretty sure the indoor portion (and the station) had some good theming, but I actually don’t remember much of it. The vertical drop section was fun, but I remember Verbolten’s being better (which is ironic, because isn’t Th13teen’s taller?). I think that’s because I knew Th13teen had this element. I went on Verbolten blind, so that element was unexpected, making it more fun.
After the drop, I think the ride did a quick backwards helix or something. It was sort of fun, but the ride ends there. The entire ride is just short and lacking. The vertical drop is good and the hills outside were actually kind of fun. But it’s nothing more than a smooth family coaster.
6.6/10
After cleaning out the Forest, we continued to work are way back around the park and headed toward X-Sector. On our way we got a good look at the Towers.
Alright, time for
Smiler… The queue line was a whopping one hundred minute wait…. yeah, not happening! Longest I've ever waited was 90 minutes. We saw there was a single rider queue, so we entered that. I knew the line wouldn’t be much shorter later in the day, so we decided to just get it over with.
The single line as sooo slow. Think it was a total of 45 minutes, but it could’ve been a lot quicker. Again, those bag checks slow everything down, they only let in a certain amount of people in the station, and they only let in a single rider to the train like once every few minutes.
At least the outside portion of the queue line is right under the coaster, providing some entertainment.
The lighting effects inside were only entertaining for a few minutes before becoming boring. That evil Smiler music was also starting to drive me crazy. It felt really long be we survived the wait.
The two of us were put on the same car. I was assigned the third row while my mom was in the fourth. For some stupid reason, I decided to switch with my mom and seat in the back on the very left, even though it might’ve been the roughest seat on the train (I think I just wanted League of Goon points for sitting in back row
)
Like Saw’s the first barrel roll out of the station is great (I think one of the better inversions of the ride
). We go up the lift hill, and I start to brace myself, gripping the just above the handle bars of the OTSR. I knew this wasn’t going to be smooth.
I don’t know what to make of this ride. It’s another “meh” ride for a major coaster. The inversions were kind of forgettable, and I don’t think any of them had any hangtime (besides that barrel roll out of the station <3). By far the best parts were the two airtime hills. The second one was even better than the first and caught me by surprise. It had strong ejector and it felt like I was out of my seat for a while. Other than that, the rest of the ride just rattles like crazy. The headbanging isn’t serious, but the ride does kind of throw you around. It’s pretty intense! I was relieved when we hit the brake run, but I noticed the restraint felt a bit tight, tighter than Swarm’s.
Ah well, we did it. Got the credit, now I never have to wait in that line again! :lol:
Ok, if it weren’t for the two airtime hills, the ride would actually be a PoS. If the line was shorter (-10 minutes), I would ride it again just for the airtime. I know I am kind of bashing it right now, but I don’t think it’s that bad. I think I’d ride it over the other park’s mediocore coasters (Rita and Th13teen). I also compared it to Colossus, and I preferred that over this. It’s also better than Saw, but I think I prefer Untamed for my favorite Gerstlauer as it’s more enjoyable and can be re-rideable. So I’d give it a
7/10 for those awesome airtime hills and first barrel roll, but I can’t ignore the crazy rattle this coaster has. Again, I feel like I’m being harsh on this, but it’s alright.
Now it was time for Oblivion, except it had just broken down… my mom said that she heard someone say that it was also having problems the day before, but I didn’t what was up. We decided to wait for it to open and did something else in the meantime.
I did the one at Cedar Point a couple years ago and this
Enterprise wasn’t any different. Think there was also one at Thorpe that we didn’t do, so it was nice to see one here. For some reason I found myself a bit scared while riding, unlike when I rode the one at CP. It’s nothing special, some positive g forces (thankfully not too much). Average flat ride,
6/10.
Oblivion still hadn’t opened yet. I thought I was going to get spited until I saw it testing. We gave it a few minutes and we saw a couple people testing on it, and it opened back up.
Pretty good timing for us, especially since the queue line had emptied out, so we just walked right on. Unfortunately they assign you what row your on (we got back). I found the loading platforms a bit confusing there’s multiple lines for one row. At least they don’t have those slow bag checks and just bins in the station.
As I expected, it wasn’t as good as Griffon. The drop was great, but not amazing. The holding brake wasn’t as long as Griffon’s too. It sort of felt like a drop tower; slow climb to the top, bit of waiting at the top, nice drop with good airtime, and that’s it. The overbanked turn is fun the hill into the brake time gave some nice floater. The tunnel at the bottom did help a bit, but the ride is pretty much over as soon as it dives down. I felt that Griffon did everything better (drop, length, elements, airtime, etc). What the ride has to offer is pretty good though; it’s great while it lasts, but it’s just way too short.
8/10
I also love the train design and that sexy-looking overbanked turn. <3
So we got everything done in X-Sector. I got a few more pics of Smiler on our way out.
They also had this Smiler minigame here. Looked like just another rip off carnival game.
It was time for the last +1 of the trip.
Sonic Spinball was my second spinning coaster. The only other one I’ve been on was SFNE’s Pandemonium. I had only ridden it once four years ago and I thought it was kinda boring. I’ve been meaning to try it again but the line always looked long and slow. Sonic looked a bit more interesting and luckily it turned to be an exciting ride.
The queue line was a walk on, which was pretty nice because I was expecting a slow wait. For some reason a couple riders didn’t listen to the ride ops and took a little while to get themselves on an empty train.
I found this really fun. It’s actually the jerkiest coaster in the park, but I just found very funny and stupid and enjoyable! Don’t really have anything else to say about it.
6.9/10
Think it was around 1:30 when we got off Sonic. We cut across the front field to go find some lunch. I wanted to try the Pizza & Pasta Buffet, which was convenient because it was on the way back to Nemesis.
It really is such a beautiful area!
We saw a couple sneaky little devils spraying some people on the water ride.
I thought this place was pretty good. I had some slices of pizza along with breadsticks, both of which tasted pretty good.
After that I was looking forward to some rerides on Nemesis. Then I forgot that we didn’t do
Duel yet, so got that over with. This was my second dark ride shooter (after Men in Black). This one was surprisingly long ride with some decent theming. I’m not too good at these shooter rides, but they’re enjoyable.
6/10
So I think for the next hour and a half I whored Nemesis (with one ride on Ripsaw in between). And holy **** this ride is amazing. It was perfect in the morning, but, like I expected, it got so much better. Each ride just got better than the last.
I did four back-to-back rides. My mom rode with me the first time and sat out for a bit (she finally understood about the ride needing to “warm up”). There were quite a few people in line, but it moved along quickly and it wasn’t any longer than ten minutes. After the first two re-rides I did the single line as the normal line doesn’t let you chose your row when there’s a lot of people. They still assign you your rows in single line but it’s much quicker. Nemesis’ single line is also 10x quicker and better than Smiler’s.
After those four re-rides (bringing my total rides to seven), I did
Ripsaw, my second top spin flat. Nothing special to say here. Fun rides, and I think it’s a good length.
6.5/10
After that I did more Nemesis.
At that point I wanted to see if I could get to ten rides, so I did two more single rides and got my mom to do one more with me for my 10th. I also wanted to see if we could get back row as well. The ride ops assign riders from the back row all the way up to the front row. Luckily we would’ve gotten front, and the op let us step aside and wait for back row.
Definitely the best ride on Nemesis so far. Truly amazing. So much force. Whoring Nemesis was probably one of the most fun things I’ve ever done at theme parks
At one point we wanted to see if we could reride Air. But the queue said over thirty minutes, so we left it. Glad we got a couple rides in it that morning.
We took the skyride across the valley to the Dark forest to do some other stuff.
If the line for Rita was -5 min, I would’ve done it again. But it didn’t look any shorter than our wait that morning. I wanted to try Hex, but first we strolled our way through that kiddie area (whatever it’s called) just to check things out.
I discovered one ride that I really wanted to do, but unfortunately I was too tall.
Kiddie driving school!!
I thought this was pretty cute. We decided to watch for a bit to see how things go. At first I wasn’t sure if the cars were programmed to drive on their own, because it seemed like all the kids were following all the rules of the road…
…but then I saw the one kid who decides to go on a joy ride.
After that we made our way to
Hex.
I had no idea what this ride was. I thought it was pretty cool how it was placed right inside the Towers. I thought there were too many pre-shows rooms that kinda dragged on. By the time we got into the third room I just wanted to get on the ride. The ride itself is okay, but I like how bizarre it is and how it plays with your head. It’s kind like a slower, smaller swinging ship. Overall the it’s okay. The pre show was dragged out, the ride is mediocre, but I like the atmosphere and the little trick with the room spinning.
5.5/10
The exit through the Towers was pretty cool though.
We went back to X-Sector because I wanted to try Oblivion again (was hoping for front row). And who knows, maybe Smiler’s queue was shorter. :lol:
In fact, Smiler was actually was pending a 70 min wait, but we didn't bothered to wait that long for an alright ride.
We went through the single line of Oblivion (there was a bit of a queue, but probably nothing too bad). Actually this single line just dumps everyone in their own row, they don’t fill in any empty seats. So that was kind of cool. Unfortunately it was back row, so it was more or less the same fun ride we had earlier. Not any better or worse.
As soon as we got off Oblivion broke down again! This time one train was stuck up the lift hill and another right before the holding brake. Good timing for us (again).
I filmed a crappy video showing off the broken ride. (You can see maintenance crew climbing up along the track.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=To3lmUUACiM&list=UUp5WJW0fZi3JpEN_9kioRBA
Another reason why we came over here was because I wanted to get me a coaster T-shirt. For some reason I’d never owned a coaster T-shirt, so why not get one here? I would’ve gotten a Nemesis T-shirt if they had one, so I got a Smiler shirt instead (not because I love the ride, I just thought the shirt looked kinda cool
).
We also poked our heads around the Smiler Shop. I thought they went a bit over the top with the Smiler merchandise.
Smiler Monopoly?!?
After that we left the store and made our way out of X-Sector (I think Oblivon had opened back up again).
We quickly stopped by Sonic Spinball. Since it was so much fun I wanted to do a reride, but the line was a lot longer and looked pretty slow. We left it.
By now it was around quarter to five. I wanted to do something else that was good, so naturally, we went to Nemesis.
This time we headed over to the other Skyride (we had circled around the park twice now) and went up to the Forbidden Valley.
Like my day at Thorpe, I would’ve liked to do some other rides. But I’d rather reride a phenomenal coaster than do some little rides that I can find elsewhere. The Flume looked fun but the line looked pretty long as we passed over it. I didn’t know how fast the line moves.
So I was able to do one more go on Nemesis (11th), and it was definitely the best. Luckily the afternoon queues have died down so there were no more than five people in line/riding. I was able to choose my favorite seat: back row on the very right.
As soon as I got off I asked one of the ops if I could stay on (they let a couple people do that the train before me), but I saw that the ride had just closed. The ride ops were pulling down all the OTSRs to send the empty train around (so the other train with riders could get back in). It was five o’clock (I wasn’t too sure, but I thought the park closed at 5:30 or 6 or something). I didn’t really care. Once again I had perfect timing with these rides and I had a fantastic ride to end my day.
Luckily the Skyride back to the entrance was still running (there were quite a few people waiting to get on). It did look like some other rides were still running. Our cab ride was supposed to pick us up at 5:30-6, so we wandered around a bit.
This guy was jamming to some pop music.
On our way to find a bathroom, we decided to check out CBeebie’s Land!!
If only this was a cred… I probably should’ve ridden it just in case.
Alright enough of that. We grabbed a water in the main area and waited patiently for our cab.
Me being artsy
A bit of traffic on the first road out…
…but it soon cleared out for a nice, scenic drive.
What a day! It was actually kind of a while since I’d spent 5+ hours at a theme park (think we were in the park for about 8 hours), and we didn’t even get back to London until 9ish.
So my overall thoughts? Definitely the better park of the trip, and probably in my Top 3 favorite parks. I really liked how different (in terms of design) this was from some of the other parks I’ve visited.
I’d say the left side of the park (Katanga Canyon and Forbidden Valley) is the better area of the park, as it has better theming and for some of the better coasters of the park (specifically Nemesis and Air, but also RMT for a family coaster). The Dark Forest was fine, but X-Sector was a little bland when it came to theming. Operations were also very good, the park was clean, food was good. Nothing particularly bad comes to mind!
So yeah, I had a great visit at a fantastic park. Definitely would love to go back there in the coming years!
There! Thanks for reading my incredibly long Alton Towers report. Might continue writing with my adventures in London, but it might not be as interesting as this (major events included Tower of London and London Eye). We’ll see.
