Tuesday 4 October 2011

Trip To Alton Towers - 24th September 2011

As an early birthday treat for David, we took him to Alton Towers using the family ticket I won from Nivea on Facebook on their Million Moments Of Closeness app.

We originally intended to get their for the opening time of 10am, but for one reason or another, we actually arrived around 12pm. Upon arrival, we were disgusted to see they had an additional parking charge of £6. I know we had a free family ticket, but had I have been paying, considering their high prices, I would have been outraged at having to pay parking as well!

David enjoyed the free monorail ride from the car park to the park entrance.



David's scared of heights and like me, isn't a fan of the big rides. So we took him to the little kids area.

The first thing we went on was the Charlie & The Chocolate Factory - the ride - a 40 minute wait in a queue for something that lasted a matter of minutes - it wasn't very impressive in my opinion, but David enjoyed it.

After that, David went on the Frog Hopper ride - his face was a sight to see! Although it wasn't fast or anything, his face indicated that he found it quite horrific, even though afterwards, he insisted that he enjoyed it!



He then went on the Galloper's Carousel, followed by the Peugeot Driving School. Both of which he seemed to enjoy a lot.

We then went to the Sharkbait Reef by Sea Life. It was actually quite a lot bigger than I expected in there. There were some gorgeous tropical fish, sharks, David got to put his hand in with the shrimp, but my favourite of all was the seahorses - they are so adorable!

One of the sharks.

Finding Nemo...

How cute is this seahorse?!
After that, we went on the Duel - The Haunted House Strikes Back ride - it was definitely an excellent haunted house, the ride was good, but for added interactivity, we were all able to play against each other with laser guns in a "House of the Dead" game style. Paul won, David came 2nd and I lost :'(

Then, David & Paul went on the Runaway Mine Train - I sat that one out as I didn't think like the look of it - it did mean I ended up standing around for about 50 minutes talking to myself waiting for them though!

After that, we all went on the Congo River Rapids ride which we all really enjoyed - minimal splashes from the water was good! It was a really good ride.

The final ride of the day we got to go on after a very long hours wait, was The Flume. I think David found this horrific. His face in the ride photo pretty much said it all. In all honesty, it had three drops and that was a little more than my stomach was happy with - saying that, neither of us threw up, so it couldn't have been all bad! David got quite wet, but I ended up soaking - I was so wet, you could have wrung my clothes out! I had to spend the next 4 hours like that until we were home and I was able to get into something warm and dry!

Paul likes the bigger rides, so I think he was disappointed that he missed out. Overall, the queues were ridiculous - we noticed at one point that the Thi3teen ride had a 75 minute wait!! All in all, we only got to go on/in 9 attractions in our 6 hour trip - 9 out of about 30 rides - that's not a good ratio if you ask me. If we'd have been paying, to pay on the day would have cost £95 for the 3 of us, plus a further £6 for parking - a total of £101 for 9 attractions - that's poor value for money in my opinion.

Nonetheless, David had a great time and that's all that matters in the end as it was for him for his birthday and he enjoyed it. It was a nice day spent as a family too.

No comments:

Post a Comment