Family 2 night Alton Towers Trip - What we learnt!

[Lostbrain]

Just back from a couple of days and nights at Alton Towers Resort, staying at Woodland Lodges. In these strange times I thought a few people like us would be considering UK theme park stays to scratch that itch while international travel is so tricky - there were certainly lots of people sporting Disney bags, outfits, ponchos and suitcases in ATR over the last few days.

We are myself (42), Jason (45), Isla (13) and Dylan (11)

We are based in Hampshire, so it was a 3.5 hour drive to ATR, we decided that we would stay a couple of nights and get 2 day tickets, we effectively had an afternoon and a full day.

Accomadation
This was a big draw, and it lived up to expectations. The rooms are clean and comfortable. We really liked that all of the accomadation consists of a double bed and a bunk, there was also a truckle that we didn't use. I wish that Disney, and other hotels would do this configuration more often, 2 doubles doesn't work for us, the kids just don't get on well enough to share a bed and we'd much rather not have to share with the kids either.

Shower was really good. There is also a kettle and a hairdryer, no fridge which was a shame as we'd have liked the option to store some milk and maybe sandwich ingredients.

Food
Breakfast
What we didn't realise, because an email went to our junk mail, is that you have to book breakfast in advance
We looked the night before when I discovered this looking at the website, by which point there was no availablity on our first morning and only early or late on our second. They did try to accomadate us when we checked in, but times didn't match with wanting to take advantage of early access to the parks and not wanting to get up at the crack of dawn on our first day. Reasonable buffet was offered on the second day, they are really pushed for space and so even though we had a table booked we still had to queue for 20 minutes to be seated.

Lunch & snacks in the parks
Savoury options in the parks are really limited, we had a nice hotdog on one occaision and we had an awful burger meal deal that was luke warm and not terribly tasty. Sweet snacks were easier, we had delicious fresh donouts and the chorros and waffles looked lovely. Food wasn't terribly expensive for a theme park. Couldn't see anywhere to fill up a water bottle, found out online towards the end of the day that you can fill them up at the refreshment stations.

Dinner
Again we were too late to get a table booked at the resort at a reasonable time. The Rollercoaster Restaurant seems to be fully booked a month in advance. We ate the first night at The Tavern at Denstone, which was about a 15 minute drive away, food was really good, classic pub grub, 4 mains cost us £45. Second night we ordered Dominos pizza from Uttoxeter and Jason drove out to collect it. We had already stocked up on a few drinks from the Londis in Alton on the way home from the pub the night before and we had a picnic in the room.

Our take on the actual park to follow...

[Lostbrain]

The Park
My top tips:
1) Download the app - absolutely essential. Not only does it give you wait times it will also give you walking directions between the rides and the time it will take to get there. The park is ENORMOUS, the maps are rubbish and don't always make clear how to get between places - for example, it looks on the map like David Walliams area is just behind Cbeebies land, and it is, but you have to go a really long route to get between one and the other as there are walls blocking direct access.

2) Try to plan your day - again the park is huge - easily as big as Epcot, with huge areas of woodland and gardens between the rides - and we walked miles because we didn't know what each ride was like and had no clear plan.

3)The sky ride isn't really a ride more a good transport link - we didn't really clock this until the second afternoon, there are three areas of the park served by the sky ride, and as long as it's operating it is much easier to cross the enormous gardens and woodlands on the sky ride than walk between.

4)There are probably better parks for 5-10-year-olds - Cbeebies land looks gorgeous and the rollercoasters are epic, but there isn't a huge amount for kids inbetween. David Walliams area was nice, but the biggest ride there had consistently long queue times and there weren't loads of rides there. Many of the non-rollercoasters are quite scary, for example, zombies with guns on the shooter ride (similar to space raider spin). Isla who doesn't like big rollercoasters enjoyed her day, liked the fairground type rides and SeaLife Centre, but prefers Chessington. My small 11-year-old was just 140cms and so could do all the big coasters and had a ball.

5) I'm not sure early entry for hotel guests is a big bonus. It didn't appear that anything actually opened early, merely you got to go in the queue first. We went to Wickerman and they didn't actually finish testing it and open the queue until 10:20, in the end we queued for an hour, and later in the day the queue dropped to 40 minutes!

So on balance, despite the rain and the awful food, we had a good trip. I was impressed at how clean the park was, with the exception of outdoor tables around lunchtime, it was pretty spotless. The shops and food prices seemed reasonable. The kids had a great time. The grounds were beautiful, accommodation was good, beds were very comfy. I don't think we'll go back, mainly because it was a long way away and I don't think we are into rollercoasters enough to justify it.

[formosagirl]

Thank you for posting such a detailed summary, sounds like you had a good time and like you say there will be plenty there who would other wise have been in WDW. Haven't been to Alton towers for years but I don't think I'll be able to handle the rollercoasters these days as I tend to get ill on quite a few in orlando

[Lostbrain]

Originally Posted by formosagirl

Thank you for posting such a detailed summary, sounds like you had a good time and like you say there will be plenty there who would other wise have been in WDW. Haven't been to Alton towers for years but I don't think I'll be able to handle the rollercoasters these days as I tend to get ill on quite a few in orlando

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That was quite interesting actually, I loved Wickerman, which was only slightly more intense than thunder mountain I felt, but hated one of the fairground rides that made me feel super dizzy. My daughter hated Wickerman as it made her feel sick and loved the fairground ride that I hated! So I think it must be quite personal.

Nowhere in the UK seems to have many of the indoor rides that I really like in Florida.

[Dollymixture]

Thank you, this is very helpful. We have two days at Alton towers booked for the end of the summer holidays.