Alton Towers queue times

[Magic Mouse]

DS and DD are planning a day out to Alton Towers this weekend.

Being a weekend and school holidays I imagine it’s going to be busy. They’re trying to decide whether to purchase the quick queue tickets.

Has anyone been recently at the weekend and can let me know what the wait times were like.

Thanks

[silverfox46]

My daughter and family were there a week ago for the weekend and staying at Alton Towers hotel. Queues horrendous she said even though they had early access, problem was rides not working. Waited an hour for *Rita* to be turned away before getting on, walked over other side of park and queued again. Once more 40 mins later ride closed without success. In all she said , 3 and a half hours of queuing before managing one ride. They were lucky could go back to hotel as what was planned as a fun surprise getaway turned to disappointment. Second day was a little better.
Such a shame as they had an early start and 3 hour journey there plus the expense

[DFussy]

Not at the weekend but we were there the two nice day’s weather last week. There were issues with rides going tech over both days sending queues thru roof at times. Smiler over an hour all the time both days. We got in at 70 but really it was two hours. Wicker man slightly lower but still quite long. Most queues average 3/4 hr. You can pay per ride (smiler came up at £10 one off quick q) but no idea how much quicker it was.

My recommendations are park opens hour before. If they can get there by then and into q. We joined a wickerman q at 9.15 and we were probably off in an hour and moving on to second ride.

We stayed till gone closing day one and it took us over an hour to get out of the car park, no problems leaving at 4 on second day.

We took food in and ate in queues to make most of our time.

[Guest]

Wickerman and The Smiler tend to have the longest queues, anywhere between an hour and 90mins generally at the moment.

You can do the park without fastrack if you have a plan and maximise your day, but it all depends on how you want to play it. If you want to go at a slower pace and do rides in any order, then fastrack might be for you. If you want to save that money and plan a route then you can do it without.

The Smiler has a single rider queue which isn't advertised much but can drastically reduce your queue time. You don't get to sit together, but the trade off is that you can be waiting as little as 5mins as opposed to 90 in the regular queue. Just look for the sign on the left hand entrance to The Smiler.

The park gates open at 9am so you can be in and queuing for your first ride when they open at 10am. I would suggest starting at Dark Forest for Rita and Thirteen as you can get these done super quiet in the morning. Whilst in the area you can also do Gangsta Granny if that is of interest.

Leave Wickerman until last, you can jump in the queue just before ride close at 6pm and everyone who is in the line before they close it will always get their turn. That way you aren't wasting time when rides are open in one of the longer queues. Plus after ride close there aren't any guests filtering into the fastrack queue so the main queue moves much quicker.

Hope that helps.

[Jessie2012]

We went last week on one of the days when the weather was nice. We were concerned about queues before we went so bought silver fast track (expensive! ) had done all the rides by about 2pm though,so it was a shame we weren’t staying in the hotel. We went to Wicker Man at opening and barely queued- got in the park at about 9.15 am- we then used fast track later in the day. Queues were about 70/80 minutes from about lunchtime in,and Rita went tech,although we had already done it twice. We didn’t manage to get on Gangsta Granny though,as DH didn’t want to queue 60 minutes. It was 5 minutes on the app,but by the time we’d walked over,it was at 60! Probably won’t go again now for a good few years, we just went this year to get our theme park fix. The thrill rides killed me,I am def never going on The Smiler again-makes me feel terrible every time!

[Magic Mouse]

Thanks for all the advice.

They went yesterday, they decided to purchase one of the fast track passes beforehand. They went for the one that allows you to ride the big six.

They said it was definitely worth it as the queues were pretty long but they rode them all and then queued for other rides. They even hopped into the queue for The Smiler just before the park closed to ride that one again.