A Weekend Break at Alton Towers – How We Made the Most of Our Stay

I first visited Alton Towers back in 1995. The students at our school had a tradition of causing mayhem on the last day of Year 5, throwing eggs and flour in the corridor and setting off the fire alarms. 1994 was a particularly bad year, so the teachers decided enough was enough.

They decided, as an incentive, that they would take us to Alton Towers on the last day of school instead, and we all scoffed. OK, we thought, we’ll just set off the fire alarms the day before instead.

But there was a caveat to going to the theme park, if there was any mayhem in the lead-up to the end of school, the trip would be cancelled. So, suffice it to say, no fire alarms were sounding in 1995.

I remember going on Nemesis for the first time and it had such a lasting impression on me. I grew up in Cornwall and the only theme park I had been to was the rather fabulous, but very tired, Flambards!

Alton Towers Resort is the largest and 2nd most visited theme park in the UK (after Legoland Windsor), with over 2.3 million visitors a year and the 12th most visited in Europe. The grounds were first opened to the public in 1860 so locals could watch acrobatics and fireworks shows.

By the 1960s it had become a well-known tourist attraction, although it didn’t become a Theme Park until the 1980s when the legendary Corkscrew rollercoaster was added.

The Alton Towers buildings remain, although they are in a state of disrepair. It spans over 550 acres and has the most incredible gardens and grounds, but I’m sure you’ve not come here for the history and culture!

It’s the attractions themselves that draw in the crowds (although, I could have been quite happy wandering the gardens for a few hours!)

We recently got back from our family holiday in Giardini Naxos, where we had promised my daughter a visit to Etnaland on her birthday. But due to the Italian transport system and the near-impossible journey there from our hotel, we promised a trip to Alton Towers when we got home.

Alton Towers Resort in 2 Days

Does anyone else get stressed about visiting a theme park and trying to fit it all in within 8 hours? With huge queues and so much to see and do at Alton Towers, we decided to stay at the Alton Towers Hotel for one night and get a 2-day pass.

It cost us £403 for a family of 4 which included a 2-day pass at the resort and a one-night stay at the Alton Towers Hotel with breakfast included. There are 5 different hotels and accommodations at the resort including;

• Alton Towers Hotel – a themed hotel with Secret Garden Restaurant and entertainment
• Splash Landings Hotel – Caribbean-themed hotel with Flambo’s Jambo Restaurant
• CBeebies Land Hotel – aimed at young children, the rooms are decorated with CBeebies characters with children’s entertainment
• Woodland Lodges – set amongst the trees, each separate log cabin sleeps up to 5 with a small park outside
• Luxury Treehouses – 5 luxury treehouses with a hot tub, room service and a kitchenette
• Stargazing Pods – camping-style accommodation, perfect if all you intend to do is sleep before a day at the theme park.

Alton Towers Attractions

It is a 4-hour drive to Alton Towers from our house, so we set off early on a Saturday morning and arrived at the Hotel at 11 pm.

There is separate parking for hotel guests and as we have an electric vehicle, we managed to find an electric charging space so we could charge our car overnight (we grabbed the last spot, they could definitely do with more!)

You can’t check into the hotel until 3 pm, so we left our bags in the car and headed straight to the theme park. You can either walk to the hotel entrance to the east of the park or catch the Monorail to the main entrance.

We decided to get the monorail as I wanted to enter through the main entrance just in case there were any problems with our tickets. It’s a good job we did! The electric turnstiles wouldn’t accept my phone tickets, so we had to go to the customer service centre to get them printed out.

The best advice I can give you when visiting Alton Towers is to download the app. This is invaluable when it comes to looking at queue times and planning your visit. As we arrived at lunchtime, the queues were already quite large, so we headed to the Runaway Mine Train. The queue time was 40 minutes, but it went quite quickly.

There are over 40 rides separated into different areas –

X-Sector

This area includes our favourite ride, The Smiler. I was anticipating huge queue times and although they varied throughout the day (Saturday seemed to be worse than Sunday), we queued for 40 minutes on Sunday morning. If you go on anything at Alton Towers, make sure you do The Smiler.

There is also the Oblivion which is a straight drop into a tunnel, but my daughter and husband didn’t fancy it!

The Towers

This is a gentler area of the theme park, including a Carousel, Spinball Whizzer and David Walliams Gangster Granny Ride. One of my all-time favourite rides at Alton Towers, The Hex (which is located inside the Towers itself), was closed for refurbishment when we visited.

However, we have been on the ride in the past and everyone loved it, from my 2-year-old niece to my 45-year-old husband!

Dark Forest

In the forest, you’ll find Thi3teen and Rita. Thi3teen is the world’s first free-fall vertical drop rollercoaster, which we weren’t aware of when we went on the ride! This provided lots of screams, in particular, from my husband! :)

Forbidden Valley

Home to Nemesis Sub-Terra, Nemesis Reborn, The Blade and Galactica. We were pleasantly surprised to find the queue times for these never went over 40 minutes, which is surprising in the school holidays! I have always loved Nemesis, but the Galactica ride, which hangs you horizontally, was particularly thrilling.

Katanga Canyon

This is where we headed to first to go on the Runaway Mine Train. It also has the Congo River Rapids and the queue times for both seemed to be some of the longest in the theme park!

I think this is because the minimum height is 1.1m, so there were lots of families with younger kids who couldn’t go on the more exciting rides.

Mutiny Bay

My Son’s favourite area, he loved the Battle Galleons where you can shoot water at each other from small pirate ships. There are also water guns for the public to use which provided a lot of laughs!

Mutiny Bay also includes Wicker Man which was shut for emergency repairs whilst we were there and the Sharkbait Reef by SeaLife which is impressive (for a theme park) and very popular!

Cloud CuckooLand and CBeebies Land

If you have smaller kids, these areas are the place to go! We have visited CBeebies Land in the past when our kids were smaller. It is a wonderfully immersive area, with many favourite characters from CBeebies, small rollercoasters and regular shows put on for toddlers.

However, as it is such a popular place for families with small children, the queue times are always quite large (not what you want when you’ve got a 2-year-old in tow!), so be prepared with lots of snacks and patience.

Alton Towers Fastrack

Is it worth getting an Alton Towers Fastrack? On our recent trip to Thorpe Park, I decided to wait until we got to the park to work out if it was worth spending £60 per person on top of the park entry fee to get faster queue times, but in the end, we didn’t need it.

We decided to wait until we got to Alton Towers so we could download the app and check out the queue times. As we were spending 2 days there, I knew we could factor in long queues, but in all honesty, we never queued for longer than 40 minutes.

It is all about timing your rides around the interactive app and running to a ride when it shows short queues!

The Fastrack tickets are divided into –

• Fastrack Bronze from £32 online: Spinball Whizzer, The Curse at Alton Manor, Runaway Mine Train and Gangsta Granny: The Ride – one Fastrack per attraction.
• Fastrack Silver from £55 online: Wicker Man​, Oblivion, Rita, TH13TEEN​, The Smiler and Galactica – one Fastrack per attraction.
• Fastrack Gold from £75 online: Wicker Man​, Oblivion​, Rita, TH13TEEN​, The Smiler, Galactica, Spinball​ Whizzer, Gangsta Granny: The Ride,​ The Curse at Alton Manor,​ Marauders Mayhem​, Battle Galleons​, Rapids​ and Runaway Mine Train – one Fastrack per attraction.
• Fastrack Platinum from £130 online: Nemesis Reborn, Wicker Man, Oblivion, Rita, TH13TEEN​, The Smiler​, Galactica​, Spinball​ Whizzer, Gangsta Granny: The Ride​, The Curse at Alton Manor, Marauders Mayhem​, Battle Galleons​, Rapids​ and Runaway Mine Train – enjoy all the rides as many times as you like for your whole stay.

You can also buy individual Fastrack tickets whilst at the Park, so if you don’t want to spend the money online, you can work out what ride you really want to go on, the queue times and whether it is worth paying the price.

Personally, we decided that it wasn’t worth the extra cost because, even though it was the Summer holidays, the queue times weren’t too bad (not like Disneyland, where we were regularly queueing for over an hour!). We considered getting one for The Smiler, but we waited until the queue time dropped (which it did several times over the weekend), so didn’t need one in the end.

Visiting With Kids Under 140cm

Unfortunately, although our son is 9, he is quite short for his age (at 139 cm, we thought we might be able to get away with it, but they are very strict about height and understandably so!).

However, he still had a fabulous time and there was quite a lot for him to do. As mentioned before, he loved Mutiny Bay and the Sealife Centre and spent quite a bit of time there with his Dad. He also went on the Runway Mine Train, Congo Rapids, Thi3teen, Spinball Whizzer, Gangster Granny Ride and The Blade.

My personal opinion is that if you have children under 6, there is a lot to do for this age group with CBeebies Land being a firm favourite.

However, if you have children of different ages and one can go on all the rides, and the other is over 6 but still too short, it may not be worth paying the price for them to go. I would wait until they’re over 140cm so you can get the most out of your visit.

This is obviously down to the individual child. If your kid is like my Son, loves all things pirate and sea-related, and is happy to watch his sibling go off to the more thrilling rides, then go! But you may be better off taking them to the SeaLife Centre for the day! :)

The Grounds and Gardens

What sets Alton Towers apart from other theme parks is the incredible grounds and gardens. Most people think of rollercoasters and rides, but the gardens are a huge part of the resort. During Covid, when the Theme Park itself was shut, they decided to open up the gardens so people could walk around at a distance.

You get an amazing view of the gardens when you use the Skyride, a cable car that connects the park. Unfortunately, it is currently closed as it undergoes a multimillion-pound investment. However, this means you have to walk around the park and a lot of the paths take you through the valley.

I could have spent hours in the garden. I was intrigued by all the typical Staffordshire houses dotted around with lanes connecting them, which was obviously part of a larger estate where people actually lived before the Theme park took over.

There is a beautiful conservatory and several monuments to take in, much to my daughter’s disappointment as she was keen to get to the next ride, whilst I wanted to look at the trees and flowers! I reckon I could visit Alton Towers on my own and spend my whole time in the grounds!

Where to Eat and Drink

As with most theme parks, there are several restaurants and kiosks dotted around the park. The UK’s first rollercoaster restaurant is extremely popular, so it is best to book before you go.

Restaurants include;

• Woodcutter’s Bar & Grill
• Explorers Pizza Pasta Buffet
• The Burger Kitchen
• Just Chicken
• Courtyard Hot Dogs, Wraps & Waffles
• Welcom-Inn
• Coffee Lounge

We packed lots of food to take with us as I always begrudge paying Theme Park prices for food. As we were staying the night, we ate in the Crooked Spoon in the evening (again, it is advisable to book), and had breakfast at the Secret Garden Restaurant in the Hotel. There are several water refills around the park, so make sure you take a water bottle with you!

Alton Towers Hotel

Once the park closed at 6 pm, we walked out of the main entrance and started queuing for the Monorail to the Hotel. The queue was huge as it also takes people to the large car parks, so we decided to walk.

It took us around 20 minutes to get from the main entrance to the Alton Towers Hotel, and the check-in service was quick and easy. There is a customer advisor on the desk, with 4 electronic check-in points where you enter your booking reference number and it emails you your room number and prints off 2 keycards.

The Hotel itself is well laid out, with a staircase winding around a middle section which has a huge air balloon attached to a stage at the bottom. There is a Costa coffee on the 1st floor and a small shop where you can buy food, snacks and Alton Towers merchandise.

Our room was perfect, it had a large comfortable double bed and bunk beds for the kids, separated by a small wall, with a TV each. There is a bathroom with a shower and bath and toiletries.

In the evening, the Hotel puts on lots of entertainment so you can enjoy a drink at the bar whilst the kids are entertained. We didn’t venture out once we had dinner, we were tired after a day of theme parking, so were in bed by 10 am, ready to get up early to spend another day in the Park.

We had a buffet-style breakfast in the Secret Garden Restaurant, which was well-stocked and had something for everyone.

The kids enjoyed the pancakes and we had a full English breakfast with a coffee before we checked out at 10 am, placed our bags in the car and walked to the Hotel Guest entrance, just a 5-minute walk from the Hotel.

Alton Towers Waterpark

I’ll be honest, I didn’t even know that Alton Towers had a waterpark until we mentioned to friends we were visiting the theme park and they asked if we were going to include the waterpark!

It is not included in your Alton Towers ticket, you need to buy a separate ticket which starts from £18 online.

The water park is almost fully enclosed under a 50,000ft domed roof and is attached to the Splash Landings Hotel. It contains rapids, indoor and outdoor slides, Volcanic hot tubs and a lazy river. We are already planning our next visit and will definitely stay at Splash Landings.

I would highly recommend doing a short break at Alton Towers. I think it takes the pressure off doing all the rides in one day and it gives you a bit of time to get used to the layout, how queue times can ebb and flow throughout the day and revisit your favourite rides.

Staying at a hotel for one night, with a 2 day pass works out cheaper than buying a Fastrack and I feel we got the most out of our visit to Alton Towers.

Alton Towers Resort will always remain one of my favourite theme parks. We go for the rides but actually, it is so much more than that. The grounds, splashpark and size of the park itself make it a weekend destination and it is definitely somewhere I will revisit time and time again.

I think it is really good value for money, the queues are well managed, it doesn’t feel overly commercial and if you are someone who isn’t a keen rollercoaster rider, there is plenty for you to do whilst your kids seek that next adventure!