First timer - any tips?

General discussion regarding the UK's No.1 Theme Park. Talk about anything and everything Alton Towers here.
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katied
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I'm going for my 1st Alton Towers trip next weekend. Got 2 days in the park (Friday and Saturday). I'm a huge Disney Parks fan and also love Universal Studios (Orlando) but never yet made it to Alton Towers - very excited to experience it!

What are your top 3 tips for a 1st timer?

I'm particularly interested in food recommendations - are there any must eats for you? Or any really cool themed places?

I'm a mega planner for Disney and feel a bit unprepared but really want to make the most of our time there.

We have bought tickets with Tesco clubcard points for Friday and plan to buy the return the next day tickets when we are there to use on Saturday. So I don't think we will get the early entry time (camping nearby not staying onsite).

Thanks for any help you can offer!
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Sr88
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When it comes to food I personally always take my own and eat in the queue.
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sw7nutter
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1.The woodcutters bar and grill is probally the best place to eat on park, and imo burger kitchen is the worst. Personally i would avoid burger kitchen.
2. Dont go to the smiler first. Get there at opening and head towards nemisis and air. You should be able to get a fair few re-rides if you head there first. Leave the smiler to the end and join 10 minutes before closing. That way only 10 mimutes of park time are spent in the massive queue.
3. Most of the time the skyride isnt worth the wait and is quicker to walk than stand in the queue. Especially between the forbiden vally and the dark forest.
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katied
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Thanks! Good tip for Smiler. I don't think I'll be doing that one but DH def wants to do it so that sounds like a good plan for that one.

Am considering taking a picnic but if there were any must eats like there are at other places we would have gone for that.
Kirsty25

Maybe do a picnic for the first day then eat at woodcutter for the second? Woodcutters is well worth it, I went for the first time after recommendations from here in October.
I second the going to forbidden valley first, hit sonic and x sector around 1-3pm.
Third tip would be find time to explore the towers.
If you're camping I tend to visit a pub in the evening, there's a nice one if you turn right out of towers and go straight on, you come to a t junction and it's straight opposite. It sometimes has the ride beers on tap.
Have a good trip.
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I agree with Kirsty. Woodcutters is a great place to eat.

I also second going to Forbidden Valley first. When I went on Air early in the morning, I got straight onto the ride with no wait. It also works well if you want to ride Nemesis more than once (which I definitely recommend)
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katied
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Brilliant thanks! Getting excited now and just hoping the weather holds out for us as we will be camping!
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jackgcse
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Simple tips.
Get Early Ride Time and do Forbidden Valley First then head straight over on the cable car to Dark Forest (This enables you to ride Air, Nemesis, Ripsaw/Blade, Sky Ride and Rita then Th13teen with minimal wait) - After this point there will be proper queues, however you will have done almost all major Roller Coasters.

Personally I think for Value Pizza and Pasta Buffet is best, however I do agree if you want a Nice meal, Woodcutters is excellent, I would say its on par with Wetherspoon's food, which isn't bad, and not too badly priced as Theme Parks go.

Never ever go near The Smiler until Gone Lunch time, but best to leave it until last.


If you want Fast Track, don't waste your money on Nemesis or Th13teen Fast Tracks they never attract big enough queues, in all honest you would be best either getting singles for Rita or Sonic Spinball or even The Runaway Mine Train (usually gains a queue of Half an hour), but I do not particularly like the use of Fast Track myself, if you do want to make the best of your day, that may be best if the park is busy.

Oblivion will be dead almost all day bar the morning, and generally the only rides to get a queue are Sonic, Air and Rita, hence why you do Rita and Air at the start of the day.

Sonic Spinball I would recommend Single Riders if you don't mind being split up and the queue is long and you dont want to pay extra for Fast Track. Honestly as long as the queue is not coming out of the metal floor (you will know what I mean when you go) then you will get on faster!
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My tips (Considering the above poster)
1- Plan well in advance. Imagine your group, how slow will the slowest walker be? Set goals for which rides you would like to visit and plan out routes to get the optimal amount of time on said rides (Shortest route between A and B is X and goes past Y)

2- Download the AT app. I don't really know about Android but most people have iDevices now so find the alton towers ride time app on the store. Remember that it is only updated every half hour, still has enough info to tell you The Smiler is clogged or Nemy is completely open, or if Spinball broke down for the seventeenth or eighteenth time today.

3- http://www.ridetimes.co.uk is your new Facebook. Well, I don't even use Facebook but I'm assuming everyone else on earth does, so now you have www.ridetimes.co.uk open AT ALL TIMES. I'm not joking this is your new bible, you live and breath this website. Do that and you can snap your fingers and say "Rita has a 30 minute queue now" right there in the park. Trust me, it will be hard but you will come to thank me one day :P

4- Prepack food. Or if like me can't be bothered just buy it in the park as/when you get hungry :)

5- Get any fastpasses ASAP. If you want to fastpass a ride and get like 80% of the queue time off (roughly) then you need to think of it at the start of the day because those golden tickets are limited :(

6- Be patient. I'm being serious here, the sheer LACK of patients of some people downright annoys me, waiting 120 mins for The Smiler, okay, you can be grumpy about that, waiting 30 mins for the Runaway minetrain is perfectly fine, well, if you have screaming children everywhere then it is slightly less bearable... Okay, 30 mins for Nemy (peak times right?) well I guess you might just not be able to wait for such an awesome coaster... What was I saying? Oh yes, the moral... Uhh, try to have fun while queueing...
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razgriz33
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pizza + pasta is also a great place to eat near the runaway mine train.
you CAN return to your car if you want to get your picnic out. Get your hand stamped before you leave though!

I'm also going down to AT on saturday so my fingers are crossed for the weather.

ooh here's a good one: Pay for parking when you arrive not when you leave
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katied
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I don't think we will be entitled to early ride time as we have bought tickets (for Friday) with Clubcard points. For Saturday we wanted to buy return the next day tickets while we are there on Friday. So I don;t think we will get ERT will we?

Sounds like heading to Forbidden Forest first is best plan. Will def download the app for wait times (I wondered if there was something like this as I use one for Disney all the time).

I think we are going to get the bus in as we are camping just one bus stop away so this might be easier than driving. So we will either have to carry a picnic around with us or buy food in the park. No one seems to think there are any must eats so may just take a picnic.

Not planning to buy fast track tickets if we can avoid it. Not used to queuing more than about 20mins at Disney thanks to fastpasses and accumulated knowledge so this may be an adjustment for us since we know nothing about Alton Towers!

Thanks for the tips!
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katied
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I've checked and we won't get ERT with our tickets. Is this going to cause us a massive problem?
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tallicay2k
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katied wrote:I've checked and we won't get ERT with our tickets. Is this going to cause us a massive problem?
Not at all, still head to forbidden valley and I assure you you will be able to walk on air and nemesis before the majority of the people head to there.
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katied
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Thank you!
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katied
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Thanks for all the tips - we had a great time! Wasn't massively impressed on our 1st day but on the 2nd day I found a whole new appreciation for the park and had a really great time - I was even brave and went on The Smiler! I would definitely go back. We ate at the pizza pasta buffet place and it was really good. My only issue was on Air where I tried the test seat and it was fine but then when I got on the ride they made me get off as they couldn't close the harness tight enough (it was a boob issue...). This was mortifying but they did give me a priority pass which we later used to skip a huge queue for Rita. I had no problem on any other rides. The weather was beautiful and we got a really good appreciation of how pretty the park really is.

Thanks for all the tips - they helped us have a really smooth visit!
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ThirdBrad
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sw7nutter wrote:Leave the smiler to the end and join 10 minutes before closing. That way only 10 mimutes of park time are spent in the massive queue.
I'm going to AT on Monday 30th - Just to clarify, is this 10 minutes before the park closes (17:50) or 10 minutes before the queue line closes...

Out of interest, what time do they close the queue lines?

Many Thanks
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lewis97
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The advertised closing time is the time that the queues close, so they close at 6pm on the 30th.
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ThirdBrad
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Thank you very much for your help.

So if the queue at 6pm for the smiler is 1 hour long, the last ride of the smiler will be at 7?
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Dan
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ThirdBrad wrote:Thank you very much for your help.

So if the queue at 6pm for the smiler is 1 hour long, the last ride of the smiler will be at 7?
Yes, if you are the last people to join the queue before it closes then you will be on the last train of the day.
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sw7nutter
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If you time it right you can end up riding twice as they like to fill the final seats.
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