Travellers on park

General discussion regarding the UK's No.1 Theme Park. Talk about anything and everything Alton Towers here.
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cmpunk771
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Hi guys,

Before I start I'm not being offensive or racist and trying not to generalise

Today there seemed to be a ridiculous amount of Travelers on park today, towards the end of the day there was a group of about 200 on the lawns.

I traveled a 6 hour round trip to the towers and can't help but feel my day was slightly dampened by there presence. I have no problem with Travelers but they where swearing in the ques, fighting ( saw about 6 fights throughout the day) smoking in ques, que jumping, abusing actors etc etc.

Just want to know if anyone else noticed this and if it's a regular occurrence?

Thanks
George
Last edited by cmpunk771 on Sun Apr 08, 2012 9:08 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Michael81
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Yeah me and my friends noticed. The park was full of scummy gypsies and chavs. And there were so many girls wearing these ridiculous pink tracksuits, looked like they'd all come out in their pyjamas.

They were rude, loud, and just generally ruining every ride we went on. And we got stuck right in the middle of that massive group of them just outside the towers, almost impossible to get past and some of them were fighting. It wasn't a very pleasant experience at all. I won't be going back to Alton Towers for a while!
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daveslodge
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Just posted this in Scarefest Discussion:

One word...UNBELIEVABLE!

I have never had a less enjoyable day at the towers.

Anyone on the park today (Sunday 16th) will be well aware of why this was the case. I apologise if this seems discriminatory and I understand if moderators have to take this post down, however the vast number of 'travellers' (I think that's the PC phrase) on park causing trouble, acting inappropriately and generally creating a vile atmosphere was utterly unacceptable...we (the general public) were outnumbered massively and felt like we had turned up to a traveller event.

For a park that has spent millions in recent years positioning itself as a 'family resort' they can not continue to allow days like this to happen.

I am not a prude and I understand that all parks have their fair share of scallywags (to put it politely) but to witness what my family and I did today was entirely inappropriate.

We had 2 10yr old children with us and for them to have to witness what some of these 'women' were wearing was a joke. We saw drinking, smoking and physical abuse (a man striking a young girl - which was reported and dealt with immediately) and were also verbally threatened when leaving the Thirteen queue during a breakdown.

Needless to say we spoke to Guest Services who were superb; entirely empathetic and without being able to officially agree with us that there was a problem, they acknowledged the situation and apologised profusely. They gladly refunded our entry fees and parking charge in full (in cash) as we felt it neccessary to leave the park at 5pm (causing us to miss the majority of Scarefest attractions that we had planned to do).

Apologies for this not being overly Scarefest related, but I felt that people who attended the event today may be interested in our experience and I'd be keen to see what others thought.
oldgitBEN

a few reports of this, it seems the travelling community have taken a liking to alton towers over the past few years, especially the first scarefest weekend and first easter weekend.

Like others I dont want to stereotype, but there are issues when this community arrive, fighting, queue-jumping, thefts and offensive behaviour seem to be the main issues. Alton seem to be proactive to a certain extent bringing in extra security and the police, but with a group at such a large size what can they do? I suspect if they started removing some of the people it would only encourage the others to get worse.

Alton at the end of the day are a family resort, and these people seem to fail to recognise this. Alton cant exactly have someone stood at the gates saying "um, well sorry, your a traveller, you cant come in" as thats discrimination, if they went with the "suitable clothing" (ie to stop the 90% naked girls) then who gets to make the decision, what if a non traveller went in skimpy clothing?

The whole area is a mine field. I feel very sorry for alton to have this to deal with, there seems to be no actual solution I can see.

I can honestly say tho if I had turned up today with my kids and been met with this on the park we would not have stayed long, and would have made a complaint at guest services. Im glad to see guest services are being sympathetic with families, but still, its not a great advertisement is it?
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Tom G
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How could you identify them as travellers and why were so many there? I seem to recall similar stories last year?
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daveslodge
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I apologise for suggestng they were travellers, let me re-phrase...

There were a large number of overly-aggressive people with Strange accents, ridiculous hair-cuts, tucked-in shirts and an utter disregard for rules and society grabbing a number of scantily-clad, overly made-up mouthy young girls on park today.
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cmpunk771
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Tom the girls had skimpy outfits on and fake tan and the boys had slicked back hair and Irish accents, you could tell.

I made a very long journey to the towers today and I was swamped by them, we tried not to let it ruin our day but ended
Leaving at 6 as even queuing for a ride was painful as they were smoking in the ques and being very inconsiderate.

I was in a group of them during ToTT and halfway through the actors pointed are whole group to the door where security took away the travelers and gave me and my friends fast track, delt with well but ruined the experience, mouthing off the actors, making fists at them. Not on but then again not much towers can do with it
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LordOfDarkness
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I can imagine the people could tell they were because they looked like they should be on the Jeremy Kyle show...
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Starry14
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Just returned home and can honestly say I have never seen so many travellers on the park, or anywhere else for that matter.

I do not have any problem with these people if they choose to behave appropriately, but like others have said, the majority seemed to have complete disregard for others; queue jumping (to the extent where rides were announcing on the tannoy that they had seen the queue jump), general pushing in, congregating and blocking paths and very inappropriate clothing for a lot of the girls. Have to say if I had children I most certainly would not want them seeing the way some of them were dressed.

Don't know if anyone noticed anything but around 8 o clock they were completeing blocking the path next to TOTT entrance and I felt very uncomfortable around there. Yes they had police, but I seriously suspect something was about to kick off. Headed to X Sector to get some tea at KFC, was queuing up and suddenly about 5 of them went around the side of the railings and pushed in the queue then started inviting all their friends in.

Really put a dampner on the day as you felt as though you had to be really careful - saw so many heated 'debates' between them. Also didn't get to do TOTT - we arrived at about 7.45 but the queue was already an hour and a half, so they wouldn't let anyone else in. Wondering if this was due to the unusual amount of travellers - can't say for certain as this was my first Scarefest, so perhaps it's always that busy.
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Starry14
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Completely agree with Damos1 - the 'general public' were greatly outnumbered today and although there was police and security, I do think they could have stepped it up a notch.. e.g. when they blocked the towers path, generally make everyone move on - this doesn't have to single any particular group out then, just the instruction to keep moving! Instead it felt very intimidating trying to battle your way through groups of them.
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Scott
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They were a pain in the arse and did manage to ruin a few parts of the day, especially the final hour. We had made a little plan that we'd get everything done that we wanted before going off to do ToTT around half 8, what a huge mistake this turned out to be and was a real disappointment after a decent weekend. In the queue for ToTT, there was the two of us and two girls stood in front of us, who looked terrified by the antics of these anti social tossers who insist on causing trouble wherever they go, and then they wonder why they have such a bad reputation and are disliked by the majority of the British public.

Their behaviour in the ToTT was a disgrace, it was even more of an annoyance that despite huge numbers of security in the area, nothing was done about the way they were acting, which eventually led to us leaving the queue and not bothering with ToTT.

This is one of the things that highlights the problem with modern day Britain, the police and security units aren't given enough backing to deal with these people as they should be dealt, which is what gives them basically the freedom of Alton Towers for the day.
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I've just got back, and I actually thought this year was a lot better than last year for "travelers". I didn't see anywhere near as much trouble as I expected, although we did report a group of them who were smoking weed in the courtyard.
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LordOfDarkness
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AT Should really stop them coming into the park if they are dressed inappropriately, There needs to be more action. There should be a number for you too call if you see people behaving like this, which can alert AT and they should hopefully deal with this. I know thorpe has one but I cant remember if AT do.
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Starry14
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Scott - Slightly off topic, but did they let you in to the ToTT queue at half 8? We got turned away at around 7.45 as queue was already too long for the opening times, very disappointed!
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pluk
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They do it because they get away with it, if they knew they couldn't get away with it they wouldn't bother trying to.

If they couldn't do it the wrong uns would get fed up and not come back.

Whatever towers plans / policing are they are clearly not enough. Inappropriate dress? out. Smoking in queue lines / buildings? out. Queue jumping? out. Fighting or swearing? out. I appreciate the cost of really implementing this would be huge, but it would certainly pay for itself in the long term.

I was (quite rightly) refused entry to Disneyland for wearing a French Connection T-shirt with a tiny little FCUK emblem on. This sort of blanket policy stops any confusion of standards or accusations of one ...ism or another.

None of this refers to travellers, it's just how it should be all the time, with acknowledgement that extra resources need to be planned on traveller heavy days to manage the coming together of different cultures.
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Liam B
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Thank god Im going on the 29th when this is all over. I live in Scotland and its a pretty hefty journey to get down there and if I went on Sunday then I would be so dissapointed and annoyed at the park and the gypsies. They did this last year so towers need to start seeing that that's what they are going to do now every year. So on these early days of scarefest they need to bump up security, cams, guards, and be stricter with the rules. a group of boys got taken away when I was there in April because they queue jumped and smashed a greenhouse in the gardens so why did not more of these people get taken away?
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pluk
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[quote=""hambletwins""]
................... and be stricter with the rules. [/quote]

No, there lies the problem and then accusations of racism etc that results in these events being a free for all, because they can't do things differently due to these guests being travellers.

The rules need to be clear and enforced strictly EVERY day for EVERY person. I've encountered many disgusting abrasive unlawful people from all walks of life.
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thefatone
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Problems are that things can quickly spiral out of control - travellers are a different society, and can take things the wrong way to the extreme (which I've encountered whilst dealing with them before).

Unfortunately, the SAFEST option for everyone is just to stand by and let it happen. As long as they're not physically abusing/threatening staff/guests, or vandalising property, they're pretty much allowed to do what they want as they can be nasty at times.

There's only three days they appear on park. Thats the first weekend of easter (both days), and first sunday of scarefest. No other days do they appear in such numbers.
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Nightfall
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[quote=""DiogoJ42""]I've just got back, and I actually thought this year was a lot better than last year for "travelers". I didn't see anywhere near as much trouble as I expected, although we did report a group of them who were smoking weed in the courtyard.[/quote]Ditto.

Maybe it's just that I don't take much notice of people who are trying to ruin other peoples day but I wasn't the only one that thought the situation was better than last year. That said we were such a big group that they didn't have a lot of choice but to get out of our way. If you where a part of a family with young kids the situation would have probably been different.

The trouble is there's not much Towers can do about it. We have a similar issue at are local fair but you can’t just turn round and say “you look like a traveller so you can’t come in”. One year they even cancelled our fair because the predicted numbers where so high but they just turned up anyway.
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Hi, we were at the Towers yesterday, October 16th. We had queued for over an hour to get into the Terror in the Towers. We had already objected to a group of young lads queue jumping which was dealt with by the staff, when a group of adults came via the fast pass and attempted to push in at the front of the queue. The young female member of staff maybe didn't realise or was not able to deal with it alone but just insisted they went back to where they had been queuing, which was actually nowhere. They pushed back down the queue a little way. We went into the ride, which was brilliant. But as we were entering we saw a several staff members rushing towards the queue calling for back up on their radios.

Later I was in the Aquarium, waiting for my family when a group of travellers came through. I can best describe their behavior as that of enormous toddlers. I was warned by the staff to be careful as I left, as they were outside. The staff also said that Terror in the Towers had to be closed because of the travellers behavoir. Were you in that queue? If we'd missed the attraction I would have been miffed after waiting all that time.

All the staff we spoke to were great, asking if we'd had a good day which was nice and the Zombie Car Crash Zone was incredible. Great fun
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