If you ask me which is my favourite theme park in the UK, my answer would always be Alton Towers. However, our most recent visit has left me very disappointed and thinking that Alton Towers has a serious maintenance problem. Here is our experience of Scarefest 2023.
Firstly, a little background information. I have grown up going to Alton Towers on family holidays as a teenager and will never forget my first ride on the Corkscrew and Nemesis. Since being an adult, me and my husband would take every opportunity to visit Alton Towers although we live approximately a 4-hour drive away. With young children this has been more difficult in recent years but we have enjoyed a number of visits to ride The Wicker Man and Thirteen.
Our oldest son is absolutely obsessed with roller coasters and has been eagerly awaiting the time when he reached the magic 1.4m height mark. Just before the October half term he achieved his goal so we excitedly headed to Scarefest on Monday October 23, for his first experience of the thrill rides, Alton Towers is renown for.
I am writing this piece because having not experienced Scarefest for the last three years, I was completely shocked at the experience we had.
Now, I am not naive to the fact that Alton Towers would be very busy during their top event of the year, Scarefest. But having arrived at 9:15AM ready to give ourselves the best opportunity to get a ride without a huge wait we found that the monorail wasn’t running.
Okay, annoying but we pushed on with the 15 minute walk to get to the gate. The Smiler was top on my son’s list so we headed there and he got in the queue at 9:50AM with his grandparents.
I took our youngest to The Wicker Man as he is not tall enough to ride The Smiler just yet. It was 10:00AM and we were told that the queue was 50 minutes but the ride wasn’t opening yet.
So far, not the best start. At approximately 10:40AM The Wicker Man opened. Keeping in touch with my son, we discovered that The Smiler had also not opened until late and then closed again shortly after. After a huge amount of time, they finally managed to ride The Smiler at 12:30PM. It took them 150 minutes!
Keeping up with the latest queue times it became instantly apparent that majority of the major roller coasters were struggling with closures being reported frequently on The Smiler, The Wicker Man, Oblivion, Spinball Whizzer and Galactica.
Our friends queued for 120minutes for The Wicker Man only to have to leave the queue because it closed due to technical reasons. We queued for Oblivion for 30 minutes and it broke down, although they advised us to go to another ride, we waited and it did reopen about 20 minutes later.
My son queued for 80 mins for Galactica only to be told he had to leave the queue for technical reasons. Queues for the main thrill rides were at 70-80mins for most of the day and The Smiler hit 115mins in early afternoon.
So, what are the main problems and what does Alton Towers need to do about them?
What are the main problems?
It was clear that there were just too many people in the park, with 70-80+min queues the norm throughout the day. It was obvious that Alton Towers had sold huge amounts of FastTrack tickets meaning the queues were very long meaning the standby queues were moving very slowly because priority was going to FastTrack riders.
The biggest problem though which was actually confirmed to us by the person we spoke to at Guest Services at the end of the day after the nightmare 80 min wait for Galactica and then being told to leave the queue without any FastTrack or token of apology.
Alton Towers understandably carries out its roller coaster maintenance in the off season so from November to March to avoid extended downtime in the main season. However, the person at Guest Services was not surprised that there had been so many closures during our visit because “rides tend to break down a lot more at the end of the season”.
Now, this wouldn’t be such a large problem if Alton Towers wasn’t running their most popular and busy event right at the end of the season.
Their plan appeared to be let as many people in as possible, sell the absolute maximum amount of FastTrack tickets and don’t worry about the consequences when obviously no proper maintenance has been done on the major thrill rides prior to the event. It was very disappointing.
To their credit we were offered £15 tickets to return next season but all those other guests who didn’t go to Guest Services to complain will have left with nothing apart from a very bad experience. With Alton Towers generally being considered by most as the best theme park in the UK, it is clear it has a lot to do to ensure this title continues to be theirs.
What does Alton Towers need to do?
Well, this is obvious, after the busy summer season at the beginning of September, when attendance will drop, Alton Towers needs to carry out maintenance on the top thrill rides ensuring they can cope with the busy Scarefest event which this year has run on 7th, 8th & 13th – 31st October.
Whilst I am sure, some maintenance must have been carried out in September, from our experience on October 23, it was clear that The Smiler, The Wicker Man, Galactica, Spinball Whizzer and Oblivion all needed work so they could run reliably throughout the day.
If the roller coasters had run smoothly the wait times would have been less and guests would not have gone away so disappointed with waiting for 80 mins and then being told to get out of the queue without even having ridden the roller coaster.
Nemesis is set to reopen in March 2024 and we are expecting huge crowds at Alton Towers next year to ride it. We really hope that for Scarefest 2024 Alton Towers can do a lot better in ensuring their line up of top roller coasters run smoothly.
Have you been to Scarefest at Alton Towers this year, we would love to hear your thoughts about your experience. Let us know by leaving us a comment below or on our Facebook page.
