Does anyone know at what kinda time they will be putting the things up on eBay tomorrow?

Bexa wrote:

Does anyone know at what kinda time they will be putting the things up on eBay tomorrow?

They went up at 9am last Monday - not sure if they will stick to the same routine...

https://www.altontowers.com/tickets-pas ... s-gardens/

Thoughts on this?
I’d love to go - I think the gardens are under appreciated. Perhaps opening this up might make the GP realise this part of the park.
Opening the Swiss Cottage up would be great but doubt it will happen.

Rhezz wrote:

https://www.altontowers.com/tickets-passes/alton-towers-gardens/

Thoughts on this?
I’d love to go - I think the gardens are under appreciated. Perhaps opening this up might make the GP realise this part of the park.
Opening the Swiss Cottage up would be great but doubt it will happen.

reading the website, I cant help but think this is  a dry run for reopening, give staff chance to take temperatures and run some of the stores, before the park opens fully. Its not a day ride of the rides of course but its going to be a few less things to resolve on the full opening day.

Dan wrote:

Alton Towers have released some drone footage that has been captured by two of the Resort’s engineering team during the lockdown period.

Primarily featuring the Gardens, Towers ruins and X-Sector, the video also showcases testing footage of Oblivion, giving fans of the park their first glimpses of the theme park and its preparations for reopening.

Great see legal drone footage of the resort, the footage is fantastic and hopefully we may start to see more alike footage.

That's brilliant! Hopefully then I'll be able to start planning for our trip in 2021. 

Yesterday I was able to make a trip to Towers for a gardens visit. A lot has been covered already but I'll go through how I felt and my own personal experience with how things went.

When the park opened there was just me and 2 groups in front in the queue, the temperature check was very simple, easy and didn't pose any worry. The security guard would just ask you to step forward, point the device at your forehead to measure and tell you what you're reading, the temperature you'd have to be turned away is above 37.8 degrees whilst I measured 32 degrees (which I know have been informed maybe slightly faulty!) . Slight issue with the measuring device but that could be down to low battery or my hair covering my forehead which just required a few attempts at measuring. Next just a simple walk to turnstiles to show your e ticket and you're good to go. Overall a really good procedure and credit to the staff as they were always cheerful and welcoming, I had an issue with my ticket showing up and the staff member on the turnstile was more than happy to wait whilst I got the ticket up, I believe someone else was struggling with their tickets scanning whilst I was sorting mine out too which the staff member was happy to offer assistance (all from a 2 meter distance).

Another credit to Towers was how much you can walk, besides the gardens opening, you could walk the main pathway up to the towers and towards Wicker Man. So you could see The Smiler, Wicker Man, Oblivion (from a distance) which was all nice to and offered something different from the gardens. The Smiler's 2nd lift hill was testing early on in the day, with maintenance being present throughout the day, all something that you would never normally see on a day at the park. The Smiler eventually did test at the end of day but unfortunately I had left by that time.

The gardens themselves were lovely to explore, something that you'd often overlook at a day on park, it was very weird exploring them without the sound of Nemesis roaring or Wicker Man. Be prepared as they can be exhausting and take it out of you! Make sure to take a drink with you and take regular breaks as they are definitely needed. You can check on the Alton Towers app to see all of the landmarks and brief descriptions on each of them which again adds to the day and offers the potential visit to those that wouldn't normal visit.

Fod and drink offerings I would say could do with a rethink as the only kiosk open was a simple drinks/chocolate stand by Mutiny Bay, but I can understand why it may be like this with such a small staff offering for this event. If you are visiting, I would strongly recommend bringing a picnic/your own food before visiting. When you exit the park, you'll exit via the entrance turnstiles via the old VIP gate (gate nearest to the ticket booths) which wasn't a problem when I left as there was noone else entering at that time.


Overall it was a lovely day out and appreciate the park for opening for this time and offering something new. I think this will help the park and help the staff to see what works with social distancing in place and what could be done differently. I would say that you'll probably spend around 2/3 hours on park so aiming for opening isn't a big priority (bare in mind last entry to the park is 2pm). Again a big thank you to the staff as they've done very well with the entry procedure and anything else needed on the day.

They really should provide clearer information on the closed indoor rides. If Hex, Duel, The Dungeons and sharkbait reef are closed, it's going to be a pretty uneventful trip for people over 8 who can't take white knuckle rides.

As posted on TowersTimes social media, Alton Towers have updated the opening times on their website to confirm that the theme park will now open every day until 8th November.

On off-peak weekdays in September, October and November when the theme park was previously due to be closed, it appears it will now open 10am - 4pm.

Is anyone else disappointed with how few season/annual pass holder tickets are available? I can still book a full price ticket for today but if I want to use my season pass the earliest I can go is a week on Monday.

I hope so! If the ticket availability is anything to go by the park isn’t hitting capacity yet so i would like to see them allocate more tickets for pass holders.

Not only are we MAP pass holders, but we are also pass holders for a few of our local Zoo's.  Even though we are shielding, so going out for us is not an option, but when checking availability for when we do go out, it seems like all pass holders slots have been taken up.  You can understand the limiting of the pass holders slots as the on the gate tickets are going to bring in extra revenue.   Usually as a pass holder, we make the decision to go somewhere the night before or on the morning subject to the weather forecast.  It seems like you have to book up a good few weeks in advance to get a time slot.  I certainly won't be renewing any of our passes until this is all over.  

I would rather that they give us the option to suspend our pass's and add the extra months that we lost during the lock-down to our new pass's when this is all over and we come to renew. 

There also seem to be a no show culture at the moment, with many people making bookings but not turning up, this has been happening across the board with Theme parks, Zoo's, Restaurants, hair dressers etc...

We went over the weekend and it was great to be back at the Park. Most things work well - though there seems to be little point using the online pre-order facility if you are already at the outlet, but really good if you order just before you make your way to your chosen eatery!

I'm not sure that chevrons were the best choice of marker in queue lines though as people were seemingly ignoring them, possibly assuming (despite the announcements) that they were directional aides. Though why you would need to be pointed in the right direction in a queue line is anyone's guess.

What a number of people seemed to struggle to understand was that your next marker may be more than 2m away, due to the proximity of another marker either ahead of you or behind you in the queue line due to the way the queues snake around. Due to this, I had a couple of arguments with people who thought that the gaps were too big and that I should be moving up, even though my next marker wasn't clear.

Added to this, some people don't seem to realise that whilst social distancing may increase the length of a queue line, it doesn't actually increase your waiting time - there are still the same number of people in front of you either way. What we did see was queue line times being incorrectly estimated as they were based on social distancing but when there are large groups of people bunching together, the queue time is larger than they think.

Overall though, we enjoyed our time back at AT. Got 9 rides done each day which I don't think is too bad for a weekend.

Tip: get there for about 8:30. They open the park quite early and you can then get to your favourite ride quickly. On both days, we had ridden Wicker Man by around 10am (1st train on the Saturday, 2nd train on the Sunday).