12,13,14 September mini break £275
29th September onwards - 3 nights £275, week at £395 for accommodation near Alton Towers during Scarefest, half term and Fireworks
Back in the spring sometime we purchased The Sun newspaper every day for a week just in order to apply for our free Alton Towers tickets. We hadn't realised the dates would be so restricted and were really pleased that we managed to get tickets in August. The date was put in our diaries months ahead. Exciting - a jolly day out to our local theme park.
Then the date starts to hit our radar and the week fills up with millions of clashing activities. How strange that even though we had known about this day out to Alton Towers for a long time, by the time the date came around it didn't fit into our schedule all that well. Add to that my failed intention to find another child to come along too. It was going to be just me and my 8 year old boy.
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| Nemesis is too much for us! |
In the end we were dropped off at Alton Towers at 3pm on a beautiful sunny day on which the rides were closing at 6pm. Neither of us has graduated to the likes of Nemesis yet so we headed off to the wet rides and the runaway train.
The mother and daughter who shared our bathtub on the log flume had forked out for the fast track ticket and were faintly smug about the fact they had done two rides in the time we'd taken to queue (staff were being truly incompetent but that is another story). In contrast to us she had planned her trip to Alton Towers and it had remained a priority in her diary - so for her the fast track upgrade was a really great idea. As far as we were concerned we had nipped to our next door village for three hours of free entertainment completely accepting the fact we were only going to go on our four favourite rides.
We spent a lovely time together on a sunny day. Funnily enough the highlight was not one of the rides but squirting water at each other on the pirate ships. We left Alton Towers soaking wet and within 10 minutes we were home and dry with the kettle on! Perfect.
Our thanks to The Sun and Alton Towers - we enjoyed ourselves tremendously.