We visited Alton Towers: Great fun – just make sure your child can handle terror and you get a fast track ticket

My company during this trip to Alton Towers on Saturday (March 15) with an overnight stay the previous night in the Alton Towers Hotel was my son, who is nine. Before we get into the actual attractions at the park, a bit about the hotel. Certain parts of the building, which opened in 1996, are beginning to look a little dated now but overall I’d put it on a par with Premier Inn – which is comparable in price.

We stayed in the Moon Voyage room with a double bed and a bunk bed for the little ones. The Jules Verne-style portholes and spaceship doors and generally cosmic decor went down well with the little one – as did the giant teddy bear he found on the bed. The bathroom was stocked with nice-smelling shower gel and shampoo and good quality fluffy towels and the room was very clean. The staff were great also – really helpful and professional.

A massive bonus for me was the parking right next to the hotel, only a ten-minute walk from Forbidden Valley – which is home to the classic Nemesis and the brand new Toxicator and has it’s own separate hotel guests access. Handy when you have had enough and want a quick getaway.

If you have never been to Alton Towers you might want to have some sort of psychiatric assessment of your child’s capacity for terror done before you visit. I didn’t and I think I got it a bit wrong as we had to abort several of the rides at the last moment.

For most of the scariest rides there is a 1.4-metre minimum height restriction and my son just achieved that altitude when measured by park staff in shoes, who gave him a pink wristband proving he was tall enough. However on every single ride with restrictions he was double-checked by ride staff who take safety really seriously, which is definitely a good thing.

Brand new to the park and opening this weekend was the newest ride – the 78-foot high top-spin Toxicator. My nine-year-old quickly changed his mind about this attraction as we got closer to taking our seats and we were thoughtfully allowed through the exit gate by the staff, thereby avoiding the slow progress walk of shame back past those queuing behind us.

Next up was Nemesis Reborn – which is basically the same as it was when it opened in 1994 however the entire 716-metre track has been replaced. I have been on it before but I have to say I was shocked at how awesome and fast it feels, with gravity brutally pinning riders back in their seats during four inversions.

Gazing at the photo snapped by the track-side camera afterwards, the look of genuine, regretful dread in my son’s eyes, contrasted with the sheer joy in mine, is a mark of shame that I’ll carry with me until the end of my days.

My son’s favourite ride by far – which he was sadly denied a second go on by the one-ride-only rules of our fast-track ticket – was Wicker Man. It’s more fun than terror I’d say. It’s definitely thrilling with a 44mph top speed and a 22-metre drop, but it’s more suited to a nine-year-old than some of the more hairy attractions. I’m happy to keep the souvenir photo from this ride on my fireplace for visitors to look at as his expression is less traumatised and more exhilarated.

The Spinball Whizzer is unnerving because you’re spun on the track at acute angles 17 metres above the ground and thoughts of it flying off as you round sharp angled corners are ever-present, but you soon get used to it. Oblivion – which plunges 55-metres vertically down from the top of a hill track – was genuinely terrifying. Unpleasantly so, and not just for my son.

Sharkbait Reef – the park’s aquarium complete with several shark species, sting-rays and various tropical fish – is worth a mention as it is a nice little break from the mayhem and we passed a tranquil half-an-hour there.

As mentioned already, we had fast track tickets which allow you to access a separate queue and get on the rides much quicker. We were truly thankful for these when queuing time for Wicker Man around mid-day reached 100 minutes. However by lunchtime we found ourselves in fast track queues of up to an hour for rollercoasters 13 and Rita.

We finally gave up on the latter as maintenance issues with one of the cars brought the ride to a stop. On two separate occasions the Galactica – a space travel-themed rollercoaster in which passengers are suspended face-down by tracks above them – was stopped for safety checks. Crestfallen already-seated riders eagerly expecting to fly over the park were disembarked before their journey began.

At this point we decided to call it a day and miss the traffic queues across the Staffordshire moorlands back to Yorkshire – my travel companion now an aching melancholy soul lamenting the hour-and-a-half wasted queuing for thrills that were never meant to be.

I said this many times during the day to my offspring, whose eyes rolled not unlike the attractions around him as I repeated it again and again, but considering the queues by mid-day with a fast-track ticket, I would not even consider visiting without one.