Friday, July 14, 2006

I have remembered how much I hate Alton Towers.

It's been a few years since I was last there. On my last but one visit there I had been so incensed by a combination of feeling ripped off and as a paying customer being treated with sheer contempt by the park owners that I wrote a lengthy letter of complaint. To be fair they responded very quickly but in the event I would have far rather they hadn't bothered because they responded to my complaint by sending me a free family pass which I didn't bin fast enough. My kids saw it and I had to bloody well go AGAIN.

Anyway, my 14 year old went there on a school trip yesterday. I met him and three of his mates off the coach last night. J had managed a total of 4 rides in four hours which I thought was terrible enough but his mate's day went like this:

9.00am - leave school for Alton Towers.
12.30pm - arrive at Alton Towers later than planned having been stuck behind a serious motorway accident.
12.35pm - begin queuing for latest ride 'Rita, Queen of Speed'.
3.05pm - get onto 'Rita, Queen of Speed'.
3.05 and twenty seconds pm - get off 'Rita, Queen of Speed'. Ride finished.
3.15pm - begin queuing for Nemisis.
4.20pm - realisation that will miss coach if do not leave queue, so leave queue.
4.30pm - just make it back in time for coach.
8.00pm - arrive back at school one hour late due to getting stuck behind another serious accident on motorway.

This day out cost £30.00!!!! I shouldn't think that the owners of Alton Towers can believe the stupidity of their customers, but so long as so many people seem happy to put up with this for a couple of minutes max of white knuckle thrills, why the hell should they care?

5 comments:

Holly said...

I have to say that Alton Towers never really appealed to me, so many of my friends have said that I must go but queuing for 3 hours for 1 ride does not appeal to me.

I did once go to the theme park in Tamworth, I forget what its called now, but that was bloody brilliant, and you didnt have to queue for hours either!!

Yorkshire Pudding said...

PMT?
Spelling - Nemesis NOT Nemisis - just to get you more riled up! GRRRRRRR! Me Jane - You Tarzan!

Reidski said...

I can't be doing with those white knuckle rides! Whenever I take the boy to places like that I usually have a go at him cos he's not so keen on the thrill either, but he just asks why I'm not going on them either, to which I can only reply: "Cos yer faither is a wimp, son!" He then departs to play electronic games while I depart to the bar!
And they are, indeed, all a complete rip-off.

Babs said...

Had something like that happen Down South. Went to the amusement park and ended up paying $51 for a ride on the damned log flume and that was IT. Course eveyrone arguing about the lines didn't help.

J.J said...

Moo, don't listen to those friends..it is hell - sheer hell.

Y.P. Sorry Mr Pudding Sir.

Reidski, you go to the bar??I simply refuse to believe that :-)

Babs, please at least tell me the particular log flume was 'awesome'. It bloody well ought to be at that rate!

WBS, it is outrageously expensive for a family...and according to them adulthood begins at age 12.
It really is daylight robbery.