A wicked weekend at Alton Towers theme park

As a foreigner living in the United Kingdom, it’s almost a rite of passage for me to visit Alton Towers, one of the major theme parks in England.

Practically everyone who has grown up in the UK, or lived there for some time, has visited the park before.

But, after almost a year living in Bristol, I (an adrenaline junkie and rollercoaster lover) had somehow not gotten around to it yet!

So, to combat this problem, recently Dan, our friends Will and Elyse, and I headed to to the Towers for a weekend of fun.

Of course, we picked the one weekend in the middle of the UK’s months-long heatwave where the heat decided to break and it began pouring rain in the middle of the Saturday, leaving us (in our shorts and vests) freezing and soaked because we weren’t prepared for anything other than the recent 30+ degree weather.

Because we stupidly weren’t prepared, we all ended up purchasing hoodies, ponchos and umbrellas from the park – as did thousands of others, much to the pleasure of Alton Towers’ bank accounts, I’m sure.

It was a bit of a zero waste and sustainable living fail on my part – as you know, I don’t like purchasing clothing that isn’t secondhand or sustainably made, so spending money on items that I knew wouldn’t be ideally produced was a big heart-wrenching, but a necessary move for the weekend, unfortunately.

Nevertheless, we didn’t let the weather spoil our weekend, and we had an absolute blast exploring the park and ticking off all the rides we wanted to ride.

My favourite rides of the park – in this order – were The Smiler, followed by Nemesis, Galactica (Which we rode twice – once with the VR headset and once without. Both were awesome!), Rita and WickerMan, Alton Towers’ newest attraction.

Ride counter:

• WickerMan
• Rita
• Thi3teen
• Hex
• Duel
• Nemesis
• Congo River Rapids
• The Smiler
• Oblivion
• Galactica
• Marauders Mayhem (Spinning Teacups)

I was also pleasantly surprised by the vegan food and beverage options available at both the Alton Towers park and Hotels – I definitely did not go hungry!

I may make a full blog post on how I ate vegan at Alton Towers; if you would like to read that, let me know in a comment.

Overall, I had an absolutely wonderful time on my first Alton Towers trip, and can’t wait for my next theme park experience (Which I’m sure won’t be too far away).

Now I will leave you with two photos showing the stages of being in a Marauders Mayhem spinning cup with Dan (Who makes it his dedicated mission to spin the cup as FAST as possible – I mean, look at that face of concentration!)