Wedding Anniversary weekend away

Alton Towers Staycation 2020

Hello! We hope everyone is well and coping with all the new normal? We can’t believe we’ve been married for 2 years! Madness how fast time flies. It seems like 5 minutes since we were driving to the Court House in Orlando all giddy with excitement. We had such a brilliant time on our last Orlando adventure, the wedding, the lunch at the Longhorn Steakhouse and the “honeymoon around the world” at Epcot. Fantastic. Absolutely fantastic.

This year’s Orlando trip was cancelled due to the current covid kerfuffle, so as a back up plan we booked Disneyland Paris for the weekend of our anniversary, only to have this dashed as EasyJet cancelled all the flights… we were never destined to get a visit to the “house of the mouse” this year so we went to plan k….. we’d gone through every other permutation of A through K… We still needed to get away for the weekend and we definitely needed our rollercoaster fix for the year, so we decided to book Alton Towers resort, a hotel stay and roller coasters. Oh, and a water park thrown in as well. Bostin’ as we say here in the Black Country.

We booked a Dreamy Den room, this gave us access to the on site Spa and early park admission, and we also booked the water park, Splash Landings for the Sunday. It was going to be a busy weekend… on arrival at Alton towers we had a temp check and were issued a wrist band that told everyone onsite we had been cleared for fun, a dash into the reception to say “we’re here!’’ And we were away to the early access gate. A quick scan of the passes and we were in!

We dashed over to the Wicker Man ride as neither of us had ridden it. Man alive we were stunned just how good it was! I’d heard from various workmates that it was a great coaster, but we were definitely not expecting that! From the very get go it was off! Scooting along a fair clip, the sheer quickness of the turns really took us by surprise. We didn’t realise wooden coasters could corner this fast! When we say fast we mean FAST. It’s so good, we spent the whole ride laughing and trying not to slam into each other, the ride is quite old school, there is only a lap bar for each of you and you just grin and hold on. This is now officially one of our fave new coasters.

One VERY funny thing happened while we were in the queue for the Wicker Man, our super helpful friend Glen from DialAFlight rang us to chat about flights for next years trip, we were stood there with the empty cars whizzing around the track doing the mornings testing and he asked “what on earth is that sound?” “We are waiting for a roller coaster” replied Tracey… “of course you are!” Right he said. Let talk planes. So…long story short he’s managed to book us flights for next year, with a car, from Heathrow. And saved us some cash on the deal. Bosh. Job done. Roller coasters and flight booking, we’ve got this lark down pat. Seriously this made an already great day even better. And it was one less worry. If you are ever looking at flights or holidays etc, go and speak to the good folks at DialAFlight. Always have your holiday at the forefront of their minds and will bend over backwards to make sure you get what you want. They have once again done an excellent job for us – later in the day Tracey checked her emails and the invoice was sorted and emailed over – quickly updated our DialAFlight App, and voila, our new 2021 trip appeared in all it’s glory.

After the Wicker Man and new flight booking moment, we were scooting along trying to knock off the big ticket rides before the park got busy. We wandered over to Rita and Thirteen, Rita was posted 50 minutes queue and Thirteen was 40, we decided to pop on to Thirteen, this is a brilliant coaster that is quite like Expedition Everest in Animal Kingdom. But a lot shorter. Now, gonna have a little chat here about U.K. theme parks, I’m NOT bashing them in any way shape or form, and specifically not Alton towers as we had a great weekend, but please please, PLEASE do something with the queues!!! In Orlando and other major parks in the Statesmthe queues for the rides are a great experience, and they make the time go a lot quicker than it really is. At the ‘Towers the queues were just wooden fences as a far as the eye can see… we felt like sheep being hearded round and round and round and round… nothing to see, nothing to watch or interact with. Please do something!! All we saw were empty vending machines and not much else.. mini-moan over with! (Sorry #notsorry)

As the queue was still quite long for Rita we decided to hop onto the cable car. As we’ve not yet ridden the Skyliner in WDW, it was the next best thing. And too be honest the actual ride system and cars were VERY similar to the one WDW uses. It’s a very nice ‘flight’ over the gardens and lake to the other side of the park, we took a few little vids where we chatted about out day so far and how excited we will be to ride the one in WDW next year. A leisurely stroll over to the Galatica ride and a very suprising 25 minute wait to ride it! In and on. And front row as well. They are no longer using the VR headsets but it’s still a great ride. Very very fast and I always liken it to how Iron Man must feel when he’s flying! No? Just me then. Tracey often talks about how she was stranded on this ride for over 45 minutes once. Just as you start to ‘take off’ she and her friends were all just dangling there waiting to be either rescued or for the ride to start. Instead party after party of total strangers just stood there taking photos of them. I wouldn’t have laughed at them. Much..

As it was getting to was lunchtime we walked over to the new Octoberfest site. Live music, beer and German sausage. What more do you want?? A quick dash to the coated fries van and we were set. I had the Bratwurst and mustard with Sourkraut and Tracey had the veggie option. Basically just fries. There is something to be said for sitting in the sun, eating and chatting and people watching. A class way to spend an hour. We were looking at out flight confirmation email that Glen had sent over and we were a bit giddy with it all. We always chat about what we want to do on or adventures and both of us has a ton of “IPhone lists” with everything we want to try or see. We always joke we need 5 weeks and lotto win to do everything we’ve planned. And lets not talk about spread sheets! We constantly update ours with plans and bookings and then look at something and go “damn it! Where we gonna fit this in??” Also on a side note anyone else out there use a spread sheet to plan holidays? It’s the way forward we tell you!

Fries eaten and plans made we were off to take a spin (literally on Spinball Whizzer) which is as mad as mad can be and is very similar to the now closed Primeval Whirl at Animal Kingdom. Short queue and 30 seconds of giggling and rattling around, and then onto The Smiler. Good lord this one proper throws you about! Tons of loops and drops all squeezed into such a small area! A fantastic ride though. Again one little moan is the line while waiting… you are in a metal caged area with the coaster roaring above your head, literally feet away and the noise of the cars is so load, this is great for 10 minutes or so but after that its a proper annoyance, throw in the Smiler inane repetitive music and you soon get pretty sick of it. Ok, admittedly you get some stunning views of the ride, the drops and the corkscrews, but after nearly an hour of this I was fit to be tied. We were front row again for this, and possibly is the best seat on the ride. You see all the twist and turns coming whilst you are pinned to the back of the seat! A fantastic coaster.

After Smiler we did the dash back to Rita as we had seen online the queue was down to 40 minutes, (gotta love smart phones and queue apps!). We got on Rita pretty quick and we were whooped around the haunted forest at breakneck speed. Rita is akin to the Aerosmith Rock N Roller Coaster, as in it flies off the line so blooming fast. The only difference between Rita & Aerosmith there no inversions on Rita, just screaming fast turns and banking. Love this ride. After this we popped back onto the “Skyliner” (as we’d taken to calling it) and went to see what the queue was really like for another bash on the Wicker Man. The app was saying 90 minutes, but alas that was a ‘guesstimate’ as the ride was down for a while.

As it was getting on in the day we decided to pop back to the hotel and check in proper. I had never stayed here before and was really pleasantly surprised, the staff were spot on, explaining all the new and amended rules etc for the stay, and we popped up to our “Dreamy Den” room. A lovely room with lots of space. And a rather nice view from the window of the pools and water feature. The only fly in the ointment was there was no Spa access for us due to the current situation, so we asked what the desk staff could do for us as an alternative – we were looking forward to relaxing with a massage and a sauna but we did know when we booked that the spa was closed. They were really helpful, to make up for not being able to use the facilities they gave a literal ton of snacks and treats and Prosecco. Happy days eh! We brought most of the snacks home and gave them away, we couldn’t possibly have eaten that many. Seriously. But we did drink all the Prosecco….

A chill out in the room and off to the Secret Garden restaurant, where even though it was ‘limited menu’ due to…well guess.. we had one of the biggest burgers we’ve both ever had! And a lovely suprise of gold heart shaped balloons when we had our dessert as we had said the trip was for our wedding anniversary. A stroll around the grounds to let dinner go down and we popped into Splash Landings to see what’s what. And I was impressed! A 2 part water park, half inside and the rest outside looked brilliant, roll on Sunday morning…. but now it was Guinness and Gin time for me and Tracey….

Fast forward to Sunday morning and we packed ready to go, and popped down to breakfast, again in the Secret Garden restaurant, a normal ‘buffet style” has been replaced with you telling the server what you want, and they plate it up for you. You can still have as much as you want, you just don’t do it yourself. Filled full of toast and bacon (well, I was) we loaded the car up and strolled over to the Splash Landings. A quick scan of the pass and sorted 20p out for the locker and we were in! Such a lovely place, not that big, but it was really really well organised. 3 big slides and one of them was just like the water coaster at Volcano Bay. So I knew we were gonna have a great morning here. The one thing I love about water parks is the dashing about. If you like to relax on holiday then these places are not for you. Running (well, not actually running because that’s very naughty) up the stairs with your rubber ring to a slide is never a bad way to spend a day! We slide, swim and bob about in the lazy river doing laps and chatting nonsense, a typical Sunday for us, and after 11am the outdoor portion of the park opens. There are 2 large pools and slides that connect them, at the bottom is a huge open jacuzzi/chill area. As it was a really sunny morning and quite warm we sat out here chilling and chatting again. We love a good chat we do. Several more go rounds on all the slides and we called it a day, it was nearly 1pm and we were ready for a spot of lunch, so a shower and change and off to scoff a quick bite to eat in one of the bars. Sitting in the sun with my wife, talking about the things we’ve done and seen is one of my all time favourite things. (Soppy alert!!)

We nearly forgot we had 9 holes of crazy golf booked, (which at Alton Towers is called Extraordinary Golf) so we dashed off to the course and played the ‘’easy 9” easy?? If we had been playing the hard one we would still be there today!!!! Fabulous end to our super weekend away.

As weekends go this one was brilliant. Was it Disneyland Paris? No. Was it Orlando? No. Was it fun? Definitely. We always have fun whatever we do together, and wherever we go. We laugh like fools and love the simple things like sitting with a brew people watching. We had a fantastic time at Alton Towers. We will pop back soon as it’s only 45 minutes from us on a good day. It’s well worth booking the rooms before hand or for after your stay, you can chill and not have to rush about. Alton Towers and the staff there have done a pretty great job with the current restrictions in place and we felt safe. It was well organised and we have no complaints whatsoever. Really enjoyed our stay. We are gonna pop off now to record the vlog, and hopefully we should be updating you all some more with our plans.