Re: Alton Towers | Octonauts Rollercoaster Adventure | kiddi
As the avid social media followers among you may have noticed, it's open, and of course, I made sure I was there for opening! First impressions then, it's bloody adorable! The theming is very nice and cute, not too gaudy or tacky and nicely complimented by a fun soundtrack and sound effects. There are water effects too and there should have been a bubble machine that was annoyingly misbehaving but I think that would have really set it off. It's very smart.
The queueline is where things start to go a bit off. It's a bit of a cattlepen-of-death type situation, meaning what looked to be about a 20-30 minute queue ended up being over an hour (don't judge me) which was very annoying. There's a little photobox to break it up here you get a driver's license thing taken, similar to the LegoLand driving school situation all for the low low price of £10 (<//3). I was asked in a survey once I got off of the thing what I thought of the interactive section of the queueline, and considering I was in the bloody thing for over an hour it came as a bit of a surprise to me that I didn't even notice any? Then we get to the fences. For some reason this entire ride is enclosed by ugly cheap fences. I know they must have their reasons but I can't help but feel that the whole area would be a lot more pleasant if it was all opened up slightly.
The worst offender however was definitely the station. Any and all whimsy of the Octonauts Rollercoaster Adventure lives and dies with the rides itself. The station is a ghastly orange block devoid of any fun theming or indeed anything interesting to look at. I felt very enclosed by high-ish walls meaning that once you turn a certain corner you can't actually look left or right without being confronted by fences, and I assume this feeling is intensified when you're the height of a 5 year old.
The station and queue being a let down are baffling to me because in reality this is where you will be spending most of your time when experiencing this ride. I feel that if they'd even put half the effort into theming these to match the level of quality found on the ride itself we'd have a surefire success story here!
