I was there
Was queuing for the flume at the time....and the whole place just ground too a halt. The Music stopped along with the ride, and was replaced by the breakdown announcement on a near constant loop. Staff ran to the lifthills and explained the situation to the trapped guests (with one boat stopped right on the top of the drop)....at this point we realized that the skyride had stopped as well, with rumours spreading in the que that the whole park was down. Staff obviously did little to inform the que as they were busy dealing with guests trapped on the ride.
We decided to leave the que, and try to walk to the dark forrest (assuming that the power would return shortly and the que for th13teen would be short due to guests leaving) at this point the toilets didn't even flush...
The skyride was winched back to rescue people stranded with a diesel motor (we were told by a member of staff dealing with a thousand chavs asking why the skyride was going but nothing else was) :roll:
An interesting point is that I never realised quite how noisy Alton actually is...it was quite erie walking around it in complete silence.
When we arrived in Dark Forrest Th13teen was evacuated from the lift hill, and both Rita trains were in the station. The area music started again 40 minutes or so after the initial outage, and Rita fired a test train about twenty minutes later. The Th13teen queline reopened after about another half hour, and I ran into the SRQ, which stretched to the top of the steps inside the building. The staff filled the rear of the trains with SRQ riders, so I was on back row within another ten minutes.
What hasn't been mentioned in the media is that all entry tickets were validated for any other date (including special events) on request, and all car parking was free, which was very good on the part of Alton.
I will write a full TR later, but I thought people might like to know what actually went on, rather than what the daily mail wrote about the day!
