Agooneristic Alton Trip - Sunday 18th October!

[furie]

One of those odd days where everyone plans separately, but nobody openly makes the planning known - probably to avoid the trip being gooned up

It started for me, with a text from Myk asking if I'd like to join him on the 18th at Alton. I said yes, as chances are we'd be at Alton anyway

Then Madame_Furie two weeks ago decided to arrange a trip to Alton with SSIL_Furie and some other member's of the family_furie, and conveniently chose the 18th. Unknown to me, she'd also arranged to meet up with Chaz, Katie and Aiden! :lol:

As I was kind of under invite of Myk, I didn't make an announcement.

Then I got a PM off Martyn last week asking if I wanted to meet at Alton any time in the next week or so. Never being one to turn down the opportunity of some Martyn time, I told him about Sunday.

This is getting a little Taylor like. I'd best move on.

We arrived (late :lol: ) and as I was walking to the monorail (after cleaning up MMF's sick - not a well bunny) I noticed Peep! Then Death! Then Chloe! Unofficial meetup that happened. Martyn had sent a text earlier too to say he was meeting up with tks :lol:

So, we head in to Alton on the Strawberry train, squishing into the disabled car

That's about as far as I get for trip reports. I'll let Peep, Alan, Myk and Martyn fill out the gory details. I'll just dump in some photos and we'll pretend you were really interested in the minutae of the visit.

Poor Maxi-minor_furie is too short to fit into the coffin:

I've had girlfriends who can actually do this and use their chests to pump the liquid up the straw!

There are some great halloween characters about the place. This is Skelvin!

After lunch, MMF had a go on the Trick or Treat doors:

We do like the blonde witch!

Prizes compared to last year were naff though. Last year it looked like they're raided the Duel shop for anything on sale under £1.50. This year it was a cheap chocolate ball :lol:

Chaz and Aiden played too:

I tried to get a few panning shots of Oblivion, failed, this was the best:

Did love the skeletons on the Oblivion fence!

Met Franklin just after our second go on Duel Live:

Then everyone into the giant pumpkin to look sad about going home:

Had a great day, and Alton is starting to get there with the Scarefest. Duel Live was much better than last years with more actors and it was darker. Towers Street was also better, with the moulded pumpkin scarecrows. It's still not "brilliant", but it's okay, pretty good. The problem is that it's scattered around the park. So you have a "blob" of halloween stuff in one place, but then nothing in other areas except maybe a pumpkin on a hay bale. It needs to be more consistent, or the bits that are halloween'd up need to be done to a much more impressive degree.

Still, the costumed characters were great and it was an excellent day. Great to meet up with everyone through the day too. Big boo though that the characters had gone from Haunted Hollow

I'll let somebody else take over from here

 

[Ian]

Hahaha, I ****ing love m-m_f's costume!

 

[slappy mcguire]

the skeletons on oblivion need to stay...

 

[peep]

Thanks Furie for creating the topic, just haven't had the chance to write up the TR. Some nice pics in there too, I didn't really get to see the characters though


My story begins at Alan AKA Death's house. Alan, his daughter Chloe and I woke up at something like 7am. We then got ready and left for the Towers. We stopped at a services on the motorway to grab some food. Yumm. Our stomach's now satisfied we continued our journey to Alton. Here is a sign to show you that we were going to Alton...

We then reached Alton Towers (I think) about 11. The following sign made us very happy.

Yay! We parked the car and headed towards the monorail when...Oh hello Family_Furie! Hehe, very amusing. Furie was organising meeting up with Myk and I was organising us to meet Chaz and the kidz. We then got the (as Furie mentioned earlier) the Strawberry monorail train.

We arrived at the entrance of the park and strolled straight in with our lovely Annual passes.

Halloween decorations make me happy. This was also my first time at Alton Towers during the Halloween season, so I was very excited. We waited outside the info area while people got passes etc sorted out for the day. I admired the Halloween theming in the area.

The first ride of the day was going to be Duel: Live. This is where Furie had organised us to meet Myk and Co. However Aiden (child of Chaz) doesn't like the area so we planned to meet them elsewhere afterwards. To get to Duel we made our way through the forest pathway (not sure what it's called) it was good fun though and we had plently of LOL moments.

We had to wait outside the queueline for about 10-15 mins before they let the hoards of peeps waiting to go inside go through the queue. While we were waiting I spotted Martyn, tks and other familiar faces. Martyn and Ed came over to say hi before feeling guilty about cutting in and going back to the rest of the group.

We were finally let in. I have to admit I was pleasantly surprised about how different the attraction is after turning off the lasers and a few lights and adding loads of actors. I did thoroughly enjoy it and it seems that was the general opinion amongst the group.

After Duel we went to meet Chaz and his kidz over by the rapids, which was funnily enough the next ride.

This ride amused me because I didn't get that wet and Steven (friend of Myk) spent most of the ride with his head down trying not too get wet hehe. The boat with the two skeletons in also amused me...

It was around 12 already so everyone decided to break up for food related times. I joined Myk, Craig and Steven for Burger King even though I don't like Burger King. We went to the one next to Charlie as that's where we were going to meet with everyone else. On our way we played around by doing 'parkour' on Mushrooms and other random objects of amusement.

We also went to look at the construction of SW6, it looks tall....

Once inside and sat down with food we had lots of amusing conversations about random things which made it very fun. We then spent ages waiting for everyone else so we got some Ben and Jerrys ice cream (always a good thing) and sat at the Cloud Cuckoo land sign. We were then joined by the rest of the group.

We decided to do Rita: QoS for some reason. Not everyone opted for this so some stayed and did the kids-based attractions in the area. The SW6 related characters were roaming the area and were fun to watch.

Once in the queue Alan decided to put his mask on...

Rita was ok, I think I sat in a good way as I didn't get my neck cut to pieces by the restraints. We then met up with everyone and headed for Oblivion. Woop. I think it was also at this point that Mushroom had contacted me to say he was in the park and we arranged to meet at Oblivion.

There was hardly any wait and Muse was played in the queueline. It was just so cool. I love Oblivion, it's short but intense and just generally awesome. It was really strange though as we pretty much went straight over the drop, never seen that happen before and ended up being even more shocking than the usual 3 second hold. Great stuff. "Again! Again!" we all cried. We checked with Furie and others that didn't want to ride and went straight back into the queueline.

It was still great the second time around. Although this time we had a little wait as it broke down for a minute or two.

Chaz and Katie had to go queue for the mazes (they had purchased tickets earlier in the day). Alan and I agreed to look after Aiden so we hadto split from the rest of the group, we said our goodbyes to Family_Furie and agreed to meet later with Myk and Co.

Alan and Chloe went on Spinball Whizzer, which Aiden doesn't like so I agreed to take him on the Beastie, he was thrilled about this decision.

He kept informing me that it was his most favourite rollercoaster in the World and that he likes to bash into whoever he sits next to on the corners lol. I found it all highly amusing. If should go without saying that Aiden enjoyed his two lap ride of the Beastie

We then went to wait for Alan and Chloe to come off Spinball Whizzer. The next ride on the agenda was the Squirrel nutty ride. It was actually quite nice to do this calm and relaxing ride (apart from maybe the near collision of my head and the roof of the car), it also gave me great memories of when I first visited the park (something like '97/'98). I think most of the ride was just Aiden talking about something (can't remember what exactly).

We then wanted to do the Berry bish bash house or whatever it's called. But it was a bit too busy and they told us to go back in 15 mins. So instead we went on everything in the farmyard area (tractors, riverboat eye spy and the carousel). We all had a good laugh and it was nice as the area was really quiet. Here is a picture of Alan taking a photo of me on the carousel thing...

I then went into the berry house with Aiden and Chloe. We were in there for ages. I must of got hit in the head so many times though, good thing they only use soft bouncy balls in there. After some time I got a call from Chaz saying he had done the mazes and was in the park again. We exited the attraction and met up with Alan, Chaz and Katie. Chaz and the Kidz went home, Alan and Chloe went somehwere (maybe over the rainbow?) and I went to meet up with Myk, Craig, Steven and Mushy at Oblivion.

It was very dark now and Oblivion was even better. It was also the first time I have ridden Oblivion in the dark.

Our approval can be represented by the following photo of Mr Mushy...

Oh, yeah, by this point Myk had also opened the tube of glowsticks that were in his bag, he had loads! This required us to all have loads each, good times.

I really, really wanted to ride Nemesis in the dark so I told the others and we headed over to it. We didn't have to queue very long which was obviously a bonus. It was just amazing, so powerful and disorientating. LOVED IT.

Still had some time left so we went and walked straight onto Air. Which was actually quite good at night and felt, to me, quite forceful compared to previous rides. Good times. As we excited the others played around more with their glowsticks.

I then had to say good bye and meet back up with Alan and Chloe. They were sitting in the pub in the Mutiny Bay area. We then quickly went on Spinball Whizzer...

Which I still loathe, it's just so rubbish compared to Dragons Fury and Crush's coaster. Didn't really get any spin either. Boo.

We then had a little wander around the main shop and then went home. Well, Alan dropped me off at his local train station and then I got trains and buses home.


Overall it was a fantastic day and was absolutely amazing randomly bumping into everyone, great to catch up and a lovely way to get us all excited about Ghosterforce next week. Massive thank you to Myk for the glowsticks (they're still sitting in the bathroom, kinda dead though lol), everyone for the great company and all the highly amusing moments throughout the day and of course Alan for letting me stay at his the night before and driving me all the way up to Alton Towers and back.

Thanks for reading!

 

[bob_3_]

Mushroom looks JUST like Nick Griffin.

 

[tks]

Mushroom looks JUST like Nick Griffin.

You stole my "I didn't know you went to Alton Towers with Nick Griffin" joke.

 

[bob_3_]

Awwww sorry babes...

And yeah, I was there too =) didn't recognise you furie with that new hair.

 

[Brookes]

I see loads of people with them Oblivion jumpers, I think they look quite cool. Great PTR aswell, can't wait to go Scarefest on Friday, the Halloween theming seems the best it's ever been!

 

[yinyang]

Mushroom looks JUST like Nick Griffin.

OMFGLMAO!