Had my (nearly) annual visit to Towers at the weekend, and it was genuinely the worst theme park visit I've had in recent memory.
Hail on the first day, with only Nemesis Sub terra open indoor attractions wise (Hex still down, curse went down with us having queued for half an hour, the skyway was down, even gangster granny was closed). Obviously I can't be upset at towers for the weather but it's really frustrating to make the trip up to find virtually all of their indoor attractions closed during the weather when they are best ridden.
Ride availability was dire, with just about every attraction going down at some point during the weekend. I hadn't realised that some secondary schools now do 2 week half term holidays, so we definitely got caught off by the volume of the crowds, as well as it being family fun day (or whatever it's called) on the Sunday. Finished last night with a 70 minute queue for Wickerman, then an hour long breakdown. Queue times were largely inaccurate, and, oh yeah, no monorail to get us out the park after.
I was visiting with a couple of non-nerd pals and on our way home we all said how much we preferred the pleasure beach over towers, the atmosphere, ride availability, cost, crowds, even food and the rides themselves.
I had some fast track from my last visit as my last ride then got evacuated due to a break down so after being evaced from The Curse's queue we thought we'd go and ask if we could get them validated considering the wait for nothing, but guest services simply confiscated them saying they were out of date. I explained the situation and asked if they could be exchanged for up to date ones due to living so far away and not being a regular visitor and got shrugged off. I get it - it's not the staffs fault, they're just enforcing their rules, but the complete lack of communication about ride availability, these kind of policies and the nonchalance in letting you know that only your money matters just stings.
Although some areas have been notably invested in recently, overall the park looks really, really bad. A mate asked why they replaced ripsaw, one of his favourite rides, with one of the rather shoddy looking retro squad, then asked why it had such a big queue, and if we had to pay extra for it. The closed rides were very noticeable to a repeat visitor coming up to the most popular time of the year, with the skyride dangling ominously overhead on the walkways, and hex's doors firmly shut. By the end of the second day our conversations had gone from typical friendly anecdotes about our recent day to day tomfoolery to asking why the fencing in the queues is so rubbish, and all the things we could've been doing instead of queuing.
A lot of this I know, is just sheer bad luck. Having said that, the park is so damn expensive and unreliable these days; when you have trips like mine you just feel like you're being financially and emotionally scammed.