We had a trip to Alton Towers at Easter. My older two are real thrill seekers so thought they were ready for a bigger theme park and thought our youngest would be happy with Cbeebies Land. This was a two-day trip with a day in the theme park (we used Tesco Clubcard Vouchers), a night in the Splash Landings Hotel, and a session in the waterpark the second day (you pay for this separately) and a free game of ‘Extraordinary Golf’ (part of the hotel stay). The whole thing cost us £380 (with the free theme park tickets), including breakfast. Our three year old was recovering from an illness and was not on top form! Nevertheless, he did really enjoy Cbeebies Land and his favourite rides were the Octonauts rollercoaster, the Go Jetters ride, and the In the Night Garden boat ride. The queues were relatively long for all and he did pretty well queueing. We had taken our lunch with us to eat in the queue.

Meanwhile, my husband took the older two to the rest of the park. We had an issue in that our daughter wasn’t tall enough for the over 140cm rides which our son was keen to go on, so they started with rides which they could both go on. Later on, we met up so I could take my daughter, so that my husband and 12 year old could go on the over 140cm rides, but Alton Towers is such a big place so this was quite tricky as it’s a long walk for a three year old (especially one who is under the weather). I attempted to take the younger two on some rides in the David Walliams section, but my youngest was scared by the queue for the Gangsta Granny ride (too dark!), and then we queued to the front of Raj’s Bouncy Bottom Burp ride to be told it had broken! Meanwhile, my husband and son had been on Nemesis Reborn, but had then queued for an hour for Rita to be told there was a problem with it and they should leave the queue. So in all honesty, we didn’t feel like the day was going all that well at this point!

The younger two and I did enjoy Battle Galleons, a pirate themed ride where you have to ‘shoot’ other people (both queueing and on the ride) with water which was really good fun. We then went to the Sharkbait Reef aquarium which was bigger than I was expecting, and I can’t fault the staff in here who were very keen to talk to the children about the sea creatures which my daughter loved. The kids also had the opportunity to touch a starfish which was different! My phone ran out of battery while in here which was another stress of the day. The Alton Towers app which shows queue times/map etc, while helpful, did run down my phone battery (note to self – remember to take a portable charger next time!). Luckily my husband caught up with us here.

Next, we swapped over, and my husband took our youngest back to CBeebies Land while I went on the Congo River Rapids ride with the older two. This time he enjoyed meeting characters from Bing, Go Jetters, and In the Night Garden, as well as more rides. They do have some shows etc which is good as younger ones can run around a bit as a break from queueing. There are also some play areas. We tried to make the most of the day by staying until the very end and then making our way back to the hotel. We thought that there was only one place to eat which was the Splash Landings Hotel ‘all you can eat’ buffet restaurant (some of the other restaurants were already booked up). We paid for this which wasn’t cheap at £30 a head for adults, and pretty immediately our youngest was crying to go to bed as it was 7pm by this point, he was still not 100%, and he had been exhausted by all the walking. Due to this it was quite stressful and we didn’t get our monies worth from the buffet (no puddings!). After we got him settled I took the older two to the bar upstairs. There was some entertainment going on here and we discovered the bar did take away pizza and drinks and this would have suited us much better (and been cheaper!).

The room was beach themed and pretty good. It had a double, a single, and bunk beds. We had a nice breakfast the next morning in the restaurant and then went to the waterpark. This had a main pool (with wave machine), a toddler area, various slides and a lazy river. We had a great time here although we would have stayed in longer but our little one wanted to get our earlier. After this we did the extraordinary golf. The older two enjoyed this, but our youngest was fed up half way around, a bit of a theme of the trip! Overall, we felt that we had maybe gone a bit early for our family, and this would have been a better trip for us in a couple of years, especially once both the older ones are over 140cm. I’m sure we’ll be back when they are a little older.