Alton Towers Waterpark — Attraction in Staffordshire Moorlands

My family and I recently visited Alton Towers Water Park and had a mixed experience. While there were some positive aspects, several issues detracted from the overall enjoyment of the visit.

Positive Aspects:

Nice Staff:

The staff at Alton Towers Water Park were friendly and helpful. They made an effort to ensure that we had a good experience, which was much appreciated.

Free parking:

Plenty of spaces (although it's not very well signposted to get there in the first place)

Changing Rooms:

Large area and plenty of different sized changing rooms for single, double or family occupancy.

Negative Aspects:

Broken Locker Keys:

One significant issue was the broken locker keys. This problem prevented me from securing the wristband properly, making it easy to lose. This added unnecessary stress to what should have been a relaxing experience. Probably 40% of the keys were in this state as evident when looking at a section of lockers to see all the ones with broken wrist bands left.

General Cleanliness and maintenance:

There was no soap available in the shower area as the bottles were empty, the showers had no water pressure and the temperature was on the cold side. Couple this with the shower push button operation which stopped as soon as you pressed it so not great for a key feature of a water park ie being clean. We ended up showering back at our accommodation.

Not sure if the park is due a refurb soon as some parts look quite tired but most water parks do I guess!

Also the changing room floors were wet when going in and out so not great for changing (I know the floor will get wet but normally you see a person mopping up periodically).

Closed attractions:

The flash floods sides are closed until further notice making the queues for the remaining rides longer. This is stated in the website but only if you go looking and not at the point of booking!

Crowded and Long Queues:

The park was extremely busy, resulting in long queues for the flumes. This significantly reduced the time spent enjoying the attractions, as a lot of time was wasted waiting in line. Also the river rapids were uncomfortable busy and you kept bumping into people. I guess it's not really the park's fault that is busy but there should be additional things to keep people occupied.

Food cost:

A cheese burger, chips and drink was £16.00+ so a bit of a rip off.

Useful information. The lockers take 20p coins (which reception can give you change) and if you book a 10:00 slot you can access the changing room area at 09:30 ( I wish I knew this before my visit 😁). Also a flat fee so no child discount I'm afraid although if under 90cm a child goes free. There's also a sun cream dispenser as you walk into the pool area for the sunnier days (although the outdoor area was closed for maintenance when we were there)

Overall I would recommend the water park for a rainy morning /afternoon, since the outdoor area is closed until further notice, as you would get 3 hours entertainment possibly 4 at a push. It's not value for money as I can think of two council run facilities back home which have similar rides and facilities at a fraction of the entry fee. If you can get discount tickets it's worth...

We booked for a water park trip as part of our short break, we went to the park on Saturday and stayed overnight and then visited the waterpark on the Sunday. Booking qs smooth sailing and our 2 kids went free so only paid for two adults. We booked for the 10am slot and got into the pool area for around 10.20am. we went all the way downstairs in splash landings hotel and was greeted by very friendly staff who gave us our wrist bands which correspond to our booking slot (10am-12.30pm) and the. Self scanned our barcodes for our tickets so enter the turnstiles to the changing rooms. lots and lots of lockers but not as many changing rooms. The lockers take 20p pieces and then have a key wrist band. We found the changing rooms and toilets clean along with the slower area and all the sewrint areas and walk ways within the water park. We were very impressed at all the interactive things for all ages / sizes and abilities. There were things set on different levels and depths. We only went on one slide as the queues were quite long and then just went on the smaller slide within the play equipment /. Climbing frames etc. The lazY river was good, not so laYzy on some places and it got crowded very quickly with many people using massive rubber rings and getting in the way of smaller children. There were lots of fountains / jets / overflowing buckets which were great and the big bucket which overflowed every few minutes was absolutely brilliant. We visited the outdoor area and the water was warm and the outdoor and inside jacuzzis were nice too. Amazing to see so many lifeguards and cleaning staff to maintain the areas and places for hanging towels and leaving bags was a nice touch too. The rubber rings I believe can be grabbed before you go on a slide and then returned . Not sure about how to get the large clear rings as people seemed to just be randomly grabbing them as people abandoned them 😂 lots of handlebars and grabbing opportunities should you need help in and around the pool. There's one place near the smaller pool where it's not very obvious about there being a drop rather than a step into the pool and my daughter took a tumble as we didn't realise it was a ledge / side of the pool rather than a step into situation. We paid I believe 50£ish total for our waterpark experience and found it was okay and worth it as there was so much to do. Would have liked a longer time slot but understood the need in...

Visited with friends on Sunday during a bank holiday weekend with 5 kids aged 6-15, the kids universally agreed that this was the worst waterpark they had visited.

The good: there was a set of slides where you start in a small higher up pool, then choose a slide to go down to another, and choose another slide to go all the way down, the kids did like that. The food was served quickly and staff were friendly. There is an outside area where you can escape the worst of the noise, if you don’t mind the cold.

The bad: There was a long queue of cars to enter the park, and upon entering the actual waterpark the din oppressive, the cover and walls reflect all the sound so its just incredibly loud, you have to shout to hear someone right next to you. It was very overcrowded and the slides had long queues, with one at 55 minutes.

It is a very small water park with the few swimming areas being cramped, having to jostle past people where it is narrow, and not very much to do, just a handful of slides really.

The changing facilities were small and inadequate for the number of people visiting, and didn’t seem very clean.

You aren’t allowed to bring your own food so we had to order some basic fast food (burgers and chips etc) which cost around £70 for three kids and one adult, the food was predictably mediocre, as you can expect, and we ended up eating in the little soulless damp fast food dungeon because there was no where else to sit (other seating near the pool all occupied)

The park itself seemed a little run down and dirty, for example the transparent blinds you have to push aside go between the indoor and outdoor sections were covered in yellow/brown stains.

They were clearly trying to manage the crowds using time slots but we didn’t want to stay our full allocation in the end, upon leaving there was a long queue to get in and many were complaining and saying they were going to ask for their money back etc, I couldn’t help thinking this was just the start of their problems.

Conclusion:

We weren’t expecting something of the scale or quality of southern european waterparks but we also weren’t expecting such a stressful and noisy experience. The kids and adults were both...