Alton Towers Theme Park is open every day from 20th March until 31st October 2010 for the 2010 Season.
The theme park opens each morning for guests at 9:00am, with Towers Street open to explore until 10:00am, when the rest of the theme park & the rides are opened.
The ride queues close between 5:00pm and 9:00pm, depending on the time of year and how busy the park is. During term-time, the ride queues generally close at 5:00pm on weekdays and 5:30pm on weekends.
Early Ride Time
For Annual Pass holders and guests at the Resort hotels, from 9am each morning, selected rides are open for these guests to enjoy before the park is open to the public. To get access to the rides, an Annual Pass or resort ID card needs to be shown at the bottom of Towers Street to get access. Early Ride Time is not available during February Half-Term, Scarefest or Adrenalin Week.
When to arrive?
To make the most from your magical day at Alton Towers Theme Park, plan to arrive as early as possible, so you can enjoy the rides before the crowds build up from 10:30am onwards. Remember that the car park is a 15 minute walk, or a monorail ride away from the park entrance and you'll need to buy or collect your park tickets too. So it's advisable to arrive 30 minutes before ride opening to make sure you're ready.
TOP TIP - Buy your car park token (£5) at the start of the day (there's machines at the entrance to the monorail) to avoid the queues when you leave. You can also buy the token at the ticket booths.
The end of the day
On the average day, the ride queue close is at 5pm except on Saturdays and certain days during holidays, when the queue close time is 5:30pm. Some special days (such as the Summer holidays and the Scarefest event) see the theme park close even later. The ride queue close time is when the entrance to the queues close, NOT the ride. So as long as you're in the ride's queue at that time, you'll get on the ride! Based on this, it's best to leave the attraction with the biggest queue (such as Air or Rita) towards the end of the day, where not only will be queues be shorter, but you wont be wasting time in the queue when you could be doing something else!
As you leave the park, Towers Street offers merchandise, photo collection, takeaway hot-dogs, coffees and more. The last monorail back to the car parks each day is 1 hour after the ride queue close.
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