Alton Towers!

  Hey everyone! We were just at Alton Towers, an amusement park in Staffordshire, and it was excellent! Alton Towers is built around a stately home and gardens, which used to be a castle. When the castle opened as a visitor attraction, fair rides were opened around it. When John Broome, a millionaire bought the park, he added the park's first ride, Corkscrew. From there, the park grew into a major amusement park.

  While we were at Alton Towers, Matthew came up with a list of top 5 tips for Alton Towers.

1. Wait in long lines for big rides

We had to wait in hour long lines for our favorite rollercoasters, Galactica and the Smiler. It was totally worth the wait. Galactica was the world's first roller coaster fully dedicated to virtual reality. We were also on our stomachs, which made it even cooler. You might tell from the name Galactica, but you were flying through space in virtual reality.

2. Go early to the park

On the second day we were at Alton

Towers, Matthew got to go in the park early. The only big roller coaster open was Oblivion, the world's first vertical drop roller coaster. Matthew got to ride it twice, with barely any line to get on. Also, Matthew got to line up for a roller coaster called Rita. You do this to get a good spot in line for when the roller coaster opens. Rita is a roller coaster that blasts you from 0 to 60 mph in 2 seconds! It was so fun! It felt faster than the fastest roller coaster that we have been on, Fury 325, which goes 95 mph. The fact that you reach 60 mph in 2 seconds explains that!

3. Use the single rider line

  On our second day, we used the single rider line, which some rides have. The single rider line places people riding alone in empty spaces on carts. You may be thinking that we're not alone, but the single rider line is for groups willing to split up too. The single rider line reduced our wait time on the Smiler from 1 hour to 15 minutes, and on Oblivion from 30 minutes to 10 minutes. It was really quick, which allowed for more fun!

4. Ride the best roller coasters first

  On our first day, we rode the Smiler as our second roller coaster. We wanted to make sure we did that in case there were even bigger lines the next day. We did make the mistake of riding Galactica later  in our second day, because people had rushed to Galactica, which was new for 2016. Like we said before, it was worth the wait still. 

5. Have fun!

  Make sure you ride your favorite roller coasters, for the maximum amount of fun. If you go to Alton Towers, you'll sure have fun. We sure did. 

  Some other roller coasters we went on were Thi3teen, Nemesis, and the Spinball   Whizzer. Thi3teen, or Thirteen, was the world's first freefall roller coaster. Built in 2010, it made park attendance have a record of 3,000,000, even though it got a number of mixed reviews. Nemesis, an inverted B&M roller coaster, has an interesting statistic of a height of only 43 feet, but because of the terrain, has a drop of 104 feet. The Spinball Whizzer, opening in 2004, was originally called Pinball Wizard. It was later rebranded in 2010 to Sonic Spinball, with the park's partnership with Sonic's creator, Sega. It became the Spinball Whizzer for the 2016 season. It was really cool riding it because while you were on it, the cart rotated, making you backwards on some of it, and forwards on some of it.

  Overall, we'd say Alton Towers was EXCELLENT!

Posted by Matthew