View Gallery on the source website
Visited by:
Sarah, a freelance parenting writer and editor, visited Alton Towers in Staffordshire with her husband and their eight-year-old and five-year-old children on a surprisingly quiet, sunny Tuesday during the school Easter holidays.
What age is Alton Towers best for?
Best for: Older children, tweens and teens (as well as their parents) who can really make the most of the faster rides, which have taller height restrictions.
Still good fun for: Preschoolers and younger children who will love CBeebies Land and enjoy the rides, attractions and live shows on offer.
Avoid if: Your children will really struggle with queuing. During peak times, without a Fasttrack pass long queues are virtually unavoidable.
For more theme park fun, take a look at our roundup of the best theme parks in the UK.
Buy Alton Towers tickets from £29 at Alton Towers
How easy is Alton Towers to get to?
Alton Towers is located in Staffordshire between the M1 and M6. Although the theme park is well signposted, it really is tucked away in a very rural location – so much so you may feel like you’ve taken a wrong turn as you drive through country lanes to get there. Just trust in the satnav – use ST10 4DB – follow the brown road signs and you will get there eventually!
Is Alton Towers near a train station?
The closest train station to Alton Towers is Uttoxeter, which is 10 miles – a 30-minute bus ride or 20-minute taxi drive – from the resort. The taxi drop off is located in the Express parking section, so you’re right at the entrance to the park.
What is parking at Alton Towers like?
Standard and blue badge parking costs £12 per car. The standard car park is a good 15–25 minute walk to the park, although you can catch the monorail instead, which will help save little legs (and is also exciting in itself for Alton Towers first timers!). The monorail runs regularly throughout the day and drops you right at the entrance to the park.
You can pay more for Express parking, which is right at the entrance of the park. This costs £20 or £10 for Gold, Platinum, or Premium Merlin Passholders. It’s essential to pre-book Express Parking in advance online.
Knowing we were going to be walking a lot during the day, we treated ourselves to Express Parking and, if your budget stretches, we’d 100% recommend it. It was a lifesaver at the end of the day when everyone was exhausted.
When we drove into the park, we initially missed the turning for Express Parking – which is at Gate 4, alongside blue badge parking spaces – and had to drive to the main car park before doing a big loop back to where we started. Don’t make the same mistake as us, or you’ll be queuing in traffic for no reason for a long time!
Is CBeebies Land separate to Alton Towers?
CBeebies Land is one of 12 themed areas within the Alton Towers Resort. The resort has more than 40 rides and attractions in total, and your tickets include access for all. However, there are other attractions on site, such as the Alton Towers Waterpark, which you need to buy separate tickets for. You'll find CBeebies Land mercifully close to the entrance – excellent news for parents of young children who want to keep walking to a minimum.
Buy Alton Towers Waterpark tickets at Alton Towers
How much do Alton Towers tickets cost in 2025?
On-the-day walk up prices cost up to £68 a person, so it’s well worth booking online in advance – tickets booked ahead of your visit start at £29, depending on the time of year you go.
Alton Towers offer Parent & Toddler tickets, for just £29 for an adult and toddler aged 5 and under. These special tickers are not available during weekends and school holidays but are a great way to make your visit more affordable if you have young children and aren’t tied to specific days. Children under 0.9m go free.
If you plan on visiting regularly you could always consider an Alton Towers Annual Pass, which gives you year-long access to the theme park for £109, or a Merlin Annual Pass which starts at £99.
Buy Alton Towers tickets from £29 at Alton Towers
Save up to 20% on hotel stays, food and drink and get free car parking with a Gold Merlin Annual Pass
If you plan to visit Alton Towers more than once a year, it’s worth considering getting a Gold Merlin Annual Pass. With up to 20% off hotel stays, food and drinks, free car parking and a load of extra perks and discounts, it’s an excellent choice for families visiting Alton Towers multiple times a year.
What were the opening and closing times for Alton Towers like?
Alton Towers is open from March until November. It closes for the winter season but does host its Christmas Day Out event on selected dates in November and December.
The park opens at 9am, with rides starting at 10am, but closing times vary during the seasons, depending on the light and the weather. Opening times are updated on the website, so do check there before you book.
How big is Alton Towers?
Huge! The theme park is spread out over 550 acres and there’s no getting around the fact you’re likely to do a lot of walking. We clocked up a whopping 20,000 steps on our visit (and that was the adults – it will have been a lot more for our children’s little legs!) making our way through all the different parts of the resort.
There’s over 40 rides and attractions to explore, with half aimed at young children and families. Despite being there all day, we still ran out of time, so I’d recommend planning out in advance your must-dos and head to those rides or attractions first. That way, no one ends up disappointed.
What rides does Alton Towers have?
If your child is 0.9m or above there’s a massive choice of rides for them to enjoy. But of course, Alton Towers s famous for its high-octane rollercoasters like Nemesis Reborn, The Smiler, Oblivion and the resort’s newest ride, Toxicator. If you’ve got older kids who are thrill-seekers, there’s a lot on offer here. While our children weren’t tall enough for most of the white-knuckle rides, there was still plenty to enjoy.
Some of our favourites included:
Th13teen (Minimum 1.2m) – A thrilling high-speed rollercoaster that takes you through blacked out tunnels and features the world’s first vertical free fall drop. None of us had a clue what to expect and even our 5-year-old (fearless!) declared it the best ride of the day. Not for the faint hearted though!
Wicker Man (Minimum 1.2m) – Themed around the film, this wooden rollercoaster is breathtakingly fast. While I loved the immersive feel, including a scene-setting film as we queued, it was a bit too much for the children, cue a lot of eye and ear covering.
Congo River Rapids (Minimum 1.1m) – Hop into one of the circular rafts and splash down the rapids. Oh, and prepare to get wet! This is a great ride for the whole family, offering enough speed to feel thrilling, with the added bonus of water. Our children loved it! Top tip: pack your own waterproofs rather than forking out for the ponchos, which cost £20 per adult.
Runaway Mine Train (Minimum 1.1m) – This classic runaway train ride is perfect for children who love fast rides, but aren’t keen on the scary theming around some of the other rollercoasters like Wicker Man. This was one ride both my son and daughter wanted to go on multiple times.
If you’re after a change of pace, we enjoyed visiting the Sharkbait Reef by SEA LIFE at Alton Towers Resort, which was a small aquarium tucked away in Mutiny Bay. The kids loved the touch pool, where they could stroke chocolate chip starfish and let shrimp nibble their fingers, but it was the walk-through shark tunnel that really wowed.
Buy Alton Towers tickets from £29 at Alton Towers
What rides does CBeebies Land at Alton Towers have?
CBeebies Land is a must-visit for families with young kids. It’s such a well-designed space, featuring rides themed to popular CBeebies shows and it feels like every little detail has been thought out here to make it accessible and enjoyable for families. The Octonauts Rollercoaster Adventure is the fastest ride here – and usually draws the biggest queues – but if your little ones prefer more sedate offerings, the Postman Pat Parcel Post and Get Set Go Tree Top Adventure are worth queuing for.
Alongside the rides, CBeebies Land has an excellent Hey Duggee-themed adventure playground, which we found was the perfect place to let the kids run around after being in queues for a while. There’s also a brilliant schedule of Live Shows and meet and greets; just make sure you check the Big Fun Show Time schedule as you arrive at CBeebies Land, as we missed Bluey by seconds and my daughter was not happy. Thankfully we did catch Peter Rabbit for a cuddle instead!
Which rides at Alton Towers have height restrictions?
For most of the thrill rides you need to be 1.4m tall, but Spinball Whizzer, Wicker Man and TH13TEEN have a height restriction of 1.2 and over. My daughter measured in just over 120cm and was given a green wristband to show she was tall enough to ride – something that saved us being measured each time.
Most of the rides at CBeebies land don’t have height restrictions, instead they just require each child to ride with an adult. The exceptions are Peter Rabbit Hippity Hop, Go Jetters Vroomster Zoom, Octonauts Rollercoaster Adventure and Justins Pie-O-Natic Factory, which all have a minimum heigh of 0.9m.
What are the queue times like at Alton Towers?
Queuing is part and parcel of any theme park visit, and Alton Towers is no exception. I won’t sugar coat it, the queues can get very long, although we were pleasantly surprised at how much shorter the queues were on our visit that we’d expected. Queue times are displayed at the start of every ride, so you have an idea of how long you’re going to have to wait.
My top tips for beating the queues – or at least reducing your queue time as much as possible – are:
Get there for opening time. Although the rides don’t start until 10am, the park gates open at 9am, so we arrived just after 9am and got straight in the queue for Wicker Man – a ride we knew would get busy and one we all were keen to try out. Once the rides opened, we were on in about 15 minutes.
Download the app. The free Alton Towers app is handy for all kinds of reasons, but the live queue times was a game-changer. We were able to keep an eye on the length of queues via the app, to plan where to head to next.
Buy Alton Towers tickets from £29 at Alton Towers
Does Alton Towers offer fast track passes and how much do they cost?
If you really want to make the most of the day, Fastrack passes will help you jump to the front of the queue for some of the most popular rides at the resort. The catch? These don’t come cheap. Fastrack passes range from £35 to £140 per person, depending on the level you opt for. Yes, it’s very expensive, but ours made the world of difference, especially when queuing with kids. You can buy Fastrack on the day, but at an inflated price, so I’d suggest booking in advance if you can.
What are the food and drink options like at Alton Towers?
It’s very much usual theme park fare as far as the food and drink options go at Alton Towers – with lots of burgers, fries, pizzas and ice creams on offer. There are numerous sit-in restaurants, kiosks, coffee shops and vending machines dotted around the park, so you’ll never have to go far to find somewhere to grab a bite to eat.
Three portions of chips and beans, a large chicken wrap and drink from a kiosk in Mutiny Bay set us back £27.47, while two ice creams and a Calippo cost £8.90. Price-wise it’s what I would expect to pay on a day out like this, and we were all happy with the quality of the food and the service we received.
I liked how the Little Explorers Lunch Box food kiosk in CBeebies offered pick and mix picnic boxes fir children, alongside hot and cold sandwiches.
There are plenty of spaces to have a picnic, so if you do want to save a bit of money, I’d recommend taking a packed lunch.
What are the other facilities like at Alton Towers?
When visiting a theme park with kids you really don’t want to have to be traipsing around for miles to track down a toilet. Thankfully, toilets here were plentiful and clean. Each toilet block had a baby changing room, but accessible toilets and changing places were a little more spread out.
As I’ve mentioned before, there’s a lot of walking involved on a day out to Alton Towers, so if you regret your decision to leave the stroller at home there’s always the option of hiring a single (£10) or double buggy (£15) from Towers Trading Co. just inside the entrance of the park.
There are Quiet Rooms fitted with sensory equipment for those with additional needs, as well as the option to hire ear defenders. I was impressed with the boards at the entrance to each ride and attraction, listing the sensory level in an easy-to-read colour coded display. We found these quite useful when deciding whether a ride was suitable for our children.
Buy Alton Towers tickets from £29 at Alton Towers
What is Alton Towers like for families?
As the UK’s largest theme park, Alton Towers has a reputation as one of the best with some of the biggest, most extreme rides and rollercoasters. But it’s also widely known among parents of pre-schoolers as the home of CBeebies Land and for older children as the home of The World of David Walliams.
It’s such a big, well-known destination that it’s always going to be busy here and it’s never going to be cheap. But it’s worth it for a special day out or weekend away.
Alton Towers is an unforgettable experience for children and is filled with fun.
Are there any scary/boring elements that young or sensitive children might not enjoy?
One thing Alton Towers does particularly well is commit to a theme, and the main rollercoaster rides are themed from the moment you join the queue (think atmospheric music, props and visuals). While this only enhances the experience for teens and adults, we did find some of the staging scared our rollercoaster-loving kids. They were desperate to go on the rides, but needed a lot of reassurance while we were waiting to go on.
How accessible is Alton Towers?
The site is very flat. So, accessibility is not an issue and accessible, step-free routes are well sign posted. However, pushchairs aren’t allowed in most of the ride queues. So, you do need to leave them in designated buggy parks – meaning you are holding your baby/toddler for some potentially long periods of time.
- For wheelchair users, there are designated access points on most rides and Alton Towers offers a Ride Access Pass to guests who may find it difficult to stand for long periods of time that allows them to join a “virtual” queue then arrive at the ride at a fixed time. Disabled visitors can also bring a carer for free.
- Disabled toilets (RADAR key required, available to loan on the day) are found throughout the park and a designated Changing Places facility can be found in the X-Sector zone.
- Guide dogs are welcome but cannot go on any of the rides so must be left at the access points.
- In CBeebies Land, Mr Tumble’s Something Special Sensory Garden is a great quiet space for children who may be overwhelmed by crowds, noise or just all the excitement of the day.
Buy Alton Towers tickets from £29 at Alton Towers
Would you recommend visiting Alton Towers in bad weather?
As the majority of the park is outdoors there’s not a lot of opportunity to escape the rain if the weather turns. We were treated to a beautiful sunny day, and I can’t help but think the enjoyment would have been dampened a bit by continuous rain. There are a few indoor rides and attractions, but as most are outside you do run the risk of these closing in very bad weather.
While rain showers won’t dampen your day, I wouldn’t recommend visiting in heavy rain with kids, No one wants to deal with the fallout from that!
Can you stay over at Alton Towers and what is the hotel accommodation like?
Alton Towers have plenty of on-site accommodation available if you fancy stretching out your stay. We didn’t get a chance to stay overnight, although if you can, do – there’s too much to get through in one day! You can choose from the original Alton Towers Hotel, Splash Landings Hotel (which is next to the resort’s water park), CBeebies Land Hotel, Woodland Lodges and Luxury Treehouses (complete with hot tub and room service).
If you live a long way from the park, it may be worth booking the night before you visit Alton Towers, so you’re all ready to go and explore first thing.
Browse 2025 short breaks at Alton Towers
Nearby attractions:
There is plenty to see and do at Alton Towers, as well as the Theme Park the Resort has many other attractions on site including the Alton Towers Waterpark, Alton Towers Dungeon and Extraordinary Golf crazy golf course. If you're planning on staying in the area, you can visit the lovely Dimmingsdale for a forest walk, or the Peak Wildlife Park, both of which are less than a 15 minute drive from Alton Towers.
Overall verdict of Alton Towers: is it worth it for families?
Absolutely, yes! It’s hard to find a day out that genuinely everyone from the adults to our 8 and 5 year old love, but Alton Towers really delivered. There is so much on offer here, from terrifying high-speed rides to pre-schooler friendly live shows, with acres of formal gardens, fun water rides and character meet and greets thrown in. Whatever age your kids are, there is something at Alton Towers they’ll love. Yes, it’s an expensive day out, but it’s truly worth it. It’s been declared the best day ever by my two kids, and I’m inclined to agree.
Buy Alton Towers tickets from £29 at Alton Towers
Visit the Alton Towers website.
See more reviews of Alton Towers on TripAdvisor.
]]>
