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Park News - (11/5/09) Another reader confirms hearing that not only will Rita be painted a new color, but also given a new name for the 2010 season to tie somehow into the new SW6 coaster. They also mentioned that we may see some kind of name change for Spinball Wizzer next season as well, though I’m not sure why.
    (11/4/09) As part of a special UK Concert Tour, Pink will be holding a performance at Alton Towers on Sunday, June 27th, 2010, as part of her Funhouse Summer Carnival Tour. Tickets are supposed to go on sale on November 9th.
    (10/30/09) A reader reports hearing that Rita will be painted green for next season, possibly to go along with a new theme due to the location near SW6.
    (10/20/09) A review of Alton Tower’s Scarefest event has been posted to ThemeParkTourist. They also have a few pictures of SW6.

2010 - SW6 - (11/16/09) New aerial photos taken of SW6 have been posted here along with a teaser banner covering a large item on the back of a truck.
    (10/23/09) A reader was approached to take a survey about SW6 the other day, and while nothing new was revealed about the attraction itself, they did ask their opinion about several possible names for the coaster, none of which was “Surrender” so it looks like that name really is out. Some of the names they could remember being asked about included: Panic, 13, Thirteen, 666, Mortalis, I.T.U. (Into The Unknown) and The Woodcutter. I’ve got to go with Mortalis myself… as the rest sound kind of lame.
    (10/12/09) A new construction update for “Surrender” has been posted here as well as others at Theme Park Review. The project continuers to be a bit mysterious... even with the name of the coaster. According to one source, Surrender is not going to be the name of the coaster at all, it just may have been a poor bit of text placement in the teaser graphic that made it look a bit too prominent. I guess we’ll know more soon on that issue. I’ve also been given a bit of a info about what is supposed to be the “world’s first” element. According to one rumor, as part of the indoor coaster experience section, at one point the coaster is likely to come to a stop indoors, at which point the section of track it is sitting on may be dropped down to another level, likely into some kind of creepy “crypt” environment. Of course the track really wont be ‘dropped’, think of it more as a controlled plunge experience, much like Disney achieved on the Tower of Terror rides, mixed with a switch-track element.
    If this is true however... some may have issues with the “world’s first” part of it as I know that Mystery Mine at Dollywood has a section of track in the station that drops the cars down into the maintenance area on the floor below. Of course, this isn’t part of the ride experience at all and is done slowly, so if this rumor holds true, this should be a very interesting and unique part of the overall ride experience.
    (10/9/09) Alton Towers has posted the official new name of the 2010 coaster on their website, along with the tagline, “Ride the Demon of the Dark Forest”. Creepy art for sure, but no details on just what we can expect from this coaster yet.
    (4/1/09) New images and artwork showing off Alton Tower’s 2010 coaster project have been posted to UK Rides this week, including a few better drawings of the new coaster’s layout. While you can clearly see a point where it switched to run backwards briefly before going forward again, one of our reader did perhaps nail the concept on the head, describing the ride as a “mini Expedition Everest”. Could this indeed be a new family mine-train style coaster, similar to Disney’s Everest? The similarities of how the track switches direction, followed by a helix element (taken backwards) before switching forward again are quite telling when you view the ride in this frame of mind. This also makes me wonder if the park is working with Vekoma on this project as well.
    (3/18/09) The local news confirms that Alton Towers was given permission to build their new £12 million coaster for 2010. They also confirmed what I predicted from the limited artwork seen so far, that the coaster would have a backwards section.
    (1/12/09) Alton Towers has submitted plans for a new “replacement rollercoaster” for the Corkscrew that you can see yourself here. Move over to the Documents section and you can view some of the application information as well as see the location and basic themeing for the ride’s station. I’ve pulled a few key images from the documents for everyone to see here, but the layout of the ride is very interesting in some of them, looking as if the coaster may actually have forward and backwards sections perhaps. They are mainly focused in showing off how this coaster will have even less of an impact on the outside view of the park than the Corkscrew, as it will stand 2 meters shorter and hide entirely below the tree line and how only 41 trees will have to be removed to make room.
    I’m going to speculate a bit and go with the idea that the new coaster concept is being taken from the “Dark Forest” concept art revealed in an online survey last July which detailed a story of some dark ruins and a wild rollercoaster escape ride that hinted at forward and backwards sections as well as mentioning the idea of a “Tilting Coaster”. Could this be a new version of the Vekoma Tilt concept reborn?

Future Plans - (7/15/09) I’ve been told that Merlin has drawn up a long term master plan for Alton Towers to show off to the local residents how they would like to develop the park over the next 10 years. Along the way they would like to see the park’s attendance which had peeked out around 2.5 million last year move up to the 2.9 – 3.0 million guest range on a regular basis.
    The best way to do that is though new capital projects, with the general idea being to build 10 new medium to large sized attraction (or replacement attractions) over the next decade, starting with the new coaster opening in 2010. Another hotel is also being considered along with the idea of turning the “southern” car park into a kind of Citywalk style entertainment / retail zone that would link the park up with the hotels. The current overflow lot would then be transformed into a new permanent facility. 
    A map has also been seen that had some areas of the park highlighted as possible locations for future roller coasters. In addition to the current SW6 / 2010 site, it also listed a site in the back where the old Beast and Mouse were in the late 80s as well a a site using some of the current southern carpark. The map also listed Spinball Wizzer as an attraction could be moved or sold to another park in the future. You can read more about this over at Alton Towers Almanac.