ALTON TOWERS
United Kingdom (Abbreviation: AT)
Merlin Entertainment Group
---- THE LATEST BUZZ ----
(1/17/2025) Alton Towers Testing Freshly Upgraded Skyride Attraction
(1/13/2025) Alton Towers Names New 2025 Thrill Ride
(12/22/2024) Alton Towers Submits Plans For A New Kiddie Coaster for 2026
(12/7/2024) Alton Towers Warns That The Pirate Takeover Will Return Next Year
(12/6/2024) Alton Towers Has Actually Closed Three Attractions This Year
(12/3/2024) Two Rides To Be Removed This Winter
 Park News - (1/17/2025) A fun video from Alton Towers shows off the park testing a newly upgraded Skyride system at the park this week. The Skyride was kept closed for the 2024 to allow for this multi-million upgrade program. While the all new and colorful gondolas do appear very similar to the Doppelmayr made system that Walt Disney World installed a couple of years back, I do believe that I spotted a “POMA” logo on the new cars, which is a French provider of aerial tram and lift systems.
(12/7/2024) Alton Towers has confirmed that the themed Pirate Takeover event will return to the park in 2025, taking place during the “half-term” holiday in February.
(12/6/2024) Chall Chats reported a third attraction at Alton Towers that was closed for good in 2024. I missed this announcement, but the Alton Towers Dungeon closed for good in July 2024. The Alton Towers Dungeon was a fairly short lived attraction, having just opened in 2019.
The video goes over the history of the Dungeon, Blade and Flavio’s Fabulous Fandango.
(12/3/2024) Alton Towers has confirmed that the theme park has closed The Blade (swing ship) ride for good, and it will be removed by the time the park opens for the 2025 season. The Blade is said to be the Tower’s oldest ride, having entertained guests for the past 44 years, starting out under the name, Pirate Ship.
According to the article, a second ride in the park is also closing for good, Flavio’s Fabulous Fandango, a Sizzler flat ride that lies within The World of David Walliams.
2025 - Toxicator (aka: Project Ocean) - (1/13/2025) Alton Towers have confirmed that the new for 2025 attraction will be called Toxicator. As expected, the ride will be a Top Spin style flat ride, but one that appears to have a “toxic” style theme, as riders are expected to be held upside-down over a “bubbling pool of highly toxic alien acid” at one point during the ride cycle.
As the ride will be located within the Forbidden Valley, with theme ties to the Phalanx group, it’s not surprising to see this latest attraction also tied to the park’s ongoing “Nemesis” storyline.
(11/28/2024) Another quick video teaser for Alton Towers about what The Phalanx is up to for 2025 has been posted.
(11/22/2024) According to a post from TowersTimes, the main ride arms of what appears to be a Huss Rides Suspended Top Spin ride have now been installed at the park for the 2025 Project Ocean attraction in Forbidden Valley. If this looks a bit familiar, you might recall that the park previously had a standard Top Spin ride from 1997 to 2015 known as Ripsaw that was also located in the Forbidden Valley.
(10/12/2024) While we still don’t know what it is yet, Alton Towers is starting to promote the fact that a New Ride is indeed coming to the Forbidden Valley in 2025, and asking for guests to sign-up to be the first to get the latest info when they drop it.
For those not familiar with the park over the years, the Forbidden Valley is the dark section of the park known for years as being home to Nemesis, now updated as Nemesis Reborn, along with other nearby creepy attractions such as Nemesis Sub Terra, The Blade and Galactica. Theme wise, control of the area has been overseen by the mysterious Phalanx group who have overseen the capture, containment and control of the Nemesis creature and it is likely their role will come into play once again as the park prepared to unleash the new 2025 attraction.
Attraction wise, I’m a bit unsure myself of which project this is now planned for 2025. Previously the park was proposing building an indoor structure for an indoor attraction for 2025 while a new outdoor flat ride concept was said to be in the works for Forbidden Valley in 2026, but given that the park has confirmed that the new 2025 attraction will be in Forbiden Valley, the two projects could have swapped timelines.
(2/10/2024) While we still don’t know exactly what Alton Towers has planned for their “Project Horizon” indoor attraction set to open in 2025, the park has now filed some early plans for yet another attraction concept to follow… maybe in 2026 or 2027. According to the post on TowersTimes about this “Project Ocean” concept, the new attraction will be placed in the Forbidden Valley area not far from where the temporary Funk N Fly ride sat for the past few seasons.
According to the filings the new ride is said to be a “more fixed” attraction than the portable Funk N Fly, so this will be a park model ride. Interestly enough the concept would place this ride outdoors, but mounted to the top of a 4.8 meter tall building structure. The overall scale of the new ride is said to stand 18 meters above ground level, and take up a footprint of 11.5 x 14.5 meters. Due to the size of the neighboring treeline however, the attraction will remain invisible from outside the park. A guest pathway that leads towards Galactica will actually run under the attraction structure, along with two tall circular structures that will sit on either side of the attraction, standing about half the height of the ride itself.
The concept art shown in the filing shows a large square box building where the ride will be placed, but since the ride was said to be outdoors, this is assumed to just be a representation of the envelope that the ride structure will utilize. Even based on these very vague early descriptions, this new addition sounds like it will be a very fascinating visual addition to the park’s landscape.
While we don’t know exactly what is coming, the visual here did give me one good idea, especially with the placement of the load and unload staircases on either side of the platform, which seems to indicate that riders may be loaded and facing in more than one direction on the platform. My first impression is that this could possibly be an S&S Screamin’ Swing ride. While these can be modified to be made slightly bigger or smaller based on what a park wants, I believe this would fit right into the general footprint envelop posted by the park, with the basic Screamin’ Swing standing 19m tall and able to be modified to fit within the available footprint. And those two circular structures on either side could easily contain the two required massive air-tanks that propel the two arms swing movement.
2026 - New Kiddie Coaster - Planning - (12/22/2024) According to Yahoo News, Alton Towers has submitted plans to build a new “junior coaster” inside the park’s CBeebies Land. The new project could be ready to open as early as the 2026 season, but many expect that the new coaster may be themed to the kids cartoon, Bluey.
???? - New Indoor Attraction / Project Horizon - (2/19/2023) According to an update posted to TowersTimes, Alton Towers was approved to move forward with their large new indoor attraction project, aka: Project Horizon. As before, I believe the timeline on this wouldn’t see it open until 2025. Follow to link to read more details about what the structure itself will likely look like from the outside, as well as the placement of it in the park.
(11/23/22) The latest word on the proposed new indoor coaster project for Alton Towers (referred to as Project Horizon) is that construction on the large building for the indoor ride is set to begin in Spring 2023 and the ride is expected to open in Spring 2025.
(11/6/2022) According to a post by TowersTimes, the new indoor Project Horizon planning application mentions that the new attraction inside would be some kind of indoor roller coaster. A family friendly indoor coaster would be a good fit for the park that has been without such an offering ever since they closed Black Hole in 2005.
(9/5/22) In other news it has come to light that Alton Towers will “hold a public exhibition event” on September 19th featuring proposals to add a new indoor attraction on the former site of Alton Mouse in the former Coaster Corner section of the park. According to the limited information in the leaflets, the proposal will be for a new attraction building on the site. As for the location, Towers Times mentions that guests have not had access to the former Coaster Corner area since 1992, following the removal of the 4 Man Bob and Alton Mouse from the area, and the relocation of Alton Beast to the Forbidden Valley area as “The New Beast”. Noise from the outdoor rides in this area was always an issue with the locals, so the area has sat unused for many years, so building a new indoor attraction should be a viable solution to breathe new life into the site. A new video on the CoasterChall channel also discusses this new development in further details (see below).
In other news a post to Twitter shows off markings on the ground in the park said to be placed just outside of the Enterprise ride, hinting that it could be related to an SW9 project.
Keep in mind that the park is also planning on closing Nemesis for a complete rebuild that will likely see Nemesis closed for all of 2023 to reopen in 2024, so between Nemesis, Duel, and this new indoor ride project, and whatever SW9 turns out to be… there a lot of activity being planned for Alton Towers all at once.
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