Now that we are just about recovered from the TowersTimes 20th Birthday Celebration, it feels appropriate to revisit what was without a doubt the most ambitious event that we have ever hosted! With exclusive ride time, insightful talks, a mind boggling quiz, a boogielicious disco and of course an incredible Q&A with theme park consultant John Wardley, our birthday celebrations were suitably fantastic and will be remembered as one of the best days any of us have had at Alton Towers Resort!
The celebrations began with exclusive ride time on The Smiler, before the theme park opened to the public, with 30 minutes for our group to enjoy being spun upside down 14 times as many times as they could handle. We had a fantastic time taming The Smiler’s twisted layout, and there certainly wasn’t a single straight face after everyone was mesmerised by the Resort’s incredible Gerstlauer Infinity Coaster.
The afternoon activities started with an insightful talk by current team member Adz, who has been with TowersTimes since 2004, along with Jai, one of the original team members that established the brand we know and love, and finally Wayne Burton, the founder of Wayne’s Alton Site / SW5Live and current Global Head Of Guest Excellence at Merlin Entertainments. This fascinating look into TowersTimes history was directly followed by a talk from Gaz Birks, Head of Ride Operations, who spoke about the day to day practicalities of operating the rides at the Resort and leading such a large team to do so.
After a lovely sunny day enjoying the thrills and spills across the park, the group reconvened for an extended exclusive ride time on Wicker Man after the park had closed to the public. Wicker Man provided some incredible rides after running all day in over 30 degree heat, and it’s fair to say that we all fed the flames during 45 minutes of lapping this amazing Great Coasters International wooden coaster, with some event attendees managing to rack up nine rides during the session!
Following this, we headed over to the Alton Towers Conference Centre where the State Room had been transformed into a very fitting venue for our celebrations, ready to welcome famed theme park consultant John Wardley, who designed legendary rollercoasters such as Nemesis, Air, TH13TEEN, Oblivion and more, for a question and answer session.
John answered questions about relationships with rollercoaster manufacturers, his thoughts on published plans for upcoming attractions at other UK parks (yes, we’re looking at you Chessington’s B&M Wing Coaster) and shared some memories from the development of various aspects of the Secret Weapon series of rides. It will come as absolutely no surprise that there was a fair few ‘mic drop’ moments, most notably when he told us that the new rollercoaster technology he has been most impressed by is “coming along here”! Could we be seeing the first murmurs of Secret Weapon 9? It was certainly confirmation that John Wardley is back consulting at Alton Towers, and is very much a part of what is to come…
The evening was wrapped up with a quiz about Alton Towers Resort that featured three rather incredible prizes. The team at the park kindly donated a sign that was once found within Sharkbait Reef as part of the TH13TEEN exhibit! Also up for grabs were two framed prints that had been signed by John Wardley himself. The quiz was filled with brain-teasing questions and tested the knowledge of our attendees. After the winner was crowned, and second and third place decided thanks to an incredibly tricky tie break, the evening progressed into a disco! The most surreal moment landed when a room full of theme park enthusiasts and Alton Towers lovers were dancing around the conference centre, including to the theme music of Euro-Mir at Europa Park!
The TowersTimes 20th Birthday Celebration will go down in history as the biggest and best event we’ve ever managed to pull off, with an awesome line-up of activities, an incredible team hosting it, and of course nearly 150 wonderful attendees coming to make memories with us! We want to say a massive thank you to everybody who turned up to celebrate with us, to Wayne and Jai for joining Adz to speak about the history of TowersTimes, to Gaz Birks for taking time out of your day to speak to us, to every ride operator on The Smiler and Wicker Man who worked extra hard to make our day so fantastic, to the bar staff in the Conference Centre for working into the night for us, and of course to John Wardley for being part of such an important milestone for the community.
Now… to get planning on how we will top this event in 5 years’ time…
