altontowers.com

The magic has disappeared..

To give some background, I have been coming to Alton Towers Hotel pretty much every year since it opened. Year on year, I still give it a chance, staying in each of the hotels and lodges available, hoping it will change my mind and give me/us the experience we used to have. My overall feeling is that Merlin have become greedy and want as many people in as possible to make as much money as possible, with price increases year on year, but are delivering less and less. This is evident by the horrendous queues for rides, the monorail and sky ride. This year we thought we would book the ‘luxury’ treehouse for 4 days, costing a small fortune of just under £3500 with park tickets. Some small perks of the treehouse is the express parking (helpful for tired little legs), fast tracks for 4 rides, and a friendly assistant for the length of your stay. But…. The ‘luxury’ treehouse is filthy! Kids feet were brown and dirty from walking on the floor and tired rug, the decking area hadn’t been swept and was plagued by wasps so relaxing in the hot tub was out of the question. The bathrooms were covered in cobwebs and spiders. Every light and wall was covered in thick grey dust. Corners and behind doors certainly aren’t hoovered. The whole place needs a paint. The windows are covered in cobwebs and bird poop. But also, the layout of the Oak Wood is thoughtless- a very steep narrow staircase with 2 twin rooms at the top (meant to be suitable for children) and 2 double beds on the ground floor. There is a stair gate available at the top, however for kids that wake in the night, this leaves you with the constant dread of wondering whether they’ll make it down the stairs, fly down them, or wake up the whole house by screaming at the top to come down and sleep in your bed. Eventually I had a choice, the child or the husband. I stayed upstairs with our child in a creaky single bed waiting for the night to pass. It was the same for the other couple who stayed with us, separated as they were too worried about the kids being upstairs alone. I would advise Alton Towers to display the layout of the accommodation clearly on their website so that people are fully aware of what they are booking. I have given this review 1 star as I subsequently had a conversation with the team at the Alton towers hotel to see if they could help, and they agreed to transfer us to rooms instead as I explained that we just wanted one decent nights sleep for our last evening. Generally, I think they handled this well and were understanding of our situation so accommodated the move.On to the rooms, of which we had 3. When we checked in, 1 room had someone’s fake eyelashes stuck to the top bunk bed. Another room had 2 bottles of half drunk water left in the room and the last had light bulbs not working on the bunk bed and kids interactive play board, and the bath was covered in hair…. Lovely! @AltonTowers, you should be getting at least the cleaning basics right!!The hotel itself is also plagued by seagulls, meaning every window & pane of glass is covered in excrement. Strangely I saw the window cleaner cleaning some bottom floor windows whilst we were there, but they must think that anything above the ground floor is not worth it as none of the others, including the secret garden restaurant roof, have been cleaned in a very very long time. The bar & seating area carpet is filthy, the tables & chairs sticky, the ceilings are covered in cobwebs and bugs. Glasses are cloudy, plates smell of wet dog and the cutlery has bits of food stuck to them from the previous use.The magic feels like it’s disappeared- What happened to the talking tree in the Secret Garden Restaurant? The tweeting bird ambient music? The music and lights in Splash Landing lifts making you dance along to Spongebob? The fish from the tank in reception have disappeared and all that is left is an empty, dirty, dry tank with pictures underneath of previous fish that swam there. The hunt for the chocolate treasure in the room is no longer…. And the early ride time woodland walk with the dressed up characters doesn’t happen anymore. I always remember feeling special when I used to visit as a child, that all staff were very much in character with the magic of the Alton Towers story. Now you’ve pretty much got young people wandering around hoping their shift would be over.Some prices- £4.50 for a bottle of sprite. £14.50 for a refillable flask, £8 for a slush drink, £7.75 for 3 bags of crisps, £11 face paint, pizza/pasta buffet £26 per person. The waterpark- 1 hotdog at £13.50. And on the subject of cleanliness, the locker rooms/toilets had an overwhelming stench of urine! Overcrowded and at £24 a person, surely they can afford cleaning products.Alton Towers/Merlin- Please clean up your act and go back to basics! Sometimes bigger isn’t better!

Date of experience: Jul 29, 2025