Over the summer, Alton Towers introduced a new perk for Hotel Guests and Platinum Passholders: Early Ride Time (or ERT for short). It’s nice they have an extra perk for selected guests, but is it any good? Is it worth getting up a tad earlier for? Answers below!
What is ERT?
Hotel guests and platinum passholders are allowed to enter the park for one extra hour’s ride time on the following rides: Toxicator, Nemesis Reborn, Runaway Mine Train and all of CBeebies Land. Gates open at Alton Towers at 9am for all guests anyway, but the rides themselves don’t usually open until 10am. With ERT in operation, barriers are put up to stop non-ERT guests from entering the areas with operating rides until 10am. If you have ERT access, you can enter Forbidden Valley at the hotel guest entrance or the main gate and show your ERT ticket upon entering CBeebies land or Katanga Canyon.
How do I get Early Ride Time?
Hotels guests just have it automatically, but Platinum passholders have to pre-book. You have to book an ERT ticket for you and all passholders in your party for your selected date on the Alton Towers website. You also need to book your usual passholder ticket for park entrance on the passholder hub.
Is It Worth It?
Well… its a tale of two attempts for us so far. It’s a bit hit and miss.
ERT Take 1
We arrived early on a Sunday and joined the queue at the hotel entrance. It took a few minutes and we were scanned in and held at a barrier by Galactica for the tides to open at 9am. When it was time, everyone made their way to where they wanted to go. Mainly Nemesis.
Unfortunately, it was on a delay. Now you can choose to stick it out and wait or go on Toxicator (and get wet at 9am) or head to Runaway Mine Train which is a 10 minute walk away. We waited. Nemesis was down for around 30 minutes, so by the time we’d gotten off the ride, 45 mins of our bonus hour were gone. We’d be hard pushed to get to Mine Train now, so we thought we’d try Toxicator (as getting wet at 9:45am is much more sensible!)
We joined an empty queue for Toxicator and had to wait for about 10 minutes before we were allowed to get on. No reason given, we just waited. Once we’d spun around and got wet, we headed for another go before the 10am crowds descended on Forbidden Valley for park opening. There were only a few of us in the queue, and this time we were told that without a minimum of 20 people they couldn’t operate the ride as it had to balance. So we had to wait another 10-15 mins for more guests to arrive. Whilst I appreciate that there may need to be x amount of people for the ride to run, it felt a bit odd to have a ride running that had this requirement on a time where the park is at its lowest capacity? Pretty sure I’ve seen it going with less people on too.
Whilst this was all happening, Jo and Elliott had a few laps on Mine Train which was operating fine and they’d already had a good start, but we were were already on a downer from the disappointment of the first hour.
The the rest of the day was a let down for non Early Ride Time issues: It was a hot day, so we’d brought our freestyle cup and all the drinks were flat and warm with no ice in the machines all day. We also tried to stop for an early ice cream in Haunted Hollow and it was still shut past 10am, plus the queues were generally big all day too, which is understandable in school holidays, so we didn’t get much done and left early. All in all a bit of a let down of a day.
ERT Take 2 and National Rollercoaster Day
The following Saturday was National Rollercoaster day, so we had to go get on some coasters. Alton Towers is our “home park” (still 1hr40min drive away) so we were heading back to see if Early Ride Time was better second time around. And it was.
We arrived at the same time and were in after a short queue with no holding barrier. Just in and get to the rides. Nemesis was open straight away so no messing and waiting there. We were on and off in around 15 minutes so did another lap with a pretty short queue. We could easily have done another few. Toxicator seemed to have enough people on it to be running continuously (we didn’t fancy another pre 10am soaking), Jo and Elliott had done laps on Mine Train and headed over to CBeebies for a few rides in there before the 10 am melee hit and the queues started building. A much better ERT experience!
As for the rest of the park, the freestyle drinks were still warm, but they had ice this time. Queues didn’t seem so big, but ride availability wasn’t great through the day. Wicker Man was down for maintenance for the whole day. We headed over to The Smiler at one point only for it to go down for about 40 mins as we got there, so we skipped over to Oblivion for a 20 minute queue, which itself went down just after we’d gotten off leaving riders stuck at the top. Queues seemed to fluctuate wildly too. We saw Thirteen and Rita on 30 min queues, but by the time we’d finished on Thirteen, Rita was showing 70 mins! Definitely not worth a 70 min queue.
We did a lot more on this visit, a few rides, tried some new food items, wandered around the park, so it was a much better experience.
Verdict on Early Ride Time
I think having some extra time on rides is a great thing for passholders and hotel guests, and if you can catch it on a good day, then it’s worth it. Nemesis goes down though and it’s kinda pointless.
Early Ride Time feels like they’ve just added something on a temporary basis that should be a permanent fixture. Universal Orlando and Disney both give Early Park Access to hotel guests and Annual Passholders all year round, with additional benefits like priority entrance queues and passholder lounges, free gifts and more throughout the season. We’ve been to Islands of Adventure several times, and if Hagrid’s is down on Early Access, you can wander Hogsmeade or try one of the other Harry Potter rides, or head to Velocicoaster. If Nemesis is down its a 10 minute hike to Runaway Mine Train, 20 plus minutes to CBeebies land or a soaking on Toxicator (if there’s enough people for it to run).
Why not open Galactica too? It’s right there, next door to Nemesis. And Sub-Terra. Why not leave Early Ride Time as a benefit all year around? And do we have to book it? I understand its crowd management, but I bet Universal don’t need you to pre-book early access with your pass? Seems an odd additional move, especially as you can’t book it in the passholder hub AND have to book an entry ticket too. Surely if I have ERT ticket, I’m obviously going to the park that day.
Yes, it’s a brilliant idea, but like a lot of things at Alton Towers of late, executed badly.
Visit the Alton Towers website for details or follow them/Merlin on your favourite socials for news of the latest offers
