A week ago today I set off on a mini adventure with my fiancé!
The mini adventure was a two day, 1 night trip to the Alton Towers Resort.

We were staying in the original Alton Towers Hotel (the Splash Landings hotel was around the same price but more child-orientated) and included in our package were tickets for the Alton Towers theme park and Splash Landings water park for the duration of our stay.

The Hotel room itself for bed and breakfast was £128 for the two of us for 1 night; we then used a promotional code from The Sun newspaper which cut 50% off this amount.
The theme park entry is usually £36 pp per day but if you book in advance this is reduced to £29 pp per day, the water park entry is £14 pp on top of this. The deal then is that if you are booking the hotel stay at the same time you get 2 days for the price of one for both the theme park and the water park.
(Child prices are obviously less)

I'll try not to waffle on but there are a lot of factors to consider in a hotel review so bear with me!


Arriving at the hotel
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We had been to Alton Towers before but never stayed at the hotel so were hoping finding it was easy enough, once you get to the Alton Towers gates you imply follow the road round all the way, don't turn off!
It was sign-posted so we got there quickly and easily.

First impressions count.... our first impression was on a rather windy and wet morning but still the magic was there!
The hotel is a gorgeous big building with a massive fountain in front of it, for those that don't know the hotel is based around the travels of adventurer and explorer Sir Algenon (whoever he is!)
Inside was just as impressive, a hot air balloon rises up from the floor below in-between the wooden spiral staircases winding around the reception.

We were met by a porter, dressed in the old fashioned gear and checking if we knew what we were doing and were ok.
Check in is any time as long as your room is ready, check out is 10am so when we arrived at 8.50am we knew our room wouldn't be ready and just went to the booth in reception which above it said 'ticket collection' presuming this would be where we picked up our tickets for the theme park and waterpark.
Now the next member of staff was 1 of only 2 who didn't go out of his way to help us, he said we couldn't collect them there despite the fact I had printed the e-mail confirmation exactly as it was sent he said t was missing the number he needed and we'd need to go queue at the park entrance and wait for admin!!
We took a chance and went across to reception and they said we could collect our tickets there and that was that, we were relieved we wouldn't have to queue and wait!
The staff at reception gave us an envelope containing the theme park tickets for both days and the water park wristbands. We were told we could leave our bags with concierge and they would put them in our room as son as it was ready, we thought this was a nice touch and were looking forward to returning to the room to find the cases waiting, sounded posh!

To get into the theme park you just follow the signs for the monorail which runs every five minutes or so to the park entrance. If you are feeling less lazy you can walk the pretty woodland walk which takes around 15 minutes from hotel to park.

Fast forward a few hours in the theme park and we headed back to the hotel and went to reception to collect our keys, the staff there were very helpful and told us everything we could need to know; all about the restaurants we could eat in, opening times, check out etc and also about the early ride times on certain big rides for hotel guests- the park usually opens at 10 but hotel guests can go in from 9 and ride on the following rides before any big queues build up; Oblivion, Enterprise, Mutiny Bay, Duel, Runaway Mine Train, Haunted Hollow, Rita and Sharkbait Reef.

We were then given our key card in a little Alton Towers wallet and headed up in the lift to the room.
I had read other reviews before we went and so expected what was ahead of us in the lift, I hadn't told my fiancé and he was little shocked...I don't want to spoil the surprise but believe me the fun doesn't stop in the lift!


The room
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The key card worked first time which is a miracle in itself!
Our cases were as promised waiting inside the room for us, the room itself was spotless and styled in the adventurer style with little compasses on the headboards and mirrors and a very cool carpet.
We had chosen a standard room but you can also go for themed rooms at a higher price but our room was themed enough for us.

The bathroom was gleaming clean, I have a thing about bathrooms and as we checked in I heard someone complaining about theirs so I was a bit worried but was relieved it looked as clean as my own.
As well as being clean there were added goodies; a full size Original Source shampoo and conditioner, Imperial Leather Foamburst shower gel, Imperial Leather soap and a little Nivea bubble bath. V. impressed!
Next important part of the room, comfy bed? Tick, we had a quick lie down to check it out and it felt gorgeous, we were informed by the sign on the door that it was a Silent Night bed.
The room was warm enough but there was a thermostat so we could have warmed it up or cooled it down as required.

There were a couple of drawers and a clothes rail, not a proper wardrobe but we weren't bothered as we only needed to hang up Nicks shirt for the night and a dress I'd taken, we laid the rest of our clothes on the spare single bed.


The restaurants
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There is a restaurant in each hotel, as a guest at either you have access to all the facilities within each. The two hotels are joined together by corridors so you never have to step outside to go between the two, it is a bit of a maze though so beware you don't get lost as we did on more than one occasion!

In the Alton Towers Hotel we had the Secret Garden restaurant, we had a quick look at this menu but had been recommended by a friend that we visit Flambos in the Splash Landings Hotel.
There is also a snack bar called Ma Garritas in Splash Landings which sells pizzas and toasties but we fancied a proper meal.

The Secret Garden is a brasserie type restaurant; it overlooks the beautiful gardens of the hotel. You have to ring up from your room phone to make a booking to eat here.
An example of the menu:
Starters were around £4-£5 each and included Soups, Pate and Garlic mushrooms. Main courses were around £10-£12 and included Steak, chicken and the vegetarian option of tomato pasta (something I am getting bored of as all restaurants seem to only offer this!)

As I said we decided to eat in Flambos Exotic feast this was just off the reception area of Splash Landings. At this restaurant you just turned up and were seated, it was a lot bigger than The Secret Garden.
In Flambos you help yourself to a 3 course buffet.
For the starter there was a choice of 2 soups; mushroom or tomato and freshly baked bread rolls.
For the main course there are tonnes of choices; a Chinese section including noodle dishes, rice, sweet and sour chicken and stir fried veg, an Indian section which included Samosas( meat and vegetable options) tonnes of curries, poppodoms and naans, a childrens bit with pizza, chips, chickens nuggets, garlic bread etc, a huge salad bar and finally a massive carvery with a choice of 3 meats, roast or new potatoes and about 6 vegetables.
For dessert you had the choice of pastries, cheesecake, chocolate fudge cake or my choice a chocolate fountain complete with Turkish delight, fruit and mini donuts to dip in!

The food was absolutely gorgeous but we both ate far too much!

It was an all you can eat for £16.95 per adult, you just paid for drinks on top.

The drinks were a reasonable price, around £1.60 for a decent sized glass of Coke.

Our waiter (who just cleared the plates away and brought drinks) was a lovely Polish man who couldn't have been more helpful! All dirty dishes were cleared away promptly as we helped ourselves to the next course.

As I mentioned earlier there were 2 members of staff that weren't great, we encountered the other one in the restaurant; a waitress took our full drinks away as wree getting our food even thought the table had a 'occupied' sign on it and then when she helped our waiter to clear the table she put all the other dirty dishes on our table as she stacked ours up which I didn't like!


Entertainment
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In our hotel there were both childrens and adults entertainment, in Splash Landings it was all for children so we stuck to our hotel for the evening.
The childrens entertainment was a clown at 7pm but we wree eating at this time so I can't say if it was any god, the adult entertainment started at 9pm and was a singer in the bar area down a floor from the reception.
He was only on an hour but was decent enough singing classics everyone could toe-tap to!

The bar was slightly overpriced for 'normal' drinks, a pint of beer costing around £3.50 and a vodka and coke the same. Cocktails thought were better value, coming in a huge glass and costing around the £5 mark, I sampled one (can't remember its name lol) and was nicely merry half way through!! I am a bit of a lightweight but they definitely weren't skimpy with their measures, the bar service was very slow though.

We stayed in the bar about an hour after the singer had finished and then went into the gardens for a bit of an explore.
The gardens themselves are gorgeous, landscaped with fountains and steppingstones everywhere.

We then went up the room and got a lovely nights sleep dreaming of breakfast!


Breakfast
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As I mentioned a full breakfast was included in the package price.
You had the choice of either restaurant for breakfast, they were both serving the same menu and as the Secret Garden was a bit posher we decided to eat there!

The restaurant was really lovely and the food was to die for!

It was self service again, the waiters just brought tea or coffee to your table for you. There were tonnes of different sections; a juice bar with a choice of around 6 juices, a pastry bit with croissants, Danish pastries, pain au chocolat, baby muffins....Mmm, Tonnes of cereals all in the mini boxes, a place to toast your bread and of course the Full Eglish Breakfast including everything you could imagine minus fried bread sadly as its my favourite bit!
We again stuffed our faces and then when Nick decided he was going to get on Oblivion in the early ride time, I was worried his breakfast would make a re-appearance but thankfully it didn't.

The breakfast was so huge we didn't want anything else to eat till about 3pm (which is odd for us believe me) lol.


Checking out
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Before we headed into the park for the second day we had to check out, this included handing our key in to one of the many porters around the reception area. Simple and quick.
There was a questionnaire to fill in too if you had the time.


All in all the break cost us £150 plus around £50 for food and drinks so it wasn't a cheap night but it was highly enjoyable.
It's lovely as a treat but with a family it could get very expensive!


Thanks for reading :)