Fun Times At Alton Towers

Bonjourno!

I know it's been a REALLY long time since I've written a blog post, but honestly my life has gotten super busy over the last few weeks and I've barely had any time to myself to write anything. I can't apologise more, and I'll try harder now that the schools have broken up and I have six whole weeks to myself (woo!). 

So, I don't know if I've mentioned it on this blog before, but myself and my partner had decided that we were going to celebrate the start of the holidays with a sneaky trip down to Alton Towers while the kids were still at school (side note, we actually planned this before the tragic crash on the Smiler..), so that the queues weren't so bad. I took to Twitter to talk about some of the issues I had with going - was I too fat? Was I too wide? Were my thighs too big? The list went on and on. I did some serious - and I mean serious, like hours of internet trawling and searches - research to find out exactly what the heigh/weight/fatness restrictions were around Alton Towers.

People online were really kind - I was hoping to get my 4 stone award before I went (which I did, eeeeee!) just to give me that extra confidence I needed. And after literally changing my mind about six times about whether I wanted to go, we just packed a bag and went, though I was a little apprehensive about it.

So day 1 started off pretty great, standing in the queue for Rita (0-60mph in 2 seconds, insane!) I was actually shaking, I really didn't want to hear the oh so famous "sorry, could you just get off?" and have to make the walk of shame. To my ultimate surprise, the restraint came down over me and fit me fine, I even had room to spare! This boosted my confidence completely and I was ready to take on the world. I even managed to get on Th13teen, which I was sure was going to be too small.
So then we reached Air. Infamous Air. Having done a lot of research about it, lots of people had mentioned that there were bigger seats on row 4, so that was my plan. I even took the courage to ask the really kind woman at the entrance to the ride if she thought that I would fit. She was really nice and suggested the bigger seats, saying that she had seen massive blokes go on it and have no issue. 

Right, I thought, I'll go for this, made a bee line for the 4th row and sat down, pulled the restraint down. Shit, it won't go down. Cue the attendant. "Can you move up a bit and try it again?" Nope, nothing, still won't come down. Fuck this, I'll just get off before I embarrass myself even more. Doing the walk of shame has never been so humiliating. Cue floods of tears, general swears and a fuck this, we're going home attitude. 

After a while of talking and calming down, we decided to try Nemesis. Another pull down restraint. The queue was minimal, so we got on straight away. Again, couldn't pull the thing down, so I got off and went to speak to a man. This part is amazing, because this man that I spoke to deserves a raise for what he did for me. I was still in so much of a tizz from what had happened on Air that I burst into tears right in front of him. He was so kind and took us to a quiet place to talk about it, where I explained what had happened. He gave us free priority passes to come back when I had calmed down, where he would let me try a seat at the back to avoid embarrassment, if not he said I could try a bigger seat, which he even said was probably too big anyway.

So later that day we went back, and he was so kind once more, and to my actual amazement, I got on! And not in the bigger seats, in the normal ones! He said the restraints were half locked when people get on, so it's really hard to get them to where they need to be. 

I really can't get over the kindness of the staff there, really boosted my confidence, especially after what had happened earlier! To those planning a visit in the future, if you're not a size 10, then avoid Air, you have be a skinny minny to get on that asshat!

Hope you all have a wonderful summer,
Ciao!
Ps. Here's a cheeky photo to make you all laugh ;)
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