CBeebies Land Makes Alton Towers Worth Visiting With Younger Kids

If you’re visiting Alton Towers with pre-schoolers or visiting Alton towers with younger kids (Boy5 is in his reception year at school) then CBeebies land is the jewel in the crown of Alton Towers: the one part of the park that makes visiting with kids of this age totally worth doing. There aren’t that many rides elsewhere in the park for smaller children (less than 100cm tall) to do, but they can fill a huge amount of time living out their fully-immersive CBeebies dreams and riding on the rides inspired by their favourite characters (whilst the grown-ups take it in turns to be big kids and ride all the bigger thrill rides, if you’re so inclined).

There are twelve different rides and experiences for kids to enjoy in CBeebies land. These are: Peter Rabbit Hippity Hop (this is the newest ride in the land), Go Jetters Vroomster Zoom ride, Octonauts Rollercoaster Adventure (a junior rollercoaster that’s great for slightly older kids too: Boy8 loved this ride when we visited on our last trip, but the queue for it was never shorter than 60 minutes, so we didn’t bother on Saturday), Big Fun Showtime (character-based shows at intervals throughout the day), the Something Special sensory garden, Justin’s Pie-o-matic factory, the Bugbie go round, Tree fu Toom training camp (a playground with slide and zip wire, ideal for letting off some steam), the In the Night Garden Magical boat ride, Postman Pat Parcel Post, Charlie and Lola’s moonsquirters and green drops, and the Get Set Go Tree Top Adventure ride.

CBeebies land really has thought of the needs of all of its visitors, with gentle rides suitable for babes in arms, character meets to appeal to the ride adverse, and a junior roller coaster for slightly bigger kids.

Boy5 was totally in his element: he was the perfect age for this experience! He is also completely obsessed with Peter Rabbit, so spent much of the day hopping around like a rabbit with excitement! We had to ride the new Peter Rabbit Hippity Hop ride more than once!

Boy8 was slightly sarcastic and cynically about many aspects of the CBeebies land part of our trip (in that special way that only 8 years olds can be sarcastic and cynical) but he still had a great day, with the pirate area of the park, Mutiny Bay, holding more attration for him than CBeebies land. There were also other parts of wider Alton Towers that were appropriate for his age band, and the new David Walliams area (that we didn’t realise was opening two days AFTER our visit!) will be all of his eight year old dreams come true, so he didn’t miss out and still had an absolutely brilliant day.

Sometimes it’s better to hear about these things from the mouth of the target audience themselves. So I asked Boy5 to describe CBeebies land to you all. “It was the best day ever even though it was raining! I loved Peter Rabbit hippity hop best of all, and you could see Benjamin bunny and Mr McGregor’s garden on this ride. I also really liked the postman Pat ride because it was fun to drive the car and watching the Teletubbies show while eating sweets was so cool, so I think people should go to CBeebies land.”

From a parents point of view, CBeebies land was incredibly easy to navigate and the whole area was bright, clean, and packed full of fun. The route around the land felt really intuitive, and all of the rides were designed for parents and children to access together, which doesn’t always happen when rides are designed with children in mind. All of the staff were also cheerful and friendly, despite the fact that it didn’t stop raining all day! I don’t think there’s enough to do in CBeebies land to fill a whole day, and we definitely had hours left of our day to explore the rest of the park (taking the Skyride around the park was a great way to see everything, because there’s so much to do here you definitely can’t do, or even see, it all in one day). However, your perspective on that might be different if you have pre-schoolers who thrive on repetition, and want to go on every ride several times- they might find that once they enter CBeebies land they never want to leave!

The queue times seemed to be shorter at the beginning of the day than they were in the afternoon. By far the longest queue was the Octonauts coaster, which never dropped below an hour. The other two most popular rides were Postman Pat and In the Night Garden, which hovered at around the half an hour mark for most of the day. Peter Rabbit, the Bugbie go round and the Go Jetters were all the shortest queues (with hardly any queue at all) whilst the outdoor show was a ‘walk in’. We were told that the queue system on the app doesn’t update in real time, which was slightly irritating as we walked over for the Octonauts when the app said 30 minutes, but when we arrived we were told it was still an hour: just something to be aware of.

If you don’t plan on leaving CBeebies land, there is even a colourful and immensely child-friendly restaurant in the land, although we chose to eat elsewhere. Overall, I think CBeebies land is a dream come true for kids that love CBeebies: and a fun, easy, low-effort day out for their parents too!