Jason Green stood in the car park at Alton Towers, with his wife, Sarah, and three children, looking slightly stunned. The 39-year-old IT professional from Oxfordshire said his family day out at Britain’s top theme park had “exceeded all expectations” – but he wasn’t talking about the thrill rides.

“I’ve just spent almost £400 on a single day out,” he said, turning his pockets out for effect. “By the time I’ve factored in the fuel costs, that’s going to be £500. A couple of years ago, I could have taken this lot to Greece for a week for less than that.”

It’s the unadvertised extra costs – ticket upgrades, parking, eating out, souvenirs – that add up, sending the price of a day out spiralling. The standard entrance fee for Alton Towers, for example, including the Cariba Creek water park, is £143 for a family of four. When you add in the extras, however, it can rise to more than £330 – and that doesn’t include the cost of getting there.

We sent Chris Haslam and family to some of Britain’s most popular but priciest attractions to find out if they offer value for money. We’ve totted up not just the basic entry fees for a family of four, but compulsory charges, such as parking; and, where available, upgrades such as fast passes. We’ve also included snacks and, at each full-day attraction, a standard two-course lunch with drinks at the main restaurant.

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At the theme parks, we bought ride photos as souvenirs; at Longleat and the Tower of London, where photographs were unavailable, we bought teddy bears; and at Blenheim Palace we bought a jigsaw.

Obviously, you don’t have to pay for all these extras – you could pack a picnic, eschew the fast passes and ignore the souvenir shops (we’re sure little Johnny won’t mind at all) – but the vast majority of the families we spoke to said they’d bought snacks, lunch and souvenirs on site. Almost half said they had bought the fast passes. Most also admitted to spending extra money on attractions not included in the ticket price, such as amusement arcades and sideshows.

To make this a level playing field, we’ve included how many hours of fun the Haslams got for their money – and worked out an average cost per hour.

Alton Towers
Gate price (theme park) £98 (water park) £45
Fast passes £120
Parking £4
Towel hire £4
Snacks and lunch £47.10
Souvenirs £14
Total price £332.10
Hours of fun 9
Cost per hour £36.90

What’s good? The rides. With Oblivion, Nemesis, Air, and Rita – Queen of Speed, Alton Towers has Europe’s most thrilling rollercoasters, and even the smaller rides, such as Spinball Wizzer and Corkscrew, are better than top attractions at lesser parks. Only America does it better. It’s a cliché, but true – there’s too much here to do in one day, and the attractions cover all ages. Grandad will find peace in the delightful gardens, younger kids will love soaking each other in the Battle Galleons, and the singing pig in the toddler-friendly Old MacDonald’s Singing Barn is still the best thing in the park.

What’s not? The queues are awful. Up to 15,000 thrillseekers crowd in on sunny weekends, and queues for the big rides are measured in geological time. Expect bladder-bursting waits of two hours or more, effectively limiting your day out to three rides, a trip to the loo and a bag of chips. An £8 fast pass gets you on the top four, but to jump the queues for all 18 rides, you need to fork out £30 a head.

The indoor water park, Cariba Creek, is a great idea – a refuge on a rainy day – but there’s not enough here to warrant the entrance fee. Babies and toddlers will have a ball, but my eldest quickly tired of 30-minute queues for the two short feature rides. And you even have to pay for the car park.

Rip-off or not? Rip-off. But that’s irrelevant. Alton Towers is Britain’s best theme park, and if you have kids, it’s like death and taxes – inevitable.

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