Alton Towers Extraordinary Mini Golf whack out!

Altontower Mini (Extraordinary) golf- Trip date 11th June 2010
An idiot’s way to playing golf in a whacked out world is what miniature golf have to offer, (well not in a bad way of course), often with many interesting challenges and finds too. The Alton towers mini Extraordinary Golf one is no exception either. It’s a fairly new attraction too, opened in 2007, The mini golf course sit about a small 100 by 100 meters plot housing an 18 hole golf course split between 2 difficulty levels of 9 holes each. It is an independent attraction by itself and is situated near the theme park within walking distance from the Alton Towers water park and splash landings hotels.

As with all fun courses, no previous knowledge of golfing is required. Infact how the way you play the some course requires you actually unlearn your golfing techniques just to get them across. Everything here requires putting (mostly), sand/dirt traps and an occasional water hazard if your ball strays off course.

Stick in O

The golfers for today

The Nemesis hole

There are no spinning windmills or ball gobbling dogs in this course, the holes lined throughout the course allows you to play through in a contained manner without spilling over to other holes and golfers. All the holes here is largely customized in Alton towers style with several theme park themed the various attractions in the theme park itself. Names like nemesis, air, ripsaw and hex are familiar names given our visit to the theme park yesterday.

Adventure mini golf it is, you can literally play the holes as if you are a complete idiot, often with bizzare results as well. Each hole features a small instruction stand telling you the “right” way each hole is to be played. With a variety of normal (we call easy) or hard courses to play through in a single setup. Usually the easy way is the most straightforward play, and the more or often having to go through rounds or obstacles so, often resulting in more strokes and a higher chance of the ball going out of course. It pays to justify whether your strategy in the most retarded manner to get your ball across seemingly by almost any wicked means possible in the rules

Some hard holes require trick shots which send you ball in jumps over obstacles, mini hills or water obstacles including streams often resulting in rather hilarious results, with more often having the ball stuck having to use nearly unlimited number of strokes (and counting) to get them unstuck. Unlimited number of strokes are also not limited to our godsend putting skills on the green, which will definitely make Tiger woods squirm in his pants.

Ripsaw loop anyone?

Dang Faucets!

Micro Machines?

The place however, is quite weathered in some areas, and the course here is not really the best we’ve seen to date. The place is quite worn down and painting chipped in certain plastered elements made to mimic wood, the place is largely unsheltered and receive the full blunder of the raging sun on the fairly sunny day we played the course.

Sometimes even with idiot-proof instructions, it seems nearly impossible to tackle some of the trick shorts required without skyrocketing your strokes to clear the hole (or maybe we are worse than idiots ourselves). We play the holes and calculated scores by the number of strokes taken to get each player’s ball into the hole, with the initial incentive of halving the score for “catchup” if completed on hard difficulty. Later we went ahead with the deduction of 2 strokes to the final scores for fairness moderation (also to cap my too trailblazing awesome score : p).

Overall the mini adventure golf course is a real fun way to unwind with some laughs and is a perfect compliment to the already existing theme park and water park. It is a great way to spend about an hour of your time casually tackling very hole in the most retarded manner possible, often with very hilarious results.

More photos in the Alton towers trip minigolf album.