The seeds for this feature were sown a couple of months back when preparing for us moving house. My parents have now moved up to Suffolk, and I now rent my own flat in Hove. Part of this included a massive clear out of the old attic. Among the usual collection of Christmas decorations, old toys, school work and other rubbish we'd never disposed of before we found one item all the way back from our first visit to Alton Towers, way back in 1990. It's actually one of the large souvenir guide books which they sold to visitors back in 1990.
In this feature I've included thumbnails  of each double page, which you can see a larger version of by clicking on the small thumbnail on the left. Also included are my own comments and commentary as I look threw it.

Front and Back Cover:
One of the first things I notice is the cover doesn't feature one of the rides, but the towers themselves. Obviously there was a lot more emphasis on them back them.
On the back you can see a list of other Tussauds group attractions. No Thorpe Park back then, and it's also interesting to see the Vampire described as Chessington's new ride.

Page 2 and 3:
Looking at the first page it boasts of opens spacious parkland and a haven of natural beauty, as well as over 125 attractions. How many of them are toilets, shops or arcades?
Looking at the contents you can see the names of some of the areas of the park back them, all of them except Towers Streets and the Towers and Gardens have been rethemed since then.
You can see a photo of the monorail, that still existed back then. If you look at the name of the car you have a chance to make a joke about riding Uranus. A joke older than this brochure.

Page 4 and 5:
Page 4 has Alton Towers, our noble heritage, again showing how there was more importance placed on the Towers and the history in 1990. There's also a photo of Henry Hound, remember him? Apparently his design was based on a Talbot hound, on the coat of arms of the Talbot family which owned Alton Towers.
It also mentions John Talbot, who owned the towers and became First Earl of Shrewsbury, who spent a lot of his life fighting alongside Henry V, and gets mentioned by name in the Shakespeare play Henry V. If that's not a claim to fame I don't know what is.

Page 6 and 7:
Page 6 and 7 has Main Street USA, sorry, I meant Towers Street. Looking back this was the period in which Euro Disney was imminent, and there were several attempts to copy the Disney formula. There's the entrance street and the parade, and in two years time the Mine Train and Haunted House, which was quite an obvious attempt to emulate Disney.
Another thing I remember is that there was a much better range of souvenirs back then compared to some of the tat on offer today. I can't say I remember the street performers being as good as there shown in the brochure here. Nowadays of course if you see a big ball of flame it's not a fire eater, it means some chav has set a bin on fire.

Page 8 and 9:
Now it's  on to the farm, which is still there today, although the threat of foot and mouth a few years back mean all the animals are now animatronics models. Looking at it more closely there was more emphasis on teaching kids about farming back then, now it's just a kids area of the park themed around a farm.

Page 10 and 11:
Now it's on the future sight of Oblivion, Fantasy World. Obviously they relied a lot more heavily on fairground style rides back then. It's interesting to see them compare the pirate ship to a Victorian Steam Yacht.
With the removal of the Black Hole I think that's every ride in this area from 1990 removed from the park, although I did recently encounter the Gravitron that was relocated to Pleasure Island, Cleethorpes.

Page 12 and 13:
On to an area known as Talbot Street, which once again has some information relating to the history of the estate. It's also the area with the ride known as Around The World in Eighty Days, which later became Toyland Tours, which later became the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Ride.
It's interesting to see how this area has a number of edutainment exhibitions and museums as queue free attractions. They've just added a new queue free attraction in the Gloomy Woods area of the park, and I think they could benefit from a few more like they had in 1990.

Page 14 and 15:
There's someone there playing Space Harrier in the arcade, this is going back a bit. I also noticed that two of the roller coasters aren't labelled on the key. I think one must be the 4 Man Bob, a compact family coaster, a version of which can still be ridden on the Space Invader ride at Blackpool. The other must be the Alton Mouse, although it looks nothing like a mouse coaster in the picture.
Also in this area are a wave slide and an Apple Coaster, rides it's hard to imagine Alton Towers having now. The main ride here though has to be The Alton Beast, a good ride of it's time, now sadly not at the park any longer.

Page 16 and 17:
It feels a little odd now to think there was a time that the Corkscrew was the billed as the parks most famous and popular ride. I also notice the presence of the Dragon Coaster, which I think is still at the park by the Spinball Whizzer, with the name Beastie.
There's also a magic carpet, that was a more popular thrill ride back in 1990's than it is now, with quite a lot of parks having them. I also  noticed there's an enterprise and wave swinger. Are these the same rides still at the park or were they replaced with new versions?

Page 18 and 19:
The centre pages show the park map of 1990. Looking at it there hasn't been a huge change in the basic layout. That has a lot to do with the gardens and towers in the centre, which the rides border around the centre. Obviously there's been a lot of development since then.

Page 20 and 21:
The next couple of pages have even more on the Towers, and some of the attractions in them, and more on the history of the towers and the grounds. It's also interesting to say how they hope to one day restore the Towers to there formal glory. I haven't seen any mention of those plans recently.
Also mentioned in this section is the Towers gift shop, which will be converted in to the queuing area of Hex about a decade after this brochure was published.
I also like how they say you can cheer your favourite characters, in the parade. That's as long as one of your favourite characters is Henry Hound.

Page 22 and 23:
We now move on from the the Towers to the Gardens. It's interesting to actually see a guide to some of the landmarks in the gardens themselves, as they're not shown on the maps nowadays.
They also mention a historic area hidden below the Skyway station. Last time I was there it had a toilet and a couple of vending machines.

Page 24 and 25:
The next pages are Aqualand. There's the big photo that shows the fashions of the early 90's. Did everyone's cloths really look like they were done with hi-lighter pens? I think that could be a fashion disaster from my own childhood.
There's  quite a few rides here I recognise. There's obviously the Log Flume and Rapids, which are both still at the park, although both have been made over since then. There's also the teacups, and the park still has an ice show, but it's now in the farm area.
The one ride I have to mention of course is the Thunder Looper. For a start you can see how empty the Nemesis and Air area was, plus it brings back memories of how much I enjoyed the Thunder Looper. What a shame they had to remove it due to planning problems.

Page 26 and 27:
We've run out of areas of the park to review, and it now moves on to a restaurant guide. The pizza in that photo looks better than anything I ever remember them serving. Another thing I noticed which is different is there isn't a corporate fast food or coffee shop franchise in site. This was before anyone had ever heard of Starbucks.
The Swiss cottage restaurant has caught my eye. I don't think you can eat there anymore, which is a shame as it looks like quite a nice location.

Page 28 and 29:
I've already mentioned the noticeable drop in the quality of the shopping opportunities since 1990. Here it becomes even more apparent. As well as a better selection of souvenirs they also have a large number of speciality shops. They also list of shops selling crafts and more upmarket items, including Wedgwood, local to Alton Towers in nearby Stoke on Trent and items from Gucci.

Page 30 and 31:
Towards the end there's a whole page which is basically name dropping. There basically listing a load of celebrities who've been to the park. Sonia or Bruno Brooks anyone? Moving up the leagues you've got Cliff Richard and Philip Schofield paying visits. You've also got ride openings, including William Shatner, (or William Shatter as the spellchecker calls him) Eddie the Eagle and Kylie Minogue was one of the first people to ride the Alton Mouse.
Also of note are members of the Royal family visiting the park, including the Duke of Edinburgh. No word on which minority group he offended.

Page 32 and 33:
It's Henry's Fun Page. I'm told the fact that none of the puzzles have been drawn or written on is important, as doing that will affect the value to a collector. You can always print these pages out and have a go yourself. See if you can find all 10 bones hidden on these two pages.

Page 34 and 35:
Believe it or not Alton Towers use to have it's own leisure wear collection. If that sounds like a fashion disaster you'd be correct. I wonder if you could make anything on e-bay for one of these now? I notice one of the items on offer is a hoodie, perfect for the coaster loving chav.