Alton Towers Resort have banned children from wearing high heels after realising that the shoes were being used to cheat height restrictions on some of the resort's more hardcore attractions.

Resourceful children have been found to be employing all manner of height-boosting trickery to gain access to rides such as Nemesis and Oblivion. Here's a few examples of how some park visitors have tried desperately to gain an extra few inches:

Wearing multiple pairs of socks.

Stuffing shoes with paper and other objects.

Attaching a pair of flip-flops to the underside of a pair of trainers with masking tape.

Swapping trainers for Mum's high heels.

From 23 May, 2009 Alton Towers Resort has employed a ban on all shoes with heels more than an inch high. Morwenna Angove, Sales and Marketing Director for the Alton Towers Resort has commented on the ban: "Whilst this ban may appear extreme, we are confident it will reduce the number of desperate attempts to gain a centimetre or two."

Shoe X-ray scanners similar to the ones used in airports are also be be installed to enforce the ban and to ensure no more teens manage to cheat the height restrictions.

Image from Valerie Everett (valeriebb) via Flickr