Request stop

"We were on a bus that took us from the slopes directly to our hotel, but as we were approaching our bus stop, we realized that the driver hadn't slowed down and the bus just kept going. The problem was, as we later found out, that the bus stop has been turned into a request stop, so we should have pressed one of the stop buttons on the bus in order to let the driver know that we wanted to alight. We didn't know that because the last time we had been there, we didn't have to press any buttons whatsoever."

Is this text okay? Can 'alight' be used instead of 'get off' or is it way too formal? I'm also not sure about the use of tenses in the last sentence, but I think that it'd sound rather clumsy if I said:"the last time we had been there we hadn't had to....

Thank you so much in advance for your help!