- News all the latest
- Theme Park explore the park
- Resort tour the resort
- Future looking forward
- History looking back
- Community and meetups
-
ℹ️ Heads up...
This is a popular topic that is fast moving Guest - before posting, please ensure that you check out the first post in the topic for a quick reminder of guidelines, and importantly a summary of the known facts and information so far. Thanks. - Thread starter Scott
- Start date
- Favourite Ride
- VelociCoaster (Islands of Adventure)
Pleasurewood Hills
Matt N
TS Member
I went to the parks in the East Anglia region once, in 2024.
I’m glad I visited them for the experience, but I wouldn’t say any of the three are parks I would make the specific effort to return to any time soon, as someone who lives 250+ miles and 4.5 hours away on a good run by car and probably even further by train.
As someone who has ridden 137 different roller coasters both in the UK and abroad, the only ride in East Anglia that even entered my top 50% was Great Yarmouth’s Roller Coaster. The region does have a fair quantity of roller coasters, but none of them were anything particularly spectacular even on a UK scale for me.
This is not to do the parks down or say I didn’t enjoy my visits at all, but as a visitor from the opposite side of the country who drove 4.5 hours each way to visit, there’s nothing strongly pulling me back to the region theme park-wise and I would not lose too much sleep if I didn’t return.
Great Yarmouth Pleasure Beach was probably my favourite of the three parks, but other than the Roller Coaster (which was good fun, to be fair) and a select few other rides, I didn’t find a lot there to meaningfully separate it from the likes of Brean Theme Park closer to where I live. It certainly hasn’t got nearly the same depth and breadth of heritage, uniqueness and overall standout ride lineup as a park like Blackpool, and I think if you took the Roller Coaster out, it would feel more like a permanent funfair than a true major theme park.
Joyland is admittedly charming and utilises a small space well, but Tyrolean Tubtwist was vile and in strong contention for my least favourite coaster of all time and the other two rides I rode there, while admittedly quirky and charming, are children’s rides.
Pleasurewood Hills, while probably the more “theme park”-y of the three parks in the area, had considerable swathes of decrepitude, more so than any other park I’ve ever visited, and just didn’t seem to have an awful lot to it. Before visiting, I kind of expected it to be a little like Oakwood in West Wales, and it met that expectation in many ways while also having notably weaker headline roller coasters, which I would have called the main positive attribute of Oakwood (Megafobia was brilliant, and even Speed was an admittedly impressive headliner for a park of Oakwood’s calibre). Jolly Roger was admittedly an excellent drop tower, and in strong contention for my favourite tower ride in the country, but other than that, not a lot at Pleasurewood overly appealed to me, and I was quite content leaving after around 2.5 hours despite it being a park I’d never been to before.
I hope Premier Attractions makes a success of Pleasurewood, and I’d love to see it thrive. The proposed attractions being discussed are not making me want to pack a suitcase and trek back to East Anglia, but I think it would be harsh to expect that from them having only owned the park for a couple of months, and I think the speed at which rides are entering, no matter the calibre of said rides, does signal intent.
I’m glad I visited them for the experience, but I wouldn’t say any of the three are parks I would make the specific effort to return to any time soon, as someone who lives 250+ miles and 4.5 hours away on a good run by car and probably even further by train.
As someone who has ridden 137 different roller coasters both in the UK and abroad, the only ride in East Anglia that even entered my top 50% was Great Yarmouth’s Roller Coaster. The region does have a fair quantity of roller coasters, but none of them were anything particularly spectacular even on a UK scale for me.
This is not to do the parks down or say I didn’t enjoy my visits at all, but as a visitor from the opposite side of the country who drove 4.5 hours each way to visit, there’s nothing strongly pulling me back to the region theme park-wise and I would not lose too much sleep if I didn’t return.
Great Yarmouth Pleasure Beach was probably my favourite of the three parks, but other than the Roller Coaster (which was good fun, to be fair) and a select few other rides, I didn’t find a lot there to meaningfully separate it from the likes of Brean Theme Park closer to where I live. It certainly hasn’t got nearly the same depth and breadth of heritage, uniqueness and overall standout ride lineup as a park like Blackpool, and I think if you took the Roller Coaster out, it would feel more like a permanent funfair than a true major theme park.
Joyland is admittedly charming and utilises a small space well, but Tyrolean Tubtwist was vile and in strong contention for my least favourite coaster of all time and the other two rides I rode there, while admittedly quirky and charming, are children’s rides.
Pleasurewood Hills, while probably the more “theme park”-y of the three parks in the area, had considerable swathes of decrepitude, more so than any other park I’ve ever visited, and just didn’t seem to have an awful lot to it. Before visiting, I kind of expected it to be a little like Oakwood in West Wales, and it met that expectation in many ways while also having notably weaker headline roller coasters, which I would have called the main positive attribute of Oakwood (Megafobia was brilliant, and even Speed was an admittedly impressive headliner for a park of Oakwood’s calibre). Jolly Roger was admittedly an excellent drop tower, and in strong contention for my favourite tower ride in the country, but other than that, not a lot at Pleasurewood overly appealed to me, and I was quite content leaving after around 2.5 hours despite it being a park I’d never been to before.
I hope Premier Attractions makes a success of Pleasurewood, and I’d love to see it thrive. The proposed attractions being discussed are not making me want to pack a suitcase and trek back to East Anglia, but I think it would be harsh to expect that from them having only owned the park for a couple of months, and I think the speed at which rides are entering, no matter the calibre of said rides, does signal intent.