Blackpool Pleasure Beach: 2023 Discussion

[Burner]

It's obvious they've just opened it because they couldn't be bothered to deal with any more grief off the thoosies, regardless of the condition.

 

[Rob]

If it feels so unfinished at this stage, what have they been doing for the past 3 years? Nothing? Well I guess that’s pretty accurate to be honest.

What a sorry state of affairs.

 

[Craig]

Not sounding great from Scare Track's review (timestamped to post ride after their first was evac'd)...

From: https://youtu.be/8yyjhj0Tszo?t=613

Spoiler: A few bits from the video

• Hideously wet, despite no water vortex and the hammers not working on their ride
• "95% in darkness"
• Music is a massive downgrade
• Zero fire on their ride
• My fave comment - The ice room looks more like Bent's Garden Centre

Insane that the ride has been closed for so long, yet from early reviews they've actually made the main thing that annoyed a lot of people - the sheer level of drenching you receive even worse.

 

[Skyscraper]

Not sounding great from Scare Track's review (timestamped to post ride after their first was evac'd)...

From: https://youtu.be/8yyjhj0Tszo?t=613

Spoiler: A few bits from the video

• Hideously wet, despite no water vortex and the hammers not working on their ride
• "95% in darkness"
• Music is a massive downgrade
• Zero fire on their ride
• My fave comment - The ice room looks more like Bent's Garden Centre

Insane that the ride has been closed for so long, yet from early reviews they've actually made the main thing that annoyed a lot of people - the sheer level of drenching you receive even worse.

Did you see bucket-gate at 6:08? They took the bucket off the fire thing and replaced it with a different one.

 

[Thameslink Rail]

This is probably unnecessarily cynical but would people say that the extended closure and lowering of standards are due to budget cuts?

 

[AstroDan]

I am intrigued to see how long these technical rehearsals last...

I mean, technical rehearsals should be that the attraction is largely complete, but some effects are unreliable. You could argue that Alton Manor's status on opening weekend was that.

Valhalla just sounds plainly unready.

 

[Craig]

This is probably unnecessarily cynical but would people say that the extended closure and lowering of standards are due to budget cuts?

It's been discussed at length before, but they needed to lower the gas bill, attempt to fix reliability issues and replace broken effects. The retheme was just a way of justifying it.

The ride hasn't been worked on for three years, realistically it's probably had a year's worth of work done to it tops. Covid delayed things, and the impact of Covid on attendances and the need to cut costs further delayed it too.

 

[AstroDan]

Further review (spoiler-free, timestamped)... I think they are trying to be kind.


From: https://youtu.be/ykY8aSYwr0E?t=492

 

[Rick]

Could I proudly announce that I was the first to walk out of the queue when it broke down.

He was - left me alone with the general public (after barking at a stranger for queue jumping).

I'm not doing a 'review' per se - because I don't think it would be appropriate to do so, given what I experienced can't be the final ride. It was a hot mess, with barely any effects and a breakdown to boot.

Wait was 1h 40m, we joined the queue when we saw it open from Loki's Bar. That's not the longest I've waited for the ride, nor is it the first time I have ridden it in a shirt and tie.

If you want spoilers and comparisons to the previous ride experience - see the contents of the spoiler tag below. I'd wager I know every inch of that ride better than 99.99% of people, but as has always been the case with that thing, the ride experience is hugely inconsistent - so the below is based on one go through, with a breakdown on lift one.

Spoiler: May the Gods of the Nordics Help Us All

In order ...

• The station looks fabulous - photos below. The soundtrack was playing intermittently and is still switched off when there is a breakdown.
• The skull waterfall was off, but the infrastructure for it appears to still be there - perhaps it shall return.
• Huginn and Muninn have been replaced by a static scene with a viking that reminded me a bit of He-Man - quite a decorative scene
• The real fire torches have been replaced by vapour / steam
• The dogs remain as they were, but have been relit - no sound today
• Fenrir(?) remains above lift one, and has been relit
• ... then it all starts going wrong, the boat stops on lift 1 for 10 mins - the announcements regarding what is going on are barely audible
• The effects on the lift (they look a bit like eyes) switch off
• ... we eventually start moving again
• It appears the twin-trommel is still in place, but naturally, is not moving
• Odin appears to have been removed / there is no audio - there is nothing in that space
• Coming off lift 1 there is no bouncing, nor are there lights in the cave at the top
• The dragon heads that were to your right have gone and been replaced by lots of lanterns in a mirrored box
• The river of fire remains largely unchanged - but now each 1m of it or so lights up as you approach it - very cool
• The waterfalls are gone - they have been replaced by a solid wall with thin shafts of light shining through - fine, but a downgrade
• Turn 1 (which I suspect is a relocated Turn 2) spins you round anti-clockwise to go down the mini-drop forwards
• You then approach a bizarre large figure that was lit very badly - but it looked odd, no idea what it was. Reminded me of the Mumbo Jumbo logo.
• The ice room wasn't cold - there are a lot of ornate 'things' in there now - a weak snow machine, but the canons are presumably gone. Thankfully the perspex polar bear, or whatever it was has been banished.
• Drop 2 - there is a new effect with some lights / water dropping from the ceiling
• The vortex infrastructure was there, but switched off / broken - but it did light up
• The waterfall and shooter before the 180-degree turn to lift 2 remain the same
• Lift 2 had some new sound-effects, but were very quiet
• The skull chandelier now lights up when you get to it, rather than being on constantly
• There were some new bits on the 'bad corner' - again very ornate
• The hammers were there, but didn't work
• The flaming arrows were there, one worked
• The rolling log was there, didn't work
• There is a new scene with bells above your head that chime as you pass under
• The Tesla coil corner, which was 'upgraded' in the last refurbishment to have the exploding chests has been completely redone, I assume stuff was supposed to happen there but nothing did - it almost looked like tracks with stuff on that was supposed to move side to side on said tracks, but nothing happened ... could be really cool I am sure, but it wasn't today.
• No flaming trough / ring of fire - I would be delighted and hugely surprised if that came back
• No fire explosions on the run out - didn't appear to be lit
• No long boat explosion - but the mechanism appeared to be there
• One final fire blast on the right hand side
• ... and out into the daylight with a huge feeling of WTF

Wetness
The corners are just as bad as they have ever been - the boats didn't have as much standing water as they have done previously. In the run out from drop 3 I was hit by a wall of water from the right, I can only think a boat had come down drop 2 at the same time or there's something new that the water from your boat 'ricochets' off. It felt like it did in 2000 where the boats could drop together - maybe they can again.

Audio
There felt very little compelling about the soundtrack and the sound inside around the ride was worse than ever.

It will be better than the above, there are some very talented people working on the project - just a bad run I think. It's always been the case that breakdowns do cause trouble with the effects, I am hopeful that was the case here.

Now to go and do all that work I should have been doing this afternoon ...

Some station pictures :

 

[AstroDan]

I am trying to work out why the project has taken so long.

Has there been an overhaul of the ride system itself?

 

[Poisson]

I am trying to work out why the project has taken so long.

Has there been an overhaul of the ride system itself?

How long did Piraten take from fuego to finished?

 

[Rick]

I am trying to work out why the project has taken so long.

Has there been an overhaul of the ride system itself?

Reconfiguring the trough and the turntables won't have been an easy job - not least because access for plant is so tricky and there is some pretty heavy engineering involved, literally.

The console and ops cabin has been relocated (see photo) but the console itself appears to be the same.

The boats have been refurbished.

There may have been other things too, but nothing else obvious.

 

[Craig]

Cheers for the rundown Rick, exactly the sort of thing I was looking to see. Gut feeling appears to be they'd ultimately need another few months, not just weeks to iron all of this out. Such a shame!

I am trying to work out why the project has taken so long.

Has there been an overhaul of the ride system itself?

Definitely work that's been done, but (gut feeling again) the vast majority of the wait for the project to "finish" has been budget constraints. It never looked like a hive of activity around there.

I reckon they should've just been completely honest in the first place and just admitted to lengthy pauses in the work completing thanks to uncertainty. It stops the assumption that there's 3 years worth of non stop work taking place, which clearly hasn't been the case.

 

[Rick]

Just to demonstrate the inconsistency ... I stood by the skull for a good while pre-opening, before my ride and after it and didn't see the waterfall operate once ...

 

[DistortAMG]

Is the backwards turntable still in? Or was that replaced?

 

[Benjsh]

You could tell by the tone of Amanda's tweets that this wasn't going to go well.
What a shame if they have managed to ruin the only world class ride they own.

Let's hope that things will get better by the summer. Don't think I will bother visiting this season until it's working properly.

I genuinely think a lack of money is definitely at the root of the problem too.

 

[Rick]

Is the backwards turntable still in? Or was that replaced?

Spoiler: Turntable(s)

The turnable that flipped you backwards now rotates further, so you enter and depart forwards. There is no turntable when you get to the bottom of the small drop, the trough turns right to head torwards the ice room.

Previously Turn 2 rotated you not far off 360-degrees, its core purpose was to rotate the boat forwards, rather than change direction.

The other thing I forgot to mention is that the bin bag ponchos are now £3. I opted for what I thought was a more deluxe Funshine themed thicker material (£5), but it was essentially a sheet with a hole in for my head and two press studs on either side which did nothing to keep the water at bay ... plus, despite being 'adult sized', it would have been snug on a toddler.

 

[Alsty]

It feels like Valhalla only reopened today because they were so embarrassed by how long it had been shut, rather than it actually being in any state of readiness.

The question now is, how much more time do they realistically need to finish it?

 

[Dave]

Not seen such a flat response to an opening of a ride since origional Nemesis Sub-terra opened. I don’t buy the “technical rehearsals” excuse as it has been closed for a year.

Shame as I used to love that ride.

 

[Danscott22]

Not seen such a flat response to an opening of a ride since origional Nemesis Sub-terra opened. I don’t buy the “technical rehearsals” excuse as it has been closed for a year.

Shame as I used to love that ride.

It’s been closed for 3, even less reason to buy it!