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Blackpool Pleasure Beach: 2023 Discussion

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I went on The Mummy for technical rehearsals in 2004, it got stuck in the fake loading platform room once out of the ten or so times I did it and probably had a few effects not working, other than that it was excellent. I also did Derren Brown’s Ghost Train during technical rehearsals which was crap, but that’s because it was a crap ride not because it was in rehearsals.

The point I am making here is that technical rehearsals isn’t usually code for ‘blatantly unfinished’ which seems to be the case with Valhalla. Reeks of Blackpool buckling to pressure, which wouldn’t have been the case had they not taken 3 years to renovate the ride.

Hopefully they sort it out as I used to love it.
 
This is Blackpool, I have huge suspicions that this ride will be in technical rehearsals until 2024. Do work if we are lucky over closed season to actually get it to some standard.

Without major downtime I don’t know how they are going to find time to actually get things working
 
As I say, if you're defining a technical rehearsal as it not opening all day and without every effect working, when will it ever get out of that?

It's like that for a lot of the 3.5 years it's been shut that absolutely zero was happening. The excuses around logistical and technical issues don't wash for that time period. I can even imagine that no one was working on it and no one knew, certainly Mrs Thompson didn't know what was going on?

Cut to November 2022:
"How's Valhalla coming along?"
"Coming along? It's been stood there three years while we waited to hear back from you on what type of big cat you wanted inside."
 
I think some leniency can be allowed for Valhalla not having all its effects properly working, but it seems to be a lot worse than just some of the effects not working, and that cannot be excused.
 
There's a huge amount that could have been done that wouldnt result in visisble change, but not justifying the time it's been closed.

Seems like something has seriously gone wrong during that time and the park bit off way more than they could chew.
 
It’s really quite obvious what has happened here:

1) The ride system needed some major spend.
2) The park had a cash flow problem
3) The ride had a high operating cost.

I agree with @Craig, the park should have been honest and said due to various factors we can’t operate the ride and we need to do some boring technical adaptations and we will open it when we get the chance.

Don’t get me wrong lots of people would have complained at the above but it is would have been the lesser of two evils.

That said I am certain folk today didn’t see the final product and we should be open minded to when that is available but the park has messed this one up a bit.

The only positive is I think I can confidently say the only people who care about this are geeks. As it’s not been advertised as a new ride most of the general visiting guest population won’t even know (let’s face it due to blackpools terrible marketing few people knew they had opened a new coaster).
 
zeock said:
I think some leniency can be allowed for Valhalla not having all its effects properly working, but it seems to be a lot worse than just some of the effects not working, and that cannot be excused.
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Not sure how much leniency you can give them. It's been closed since 2019 !

From the reports I have seen and heard, it looks like virtually nothing was working .

Seems like a bonkers decision to open it but it's Blackpool so I wouldn't expect any less !

Sent from my Pixel 6 Pro using Tapatalk
 
shakey said:
Not sure how much leniency you can give them. It's been closed since 2019 !

From the reports I have seen and heard, it looks like virtually nothing was working .

Seems like a bonkers decision to open it but it's Blackpool so I wouldn't expect any less !

Sent from my Pixel 6 Pro using Tapatalk
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Exactly this. People are sick of waiting, and they were getting stick for it - I get that. But at the same time, people would've been travelling from around the country to experience the ride this week with the expectation that the majority of the ride is working.

Yes, there's the technical rehearsal caveat, but if as a company you're spending time bigging things up on social media and at season launch events, there's a general expectation that you'll see the majority of the ride working. There's been a three year wait, I don't think it'd hurt to actually be realistic with a timescale instead of rush things and annoy people who are some of your business's biggest fans.
 
Agree with all the above.


I just believe that they are stretching the word “Technical Rehearsal” too far. For any other park, this would mean: adjusting effects, timing, sound levels and effects not working all the time. This has been described as unfinished, a ride which just needs the points I made above wouldn’t be described as unfinished.

Technical Rehearsal is just an excuse and is already being used as excuse.

Don’t get me wrong one day this ride will fully open (in years to come) and everyone will move on and forget about the delays, poor communication and the ride will exist. This ride won’t have a big bang or hype or raving reviews. It won’t get the curse at Alton manor wave, it will come in dribs and drabs and that’s it’s, it will be something which is open at a park.
 
Apart from the crazy bad “after the 7th” thing, they’ve actually been OK on communications. It was said by Mrs Thompson at that season launch thing that it would be a “sneak peek” at what was to come.

The fact that they are not ready after all this time is a little bad, but it may never be significantly better. Just different things working at different times like it always has.
 
ML27 said:
Agree with all the above.


I just believe that they are stretching the word “Technical Rehearsal” too far. For any other park, this would mean: adjusting effects, timing, sound levels and effects not working all the time. This has been described as unfinished, a ride which just needs the points I made above wouldn’t be described as unfinished.

Technical Rehearsal is just an excuse and is already being used as excuse.

Don’t get me wrong one day this ride will fully open (in years to come) and everyone will move on and forget about the delays, poor communication and the ride will exist. This ride won’t have a big bang or hype or raving reviews. It won’t get the curse at Alton manor wave, it will come in dribs and drabs and that’s it’s, it will be something which is open at a park.
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The ride was never "fully open" though, ever.
Anyone ever been on the ride and seen every major effect working???
I have, twice, in twenty years of riding the flume in a shed.
And I rode it a few times every season, when it wasn't closed without reason.
They have a few off peak Mon/Tues closures coming to fix things, but I won't be holding my breath.
If all the money blown (and lost) on the failure that is Hot Ice over the last decade had been spent on Valhalla, we would have a world class dark ride.
But mandy.
 
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I do think the ride is finished but will the raising costs of Gas and Electric they can’t afford to run it so they just running it as a basic indoor log flume with minimal working and when the park is very busy in the summer months some of the effects will be switched on but I doubt you will see everything working again.
 
Themeparksandy1981 said:
I do think the ride is finished but will the raising costs of Gas and Electric they can’t afford to run it so they just running it as a basic indoor log flume with minimal working and when the park is very busy in the summer months some of the effects will be switched on but I doubt you will see everything working again.
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If they couldn't afford to switch on those effects for opening day - with loads of vloggers about - then they'll not be running in the summer either. The effects have either been removed or they just don't work.
 
More thoughts on yesterday.
First of all, to my defence in quitting the queue yesterday...
Yes of course I did it with glee, and led the wise ones away, but I did have a parking ticket running out in an hour, and the shed flume isn't worth a parking ticket.
I wouldn't want to be misquoted.
National closed all day, again.
Just as the shed flume reopens.
With some of the National staff.
Two staff heavy rides on the North area, only one open at a time.
In the Easter peak...with weekday closures kicking in next week.
I know it needs work, and I'm sure it will be open for this "special" weekend, but I bet one or the other will be closed through the off peak.
Most enjoyable day...geek central, skiving work, good company, gossip, beer and coasters.
And next week the kids are back to school.
 
Themeparksandy1981 said:
I do think the ride is finished but will the raising costs of Gas and Electric they can’t afford to run it so they just running it as a basic indoor log flume with minimal working and when the park is very busy in the summer months some of the effects will be switched on but I doubt you will see everything working again.
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You’d think that if the ride was finished then they’d surely have just officially opened the ride with a proper launch rather than these “technical rehearsals”. Part of me wonders if they have soft launched the ride to gauge the opinions of the vloggers to see how much more work they need to do to the ride but then again this is Pleasure Beach. The park’s decisions can often be strange ones and opening up the ride in this state is one of them.

I always suspected though that a large reason that the ride closed for three years wasn’t because they were doing some grand reimagining to enhance or retheme the ride but rather to mothball it for a couple of seasons to save on running costs and strip back the effects for ones that are much less expensive to run. In the Valhalla thread last year I joked just wait for the look on our faces when it turns out that after ask that time Valhalla 2.0 is the same as Valhalla 1.0 but with all the effects turned off and a different soundtrack. Maybe that wasn’t so far out after all.

Edit - Just had a thought, maybe Pleasure Beach were aware that there was no way they’d be able to deliver an enhanced ride experience that fans were expecting and so just quietly snuck the ride back out there to the public under the guise of “technical rehearsals” rather having a proper reopening launch media event for it where the spotlight would be on it and it’s flaws (ie the equivalent of quietly burying bad news)?
 
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At the time the ride was closed it was truly broken, stopping every half hour, often only open for an hour a day off peak.
I'm sure they will slowly increase the effects, but it wouldn't surprise me if the official opening was in the summer school holidays.
 
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