So back in May 2021, I made the deliberate decision (partly at the advice of certain members of this forum) to stop visiting BPB after a particularly bad few visits.
This weekend I returned for the first time since then, hoping that the operational issues of 2020-21 had been resolved.
Following my visit, I can conclude that some, not all of them have. Here are my observations from my first visit in over two years:
Ride operations: On the whole, not bad but also not amazing. Most coasters were on half capacity, including Big One, but very few people were using Speedy Pass, resulting in reasonably quick moving queues.
Opening hours: Sadly this hasn’t got any better. If anything it’s got worse. I’m not of the opinion that the park should return to pay per rides and be open till 10pm or midnight every day. I appreciate that the park has taken a different direction now, however on the sunniest weekend of the year, closing at 5pm does seem too early.
Staggered openings/ rides opening late: The staggered openings aren’t much different to when I last visited, but one thing that really did shock me was the whole of Nickelodeon Land closing at 4pm. There were easily enough crowds to justify keeping it open till park close. Is this a regular thing now?
The final straw for me in spring of 2021 was when they started a strange practice of always closing Big One queue line half an hour before park close with no explanation. I was very pleased to see, on this visit, that this practice seems to have stopped and Big One’s queue stayed open till park close.
Valhalla: Great to see it back, it’s a really impressive refurbishment while still retaining plenty of its original features. We experienced no breakdowns and way more effects were working since our last ride on it in 2018. It also doesn’t seem quite as wet. Still very wet, but not quite as wet as it used to be, which was welcome.
In other observations, the entire first room of W&G was broken and we just rode through the darkness. And surprisingly, a lot of people seemed to be using Enso.
Hope you enjoyed reading this. Not sure I’ll be back again this year but I’m very glad I returned after a two year gap. There’s still a lot that the park can do to improve guest experience, but I certainly didn’t leave the park feeling anywhere near as cheated as I did during my last few visits in 2021.
