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Blackpool Pleasure Beach: 2023 Discussion

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Having recently ridden the bobsleigh at Parc Asterix I'd rate that above Avalanche with the Europa Park one a distant 3rd.

Intamin ones I'd go Disaster Transport, Bob, La Vibabora (amazed it's still operating seeing how the other two I rode mere days before they shut forever).

Think for the park reducing capacity on rides you've got the double header of the park moving to pay one price so riders didn't need to quickly be removed from their money/tickets and the likes of the big one and Avalanche suffering from incidents when running 3 trains. Valhalla initially running a ridiculous number of boats that must've been causing all manner of issues. Wooden coasters using manual breaking systems which really mean they don't want a parked train in the station. Plus I'd rather they don't try and modernise the breaking systems seeing the mess it made of the national, and somehow seemed to be the beginning of the end for the mouse.
 
Was Avalanche's incident expressly caused by it running 3 trains? I thought the ride derailed, but I could be wrong there. (Unless you're referring to a totally different incident... I'm referring to the one shown in the Blackpool Pleasure Beach documentary from 1997/1998)

Overall, though, I don't think Blackpool is operationally cut out to run on free entry and sole pay-per-ride anymore. They'd need significant investment into a number of their rides to attain the sort of high throughputs they apparently used to back in the day, and I dare say that it wouldn't even be possible to return to the old levels of throughput on some of the park's coasters.

Out of interest, what sort of throughputs did some of Blackpool's big headliners attain back in the day? I'm aware that the park had very high throughputs when it ran as a pay-per-ride park, but I'd be interested to know just how high.
 
Lots of other Mack bobsleds run on more than two trains. Indeed those two popular examples of Trace du Hourra and Schweitzer Bobbann run around five.

Quite incredible that Pleasure Beach struggle to operate more than one and their solution is seemingly just to extend the queue line.
 
Out of interest, why is it that The Big One can't run 3 trains any more?

Surely it has enough space on the brake run to run 3, no? I could have sworn that there was a block directly behind the station (where a 2nd train could wait), and then another block around a 180 degree turn from there (where a 3rd train could wait), so the ride has enough space to store all of its trains on the "final" set of brake runs in the event of it double stacking, doesn't it?
 
Dipper_Dave said:
What ‘mishap’ happened on Avalanche on 2 trains?

Also, what on earth would 3/4 trains on that achieve? Stacking on the brake run like Oblivion, that’s all
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I assume a mechanical issue, broke down on the lift hill and havent seen it run two since. It sat out at least overnight

Matt N said:
Out of interest, why is it that The Big One can't run 3 trains any more?

Surely it has enough space on the brake run to run 3, no? I could have sworn that there was a block directly behind the station (where a 2nd train could wait), and then another block around a 180 degree turn from there (where a 3rd train could wait), so the ride has enough space to store all of its trains on the "final" set of brake runs in the event of it double stacking, doesn't it?
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They don't dispatch until the second train has came home. About 50/50 whether the train in the station is ready to go, or if people are still arsing round loading anyway
 
I was just looking at the late night riding for October / November as I was thinking of maybe going to one.

But there aren't any this year . They usually run one on the Saturday before (or on) Halloween for Vampire Beach and one around bonfire night (think the bonfire night one went missing last year)

So I assume Vampire Beach is no more ?

I was sure they had a late night riding pencilled in for October this year when I looked earlier in the season.
 
I thought Vampire Beach had been replaced by Journey to Hell: Freak Nights?
b2311e said:
They don't dispatch until the second train has came home. About 50/50 whether the train in the station is ready to go, or if people are still arsing round loading anyway
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Interesting! So by that metric, the ride dispatches about every 2m 24s on a good day, leading to roughly 25 trains per hour and a throughput of 750pph? (The timeframe is calculated from having watched a POV and timed the amount of time between the train leaving the station and the train hitting the final brake run)

That’s lower than I’d expected. I once heard it said that when running flat out on 3 trains, a train can dispatch as soon as the train in front leaves the lift hill, which I’ve timed to be an average dispatch interval of about 1m 3s. This would lead to around 57 trains per hour and a throughput of 1,710pph, which I’m guessing is where the ride’s RCDB-listed throughput of 1,700pph comes from.
 
shakey said:
I was just looking at the late night riding for October / November as I was thinking of maybe going to one.

But there aren't any this year . They usually run one on the Saturday before (or on) Halloween for Vampire Beach and one around bonfire night (think the bonfire night one went missing last year)

So I assume Vampire Beach is no more ?

I was sure they had a late night riding pencilled in for October this year when I looked earlier in the season.
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Unfortunately there was never any late opening events - LNR or “Twilight Thrills” scheduled for this year past September - you can tell by the event schedule on the back of the park map.

The late night riding events were some of the best attended days of the year in past years. A real shame and yet another cut implemented by the park that a lot of people seem to glaze over.
 
Matt N said:
Interesting! So by that metric, the ride dispatches about every 2m 24s on a good day, leading to roughly 25 trains per hour and a throughput of 750pph? (The timeframe is calculated from having watched a POV and timed the amount of time between the train leaving the station and the train hitting the final brake run)

That’s lower than I’d expected. I once heard it said that when running flat out on 3 trains, a train can dispatch as soon as the train in front leaves the lift hill, which I’ve timed to be an average dispatch interval of about 1m 3s. This would lead to around 57 trains per hour and a throughput of 1,710pph, which I’m guessing is where the ride’s RCDB-listed throughput of 1,700pph comes from.
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Besides the "they don't need to run it on three, it's not pay per ride" reason, why I see 3 trains never running on the Big One are:
1. Everyone has stuff to put in the storage, which takes extra time both loading and unloading
2. They don't open the air gates until the previous people have left the platform, by this point the train in front is approaching the top of the lift
3. Only 2 people doing the belt/lap bar checks, by the time they have completed this the train in front has already passed through B block brake
4. They had some bumps on 3 trains in the early days, so they want to keep a full clear block between occupied blocks, i.e. don't let a train off the lift until the first set of brakes behind the station is clear of the previous train.

So adding the third train would make no difference to capacity. To run three again they'd need to get a setup similar to Toutatis, have the luggage taken out of the way so that unloading is fast, have the air gates open ASAP so that the new passengers cause the previous ones to move quicker, and have at least 4 staff doing the lap bar checks so they each only have half a train to check. They can turn around a train on Toutatis in 35 seconds, very impressive.

Edit: Also I don't think they have three full trains any more, given that one of the trains is made of a mixture of train 1 and train 2 cars (if you look at the label on the back of each car)
 
On three trains, you often sat round the back of the station for a bit (nervously waiting for the smack up the arse), then you waited outside the station for a bit, then you got into the station.
Never any quicker than two trains, and very similar to waiting to get off 'blivvy, especially fun on a rainy day.
My wife has never ridden Avalanche, because of early bumps...more than one or two if I recall correctly.
So they gave up on three there as well.
 
Katy said:
Besides the "they don't need to run it on three, it's not pay per ride" reason, why I see 3 trains never running on the Big One are:
1. Everyone has stuff to put in the storage, which takes extra time both loading and unloading
2. They don't open the air gates until the previous people have left the platform, by this point the train in front is approaching the top of the lift
3. Only 2 people doing the belt/lap bar checks, by the time they have completed this the train in front has already passed through B block brake
4. They had some bumps on 3 trains in the early days, so they want to keep a full clear block between occupied blocks, i.e. don't let a train off the lift until the first set of brakes behind the station is clear of the previous train.

So adding the third train would make no difference to capacity. To run three again they'd need to get a setup similar to Toutatis, have the luggage taken out of the way so that unloading is fast, have the air gates open ASAP so that the new passengers cause the previous ones to move quicker, and have at least 4 staff doing the lap bar checks so they each only have half a train to check. They can turn around a train on Toutatis in 35 seconds, very impressive.

Edit: Also I don't think they have three full trains any more, given that one of the trains is made of a mixture of train 1 and train 2 cars (if you look at the label on the back of each car)
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Another reason is access guests, none were allowed when 3 trains were in operation.
 
PMBO has 3 trains still I believe, 2 trains on normal compounds and 1 on faster (harder) compounds hence windy day single train ops unless that has changed,
 
You can spot them through the lift gaps...and the staff toilet if you are unlucky.
I thought they only had two running, medium and fast, they gave up on slow wheels with all the valleying.
Information came from long term ride staff, so could all be lies anyway.
 
rob666 said:
You can spot them through the lift gaps...and the staff toilet if you are unlucky.
I thought they only had two running, medium and fast, they gave up on slow wheels with all the valleying.
Information came from long term ride staff, so could all be lies anyway.
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I'm fairly certain there is no third train any more - there hasn't been one at the "pit level" (you can see from the PB Express through a gap in the wall of the station as it goes past) for a few years, and the two trains they are running this year are train 3 and a train containing a mix of cars from both trains 1 & 2.

Too young to remember much about it on 3 (although I did ride it on 3, I was 10 at the time)
 
venny said:
I don’t think she realises that the water isn’t dyed blue, it’s just the pool that’s painted blue.
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I'm sure it used to be dyed blue, but yes currently it's not.. otherwise there'd be blue water coming out of the top of the fountain, like there used to be in the past.
 
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