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Blackpool Pleasure Beach: 2023 Discussion

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benpicko said:
Surely that only makes it the easiest park in the country for people in Blackpool to get to? Thorpe is far easier to get to for more people both living in the UK and visiting the UK, surely? It's extremely easily accessible for anybody in or around London.

I used to live in Yorkshire and even though I've been tempted to go to Pleasure Beach, the hassle of getting to Blackpool via train was far too much so I've still never been unfortunately. And that's from Yorkshire.
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Yorkshire to Lancashire is notoriously difficult. Crossing the Pennines is a pain in the caboose on public transport. Our national rail network is entirely centered around going from south to north, it's awful trying to go from east to west or vice.

Blackpool's success is famously down to its transport links to industrial towns and cities in the north west. It's even easy for people from the Midlands to get to, or London, if not that near or fast. Wales too.

Thorpe is easy to get to if you're driving, public transport wise it's not great. It's not terrible, but not great. The only park with decent rail connections, or other public transport, is Blackpool.
 
I'd argue Chessington is slightly easier by train by virtue of being walkable from a station with direct services to London but on the whole BPB certainly benefits from being in a place that people have wanted to get to in large numbers throughout the mass transit era.

Fair to say the park have not been good at marketing themselves recently too. Having some posters near the Trafford centre is not a marketing plan.
 
The northern mill town train trips to Blackpool are a joy to behold, often dumping a thousand day trippers at the Beach station by 9 a.m. and then again every hour.
Likewise the late train journeys home, you could get drunk off the vapours back in the golden days of the eighties and nineties...not a seat to be had.
A short walk from home to the station, likewise to the Beach (or beach) from the station in less than a minute at the other end.
Easy access like that is not on offer elsewhere to their local park.
The motor access is equally as good, motorway all the way, stilt road access to the car parks, and lots of free local parking a short walk away.
Hard to get elsewhere.
 
Local transport links are better in Blackpool i.e. its own tram and train stop. Road-wise also very easy and almost certainly less chance of traffic congestion that you may get around say Heathrow. London clearly has better overall infrastructure though since so much more public money is spent on it.

As for Valhalla, it would have been great if it took a closed season but it’s not worth the three year wait. Since we don’t know how much of the budget was spent on the ride system vs the retheme, it’s difficult to comment on value (although I’m sure that won’t stop YouTubers making clickbait videos doing just that). Anecdotally, I find the ride to be open a bit more than pre-refurb and for some of the effects to be more reliable.
 
venny said:
As for Valhalla, it would have been great if it took a closed season but it’s not worth the three year wait. Since we don’t know how much of the budget was spent on the ride system vs the retheme, it’s difficult to comment on value (although I’m sure that won’t stop YouTubers making clickbait videos doing just that). Anecdotally, I find the ride to be open a bit more than pre-refurb and for some of the effects to be more reliable.
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I think the issue with the refurb is that people expected a complete overhaul of the theming, but fail to realise that the ride system needed a massive upgrade, along with evacuation platforms and some of the ride hardware just to keep the ride operational and compliant. The length of the refurb, apparently, was down to getting parts for the ride system due to shortages. I know that our company use to be able to get machinery parts delivered into the UK in days pre-brexit... we have had some take 6 months plus recently.

My view of the refurb is positive. I actually love the story-driven approach, but the issue is that people are too noisy/ excited/ distracted when on the ride to actually follow it. A few screens in the queue line with an overview would massively help with this. The audio was better of late, but still struggles to be heard - I just feel the found system isn't wonderful. Onboard audio would have been a great addition - but it would have been prohibitivly expensive.

In terms of peoples reactions to the overhaul... I think the biggest problem is many people remember 'old' Valhalla when it was at it's best and new... sadly laterly the effects barely worked and was woeful. So, my view is 'new' Valhalla is not as good as original Valhalla when it was at it's best. It is, however, a massive improvement over the last few years of valhalla v1.
 
John_P said:
It still gets you too wet, it's a ride I'd love to do every visit but I just can't be bothered with having to ensure I've got spare shoes, a raincoat, and a poncho to make sure I'm not spending the rest of my visit soaked through.
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I rode it once this season on my last visit. And hated every moment of it 😂
 
So I’ve missed quite a lot of discussion about the 2023 season roundup and the success of the Valhalla refurb, so figured I’d share my thoughts of both:

- After some terrible visits in early 2021, I’ve stoped being a regular visitor and only actually went once this year (way less than how often I used to visit). I enjoyed my visit but there was very little atmosphere around the place. I mean, it was fine, but nothing that special.

- Based on everything I’ve heard about how quiet the park was in 2022 and how dead it’s been in 2023, I think that a lot of people may feel similarly to me about the place and be keeping away. The high price increases for day tickets can’t be helping them, together with lack of much marketing.

- In my opinion, the 2020-21 BPB covid boom was mainly due to people not being able to take overseas holidays. The 2022-23 slump I imagine has been due to a combination of reasons- most notably overseas travel returning, the cost of living crisis keeping people away, the high prices, the weather and poor customer service, as well as little to no investment. Say what you like about Merlin, but they were ready for the post-covid years when foreign travel returned and they’ve been ready with major new rides which we’ve seen at Chessington this year and will be seeing at Thorpe and Lego next year. Enso and the rethemed Valhalla is hardly enough to capture the public’s excitement.

- Valhalla’s refurbishment is welcome and I appreciate that it’s been smartened up, especially the building exterior, and many of the dead spots have been filled. Whilst lots of effects have been fixed, it’s disappointing to still see so many still only working sporadically.

I didn’t visit BPB at all in 2022 and only went back this year to check out Valhalla.
Will I go next year? I doubt there’ll be much to get me there, especially when there’s so much going on at other UK parks. The lack of atmosphere is what really makes the park so unappealing these days for me.
 
The covid boom (£8m profit vs usually negligible profit or a loss) was down to VAT for tourism being temporarily reduced to 5%, along with people being unable to travel abroad. Very much a one-off occasion.

Valhalla - I disagree slightly with Scott and Mike in the YEG video, in that I do think it is more reliable than it used to be - less downtime, and I had never seen the full "ring of fire" with the trough on fire before the refurb, since the refurb it's been a 50/50 chance. So more reliable but still, it's a lottery as to which combination of effects you can get on any ride.

I also didn't know that they had people "babysitting" the ride, to reset broken effects, on the media day, concerning that they are still so unreliable to need someone watching over them (which obviously isn't going to happen on a normal park day).

The park has been fairly quiet on the majority of my visits this year, although I have renewed my season pass as, being local, I do like to nip in for some food and a ride or two if I'm taking a long lunch break.
 
Enter Valhalla said:
Will I go next year? I doubt there’ll be much to get me there, especially when there’s so much going on at other UK parks. The lack of atmosphere is what really makes the park so unappealing these days for me.
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I think the spotlight will be well away from pleasure beach next year so it will be interesting to see what the attendances are like.

It really has been a stagnant few years for the park since 2018. I know they have built a new hotel but next year the park will be the same as it was 6 years previous. You can blame covid for part of it but other parks are moving on and leaving pleasure beach behind. And the "Re-imagined" Valhalla turned out to be almost the same ride, without the backwards drop or cold room.

Even in the years after Amanda took over (a period including the financial crisis in 2007-2008) they were still making changes to the park - Infusion (2007) , Nickelodeon Land (2011), W&G (2013), Sky force (2015), Icon (2018)

I really hope they have something planned and if they have I think they should start teasing it next year.
 
BPB accounts up to March 2023 have been filed, so this essentially covers the 2022 season.

Things of note:

- Visitor numbers were down 20% versus 2021 season
- Turnover down from £39m to £32m
- Staffing costs make up 63% of overall costs, up from 52%
- Utility costs risen by 44%
- Overall they made a loss of £522k versus £8.6m profit in the previous year

Rising costs and lower visitor numbers is possibly the worst combo.

BLACKPOOL PLEASURE BEACH LIMITED filing history - Find and update company information - GOV.UK

BLACKPOOL PLEASURE BEACH LIMITED - Free company information from Companies House including registered office address, filing history, accounts, annual return, officers, charges, business activity
find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk
 
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Suppose we don't know the full picture due to how Pleasure Beaches businesses are split into different companies. So if for example the hotels are still doing good business that could well offset the losses the park have made.

But it's still not good seeing how 2023 if anything seemed even quieter.
They really need to look at bringing back an entry charge for non riders. Or even say something like for every 2 wristbands bought you get 1 free walk around ticket. There's definitely custom lost from people not wanting to pay £40 to watch other people ride attractions and hold bags and coats.

Then you've got 2024 with New Nemesis, Hyperia, and Draytons coaster likely to draw visitors away (as well as the height record) whilst it seems Pleasure Beach have nothing new to promote for 2024.
 
The hotels being excluded are significant since I guess most people that stay there do so for the park, but other elements of the wider Thompson empire propping up the Pleasure Beach itself wouldn't be great.
 
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