I disagree with you completely. Blackpool Pleasure Beach made a fundamental change to their entry costs/ requirements but done absolutely nothing to change people's perception of the park. I made the comment previously that when Merlin took over the running of the tower they changed their entrance model to have individual charged attractions instead of the Pay One Price 'Tower World' - they done a phenomenal amount of brand work and marketing to maintain/ encourage visitors and it worked. It is the perfect case study of what should be done. Pleasure Beach done nothing and still to this day have people turning up at the gate expecting free entry.
People talk about groups of people not willing to pay full price to get in. When it is mentioned that other large parks don't have this model and it is accepted, people say "BPB is different". But why should it be? I accept that the current offering in terms of entertainment needs to be improved, but it really is no worse than that offered by Towers or Thorpe on a standard day.
@rob666 you say that large numbers no longer go because the "one price fits all policy" doesn't fit all. I'm sure this effects some, but I put to you the absolutely dier marketing over the last few years is much more to blame. Just look at last season - the TV advert was for Valhalla. It didn't tell you what the ride actually was, and unless you got a magnifying glass out you wouldn't know where it was (take a look:
From: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8Dh9xFz34Y
). The park had a few bus shelter adverts around - they were literally a picture of people standing on-top of PMBO (not in the train and not evident that it was in the park) with the tagline "This should be you"?! It makes no sense. If you search Blackpool Pleasure Beach on socials you rarely get anything official or complimentary. My #1 hit is Scott from Your Experience Guide rubbing his chin and complaining about stuff. Marketing is meant to enthuse people to visit, nothing released by the park in the last 4 or 5 years has done this.
I could also go on about brand recognition too, but I'm sure you are bored enough with what I have written!
While I don't disagree that Blackpool Pleasure Beach could do with some brand work to change the park's image, I do disagree that pay-one-price only is right for Blackpool just because it works for other theme parks in the UK.
As much as you dismiss the "BPB is different" rhetoric, I'd personally argue that it
is different, and as said before, that is entirely down to its location and typical clientele. Unlike other theme parks in the UK, Blackpool Pleasure Beach is located right in the centre of a massive holiday resort town where it may attract considerable passing traffic and may be considered more of a constituent part of a wider package of attractions rather than an attraction in its own right. Lots of families will probably leave their holiday cottage, B&B or whatever and want to spend a day on the Blackpool seafront doing a wide variety of different attractions as a wide family unit, and a trip to Blackpool Pleasure Beach for a casual ride or two may be part of that day. However, it may not be the whole day; a family might also want to spend time on the beach, go to one of the piers, go to Sandcastle Waterpark, go to the Tower and the Merlin attractions or do something else entirely.
The typical crowd in Blackpool will also be a lot more multi-generational. Lots of families might bring grandparents along to Blackpool with them, and these grandparents will probably want to spend as much time with their children and grandchildren as possible during the holiday. These grandparents may not necessarily want to pay £40 to get into BPB and not ride anything, but the younger members of the family may not want to leave the grandparents back at the B&B or holiday cottage just to visit BPB, so in that scenario, Pleasure Beach miss out on both the primary spend from the whole family's admission fees and the potential secondary spend of the grandparents possibly buying things like food & drink.
As much as the park's ride lineup may match that of Alton Towers or Thorpe Park on paper, that doesn't really matter to your average multi-generational family holidaying in Blackpool or going for a summer day out. Visitors to Blackpool are likely to view Pleasure Beach as merely one part of the wider Blackpool experience, and these people may not want to spend a whole day at the Pleasure Beach and pay £40 for a full theme park day. People who visit Alton Towers, Thorpe Park, Chessington et al are most likely going out of their way to visit these parks as attractions in their own right. Alton, Staines and Kingston-upon-Thames are not multi-attraction family holiday resorts, and the locations of the theme parks within them are within suburbs or villages rather than the busy, built-up town centres. You have to make an effort to go to these parks as attractions in their own right, whereas if you're staying in Blackpool, the Pleasure Beach is right on your doorstep, right in the centre of Blackpool, which allows for far more opportunity for it to be integrated into a day of numerous Blackpool attractions.
Anecdotally, I can personally raise the example of my aunt, uncle and young cousins. A couple of years back (I think it was 2022, possibly?), they went on holiday to Blackpool for a week or so. They took my aunt's parents with them, they stayed in a hotel for the week, and they did loads of the Blackpool attractions; things like the Tower, the piers, and the Merlin attractions, amongst others, were all visited during their holiday. My aunt said to me that they considered going to Blackpool Pleasure Beach while they were there, but were put off by it being "ridiculously expensive" for all six of them to go in when her parents wouldn't ride anything. They are the sort of group who might have been tempted by a walk-around pass, and they are exactly the sort of custom that Blackpool Pleasure Beach is missing out on while they pursue sole pay-per-ride.
In terms of why the Merlin attractions changing pricing model has not generated the same discontent; I'd argue that changing to a model of individually paid-for attractions actually suits the average Blackpool visitor better than the previous pricing model, as having individual attraction prices cooperates very nicely with those families who may want to experience a wide variety of different attractions during a day or holiday in Blackpool. Merlin actually made things more appealing for the average Blackpool visitor in that regard. Whereas I'd argue that Blackpool Pleasure Beach's pay-one-price only model is making things less appealing for the average Blackpool visitor.
I'm not advocating for a return to "the good old days" of the 90s, when the park had free entry and sole pay-per-ride, as I think that an all-guns-blazing return to the entry policy of that era would be problematic for different reasons. However, I would absolutely advocate for the return of a walk-around pass for a small fee and a form of pay-per-ride coexisting alongside the pay-one-price wristbands, as I think that this would be a more attractive proposition for the average clientele in Blackpool.
