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Blackpool Pleasure Beach: 2023 Discussion

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rob666 said:
Stunning Friday night on the Beach...
Beer, rides in the dark, kebabs, good company, and more freaks and geeks than you can shake a stick at.
Very quiet, less than a thousand punters, so rides galore.
Lovely night gents.
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Yep, I can concur, excellent evening with excellent company . Almost all rides walk on. Only issue was sitting on the coasters waiting for other guests to turn up!!

The only ride with any sort of a queue was the Big One . Waited about 20mins for a night ride but it was running on just half a train all evening, otherwise that too would have probably been walk on.

After all the staffing issues they've had this year, they had almost every ride open today and almost no punters to ride them. Even Alpine Rally and Thompson Carousel were open. Grand Prix was the only notable ride closed. (If you don't count Valhalla - still SBNO , and Wild Mouse - still NSANO).

Loads of staff just stood around in groups with nothing to do.

Even saw her majesty in WG Beans coffee shop (no , not a ghostly apparition of the Queen, but a real life Amanda Thompson).

I highly recommend a Friday visit in September. Don't be put off by the short 5 hour opening. You could get well over 20 rides in if you wanted to. We did 13 with several stops for beer and a walk for a kebab mid way through the evening.


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I haven't got a mystic spy in skates and glitter, checking out the Hot Ice attendance...sadly.
You just go on the Beach booking site, and check what seats are available for that night, and the next nights.
Most days there are 90% of seats still available, usually the most expensive seats on the "horseshoe" get about 20% sales, the rest get front row sales in the cheaper seats, about 10% of each area gets sold.
I have checked every few days, and the results have been consistent throughout.
The show is good, quality, well done with good sound, lighting and production.
It is simply that nobody wants to see such shows on a regular basis, fashions have changed, Mandy hasn't.
Shame really, but get it scrapped, it must cost the park a million quid a year to produce, after ticket sales I imagine they must be half a million down at least.
Roll those losses up over the last three decades, and you are talking massive rollercoasters that have been lost to "opportunity costs"...all that money that has been spent on a loss leading show could have built a number of tasty new rides, dragging the lost punters back in the park.
Tonight is the final night "gala".
The majority of top seats have gone (often tied in with a dining package), but yet again, eighty percent of the cheap seats, or about seventy percent of the seats overall, remain unsold on the morning of the final performance.
A number of the posh seats have probably been donated free to friends, family and business freebies.
Get it scrapped, before it busts the whole park.
Friday night opening, all September, only about seven hundred punters on the park, and half of them were season pass holders.
 
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Were hitting autumn and quickly into end of season times. So, are we assuming Valhalla isn't opening this season? Id say ask Mandy on twitter but she was vile last time someone did
 
Ben said:
Were hitting autumn and quickly into end of season times. So, are we assuming Valhalla isn't opening this season? Id say ask Mandy on twitter but she was vile last time someone did
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Who cares about getting extra budget for a ride getting done when you can waste it on useless tat.
 
Sorry, are you talking October 2022 or October 2023?
Discussion Friday night in Crevettes...Will it ever reopen?
Seems no nearer opening than it was in the spring by the frontage, and energy costs to private enterprises are suspected to double or treble over the year.
With park attendances down overall, and at the Beach in particular, will they ever get the numbers back to run the energy gobbling, money munching nordic beast.
 
Watched Hot Ice for the first time ever yesterday afternoon. Sat in the free seats with 95% of the rest of the audience. I did ask on arrival into the arena if I could just sit anywhere as it was empty, but the young lad greeting us was insistent I took my allocated seat.

The show was impressive. Couldn’t believe how many people are actually involved in running it.

The same young lad spent most of the performance telling people they couldn’t film or photograph the show.
 
NickB said:
I see what you guys are saying about how quiet it was on a Friday night...

PBE footage
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It's not surprising is it really - I saw the video and thought oh I might go there after school on Friday with my son - £40 for this Friday or £35 the following Friday - with the dubious opening and closing times that BPB do, could be looking at 430 to earlier than 9, that's hefty enough. I would have booked if it had been £25, no doubt would have spent at least £15 on F&B - so that's £65 revenue they could have got but as it is it's £0. If they made parking on site reasonable at £10 not £18 or whatever they are charging these days. That would have been £75. Just checked the parking it's £20 now! - who is going to pay that - there is loads of free parking not that far away or £10 literally minutes from the park.
 
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They did "do" the full hours, and we were getting on about 5 coasters an hour without trying.
Felt good getting walk on coasters in the dark...rather rare in Blackpool!
 
Enter Valhalla said:
So if Friday night was empty, as unpopular as this might be, were BPB right to have have moved away from late opening times all along?
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I think there are 2 issues with how the park have implemented this late opening experiment.

We had a walk on the pier in the afternoon before the park opened and there were only a handful of people about. Same when we nipped out for a kebab about 6.30pm. There were very few people around to entice into the park (even if the gate price was reasonable, which at £46 it wasn't).

So you can see the two problems. Firstly , there is hardly anyone in the town midweek in September, and secondly they are not offering a decent gate price to attract walk up trade.

Opening later lends itself to attracting walk up trade that's around in the evening at busy times. Fridays in September is not the time to do it.

But they've got a massive electronic advertising board on the casino building, so with a couple of hours to go why not put the message out... "Unlimited rides £20 Until 9pm. Pay on the gate".

There were a few people paying £20 for one ride on the sky coaster on the pier. I am sure, given the option of paying the same for a couple of hours of unlimited rides on the pleasure beach they would have done that instead.

EDIT: Half term week in October, when it will probably be heaving around South Pier in the evening, the park is closing at 6pm. That would be the perfect time to open 1pm till 9pm and offer a good discount on the gate for the last few hours.







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It was badly attended last year. I was surprised to see it return this year. The perception of value for what people see as just an evening in the park doesn’t work. They need to reduce the price and market it as a special value of some sort, however as we know Pleasure Beach and marketing rarely go hand in hand.

As an aside, Blackpool overall seemed very quiet this weekend. South Pier for example was very quiet this morning. The Illuminations were also off on Friday due to the Queen’s passing.
 
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