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Blackpool Pleasure Beach: 2023 Discussion

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John said:
I've always thought it was meant to be a flame, then suddenly this year I hear that the park refer to it as an onion for some bizarre reason.

Has there been any word on when it'll reopen?
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In a TPWW vlog from a few weeks ago (when they did walk the woody), a June opening was mentioned by Andy Hygate.

But the big question that nobody seems to be asking, is when will Dora Reopen ? It's been closed all season up to now for "essential works" (aka CBA)

Sent from my Pixel 6 Pro using Tapatalk
 
This is a bit of a strange one, but it's bugged me for years.

I was once in the queue for Big
Dipper, probably late 80's and outside there was a building with an open door. Inside was a coredor that looked like some sort of artifical cave and on the wall was a bit of themeing and a sign saying 'danger explosives'.

Does anybody know what this might have been? It's nowhere near river caves or goldmine and I've never found out what it was for!
 
shakey said:
In a TPWW vlog from a few weeks ago (when they did walk the woody), a June opening was mentioned by Andy Hygate.

But the big question that nobody seems to be asking, is when will Dora Reopen ? It's been closed all season up to now for "essential works" (aka CBA)

Sent from my Pixel 6 Pro using Tapatalk
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Dora looks fairly abandoned from Nick Streak. No sign of any “essential maintenance” occurring.

As for the top of Big Dipper, it’s definitely not an onion, nor have I ever heard it referred to as such until this year. Flame or teardrop are much more common and also make more sense.
 
Valhalla is - for want of a better word - buggered.

Yesterday it was breaking down every 10 minutes.. out of 5 rides, 2 had us stopped midway round the ride with lights coming on, most had the boat bouncing around like a bucking broncho and almost jamming on the corners, it had a ride evacuation straight after opening and a queueline evacuation mid afternoon before reopening. We had a boat bump just after the ice room (before the big drop) with three boats all bumped into each other.

Today we rode once, again it broke down three times whilst we were in the queue, and then just after our ride it broke at around 1pm, and evacuated the queue at 2pm and did not reopen.

Hammers, rolling log and steam have been broken (steam turns off as you get to it), and only one fire explosion at the end.

Effects being off so soon after reopening is poor, and the state of the ride itself is downright concerning.
 
Coaster said:
Valhalla is - for want of a better word - buggered.

Yesterday it was breaking down every 10 minutes.. out of 5 rides, 2 had us stopped midway round the ride with lights coming on, most had the boat bouncing around like a bucking broncho and almost jamming on the corners, it had a ride evacuation straight after opening and a queueline evacuation mid afternoon before reopening. We had a boat bump just after the ice room (before the big drop) with three boats all bumped into each other.

Today we rode once, again it broke down three times whilst we were in the queue, and then just after our ride it broke at around 1pm, and evacuated the queue at 2pm and did not reopen.

Hammers, rolling log and steam have been broken (steam turns off as you get to it), and only one fire explosion at the end.

Effects being off so soon after reopening is poor, and the state of the ride itself is downright concerning.
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Like I said Its a complete fail this ride. such a shame but no surprise with this being Pleasure Beach
 
It will be interesting to see how long Valhalla lasts. I can't see them doing another overhaul of the ride and judging by the last one they did in 2011/12 before closing in 2019, that would give it about 7 years max.

But if the ride is already having major problems a few weeks after a 3.5 year refurb, its hard to see how they can keep it going for anywhere near another 7 years.

They could add a pretty large coaster using Nash and Valhalla's footprint :)
 
It’s definitely a pain for them to keep running. The temperamental nature of the ride system combined with the effects must mean it’s pretty resource intensive.

Whether the wrecking ball is the best solution though? I wouldn’t bank on free space equalling a new ride. They could have also added a new ride in the footprint of Trauma Towers. And Wild Mouse. And Space Invader and Millenium Bug arcade and Vikingar.
 
venny said:
Whether the wrecking ball is the best solution though? I wouldn’t bank on free space equalling a new ride. They could have also added a new ride in the footprint of Trauma Towers. And Wild Mouse. And Space Invader and Millenium Bug arcade and Vikingar.
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I think if Valhalla was permanently closed, the park would either need a new major thrill ride in place or at least have one at the construction stage.

The park cannot continue to stagnate for much longer and needs new investment. We all know they have limited financial resources so I am not suggesting a major project is imminent but eventually they will need to add something big to keep people coming back to the park. It's 5 years since icon, without even a small attraction being added, and no sign we will get anything next year. But how much longer can they go without a new multi million pound attraction ?
 
There's plenty of places they could build without going down the route of removing Grand National (which would be a complicated process with it being listed), if they were to build in that area there's plenty of room to land coaster supports - they don't take up anywhere near as much space as they used to (compare 1990s Arrow supports with anything modern). Most likely area for development in my view is the Bowladrome car park and the Bowladrome building itself - it's almost empty, very few arcade machines left in there and the remaining 2 bowling lanes are boarded up. Include FY4 into the plans and that's a huge space for a coaster, can relocate the food to the opposite side of the fountain where Trauma Towers once stood.

Regarding Valhalla - I'm not sure how big the warehouse building is compared to say X/TWD pyramid at Thorpe, or Project Horizon at Towers (assuming that turns out to be a coaster) - so perhaps it could instead house an indoor coaster.
 
Whilst I’m very conscious that we are prone to short term memories (and the park has added a fair bit running up to Icon), it definitely feels like they need to capitalise on Valhalla’s reopening by pushing the button on some more additions to the North park. Dare I say flat ride?

A giant frisbee on the Trauma Towers site is an obvious one for me. It ticks so many boxes, from investing in North park, reinvigorating the fountains area which can feel like a very open dead space, hiding the back of Alice’s warehouse, being easily marketable and a visible draw and delivering a great ride experience. It would even tick the thoosie approval box.

No brainer.
 
Now that I'm home with some time, here's a full account of what we experienced with Valhalla over 3 days during the bank holiday weekend.

Valhalla broke down constantly over the weekend; it was going down almost every 10 minutes. On Saturday, the ride was evacuated just after opening, taking another half an hour to properly open. Then in the afternoon, the entire queue line was evacuated however the ride did re-open later on. On Sunday, the ride and queue were evacuated at around 1:30pm and the ride did not re-open. It then opened well past 1pm on Monday despite being advertised as 12 noon.

Before this refurbishment Valhalla opened at 11am consistently, after a massive investment in time and money, is it not reasonable to expect it to open earlier than it used to? The whole point of this was to improve things, not make them worse!

We experienced a concerning boat bump on the Saturday evening, with 3 boats all bumped into each other just after the ice room. Surely after a £4 million pound upgrade, the block system should not allow this to happen. Whilst we knew there was no danger, the riders in front of us were very worried and had their first ever ride ruined. On some of our other rides on it, the boat bounced around like a bucking bronco and almost jammed on some of the corners.

On Monday, they were holding boats in the station and staggering how often they were dispatched, which seemed to reduce the number of breakdowns, but it made the low throughput even worse to the point where the queue hardly moved at all.

Speedy Pass is also throttling the ride’s capacity. This should not be a feature on the ride until the reliability and throughput has been sorted – Easy Pass is needed, but Speedy Pass should only be introduced once the ride is running properly.

Effects were as unreliable as ever; no hammers or rolling log during the weekend, then working on Monday, fire not working properly, audio broken in the turntable scene on one ride, fire exits and evacuation lights left open/on, and the warehouse seemed lighter than ever which highlighted all the workings. The steam room was turning off as we got to it, making it much less impressive than before. The new ghost scene just before the last drop has had a new strobe added which lights up all the workings, this looked better during technical rehearsals.

As a result of our experiences over the weekend, my question is, where did the time and money go?

After waiting 3.5 years for Valhalla to re-open, and after an investment of £4 million pounds, a reasonable expectation is for it to run reliably and with a higher throughput than when it closed. I would also expect the effects to work – we were promised the ring of fire which worked on the media day, but I have not seen this working even once since the re-imagined Valhalla opened. This is not good enough, it needs to work for every ride, not just for the press.

Given everything that we have experienced above, my overall impression of the re-imagined Valhalla is that it was a complete waste of money and the ride should have been ripped out and replaced. Every single problem that it had prior to closing in 2019 is not only still present, but worse than it ever was before.
 
Valhalla didn't always open at 11, it rarely opened at that time off peak, it often opened for an hour or two in the afternoon.
Bring back the Funhouse and Reel.
 
I've never known a community who will demand a ride to be closed for good, I'm half expecting someone will start a petition to close the ride for good just for the sake of it being a waste of time and money. 😂😂😂

Won't be surprising if that did happen given how stupid petitions can be it wouldn't suprise me with I remember one being formed for M&D's to close following thr Tsunami incident (even if the park does deserve to close but that's beside the point.)
 
rob666 said:
Valhalla didn't always open at 11, it rarely opened at that time off peak, it often opened for an hour or two in the afternoon.
Bring back the Funhouse and Reel.
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I only used to visit BPB on weekends or holidays, and 9 times out of 10 it would open at 11. May have been different during empty midweek days, but I never saw that.
 
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