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Blackpool Pleasure Beach: 2023 Discussion

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Add my best mate in Yorkshire...we used to do four wristbands, and two entry passes, and my season pass.
Not been since covid...used to be every year without fail.
The outing used to be pretty much five hundred quid in total, loads of food, drink and souvenirs, two or three photos, absolutely massive bar bill.
But two non riders couldn't figure eighty quid instead of twenty.
They did centre parks instead.
 
Matt N said:
On a broadly related note, Coastercal on CoasterForce, who is a taxi driver in the local area who often transports Pleasure Beach staff, revealed some interesting info about 2023 visitation to Pleasure Beach that they had ascertained from conversations with employees: https://coasterforce.com/forums/threads/wtf-bpb.46255/page-4#post-1156969

They said:
  • Average attendance is a lot less than it used to be. The highest day of attendance the park has seen this year is 9,000 guests, and on many days, the park has seen under 1,000 guests.
  • The Hot Ice Arena has a capacity of 1,600 guests, but has been pulling in less than 10% of that figure on most nights of the week.
This does paint a concerning picture, and it does imply that Blackpool's guest figures are a lot lower than I had previously thought... with the park being the 2nd most visited park in Europe and by far the most visited in the UK during the mid-2000s, I had previously assumed that the park's attendance was still at least level with that of somewhere like Alton Towers, if not even higher.
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On the attendance front, it's important to distinguish where the comparisons are being made. If it's 2023 vs. 2019 - that's interesting, if it's 2023 vs. 1983 ... less so. If you have 1 million guests at £30 each, that's more interesting than 5 million guests wandering around not spending anything.

As for Hot Ice, it hasn't even started for the season yet (opening night is tonight).
 
It's the first night of hot ice tonight and the arena is sold out

So I guess those "arena only gets 10% full" comments are false (unless they men in years prior)
 
Yup, opening night is bound to be full. Press tickets, those invited guests and the novelty of the whole thing will put bums on seats.

I doubt the figure is as low as 10% through the whole year, but I have no doubt there's large chunks of what is an unnecessarily long run with hideously low attendance. It's very much a vanity project more than anything else, always has been.
 
It's the first night and they have already announced next year's Hot Ice show name and poster.

I've seen it a couple of times, once in the evening and a few matinees about a decade ago. I'd say it was about 25% full (75% empty), although I think the evening show had better attendance than the matinee - I guess if you're in the park you're on rides not watching the show, and if you're willing to pay then you'd pay a little more for the full thing over the cut down matinee show.
 
The % of seats sold is a complete red herring.

The size of the venue for the show is what it is ... they own the arena and it was paid off years ago. It holds ~2000 people, the notional capacity doesn't inform your expectation of attendance - that's insane.

It's not like they're sitting down and selecting a venue that is 10x larger than they need - the venue is the venue and has been since 1937, give or take a fire or two.
 
Ok, so percentage of seats is immaterial - its the number sold that matters and whether or not it is enough to make a profit.

So forget the first night as that is mostly free tickets.

Night number two 7th of July.

As of 9:30am on the 7th.

Tickets sold : 266
Takings (assuming everyone is an adult and has paid full price for their particular seat) : £6858
So actual takings from tickets are likely to be quite a bit less than that because there will be some children, some hot ice season pass holders and possibly even some free tickets, but they will probably make some money from other sales. (programmes, merch, food/drink etc)

I have no idea how much it costs to run a show, but there will of course be all the professional skaters to pay, all the staff on the night plus all the staff that get everything ready and look after the arena, plus arena running costs, plus all the costumes and props, plus advertising, plus everything else that goes into preparing and putting on a show like that.

I am not going to try and guess how much the costs are. Maybe 2 to 3 hundred guests a night is enough to cover things ? who knows, but I suspect there will be far more quieter nights than the 2nd night performance.
 
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I can't help but feel like they should split the business into two parts, one for the park and the other for the Hot Ice vanity show. They can then have separate accounts and Mandy can concentrate on the part of the business she cares about, and put somebody else in charge of the park side of the business.
 
shakey said:
Ok, so percentage of seats is immaterial - its the number sold that matters and whether or not it is enough to make a profit.
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I'm not convinced it's that either. Now we're in a POP era, no one attraction generates revenue, whether it's a ride* or a show ... Conceptually, Hot Ice is the same as a Disney Parade or CBeebies Land show - it's in park entertainment, those examples create zero revenue at all - it's weird that Hot Ice is picked out as 'not generating enough revenue to cover its costs' - but it generates far more than any 'free' show/attraction/ride in any park anywhere - you might argue it costs a lot more to produce, I am sure it does - but don't have the numbers to understand cost/revenue mix.

* Valhalla is doing its best, the number of people willingly handing over £5.50 for a posh poncho is unbelievable. I reckon I counted around £400 of product in the queue from the Loki's balcony last weekend - maybe that's why it's so wet.

Alsty said:
I can't help but feel like they should split the business into two parts, one for the park and the other for the Hot Ice vanity show. They can then have separate accounts and Mandy can concentrate on the part of the business she cares about, and put somebody else in charge of the park side of the business.
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I was convinced that StageWorks was a separate Ltd company at one time, but can't find any trace of it now - must not have been.
 
Rick said:
I'm not convinced it's that either. Now we're in a POP era, no one attraction generates revenue, whether it's a ride* or a show ... Conceptually, Hot Ice is the same as a Disney Parade or CBeebies Land show - it's in park entertainment, those examples create zero revenue at all - it's weird that Hot Ice is picked out as 'not generating enough revenue to cover its costs' - but it generates far more than any 'free' show/attraction/ride in any park anywhere - you might argue it costs a lot more to produce, I am sure it does - but don't have the numbers to understand cost/revenue mix.
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That only really applies to the matinee though, which is free with wristband, and probably is comparable with some of the live shows at parks like Phantasialand, Europa and Disney.

But the evening show is longer and separately ticketed. It’s a theatre type show in its own right. Some theme parks do have separate ticket dinner shows too but really Hot Ice is competing against all the end of the pier shows in Blackpool.
 
Rick said:
* Valhalla is doing its best, the number of people willingly handing over £5.50 for a posh poncho is unbelievable. I reckon I counted around £400 of product in the queue from the Loki's balcony last weekend - maybe that's why it's so wet.
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The number of people who bin them after one ride too is crazy, the price point isn't that bad for a re-usable poncho and in line with other parks (I think my Phantasialand one was €5), you can easily get a good 10 visits out of a single poncho. I'd heard they were running out of stock at BPB due to going through them much quicker than expected :laughing:
 
jon81uk said:
That only really applies to the matinee though, which is free with wristband, and probably is comparable with some of the live shows at parks like Phantasialand, Europa and Disney.

But the evening show is longer and separately ticketed. It’s a theatre type show in its own right.
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Indeed, the park offsets the cost of their in park entertainment by charging people to come and watch it outside of park hours. I don't know how that isn't a good thing.
 
Would be interesting to know how much it costs to run vs the income, doubt we ever will. I doubt it loses anywhere as much as some people claim ("millions"), if it loses any money at all. It's often surprising how little attendance something needs to break even, I used to work in a night club and it got to a point where Fridays were just dead every single week, we'd get maybe 30 people if we were lucky, but we kept Fridays going so they can't have been losing money.
 
Rick said:
I'm not convinced it's that either. Now we're in a POP era, no one attraction generates revenue, whether it's a ride* or a show ... Conceptually, Hot Ice is the same as a Disney Parade or CBeebies Land show - it's in park entertainment, those examples create zero revenue at all - it's weird that Hot Ice is picked out as 'not generating enough revenue to cover its costs' - but it generates far more than any 'free' show/attraction/ride in any park anywhere - you might argue it costs a lot more to produce, I am sure it does - but don't have the numbers to understand cost/revenue mix.

* Valhalla is doing its best, the number of people willingly handing over £5.50 for a posh poncho is unbelievable. I reckon I counted around £400 of product in the queue from the Loki's balcony last weekend - maybe that's why it's so wet.


I was convinced that StageWorks was a separate Ltd company at one time, but can't find any trace of it now - must not have been.
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But the Hot Ice show (the main evening show) is separate to the park. It's not part of the park entry fee and you don't even get a discount to the evening show with a park ticket as far as I know (could be wrong).

I appreciate the daytime show does offer free tickets for park guests but I don't think many people on park go to the matinee show, but even if they do go, very few of them would not have gone to the park if the show wasn't there. I don't think people are thinking, "let's go to the pleasure beach because there is a free show we can go to."

I really don't think hot ice drives any significant extra custom to the park, so if the show fails to make a profit on its own then surely it is losing the park money.

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I think (though not certain) that paid show attenders get a free entry to the park on the day of their show.
Stick that in your complex cost calculations.
Would also explain the needless "Show your entry pass" at ride entrances.
Independent financial audit quite recently...everything makes a profit apart from the ice show, which makes a considerable loss...
Allegedly, but from a very solid source.
Advice ignored.
 
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I get where you're coming from in terms of the matinee, but are the evening shows really generating enough revenue to actually offset the cost? Looking at the tickets available both this year and from when I've looked in previous seasons, I have my doubts. It's all well and good having an arena that's bought and paid for, but it's such a labour intensive thing to have an ice show, not to mention the energy costs on top - I don't see how it's feasible when you're having so few people attending many of those shows.

I think back in the days of Diamond Pass/Free Entry days Hot Ice was a nice extra to have for those that aren't into rides. With an increasingly younger leaning crowd at the park these days (thrill seekers who've paid to do rides over anything else, young kids who are a bit too fidgety to sit through a show and would rather be in Nickelodeon Land) I do wonder why it still persists these days.

In an ideal world, the park could've done some decent show options and had a really good F+B offering along with the rides. Then you could have a really attractive option for non riders as well as thrill seekers to either spend the whole day there, or with a (sensible!) half day option had somewhere people could head to and finish off their day at Blackpool. Then something as extravagant as Hot Ice may be worthwhile.
 
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