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Blackpool Pleasure Beach: General Discussion

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It’s more common sense, people naturally try to avoid getting wet so they’ll collectively shift their body weight. You’d be able to do it on a modern water ride but trying that on something as basic as an Old Mill ride was a bad move from the start.
 
Temleh said:
That’ll never return, it made guests lean out of the boat which is a huge safety risk.
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Bummer:confused1: Oh well if they could at least get the elephant moving again that would be fine, or better yet if they want to update the scene ever so slightly they could have two elephant squirting I'll teach other rather than the riders.

That way it's not as much of a safety hazard.
 
The elephant wasn't even moving last weekend; then again, neither were any of the animations in the Egyptian or Angkor Wat scenes.

Also there's a hole in the dinosaur's head!
 
The movement in those scenes has partially returned. River Caves generally seemed a little better this weekend. Audio and lighting improvements from last season plus some more fixes during the week means they’re heading in the right direction.

The swinging monkey in Angkor Wat has been AWOL for far too long though.
 
It’s interesting to see that on Trip Advisor there are quite a few reviews from the first two weekends complaining about ride queues and even queues to get into the park. It’s clearly not just enthusiasts who seem to notice the one train operation across all the rides. The same thing happens every year at the start of the season as regards single trains. It may be because of maintenance, but this is not an excuse which will satiate the general public. BPB clearly need to have the train capacity ready to deal with the crowds which the combination of cheap wristbands and decent weather bring in. They are otherwise aggravating potential return customers who they will need to make the Icon investment a success.

Let’s hope it’s sorted quickly, but judging by past seasons it may not happen and it’s a shame because none of us want to see the park throw away revenue from repeat visitors.

Maybe bring back JR?
 
I was told a few years ago that it is extremely difficult for them to get all the trains ready for the start of the season given that closed season is so short, so they start with one train for each and work their way up from there.
 
That’s all well and good, but if I’m visiting BPB and there’s an 1.5 hour queue for Big One when they’re running one train, then Joe Bloggs might understandably be miffed, regardless of winter maintenance.
 
venny said:
It’s interesting to see that on Trip Advisor there are quite a few reviews from the first two weekends complaining about ride queues and even queues to get into the park. It’s clearly not just enthusiasts who seem to notice the one train operation across all the rides. The same thing happens every year at the start of the season as regards single trains. It may be because of maintenance, but this is not an excuse which will satiate the general public. BPB clearly need to have the train capacity ready to deal with the crowds which the combination of cheap wristbands and decent weather bring in. They are otherwise aggravating potential return customers who they will need to make the Icon investment a success.

Let’s hope it’s sorted quickly, but judging by past seasons it may not happen and it’s a shame because none of us want to see the park throw away revenue from repeat visitors.

Maybe bring back JR?
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Yeah I agree, Pleasure Beach appear to have no sense of urgency when it comes to ride capacity and speed of service in general, with the issue occurring on rides, park entrance and catering outlets. If guest experience was a consideration, Speedy Pass wouldn't be operated in such an inefficient and unfair way. Whilst having less trains available is arguably more understandable in early season, the issue of low capacity and/or inefficient operation at full capacity occurs on a fairly regular basis, from my experience.

I will give credit where its due, the majority of staff do seem to have improved dramatically in terms of how they address guests.
 
I hope so.

Early last year, I asked to reenter the park (as guests left for the day) to buy a drink of water from their shop...with MONEY!
I literally got shouted at, being accused of god knows what (I was too stunned to work out what I was being accused of) I went and brought some water (I didn't want to after seeing the price but was genuinely too scared to leave without water)
As I left, he shouted something at me but again, I was too stunned to listen!

Hopefully its better than THAT, this year.
 
Just your generic collage age white dude, I didn't pay attention to any name tags as,
At the time, most of my brain was too busy going "omg I'm being accused" to comprehend his slurred chavspeak and the rest of my brain just didn't want to listen (because why would I?)

I would have complained but it was so late that if I had complained, I would have been too late to do paje del terror. And to be honest, I didn't want to carry on the situation lest I had been banned for harassing staff or whatever they they might have made up.

...that said, I can only assume that I was being accused of trying to gain free entry or something...that being quite the retarded claim as (at the time) all rides had closed and I had shown my wristband upon trying to renter the park!
 
One train operation equals more speedypass sales.
There is no incentive to get the second trains on the track if it loses profits on the day.
There should be no speedypass when queues are long and capacity is reduced.
 
shakey said:
Well if they were selling speedy pass and operating all the coasters on one train then it's abysmal customer service.

As rob666 said further up this thread, if they are operating rides on one train when they could easily run two then speedy pass should not be sold.

It's a total disgrace in my opinion.

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I couldn't agree more with this.

venny said:
It’s interesting to see that on Trip Advisor there are quite a few reviews from the first two weekends complaining about ride queues and even queues to get into the park. It’s clearly not just enthusiasts who seem to notice the one train operation across all the rides. The same thing happens every year at the start of the season as regards single trains. It may be because of maintenance, but this is not an excuse which will satiate the general public. BPB clearly need to have the train capacity ready to deal with the crowds which the combination of cheap wristbands and decent weather bring in. They are otherwise aggravating potential return customers who they will need to make the Icon investment a success.

Let’s hope it’s sorted quickly, but judging by past seasons it may not happen and it’s a shame because none of us want to see the park throw away revenue from repeat visitors.
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Spot on. Interesting to note that "It’s clearly not just enthusiasts who seem to notice the one train operation across all the rides." Fair enough that these weekends are half price, but customers still deserve some enjoyment out of their day, and taking ages to get into the park, then standing in long queues in freezing cold weather because BPB can't / won't put an extra train on the coasters, is not much fun really is it? Then to add insult to injury speedy passes are promoted and even reduced in price. Lets face it, even with half price entry, if you were taking a family, by the time you've paid for food, parking, petrol, etc, you're still forking out a fair bit, so if you haven't actually managed to get many rides in due to poor capacity then its still not very good value for money.

Yes, we have a good idea how long a queue is just by looking at it, but the general public don't always, and first time visiters wouldn't have a clue, and maybe wouldn't even notice until inside The Big One's station that there is no second train filling up whilst the other one is going round the ride. We all have our limits. I for example generally won't go on Big One or Avalanche if the queue is out of the station buildings. I may make an exception for Big One say if its night riding and I know for sure that its on two trains. But infrequent GP visitors would feel mightily cheesed off with lengthy waits and it is highly likely to affect their enthusiasm for returning, and like you say, BPB need these people back, and should be doing all they can to minimize Trip Advisor / social media etc complaints. Having the coasters operate at good capacity goes a long way towards achieving this.

rob666 said:
One train operation equals more speedypass sales.
There is no incentive to get the second trains on the track if it loses profits on the day.
There should be no speedypass when queues are long and capacity is reduced.
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That is really poor on BPB's part. What about the incentive of providing a great day out for their paying customers? The term 'VIP' should be banned on all speedy pass options. Every single person in the park, whether they have paid the full gate price, the advance online price, used a clubcard voucher, a cereal packet voucher, or presented a season ticket, should be treated as a Very Important Person by the park, not just those who have thrown extra money at the park to take a big steaming turd over everyone else and walk straight to the front of the queue up the exit slope (don't get me started on that)
 
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Star demolition continues apace (yesterday afternoon)

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Wow, the wrecking ball is really getting stuck into BPB these last few months. The look of that area should be improved by what replaces it though. Only went in there once for a drink, and even then sat outside. Also sat upstairs for the pre Walk The Big One safety brief. I guess the old Coasters is next to be flattened? Ocean Boulevard looked great when it was new, its a shame that building based on the original Casino design got into such a bad state.
 
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