Blackpool Pleasure Beach: General Discussion

[Dave]

BPB has not been able to cope with high numbers of punters for about a decade!
Stopped going in the school holidays when Infusion opened, always been the same ever since.
Speedypass has only made matters worse.
Join me and dippy on a term time afternoon in September, and see the park at its very best.
No queues for the rides or bars, lots of happy punters and staff.
Peak riding is hell, whatever the park.

If this was a Merlin Park the same criticisms would be made. We had a fine day as we got pissed and did Icon. The point is the rest of the guests are getting a crappy deal and that’s what the discussion is about.

 

[Ash84]

Rob, I have a fiancee who is a teacher and an 11 year old lad to consider. The park should be able to provide capacity to suit the demand, I shouldn't have to try convince her to pull a sick day (depriving 30 kids of a proper teacher for the day) and keep him off school to fit round the parks shoddy operation.

As has been said, this is no new thing, so why are these problems not being fixed.

BTW the Nash CAN be despatched before the other trains are in, I have seen it done.

 

[rob666]

Course you should Ash.
Far too much morality around these days.
Throw a sickie, meet you at Crevettes at noon, boost the economy in this time of brexit uncertainty.
You would be doing the theme park industry and the nation as a whole a favour.
The only real way to make the queues shorter is to increase the entrance price, but as Merlin have done with their cheap pass this year, there is more money to be made by cheaper entry, hitting the punter on the extra spend.

 

[Ash84]

.....alternatively they could just use the Streaks second train.

First round on you yeah!

 

[rob666]

But that would reduce jumper sales, and you would have to get your bits out.
Second train would reduce short term revenues at peak times.
More affluent parents saying stuff that queue, get a pass.
Seen it, been with the group, may well be doing it again today.
It is a small park in a big resort, stuff happens on busy days, big queues happen.

My round at noon ash, dippy, shakey, tremble.
Bloody tykes.

 

[shakey]

My round at noon ash, dippy, shakey, tremble.
Bloody tykes.

Save it for Monday Rob

Regarding queues at PB, I have visited at peak times quite a lot over the last few years and other than vampire beach I have never found queue times to be anywhere near as bad as Merlin parks, although I realise that will be a lot to do with the comparable numbers on the park.

A typical summer holiday day at AT will see queues regularly 60+ minutes on the major rides and sometimes quite a bit more, but people seem to accept it more than they do at PB which rarely gets queues over an hour for rides, the main exception being the big one when it is forced to run on one train.

PB also has a relativity low cost queue jumping system so if queues do get too long then speedypass is a lot more affordable than fasttrack at Merlin parks which is extortionate.

If they could get the big one to somehow run 2 trains in windier weather and 2 trains on Streak then it would improve the situation further.

 

[MakoMania]

Don't know what the moaning is about. I went on this same Saturday, yes it was very busy but that is to be expected and we still did plenty of rides, got on all the coasters (some more than once) plus Ice Blast, Valhalla, Derby Racer, W&G etc and had a great day.

One thing I will say is that Valhalla does need to be running more boats, when the queue line is full it's currently about 45 minutes (which still isn't too bad) but they could easily get it down to 35 mins by running a few more.

 

[Ash84]

Don't know what the moaning is about. I went on this same Saturday, yes it was very busy but that is to be expected and we still did plenty of rides, got on all the coasters (some more than once) plus Ice Blast, Valhalla, Derby Racer, W&G etc and had a great day.

One thing I will say is that Valhalla does need to be running more boats, when the queue line is full it's currently about 45 minutes (which still isn't too bad) but they could easily get it down to 35 mins by running a few more.

The moaning is about a ride running one train and having a 70 minute queue. I don't think it's being too harsh to find that situation unacceptable, especially when the same ride ran two 4 car trains in the pay per ride days. Now it's grounded on one 3 car train.

It used to have anything up to 64 people on board at any given time. Today it has a maximum of 24, that's quite a reduction.

 

[AstroDan]

Don't know what the moaning is about.

Don't know what the moaning is about?

Blackpool Pleasure Beach always had an edge over, say, Alton Towers - because the park didn't attract the queues. This was partly because of pay-per-ride in the 90s - so every dispatch counted, and also because there were simply so many rides.

A combination of removal of pay-per-ride, the removal of a number of rides, introduction of Speedy Pass and gradual decrease in ride throughputs due to H&S and/or other, has meant that queues at BPB are quite long.

Of course you expect it to be busy at the end of August - that in itself is not a problem. It is how parks react to it.

On Saturday, another irk (which I went to guest services about!) was that Grand National and Ghost Train both closed at 9.45pm due to Technical Problems... when every other ride had closed by 9.00pm due to the fireworks, it was disappointing to arrive at Ghost Train at 9.50pm to ride and be turned away. Especially as we had left it because the ride had had a 40 minute queue all day long. Then National aswell. I advised Guest Services it was 'dubious' that the two rides had 'had technical problems' at 9.45pm. The gentleman didn't disagree.

 

[MakoMania]

I'm not denying that Streak being one one train is bad, or that operations at BPB are perfect, but I'd much rather take an average of a 30 minute wait time at BPB and a 10pm ride close rather than an average of a 50 minute wait time and a 6pm ride close at Towers, which has been getting praise lately.

Whilst one train operation is far from ideal, if you really want to ride Streak do it in the morning, it's not rocket science.

In terms of there being less rides at BPB now, that is true. However it helps (or helped perhaps) to avoid financial collapse and the park still has significantly more rides than anywhere else in the country.

 

[AstroDan]

I am not saying it's perfect at Alton Towers - far from it. I have just done 3 weeks at 15 parks in the USA and they pretty much all closed later than ATR, which has dire opening hours and not enough rides.

That does not make BPB immune because they close at 10pm once a month!

PMBO: 90
Avalanche: 60
Streak: 70
Ghost Train: 40
Alice: 30
River Caves: 30

These queues are pretty long for BPB and indeed for any park.

Forgive me for criticising.

 

[MakoMania]

I am not saying it's perfect at Alton Towers - far from it.

Forgive me for criticising the ride throughputs at Blackpool Pleasure Beach.

I'm not saying don't criticise, I bash BPB myself over many things, Valhalla's number of boats and early closing being the most common. I'm just saying I don't think the park was that unbearable on Saturday.

 

[AstroDan]

Did I say it was unbearable? No.

I said I was 'shocked' to see such queues at the park, as I had never seen such waits going back to my childhood.

The reason is the combination of:

• Lower throughputs due to H&S
• Removal of a significant number of rides over the years
• The introduction of Speedy Pass
• The introduction of wristbands, removing incentives for higher throughputs

It was the first time I had ever been to BPB in my life and not done PMBO and Avalanche. I haven't done Ghost Train in 3 years either.

 

[MakoMania]

You didn't say unbearable but it was implied based on what you were saying.

We queued about 40 minutes for PMBO in the afternoon, not sure where 90 mins is coming from.

At least we can agree on Speedy Pass

 

[AstroDan]

Well, the entire queue was full, including the extension and part of the cattle pen at the front. If that was 40 minutes then I take part of my criticism back.

 

[MakoMania]

When we joined the queue it wasn't quite full. When it is full it can take up to 60/70mins.

Although having said that it does depend on Speedy Pass, so you can never really place an accurate estimate.

 

[Ash84]

I'm not denying that Streak being one one train is bad, or that operations at BPB are perfect, but I'd much rather take an average of a 30 minute wait time at BPB and a 10pm ride close rather than an average of a 50 minute wait time and a 6pm ride close at Towers, which has been getting praise lately.

Whilst one train operation is far from ideal, if you really want to ride Streak do it in the morning, it's not rocket science.

In terms of there being less rides at BPB now, that is true. However it helps (or helped perhaps) to avoid financial collapse and the park still has significantly more rides than anywhere else in the country.

And as I said to you before, I prefer not to ride the Streak first thing as it's a significantly better ride later on once it's warmed up. Also it being one of my favourite rides I would like more than one go.

 

[Dipper_Dave]

I agree that ‘technical problems’ making a ride close 15 mins early is dubious, especially as it was two rides at once. I was there recently on a 7pm close and tried to ride Nash about 15 mins before the ‘earliest ride close time’ and was turned away because of a ‘technical fault’. Frustrating as Nash is a favourite ‘sign off’ ride on my way out, and probably the same for others. If I’d known it was shut I’d have run to the Icon queue for one last go instead !

 

[Matt N]

I know this is going to be an uncommon opinion, but I personally thought BPB's operations were absolutely fantastic when I went on the 14th! The queues moved really quickly, and we got on 12 rides throughout the course of our day! For reference, we got into the park at 10am and left at about 5pm. That's just under 2 rides per hour, which I'd say is brilliant! Also, do factor in a 15-30 minute breakdown delay on the Big One, so we likely would have gotten on even more had that not occurred! Furthermore, we had quite a long sit-down lunch, too.

Moreover, we got on 4 rides in the first hour! Brilliant operations on BPB's part there!

 

[John]

Last time I waited into the extensions on PMBO it was 1hr from the cans. Given how long it was taking them to load each train (the other one was sat in the brakes by the time they dispatched whenever I was watching), the full queue must have been long. They still hadn't cleared the ramp by 9.30!