Blackpool Pleasure Beach was fun today after a 5 month break, I enjoyed getting back on the rides with The Big One being the highlight.
Even after riding many coasters elsewhere, The Big One is still very special and one of my favourite rides ever. I am still yet to find a better first drop and the ride was flying round, absolutely incredible coaster and I'll never tire of it. It was running two full trains all day, excellent.
Speedy Pass unfortunately continues to destroy the ride's operations by causing the trains to stack and making extra work for the platform staff which then causes the throughput to plummet. The Speedy Passes had been massively oversold today with the queue down to the bottom of the exit path from midday onwards, I saw two full trains of Speedy Passes sent as well as multiple rows in the others.
The new outlet in the Sky Force shop is being used to upsell Big One Speedy Passes at the expense of guest experience, it's worse than ever now. It was noticeable that on the occasions where there was a break in SP users, dispatches were much better. Disgraceful that they allow fast pass to slow down the rate at which trains are dispatched whilst also blocking the exit path. The ride isn't designed for it, total mess!
On the plus side, the new Big One soundtrack is excellent and the retro feel of it suits the ride perfectly. It adds a great atmosphere around the ride's queueline/station and is a brilliant improvement IMO.
I rode Icon once today and didn't enjoy it at all, the layout is good but it's taken much too slowly IMO. I appreciate why a lot of people enjoy the smooth nature of the ride but it's not for me, there are other far better examples of smooth coasters elsewhere.
In the interests of saying something positive about it, the soundtrack was nice and loud!
Valhalla remains dreadful, however River Caves (interior) was looking fantastic with audio levels good, scenes looking great and most of the animations working. There was some lovely new timed lighting in the first scene as well as a new sound effect and the inside felt refreshed in general whilst retaining the classic feel of the ride. Brilliant!
Grand National was noticeably bumpier than on my last ride in April, but I still really enjoyed it. Sat in the back row.
Park hours were very stingy, 6pm close on a relatively busy sunny Saturday is no good. Big Dipper and Infusion went down to one train towards the end of the day.
The Noah's Ark park exit is looking very tired and could do with some TLC!
We had a look at Boulevard Hotel and the staff were willing to take us for a look into one of the rooms, I have to say the entire hotel looks incredible.
The park looks and feels worse than it ever has done in my opinion, devoid of any of the character, charm and colour it used to have and many of the rides/areas look in need of TLC.
Whilst the staff were fantastic throughout the park, unfortunately Speedy Pass made queueing for The Big One a misery and reiterated to me why I spent 5 months away from the place. It's not good enough when an older Arrow hypercoaster runs 3 trains with 30 second dispatches, the SP system on Big One is an absolute joke.
Overall I had a good day at Pleasure Beach and it was great to get back on some of my favourite rides, but IMO there are still many issues which detract from the overall enjoyment of the park.
