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Blackpool Pleasure Beach: General Discussion

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rob666 said:
Well, Saturday's ops may have been good, but...
Sunday, no Big One, Steeplechase down, Icon on one, with a queue to the gate, Big Dipper on one, then none.
Good job the beer and company were up to scratch.
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To be fair, an Icon Queue to the gate on one train is about 35 - 45 mins, so, if they had 2 trains on the wait time would have been about 15 mins - you can understand why they were operating one train.
Big dipper is always on one train on 'quiet days'. From my experience and what I have heard the queue was steady at about 30 mins.
Big One is always going to be hit-or-miss at this time of year. I think it was phenomenal that they kept it going for so much of Saturday.

I get that people want to look for negatives, but other than Steeplechase being down (for an unknown reason) I don't see much that is worth complaining about TBH. As an enthusiast I would love to have all coasters running all trains, but that is just silly when they can still operate with acceptable queue lines and save a bit on wear-and-tear.

i know when I worked for a park back in the day, train-count was based on the number of people in the park and not the number of people in the queue. I'm not sure is BPB operate a similar system, but it would make sense.

All-in-all I think BPB done a really good job for opening weekend. They learnt from last year and considering it is February in England with a freaking storm - I will give the a pass mark :)
 
rob666 said:
Winds less than yesterday.
No excuse for any of the single trains.
No excuse for Steeplechase or Dipper closures.
More can't be arsed than anything.
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We went on revolution after you left and it was blowing an absolute gail at the top of the stairs, so probably a valid excuse for no big one.

Steeplechase remained broken for the day. Big dipper did come back to it's one train later in the day and we managed to get a ride in.

We queued almost an hour to get on Icons one train service.

Can't believe how long we had to wait for Nash given it was only from the top of the steps.

We also decided to take advantage of what we thought was a short queue for alice, only to be bombarded with speedy passes. Reckon they had 4 cars at most on it today.

Overall it felt like they put most of their efforts into Saturday but we got on 12 rides and as Rob666 mentioned, the company was excellent.

I believe it's my round next time !

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Enter Valhalla said:
Come on though. Saying that BPB can’t be bothered to get rides open is obviously not true.

From my experience, they’re great at trying to get rides open when they can. They’re in a tough location and do what they can to get a decent level of operation.
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Pleasure Beach are very hit and miss these days in that respect, in my opinion.

There are days where I've seen them try their damndest to get The Big One open on days with high winds, etc. But also, days like the final day of the season last year where Icon didn't start testing until after the park opened, The Big One opened late and many other rides did too. The weather was alright that day, it seemed to be a complete lack of organisation causing the testing to start late.

It sounds like yesterday was one of the better days, but it needs to be consistently that good.
 
rob666 said:
Winds less than yesterday.
No excuse for any of the single trains.
No excuse for Steeplechase or Dipper closures.
More can't be arsed than anything.
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Wind direction on Saturday was Southerly, wind direction on Sunday was Westerly, it makes a massive difference with the operation of the rides.

ICON has been known to roll back on a day when the winds have been as strong from the west as they were on Sunday.

Big Dipper had all its running rail grease washed off by the wind and rain, so encountered near roll back issues on Sunday morning.

They did very well on Saturday, the weather got the better of them on Sunday.
 
Is there any development of note in the park? Everyone seems full of praise who was there but I haven't seen much by way of discussion regarding any development in the park aside from Valhalla being closed.

What's new for 2020? What's changed?



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skyscraper said:
An interesting change to note is the new front row queue and extended boarding aisles in the Big One's station. Will help throughput massively. :)
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AstroDan said:
Is there any development of note in the park? Everyone seems full of praise who was there but I haven't seen much by way of discussion regarding any development in the park aside from Valhalla being closed.

What's new for 2020? What's changed?
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See my post above for a start! ;):)
 
I have to say this years opening weekend was a million times better than last year.

Last year was full of broken and closed rides all over the park. On Saturday other than ghost train and flying machines, all other rides opened. Yeah big one closed at points due to the weather and other things broke down, but that’s standard at any park on opening day.

With the badly predicted weather I was surprised so much was open without issues.

They also did the free return visit cause of the weather, so I popped on Park in the afternoon on Sunday for a few hours, I really don’t know why Icon was on one train, every time we walked past the queue was almost to the entrance, so we didn’t bother at all.

Big one station is a bit improvement, it means there is less queue line inside now, but much more room at the air gates, which should stop the issue of people waiting for certain rows and there being empty rows elsewhere.
 
For those that attended opening weekend......did the Big One feel any smoother with the track replacements or couldn't you tell?
 
Benjsh said:
Money well spent then? Hahahaha

Not been a fan of it for years tbh. There's no air time and that's the whole point of a hyper coaster surely.
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Yes I agree, the ride dies for me after the first drop. The speed and intensity is fantastic but beyond that there are no forces and it's very rough. Looking forward to trying magnum Magnum this year to see what the big one had the potential to be
 
Benjsh said:
For those that attended opening weekend......did the Big One feel any smoother with the track replacements or couldn't you tell?
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A lot of people said that that section felt distinctly smoother than in 2019, so it must have worked!
 
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