Blackpool Pleasure Beach: General Discussion

[shakey]

Also only a fool would suggest that BPB achieves anywhere near the success that Alton Towers or Thorpe Park does. The lack of major new rides and reliance on outdated technology and nostalgia keeps the park out of the UK big league.....

And towers have had a very successful 2015 haven't they !!

Also haven't PB just been voted the 6th best park in the world (and best in the UK) at the golden ticket awards ?

 

[Tom]

^ That's what this debate/argument started over.

 

[AstroDan]

Alton Towers have had a major accident. Obviously this has affected footfall.

Blackpool though, if they had 20,000 guests a day - the park simply wouldn't manage.

It's not a slur on BPB to say the rides have less capacity. It's a basic fact.

Anyway, Europa-Park is way better than Pleasure Beach.

 

[Rob]

Wow I've missed rather a lot here whilst away in Florida. In short; BPB is not the 6th best park in the world, Disney parks are not just aimed at kids (unless you are a miserable person), removing the Wild Mouse would be a massive mistake despite its best attempts to break my back on recent visits and I don't really care too much about Nick Streak.

 

[shakey]

Blackpool though, if they had 20,000 guests a day - the park simply wouldn't manage.
.

No park in the UK could mange 20,000 guests in a day. Not without 2+ hour ride queues, and anything over 45 mins is not managing IMO.

It's not a slur on BPB to say the rides have less capacity. It's a basic fact.
.

Obviously PB's capacity is less than AT, its a much smaller park in terms of area, and many of the rides don't have the capacity they once did unfortunately, but if they run them all on the full capacity that they are able to today then they can cope with fairly big crowds and they do have plenty of rides available, a similar amount to AT.

What they need of course is a big shiny new rollercoaster. Fingers crossed that will appear in 2017

 

[Coaster]

Blackpool though, if they had 20,000 guests a day - the park simply wouldn't manage.

It's not a slur on BPB to say the rides have less capacity. It's a basic fact.

Believe it or not they used to manage over 80,000 people on park (in the free entry days) better than they can manage 5,000 these days!

The potential capacity of most of BPB's major rides far exceeds Alton Towers, but they've been running dismally for years.

 

[Rick]

No park in the UK could mange 20,000 guests in a day. Not without 2+ hour ride queues, and anything over 45 mins is not managing IMO.

20,000 is a pretty manageable number when you think about it in terms of ride capacity - the coasters can shift around 10,000 people an hour. The water rides a vast number too.

Then by the time you have taken in to account all the people on the other rides and those walking, eating, shopping etc, it's all good.

 

[Rob]

No park in the UK could mange 20,000 guests in a day. Not without 2+ hour ride queues, and anything over 45 mins is not managing IMO.

Anything over a 45 minute queue shows a park not being able to manage its guests? Wow! Don't ever visit Walt Disney World parks as based on that you could argue that on most days of the year they cannot manage the guests that they have. Of course in reality they can.

Alton Towers certainly can manage 20,000 guests. The park would feel busy but if everything was open and operations were good 20,000 wouldn't cause massive problems. Towers got 29,000 on the Saturday of Fireworks in 2010.

 

[shakey]

Anything over a 45 minute queue shows a park not being able to manage its guests? Wow! Don't ever visit Walt Disney World parks as based on that you could argue that on most days of the year they cannot manage the guests that they have. Of course in reality they can.

Alton Towers certainly can manage 20,000 guests. The park would feel busy but if everything was open and operations were good 20,000 wouldn't cause massive problems. Towers got 29,000 on the Saturday of Fireworks in 2010.

I was meaning from the point of view of visitor experience rather than how many people the park deems acceptable and 45 mins is about as much of a queue as I can handle for what is usually going to be less than a 2 minute ride.

So for me, if there are a lot of queue lines longer than 45mins it is a sign that the park cannot effectively handle the amount of visitors it has let through the doors.

Of course this is just a personal point of view and luckily I have not yet had the pleasure (or by the sounds of it - displeasure) of visiting a Walt Disney park

 

[Enter Valhalla]

Believe it or not they used to manage over 80,000 people on park (in the free entry days) better than they can manage 5,000 these days!

The potential capacity of most of BPB's major rides far exceeds Alton Towers, but they've been running dismally for years.

I've heard this before and to be honest this really does disappoint me. Even on moderately busy days they don't seem to be able to cope with their current capacity which is why it's daily normal to see queues for Nash, Mouse and various other rides going external. Whilst the major UK parks seem to be finding every way they can to improve throughputs, BPB seem to be going the other way and to make matters worse frequently seem to run coasters on one train when the demand is clearly there for more. It does make me laugh that BPB fans seem to make a big deal and praise the park on days when everything is running to capacity. Should it really be such a rarity that you have to make a big deal about it? Surely on busy days it should just be expected, not celebrated on the rare occasions when it does happen.

 

[AstroDan]

Alton Towers can easily handle 20,000 guests - and does so on occasions every year. Alton Towers also track throughputs on rides every hour and operate rides to match.

Obviously it would be a busy day but it can handle them.

People suggesting BPB's rides have adequate capacity? Please! Wild Mouse has capacity of around 40% of Rattlesnake. And that is saying something!

 

[Coaster]

Alton Towers can easily handle 20,000 guests - and does so on occasions every year. Alton Towers also track throughputs on rides every hour and operate rides to match.

So Rita can handle days with 20,000 guests then? That queue is horrendous on busy days, as are quite a few due to Fastrack overselling on the busiest days.

People suggesting BPB's rides have adequate capacity? Please! Wild Mouse has capacity of around 40% of Rattlesnake. And that is saying something!

Not anymore, Rattlesnake has new dispatch times which are much slower than the Mouse, so they are probably about equal now.

BPB has lots of capacity issues, the main issues being Grand National, Nickelodeon Streak, Ghost Train, Grand Prix and the Mouse, all of which do not have a high enough capacity to cope with demand anymore, but dispatch times on the other rides are also getting worse and worse.

 

[AstroDan]

Yes, Rita can handle a day when there are 20,000 on park. The ride gets 900 to 1,000 people per hour when being operated properly. This is quite low for Alton Towers - but it manages. I have worked on it on a day when there were 26,000 on park and the queue was 90 minutes. Of course, that is long, but it can certainly deal with it. Alton Towers is designed to do so. If Pleasure Beach had 26,000 on park these days the park would simply fail to manage because there aren't queue lines for guests to wait in.

Alton Towers no longer oversell Fastrack either.

I don't get this debate. To me it is simple fact!

 

[Enter Valhalla]

Haha which considering Rattlesnake is only capable of around 360 per hour is really, really saying something!

If rides like Mouse, Streak, Grand National and Ghost Train were at Alton Towers or Thorpe Park the queues would rately be less than an hour, usually considerably more.

Don't get me wrong BPB is a great place which I love to visit but fans of the park are just delusional to think that it's anywhere near as major a park as the Merlin parks. Cracks begin to appear in the infrastructure when they hit 5000 let alone anywhere near the 10,000+ which you'd usually expect to see on a peak day at a Merlin park.

And to come back to my original point, the reason that BPB isn't regarded as highly by the public as many other parks is primarily because they rely on the nostalgia of classic rides and they no longer push boundaries with new ride technology. That's where they've been left behind, enthusiasts may love classic woodies (I know I do) but it's clearly not what the public look for in a park. The UK public look for major, modern, record breaking coasters with unique selling points. This is also where the UK public differ from the European public who don't seem that bothered by records. Either way BPB don't provide this.

 

[Coaster]

Yes, Rita can handle a day when there are 20,000 on park. The ride gets 900 to 1,000 people per hour when being operated properly. This is quite low for Alton Towers - but it manages. I have worked on it on a day when there were 26,000 on park and the queue was 90 minutes. Of course, that is long, but it can certainly deal with it. Alton Towers is designed to do so. If Pleasure Beach had 26,000 on park these days the park would simply fail to manage because there aren't queue lines for guests to wait in.

Pleasure Beach is also designed to cope with high crowds, but it hasn't done so for years! I'm not praising BPB's operations as they are far worse than they can be.

I have seen Rita with ridiculous queues on moderately busy days in the past, sometimes reaching 150 minutes which is not what I would call dealing with it. As for Spinball, that certainly can't cope with demand - and neither can the new kiddie coaster (or most rides in CBeebies land from what I've heard!)

 

[AstroDan]

When did you last see Rita with a 150 minute queue? Perhaps when they were staggering dispatches due to the H&S rubbish on the launch? The ride hasn't had such a queue for at least 2 years and I bet the days when it has had a 2 1/2 hour+ queue in its lifetime are single digits.

Alton Towers can cope. Queue lines are built long enough to manage the crowds the park attracts. That isn't to say they don't occasionally get long queues, they do - but the park copes because major new rides are designed to cope with at least 1,000 people per hour.

Fact.

 

[Enter Valhalla]

I think you're nit picking somewhat now Jamie. At most parks you will find examples of rides which don't run amazingly, Dan has even admitted that Rita has quite a low throughout for Alton Towers (although if it was at BPB it'd probably be their highest capacity ride)

The real point here is that on the whole, major UK parks can cope with big numbers and they really push throughputs. This is not the case at BPB. Even you agree that their throughputs are dire and, as such, the park could never cope with the high numbers which Alton Towers achieves. The fact that BPB is far less popular with the public is probably a blessing in disguise for them as, if they were to get high numbers, the place would crumble and would never cope.

 

[Coaster]

When did you last see Rita with a 150 minute queue? Perhaps when they were staggering dispatches due to the H&S rubbish on the launch? The ride hasn't had such a queue for at least 2 years and I bet the days when it has had a 2 1/2 hour+ queue in its lifetime are single digits.

Alton Towers can cope. Queue lines are built long enough to manage the crowds the park attracts. That isn't to say they don't occasionally get long queues, they do - but the park copes because major new rides are designed to cope with at least 1,000 people per hour.

How long the queue lines are built is irrelevant, I would rather have good throughput than long queuelines. Granted, most of the major rides at Alton have good throughputs, but Spinball certainly doesn't and neither does Octonauts.
I can't honestly remember when I saw Rita with a 150 minute queue, but it wasn't recently.

The real point here is that on the whole, major UK parks can cope with big numbers and they really push throughputs. This is not the case at BPB. Even you agree that their throughputs are dire and, as such, the park could never cope with the high numbers which Alton Towers achieves. The fact that BPB is far less popular with the public is probably a blessing in disguise for them as, if they were to get high numbers, the place would crumble and would never cope.

No. Alton Towers do, but Thorpe's operations are dismal (and they have been worse than ever this year) and Chessington's have been absolutely shocking, neither parks can cope with even small numbers of guests at the moment.
As for BPB not being popular, it has been absolutely packed out this summer and on several weekends (it might be even busier if they opened late in the evening when there are thousands of people on the seafront but that's for another discussion!)

 

[AstroDan]

I don't dispute than Sonic Spinball has an inadequate throughput for its location. Typically, the ride gets 700 people per hour. Even Europa-Park's Matterhorn Blitz suffers in this regard. Every park has a couple of oddballs which don't get throughputs like the rest.

Octonauts is a low throughput but this is inherent with small kids coasters like this.

My main frustration in this discussion is the implication that Blackpool Pleasure Beach can cope with guests as easily as Alton Towers.

 

[Coaster]

I don't dispute than Sonic Spinball has an inadequate throughput for its location. Typically, the ride gets 700 people per hour. Even Europa-Park's Matterhorn Blitz suffers in this regard. Every park has a couple of oddballs which don't get throughputs like the rest.

Octonauts is a low throughput but this is inherent with small kids coasters like this.

My main frustration in this discussion is the implication that Blackpool Pleasure Beach can cope with guests as easily as Alton Towers.

I have never said that. BPB's operations this year have been shocking and I won't deny that, it's just that I don't think that Alton Towers cope that well either (although admittedly better than BPB do).
Let's not forget that The Smiler spent a lot of 2013 on reduced throughput with crazy queues, and it's full throughput is less than the PMBO (when PMBO is on two trains with good dispatch times, so not this year!)

Alton copes with crowds better than any other park in the UK these days, I'm not trying to say they don't.