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Blackpool Pleasure Beach: General Discussion

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Rick said:
Twenty years ago to the day, we were on the Pleasure Beach, riding The Big One celebrating the dawn of the new millennium, thankful that the Millennium Bug had not struck and left any ride with a computer inoperable.
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Wait, Pleasure Beach was year-round in 2000? How did they manage to get the rides open, as I'd imagine Blackpool is very cold and/or windy in January!

I can imagine the Big One on New Year's Eve/Day being quite good, though, especially if there were fireworks or something going off while you were on it!
 
Often had winter openings, weekends only, with limited rides, but the crowds simply weren't there.
Had north park only, south only, but I don't think it ever made any money.
Things usually closed completely from new year to Valentine's.
 
I think the last time they ran was perhaps 2007 or 2008, I feel like there has been a year with Infusion included.

South only made sense. South Dodgems/Bling, Space Invader, Go Karts, Steeplechase, Big One, Maze and Revolution. Sometimes the Avalanche, but not typically. Valhalla in December was not the best laid plan.

They were 'invented' due to the Big One having a difficult first season and the park wanting to make up some lost ground.
 
Attendance was down 5.8% in Icon's first season, however the loss was 1.2 million compared with 1.6 million the previous year.

https://www.blackpoolgazette.co.uk/...or-weather-reduces-visitor-numbers-1-10189718

In my opinion, it's very concerning that after such a long wait for a new coaster, it didn't draw in any more guests.

Improved turnover could be attributed to things like all the new merchandise, increased fees etc - but if the overall gate figures are down in the year a 16 million pound coaster opens...

Wild Mouse's closure may well have had some bearing on gate figures even if not turnover, IMO.

I don't think things will improve until the park stop blaming external factors and start focusing on what they can actually do to improve.
 
Wicker Man opening with a brilliant marketing campaign along with BPB's abysmal marketing campagin for Icon will be the primary reason for such a signicificant drop.

Wild Mouse closing may have put a handful of people off going, or stop some enthusiasts going quite as often, but it will not have been significant.
 
And add in the bad summer compared to the year before.
Overall numbers in the town were down as well, despite the trains having a much improved service compared to the year before.
Nice to see that they added in terrorism and Brexit in the excuses pile.
 
I think the most worrying aspect is that, despite low attendance figures, there are still a *lot* of days throughout the year when the park is unpleasantly busy.

They don't seem to be able to deal with even moderate crowd levels anymore.
 
rob666 said:
And add in the bad summer compared to the year before.
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The figures are from March 2018 to March 2019 - so largely 2018 which was actually a very good summer - and of course the 1st year of icon.

So the weather excuse is nonsense. They use that every year whatever the weather has been.

Awful figures really, almost disastrous when you would have expected a big increase in visitor numbers due to Icon (and the decent weather of 2018)

I suspect the main reasons for the poor figures are a lack of marketing for Icon and it not being as good a ride as it should have been.

Plus a mixture of other factors keeping people away such as... poor guest experience from a previous visit (e.g closing early, bad operations and speedy pass issues), crazy car parking charges, questionable business model and maybe even the demise of the wild mouse.

They also doubled the walk round charge in 2019, and I think that has had another negative effect on visitor numbers. So I suspect we will see another big loss when we see the March 2019 to March 2020 figures.

It certainly looks like Valhalla's full season closure is more cost cutting than anything else, although I hope I am wrong about that.

It could be a very difficult 2020 for the park with another popular ride out of action. Let's hope they can recover from this and continue to invest, otherwise its a dangerous spiral of losses followed by cost cutting followed by more losses.

The next coaster seems like its a long way off at the moment.
 
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Despite the fall in attendance, these figures are actually an improvement. It suggests that they have been able to effectively push up their revenue per capita figures, which when we look at the steep rise in parking charges and more modest rise in admission is not surprising.

At the end of the day, the park will obviously be dissapointed that Icon did not draw in the crowds, but I must say the marketing campaign was the most abysmal I have ever seen. However, the finance team can be pleased that they have managed to improve profitability despite this, so it's not all doom & gloom.
 
MakoMania said:
Despite the fall in attendance, these figures are actually an improvement. It suggests that they have been able to effectively push up their revenue per capita figures, which when we look at the steep rise in parking charges and more modest rise in admission is not surprising.
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The worrying thing is that this has given them a short term gain last season, but what damage has been done in the long term? There's far less free parking in the immediate area now, and with sky high charges at their own car park will that put people off those who visited in 2019 making a repeat visit this year? Rinsing existing guests is not a wise move when they really want extra numbers through the gates away from those peak days.

Terrorism, brexit and even weather is just a poor excuse at this point. Blackpool as a whole saw nearly 200,000 extra visitors last year on 2018, the fourth successive year of rises - what's stopping them visiting the Pleasure Beach?

I completely agree with other comments about marketing. It was great to see them involve enthusiasts so much at launch, but the campaign amongst the general public was extremely poor. There was a lot of style over substance with what I saw, very little that actually hyped the ride up to the public.
 
Icon is what as an enthusiast brought me to PB in the first place but none of my colleagues or even freinds living across the bay in Southport know about. The marketing was just so poor.

On the other hand virtually all of them have heard of or seen pictures of Wickerman and know it's at Towers
 
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