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Blackpool Pleasure Beach: General Discussion

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Roger Ramrod said:
Posted by RideRater:

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I thought that was the back entrance at first look. I had to check again when it was mentioned as the ride entrance.

It would of been better putting the queue entrance under the big sign.

I'm there next week for RCCGB Blackpool bash so hopefully I can get a better look at it and maybe a ride on it :-D
 
Teething problems already as the ride has broke before anyone has been on. Opening time was supposed to be ten and we're still waiting.

They're letting wristbands in straight after preview riders, much to the dismay of wristband guests who were upsold the preview tickets under the premise of it being the only way people could get on it today!

Not good!
 
I honestly thought that the entrance holes were for a new toilet block that had been installed on first glance. I now have the feeling that the majority of the facade other than the center will be incredibly bland from what I've seen so far. What a disappointing queue line to top it off, they could have gone to town with making this a nicely themed experience.

I look forward to reading everyone's reviews on here and the social mediums later :)
 
I wouldn't worry too much about the queue line - the cattle pen bit seems to be an extended queue line. On quiet days you'll just bypass it to the left: there's a rope at the entrance to divert the queue to the right into the pens or straight on to avoid them.
 
I've just been on the preview of Thrill-O-Matic.

It's a good ride in places. The scenes are good when you get to them but there are an excessive number of dark tunnels etc where nothing happens.

There's not really a story to it, it's a mish mash of random scenes with a few audio clashes in places. Like I say, it's good but lacks quite a lot.

There were a few issues with opening, in that we had to wait over an hour to get on. We were given two priority passes each in compensation, which isn't bad. The Manager explained to us that the delay was down to a computer fault on one of the cars. All was fixed in the end.
 
I rode it on Wednesday without a preview ticket! I really enjoyed the ride the theming is great and there is quite a lot of things happening in the maority of the scenes which makes the ride experience even better. I also decided to buy a stick of the cheese rock from the shop, I must say it is very nice but it doesn't taste like cheese... I'm not sure whether this was a good or a bad thing :p
 
I am very concerned as to how I'll take to this ride, having never watched W&G in my life. I do feel losing the Gold Mine which never would have got out of date as it was set in such a way it was never going to look outdated, was a odd call for the park to make, especially when there are other rides in greater need of a re-vamp IMO.

Ash
 
Well, erm, I'm not sure about this to be honest. Some very mixed reviews from all over the place.

UKRides have posted this POV of the ride: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLEgG0A0KCQ#ws

It doesn't look all that good from that, I'd go so far as to say that the goldmine was better. Not even sure that riding it would prove all that different either.

Also £7? Jesus christ no!
 
I'd debate that. From what I can see there it looks really good. Yes, it needs more scenes but for the money they've spent it's far better than say... Ice Age 4D?!

I'm tempted to drive the 140 miles to Blackpool just for this!
 
For the money they've spent, I'd ask for a refund if I were them. They've lost a good solid ride that attracted long queues on most days that I saw and replaced it with one that has a few far too static scenes and one good scare.

Will it be popular? Probably, it's a good solid IP but that doesn't mean it was a worthwhile investment.

In my opinion.
 
Hmm...

Now I'm not going to judge as these types of rides can't really be experienced just by watching a video, but I had hoped for something more original.

What they've done is just rehashed memorable scenes from the shorts and film in no particular order. I was expecting something like the Cracking Contraptions series with a story involving the Thrill-O-Matic. Clearly Aardman didn't have a lot of involvement with this (besides letting them use the IP) as I'm sure that's what we'd have got if they had been.
 
What I don't like after watching the POV is that it's a mash up of incoherent scenes with no real context. Unless you've watched every single Wallace & Gromit film, the ride will be lost on you. If anything they should have focused on one film and based the ride around that.

What's strange is they have one scene from The Wrong Trousers, then have scenes from A Close Shave and A Matter Of Loaf And Death, then have another scene from The Wrong Trousers, like they accidently put them in The Wrong Order.
 
Haven't ridden it so I can't judge it fully as of yet, however it seems to me that they've just pulled random scenes from W&G stories and shoved them together in an incoherent maner. When parks come up with rides like this it just seems really lazy to me and never really produces a final product worthy of a look in.

W&G has a wealth of oppourtunity that comes with it story wise and looking at that video, it just doesn't seem that they've used it to its full potential. Obviously I'll reserve full judgement until I've ridden it, however looking at that video I don't think I'll be impressed, which is a shame :/
 
The individual scenes look lovely, and the ride is in the dark ride tradition of ultimately just being random tableaux, but the whole thing seems pretty threadbare.
 
It needs a single WAG storyline rather than a mix of scenes from the films. That said the scene and animatronic quality is far better the CatCF at Towers.

It could just have done with fewer dead-spots and one story, all in all it looks okay though.
 
I think the criticism about the randomness of the scenes isn't really justified, it has no negative bearing on the ride for me and the public won't be interested in that. Everything looks well crafted and presented nicely but I think keeping the old ride system is slightly hampering to word spreading about the ride.
 
Tom said:
I think the criticism about the randomness of the scenes isn't really justified, it has no negative bearing on the ride for me and the public won't be interested in that.
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Maybe it won't have a negative impact but imagine how much better the ride would be if it actually built on the W&G world rather than just hacked existing bits off.

Personally I've never got how rides can get away with just showing random scenes yet not getting criticised for it (even Disney do it). Imagine if you went to see a film based on Hex (for the sake of reversing the argument) and they just showed a jumble of scenes involving a branch, old hag and rotating room before being kicked out of the theatre. You'd absolutely pan it! yet IP based rides do this all the time :/
 
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