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Pleasurewood Hills

Out of interest; for anyone who’s been, is there anything other than the coasters at Pleasurewood that’s worth prioritising?

As a credit counter, I’m definitely going to try and do all of the coasters (I don’t generally do kiddie creds, but Pleasurewood doesn’t look to have any overly “kiddie” focused coasters). I know there is also a drop tower, Jolly Roger, that I’d quite like to try (I’m a fan of a good drop tower!).

But other than that, I’m not too sure of what’s actually worth doing at Pleasurewood. I don’t know a huge amount about it beyond the coasters, if I’m being totally honest. I know it had some kind of dark ride at some stage, but I’m unsure if that’s still around.
 
Matt N said:
Out of interest; for anyone who’s been, is there anything other than the coasters at Pleasurewood that’s worth prioritising?

As a credit counter, I’m definitely going to try and do all of the coasters (I don’t generally do kiddie creds, but Pleasurewood doesn’t look to have any overly “kiddie” focused coasters). I know there is also a drop tower, Jolly Roger, that I’d quite like to try (I’m a fan of a good drop tower!).

But other than that, I’m not too sure of what’s actually worth doing at Pleasurewood. I don’t know a huge amount about it beyond the coasters, if I’m being totally honest. I know it had some kind of dark ride at some stage, but I’m unsure if that’s still around.
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I thought the log flume was quite good fun if youre into that sort of ride, but to be honest, there's not much else there worth prioritising if you don't have kids (in my opinion!).

Queues were pretty low for us so you should be able to get on everything there you wanted to.

Yes, the dark ride/shoot-em-up is still there. Worth a go, but not up to the standard of the bigger park shooters (naturally, it's only a smaller park, after all)
 
The decent dark ride they did have hobs pit was quickly changed to the laser shoot it is now....

They did have another yet this was also removed a good few years ago and sat in the area that now houses the waveswinger, parts of the trough are still visible if you know where to look !
 
Canonball Express is a great coaster but has terrible throughput. It's also rather unreliable given that it's an old ride. If it is open do it first as it gets the biggest ques at the park.

The log flume is good for what it is and the boomerang is retro fun. I'd bring a packed lunch as food ranges from poor to non existent
 
Ah yes the days of 5 cars available for the cannonball...its a good little unique coaster yet only has the one car these days the que is utterly painful even with the limited amount of visitors they get
 
Honestly, be there for opening, smash out the coasters and Jolly Roger, with Cannonball first. Be done for lunch, then grab a sarnie from Tesco/a Maccies across the road/chips in Yarmouth

EDIT: Been informed there's parrots and sealions if you like that sort of thing and I forgot the 2 trains
 
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Hadn't realised the old boat ride had gone. It was a decent ride considering. I'll always remember though when it was themed to Aladin and somehow the audio tracks had been mixed. Played the whole story out of sequence. So surreal.

Also 5 train operation on Canonball was well ahead of it's time. Can't believe its taken modern manufacturers until now to realise that block breaks don't need to be limited to flat uninteresting sections of track.
 
The parrot show has mysteriously disappeared for 2024 and like half the park and its units its now SBNO, leaving just the sealion show as the former castle theatre was mothballed years ago.

Think it was last used for a show when Sean Alexander had his magic and illusion show in there which was a brilliant addition. The underneath of the castle which was once a laser quest is now a permanently set up scaremaze they use for the October half term only.
 
We’ve just got back from a trip to deepest darkest East Anglia which included a couple of hours at PWH. The birds appear to have gone, the creds were there except marble madness which showed no signs of opening soon. We did the creds, the drop tower and the pirate ship, discovered the train wasn’t running and left to go to Ness Point and Lowestoft beach.

I would’ve been upset if I hadn’t used Tesco vouchers to get in. Staff were lovely but the park is in a sorry state.
 
It's only 10 days until my visit now... I'm guessing my chances of getting the Marble Madness credit are now slim to none, but if I were to have one cred closed at Pleasurewood Hills during my visit, I would easily have picked that one. I don't rate wild mouse coasters and I've done others with a nigh-on identical layout to Marble Madness, so if it had been open, it would probably have just been a one-and-done to get the credit and nothing more for me.

I'd have been much more sad if Cannonball Express or Wipeout was closed (as much as Wipeout is a very common layout, I've somehow never actually done a traditional Vekoma Boomerang before...)!

Out of interest @Alix, what did you make of Pleasurewood's operating creds? I've heard some very good things about Cannonball Express!
 
@Matt N erm. I thought wipeout was the best thing there and it wasn’t great.

I know there’s a lot of love for Schwarzkopf here but I prefer rides that don’t try to throw me out sideways just before the brake run so it was a one and done from me for Cannonball.

Egg Express was just painful. And so loud it set off the “hearing protection” feature on my watch.

I would have re ridden Wipeout but the chimp put her foot down. The beach was calling her.
 
For those interested, Marble Madness did not look like it’s going to open any time soon when I was at Pleasurewood earlier today. The ride is fully assembled, with a fetching purple colour scheme, but they’re in the middle of building some elaborate-looking station that looks nowhere near finished:
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There weren’t even any workmen there most of the time; there might have been one at one stage, but other than that, the site looked completely still for most of the day. Pleasurewood claims that it’s opening in “summer 2024”, but I’ll honestly be shocked if it opens this season seeing as “summer” is almost over and it looks nowhere near finished.

In other news, I visited Pleasurewood Hills for the first time today, and I’m sorry to say that I was quite underwhelmed overall. I think I’d say that it’s my least favourite semi-major UK park I’ve visited, and I’ve been to most of the notable names now.

To be completely fair, I may not be the ideal demographic for Pleasurewood; it looked like a park that you’d get more out of with young children, as there seemed to be quite a lot for younger guests. And if I’m being positive, it was not a badly kept park in some areas; small bits of it looked quite fresh and well maintained, and my initial impression upon first entering was actually quite positive. Looping Group are clearly putting some ongoing effort into aesthetics and sprucing things up, and I think the park could look really nice in time if this continues.

But when you got further in and delved a bit deeper, I found things got a lot weaker.

My first issue was that when you scratch the surface, it becomes abundantly clear that the park lacks things to do for my demographic. My favourite ride there was Jolly Roger, which was an absolutely excellent drop tower to be fair (I love a good drop tower, and I rode this 3 times!), but in terms of the headline coasters, I found the park’s selection quite weak. Compared to a dynamic duo like, say, Megafobia and Speed at Oakwood, Cannonball Express and Wipeout just do not hold a candle to that for me. My favourite coaster there was actually Egg-Spress, the Zierer Tivoli Large, which I feel speaks volumes. We were done at Pleasurewood in less than 3 hours, and I felt quite content that I’d completed the offering sufficiently to leave the park at that time. In fairness, though, that could be attributable to me not visiting with young children and being the wrong demographic, and that’s fair enough.

My second issue, and possibly one that is less easily explained away by me being the wrong demographic, is that as much as I said above about bits of Pleasurewood looking quite well maintained, many other large swathes of the park were in complete contrast to this and looked utterly abandoned. There were husks of old rides stood dormant, there were theatres that looked derelict, there were food stands and shops closed, and on the whole, I have never been to a park where quite such considerable parts of it just look blatantly abandoned. They may sort this out in time, but right now, these considerable derelict areas do not make a good impression at all.

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed my time at Pleasurewood Hills and I’m glad I visited, but I’m sorry to say that it’s not a park I would make specific effort to return to any time soon in the absence of new major investment. For me, the lack of any overly compelling headline draws, as well as the decrepitude of quite considerable parts of it, make me struggle to justify returning, particularly when I live 260 miles, and a 4.5 hour drive on a very good run, away from it.

For those interested in more details, here’s my trip report from the day: https://towersstreet.com/talk/threa...-joyland-pleasurewood-hills.7285/#post-478854

On a side note, that new parking system is also a bit of a faff! It took my mum and dad about 15 minutes to get it sorted, and it kept experiencing errors…
 
There's no way it will open for 2024, perhaps Halloween week at best...

Totally ludicrous its been out all season... the track or certainly most of it returned with its new paint job over the Xmas break 2023 ! They clearly had no intention of getting it done, it was half built and left for a good few weeks.

Large areas of the park are camelot VIBES they look shocking, thing is that's the first impressions given out...

Loopings have done nothing yet take things away over the last 10 years and turned a lot of stuff SBNO.

It's awful, locally here it's reputation is laughable.

Ps I've no idea why VIBES is in capitals
 
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