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:
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…
