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Pleasurewood Hills

Flamingo Land is going knowhere and niether is Oakwood. LWV and Pleasurewood are the parks most at risk and you can chuck in M&Ds in Scotland if anyone still cares about that one.

It's more likely Pleasurewood would get sold off by Looping before it closes down. I'd be sadder to see it go than Light water Valley.
 
Weekend operating hours have been cut by a hour to 4pm instead of 5pm for some of the season and even weekdays too.

Another nail in the coffin for the park.

I suspect this will be down to forecasted attendance or simply cost cutting.

Back in the day it would operate 10 till 6pm at peak season ( this was quietly removed years ago ) 5pm was then always the main even at the start of this season 2023
 
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I've seen the place deserted at 4:15 on a weekend like this before. Could be heaving at 12 and dead by 4...
 
Well if the truth that was on the Drayton Manor topic that the looping group just operate the Pleasure wood hills theme park it would explain the lack of new rides at the park.
 
At pleasurewood hills today for the first time in what must be 30 years. They have wierd rides. I'm like Jack Skeleton in Christmasland.

What's this?
20230901_120136.jpg

What's this?
IMG-20230901-WA0003.jpg
 
Pleasurewood Hills is one of the main semi-major UK parks I still haven’t visited.

I’m sure it’s a perfectly nice park, but it’s absolutely miles away from me (it takes 4.5 hours on a good run and is over 250 miles away in driving distance, and on public transport, it takes comfortably over 6 hours to get to and costs comfortably over £100 even with a railcard), and if I’m being honest, the major draws aren’t overly compelling given the distance required to get there.

I’m sorry if that makes me sound overly presumptive, but as much as Wipeout would be intriguing to ride just so I can finally go on a traditional Vekoma Boomerang, I can ride a Vekoma Boomerang in other parks with more compelling coaster lineups, and other than that, there isn’t much there in the way of major draws.

I don’t know how accurate this is, but as someone who’s never been, it kind of reminds me of Oakwood if it had weaker major coasters. Don’t get me wrong, I do have a soft spot for Oakwood, and I think it’s a real hidden gem of a park, but it is definitely made by its two big thrill coasters, in my view. It would be a considerably less compelling proposition to me if it didn’t have Megafobia and Speed, and given that Pleasurewood has less unique and arguably less compelling major coasters than either of those two rides, I must say that it’s not a park I’m making huge plans to visit any time soon due to the distance relative to the headliners it offers.

I could be wrong, and I could be overly dismissive of the park based purely on its RCDB file, but that’s just my take on it.
 
pleasurewood is in a great location with bags of space for new rides but it never seems to get the investment it needs.
 
venny said:
Whilst I agree the photo is t a great look, as Rob says it is the sight of a new development, which despite many naysayers, I think is more than likely going to be delivered. The government provided funding for the relocation of the courts from that building around 6 months ago and that’s why it now sits looking quite abandoned.

Blackpool is certainly a place of high deprivation and some pretty sure street scenes if you search them out. However, I can’t agree that such pictures are a true representation of the whole town and indeed there are some other exciting developments around the town which are improving things. I would highly recommend having a look around the area of St John’s church square, which now has a whole host of very good restaurants and bars spilling out onto a beautiful square overlooking the church, Winter Gardens and Tower in the background. The new food market has opened behind, which seems to be proving popular and the renovated street scene on Edward Street is also very well done. The old post office which faces onto that has also recently gained funding for redevelopment into a hotel, which I expect will rejuvenate what is a beautiful building.

It’s not all bad and we should be careful of reinforcing the stereotypes attached to the town when there are actually some pretty commendable development occurring.
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Mattie boy said:
The parent group have no intention to invest , all the money goes into drayton
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Wouldn't be surprised to see it sold off in the not too distant future. I do still love cannonball Express though
 
Yes cannonball is unique and is quite a good coaster ,just with one car now the throughput is horrific
 
Mini report.

The park is certainly not without its faults; there are large areas abandoned from my youth like the whole western stuntshow area and the castle theatre, loads of little pockets of land the same, some quite prominent like by the carousel, the old car track, amd worst of all the derelict train carriage that look awful.

And the capacity of some of the rides is atrocious, 4 cars on the marble, one on cannonball, one on boomerang (lol), and everything is pretty casually run.

But we still had a great day. Cannonball is brutal and my 4 year old thought it was the best thing ever. The shooter is actually really well done, the circus is decent enough and certainly more entertainment than you'll get in any Merlin parks, and despite the ops and the park being pretty busy no queue was more than 20 mins or so.

The circus was popular, about 400 in there in my estimation and seemed to go down well. Food was loaded fries with pulled pork for £6 and to be fair was decent enough andbdidnt feel like a con. Bottled drinks at over £3 did though.

Overall it was a lot of fun and is definitely worth a visit for the odd and classic creds.
 
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In terms of investment, I think one relative problem that Pleasurewood suffers compared to Drayton is that it is in far more of a remote location for the vast majority of the country and has a far lower population within the immediate vicinity, so investing loads into Pleasurewood to try and expand it may not be justifiable from a business standpoint due to it having a smaller captive audience.

Drayton Manor is arguably one of the best, if not the best, located park in the UK. Being sited in Tamworth, it has the entire Birmingham Metropolitan Area, the UK’s second largest urban sprawl behind only London to my knowledge, on its doorstep. The biggest population centres in the North, such as Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds and Sheffield, are less than 2 hours’ drive away and in the ballpark of 100 miles or less in terms of distance. Bristol, another of the UK’s biggest cities, is also less than 2 hours’ drive away and in the 100 miles ballpark for distance. Even parts of North and West London are in a similar boat of only being under 2 hours or roughly 100 miles away, and I’d wager that most of London is probably under 3 hours from it. I could keep reeling off places all day, but my point is that Drayton Manor is a very, very well located park with a large potential audience within reasonably close range, so it has more expansion potential and investment into it is more justifiable.

By comparison, Pleasurewood Hills is located about as far east as it gets, in a fairly remote part of the Suffolk coast. The nearest major conurbation is seemingly Norwich, which isn’t a particularly large population centre compared to some of the significant heavyweights located near Drayton Manor, and the largest places within that 2 hour/100 mile radius are also less significant population centres like Cambridge and Colchester rather than huge heavyweight cities like the ones surrounding Drayton Manor. In the interests of fairness, parts of East London like Barking and Dagenham and Havering can seemingly reach Pleasurewood Hills within about 2.5 hours, but much of London will be more than 3 hours from it, and most of the big heavyweights will also be more than 3 hours from it. Unlike Drayton, Pleasurewood Hills does not have Birmingham or Bristol or all those huge Northern cities within a 2 hour radius, and that will have a big effect on its potential audience. And the park having a lower potential audience will ultimately mean that huge investment into it will have lower potential returns and will be less justifiable from a business standpoint.

I get that East Anglia is a seaside destination, but for a park to be a big success and be worth investing in, you probably want a big captive audience year-round, and seaside areas like East Anglia only really provide a big captive audience during peak tourism season like the summer holidays.
 
The circus is good and fills in yet another empty plot yet its only there for the main 6weeks, so back to another empty plot next weekend when it's packed up and shipped off
 
It's been so long since my last visit I'd have no idea what investment or presentation would be down to current or past owners, but I don't think I'd say the park is currently neglected.

The things that appeared more recent seemed well done; the pony ride, the shooter, the drop tower. Oh, didn't mention the drop tower earlier, it's a bloody good one. The whole place seemed quite clean and tidy with excellent reliability, so I dont think they are skimpimg on general running costs.

Also, the circus must amount to quite an investment over the course of a whole summer season, the set up and employment of 15 or so performers to do a show twice a day won't be insubstantial. It might not be hardwear, but it is investment into the park to improve people's day out.

Do we really know that they are not interested in putting money into the park, or is it an assumption based on people not seeing enough change as quickly as they'd like to?
 
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