Blackpool Pleasure Beach 10th April Trip Report

[MattC]

Not sure how many of you are interested in this particular park, but I figured I'd make my first worthy contribution to this site with a big, juicy trip report

 

Today my family and me headed down to Blackpool for a nice little day out. It was a little blustery out, with the odd bit of drizzle but you wouldn't have known it with the amount of people at BPB. We arrived at around 12 noon, and began browsing the queues immediately. Queues in what appeared to be excess of an hour and a half for Valhalla indicated that this was going to be a very busy day.

 

Our first ride was Derby Racer, as we noticed it had a very small queue. Quite thrilling for what it is, but not exactly great.

 

The second ride was a biggy for me. I'd never ridden PMBO before, but I was determined to get on it, before the credit crunch bits on BPB. Our train was stopped halfway up the hill, whilst they carried on a 'routine' safety check on the wheels of the train on the end break run. After around 5 minutes, our ride resumed. Going over the drop was a great feeling, and something I'll never forget. I know this ride gets criticised a lot for being a mediocre hyper coaster, but I don't have anything else to compare it to.

 

After that it was around 2:30pm (prior PMBO we spent a lot of time dawdling deciding which ride to go on) so we decided to go and have some lunch. We picked the little row of fast food bars beside Infusion (which I sadly didn't get on although I've ridden it before). I don't know whether it was the timing or the location but it took just under 45 minutes to get 3 portions of chips and 2 hot dogs. The food was alright, but what angered me more was the fact that they had 3 or 4 staff standing behind one of the bars, opening buns very slowly, the next adding the sausage etc. Customer satisfaction obviously wasn't on the forefront of these staff member's minds.

 

After lunch we headed over to Grand National. It had opened late, although I'm not sure why, I did see the trains stuck on the lift hill with no one on them. It was roughly a half an hour queue, which was alright but I would've rather waited a little less time. One thing that did annoy me was that how long it took to load and send off a train. The people sat in the cars for 2 or 3 minutes while the staff stood there handing people bags from the shelves. Surely they could be sending off the trains that are waiting?

 

Next we decided to have a wander and see which rides had short queue. We approached Big Dipper and Infusion, only to see that Infusion had a (guesstimation) line of 1 and half hours. Whilst the ride's fun, I'd rather not wait that long. So of course, we headed to Big Dipper. The queue was 10 minutes which I felt was very reasonable, as I also got the front seat . I'd forgotten how much I like this ride, and the small pops of airtime it offers (something which I felt PMBO lacked).

 

After doing all the woodies we could, we headed for Steeplechase, for new credit #2. This ride is very quirky, but the quirkiness is matched by the roughness. My hips were aching quite a bit after getting off this ride, although I did enjoy it.

 

Something to note after leaving Steeplechase, Iron Bru was broken down, and the car was on the opposite side to the station. This was around 4:30pm, although I believe it was up and running again within the hour.

 

The second to last ride of the day was a complete waste of time. In a complete vain and naive attempt to try and replace Valhalla, we rode...River Caves. The queue looked a lot shorter than it was. At first glimpse it appeared to be around 5, 10 minutes maximum. We ended up waiting 20 minutes, and I swear I fell asleep listening to that bloke rambling on about the beginning of time in some love tunnels or something. I'm surprised no-body has committed suicide on this ride, because the theming and music is very depressing. We also had to queue for the last drop. Yes we had to queue in the boats, to go down this measly drop which gets you as wet as a lemon wipe from a restaurant.

 

As we were leaving, we meandered past the wild mouse. I love this ride and hadn't had a chance to ride it today, due to the massive queue it had. Due to it being so late in the day (5:30pm) the queue was around 20 minutes. I was more than happy to hop into the queue, to get my fill of airtime and out of control danger

 

Overall a fantastic day was had by all, and there is no sign of BPB going down the pan yet. The credit crunch hadn't put a stop to the religious outings of the many locals and foreingers a like. The queues were frustrating, but I felt we got on enough rides to allow me to have my fill till I go to Florida in the Summer (and Alton Towers before then). Apologies about the lack of photos, but my mobile doesn't take good quality pictures and I don't have a digital camera.

[DandAyr]

well Friday was a bank holiday in England, so some longer queues could only be expected at any theme park that day.

 

Blackpool will be our first park of the season - Thursday next week. Shall see what the crowds are like then - and if the number of rides not opening up having a negative impact or not.

[MattC]

I don't feel it made that much of a difference, as all of the rides had a consistently long queue. Some rides looked like they had long queues i.e. big dipper, but thanks to the ride ops the queue moved really fast. Another thing I did notice was lots of queue jumping, mainly from Chavs.

[DandAyr]

well Thursday 16th April it was busy and a day of queues.

it was not helped with the number of rides that are not opening, nor by opening the park at 10.30 but both Valhalla and Grand National both had later opening (11.30) and also had closing times earlier than the other rides.

 

Big Dipper was eating up the queues, as was the Big One. Grand National was painfully slow thruput. First time on Infusion - not sure why some folk criticise it, did not cause head banging, restraints are fine and has enough elements to be interesting.

 

Our previous visit was October School holiday a couple of seasons ago and we rode everything we wanted multiple times, helped by the park extending opening on the day by a couple of hours. This time during the school Easter holiday, we did not even get round to some of the rides with the shorter hours and no on the day extension.

 

Still had a great day, but so sad to see rollercoaster just sitting idle, same with Noahs Ark, not so bothered about Space Invader2.

[LuckyRickie]

When u said irn bru was broken down in the report, i was on that train at the front