I visited Blackpool Pleasure Beach once this year, in August. I had visited the park before, for 2 days in 2019, but because we were travelling the UK and we had only visited once previously, it was in my list of parks I wanted to visit in 2020. The park is definitely more of a seaside amusement park but by no means has a weak lineup! From new age steel monster Icon, to the famous Arrow Hyper Big One to classic woodies like Big Dipper and Grand National, this park has it all! It took me 2 trips to get all the credits at the park, but only one of them was on the second trip (red rail on steeplechase). I really like pleasure beach for its variety of rides and the retro design of the park. It has 10 coasters and a nice collection of other rides including lots of dark rides and water rides.
One of the first steel coasters at the park was The Big One, an Arrow Hyper coaster. Now it is over 25 years old, it has gotten very rough, but over the past closed seasons, the worst areas of the track have been replaced, leading to the ride having a much nicer experience than it did a few years ago, but still feeling like a classic coaster. It is a very different coaster to any others in the UK. I really enjoy the ride experience which offers a nice variety of height, speed, forces and airtime.
My favourite coaster at the park is Icon (a Mack Launch coaster), the parks newest coaster. It is the UK's only double launch coaster, and although the launches aren't very fast, they interact well with the smoke (when it is on) and are relatively forceful providing speed for the rest of the layout. It only features 1 inversion - a barrel roll / in-line twist which leads to the coaster not really being the major thrill coaster we all expected, but I think it was all they really had the space for as Icon is in an incredibly small footprint.
Of the other coasters on park, there are 4 Wooden coasters: Grand national- an incredibly rough wooden racing coaster, Big Dipper- a very very old wooden coaster featuring a simple layout, Nickelodeon Streak- A family coaster previously known as just 'Roller Coaster' and Blue Flyer- a family wooden coaster previously known as 'Zipper Dipper'. There are 4 other steel coasters- Avalanche, Infusion, Revolution and Steeplechase. Avalanche is one of 2 bobsleds I've been on (the other being Trace Du Hourra at Parc Asterix) and it's probably my least favourite of the 2. Don't get me wrong, I like Avalanche, and a bobsled is a perfect fit for Pleasure Beach - doesn't take up too much space, has a good mid range height restriction of 132cm. But the layout isn't great and doesn't really do much. The next coaster is Infusion, I mean it's an SLC what is there to say- it's really rough 90% of the time and really photogenic 100% of the time😂. It filled a nice gap in the parks lineup in being a Suspended/Inverted coaster I just wish they hadn't gone for and SLC especially this recently as there are now so many better coaster models. But, it was second hand from Southport Pleasureland so they probably wouldn't have been able to afford anything else.
The last 2 coasters at the park are classics- Revolution and steeplechase. Both old steel coasters that were ground-breaking at the time and are now just.. enjoyable. Neither are especially forceful or airtime full but are very fun and perfect for the park.
There aren't many flat rides at the park- the main 2 being Red Arrows Skyforce and Ice Blast. They're not great, but are quite different to other flats in the UK. My favourite part of Blackpool Pleasure Beach is it's collection of Water and Dark Rides including Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Valhalla, River Caves, Ghost Train and Wallace and Gromit's Thrill-o-matic. My favourite of these is Valhalla, my favourite UK water ride. it has great theming, an incredible soundtrack and amazingly long layout of forwards and backwards drops.
Nickelodeon Land is the children's area of the park. It is one to the 2 family wooden coasters, a large range of kids and family flat rides themed to Nickelodeon shows and 2 water rides: Rugrats log flume - an absolute soaker of a log flume😂 and Dora's world voyage, a boat ride around scenes. All the rides in this area feature extensive theming and set pieces, but, as with most rides at Blackpool, newt to none have a storyline. In the future, I would like to see them extend this area with a steel kiddie coaster with a storyline. But in general, for the huge variety of rides, I really like the area.
Blackpool Pleasure Beach is a well themed park with a nice lineup of coasters and dark and water rides. In the future, I would like to see them get more flat rides as well as a real 1.4 coaster that goes upside down that isn't and SLC... In total, I would give the park a score of 4/5.
Cleo
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