Coaster

As someone who never rode the original (unfortunately), I quite liked Bubbleworks and will be sad to see it go. Also, the prospect of an IP doesn't exactly fill me with enthusiasm.

That's a shame (and a huge shame that it'll be SBNO, seems to be a common theme for UK parks at the moment!), I really hope the replacement is a coaster otherwise they will be down to three.

I would hope for 3 boat operation on a day like this!

Does anyone know if Ghost Train has a transfer track on the system? So they could take a train off if they wanted/needed to?

They've extended to 7pm.

The queue times!! https://queue-times.com/parks/2/queue_times Not great that Stealth is closed, let's hope they get it open and on capacity at some point today.

That's fantastic customer service, great stuff from Thorpe!

Two are during summer, and some are during September/October I think. Summer Nights is a completely different concept as the park empties first, however with BPB's 10pm closes the day wristbands are still valid, but they get a second wave of custom when the reduced price wristbands go on sale at 4pm. I've been there on two of these and both times the park was busy, and it got even busier after 4pm. I'm not suggesting they run an event everyday but one or two a week during summer and at least every Saturday during the illuminations would be realistic IMO.

When it was free entry they would regularly be open until 2am during the summer and illuminations periods - this is going back years though, I never got to experience it! The thing is, they run five 10pm closes a year with reduced wristbands after 4pm and they are all popular, surely that shows that there is demand for late night opening?

Yes! The South Pier (opposite the PB) stays open late into the night when Blackpool is busy and does a huge trade, a lot of this is people heading down to the Pleasure Beach only to find it closed/closing in a few hours, therefore they head over to the pier instead. I think BPB forget that they are a seaside park competing with the rest of Blackpool's attractions rather than an inland park, people don't always want to do full days there and if the park was open later and offered a reduced wristband after a certain time I'm sure it would be successful (as proved by the rare occasions where they do run such a system!) This article is amusing; http://www.blackpoolgazette.co.uk/our-region/blackpool/attractions-at-loggerheads-over-re-siting-of-ride-1-7995000 If BPB are worried about a travelling log flume taking away their trade then that says it all!

But with the park's location there is potential to make money way after 8pm - so closing as early as 7pm when it's busy is madness.

BPB have reduced their opening hours for the rest of the year. Basically, any days that were 8pm (summer holidays and October half term) are now 7pm, and a lot of 6pm days are now 5pm. The website says that they may extend if there is demand, and calls the closing time the "earliest ride close time", however from what I've heard today was a busy day with nice weather yet they didn't extend. Pleasure Beach has changed and it's only getting worse.

Any news on this new dark ride? Thought it was supposed to be opening in the summer but it's all gone very quiet.

Duel should absolutely not be removed as the hardware and potential is there for it to be a fantastic dark ride once again, it just needs some work.

One of the biggest issues for me is that on a ride so reliant on VR, if a headset doesn't work then there's pretty much no point being on the ride. Compare that to traditional dark rides, where if one effect fails it doesn't ruin the rest of the ride.

Well it's already better than The Big Top (the actual maze, not the advert) so a solid 7.

It does seem very early to start Fright Nights advertising based on earlier years, but I guess with no summer event it makes sense to start advertising it earlier.

Issues with the headsets again at the end of yesterday, the staff were better at dealing with it though which was good.

Park operations were good today. All coasters were on capacity from the start (apart from X), and whilst some opened slightly late I'd rather that than them starting on one train and building up a queue. Operations on Stealth were great, however Inferno was stacking a lot which caused the queue to build up straight away. Finally, the staff were fantastic, all very friendly and interacting with the customers which is great! Overall, a big improvement on previous visits, let's hope Thorpe can keep this up!

That's why I stopped visiting for a while, but by Thorpe's standards it has actually been a very good day today.

I was there on Monday and back again today, good to be back after not visiting for a while!

Group of idiots ruined the experience today - shouting all the way through the preshow and screaming like idiots the whole time (so loud I could hear it despite having the headphones on)!

Great operations on Stealth earlier today - staff were working quickly and the ride op was giving guests in the queue instructions to speed up the loading process. As a result the queue only took 20 minutes from a point where I've waited 40+ before!

Ghost Train was a mess at the end of the day today. Lots of people were complaining that their headsets weren't working, including me and my group as some were slanted, and one of mine was showing a black and white screen. The third time I got one that worked to an extent, however it was glitchy and a bar kept appearing on the screen. This caused us (and others) to have to move around to different seats once the sequence had already started meaning that we missed out on some of it. As well as this, some headsets are broken (already!) as the headphones had come partly unattached from the mask. I have concerns about the long term future of this attraction considering that it's having these issues already. I'm also not sure how many different versions there are - I've now been on three times and had the same thing each time (apart from the first character being a woman the first time and a man both times today), and the people I was with said they had the same thing as well on both rides today. It's already losing the re-rideability factor for me.

When there is a queue of hundreds of guests waiting to enter the park, and there are nine booths on each side (so 18) in total, I consider it a complete joke to only have 3 booths open per side! Took us 40 minutes to get to the front of the queue (as we were with someone who didn't have a MAP) meaning we basically lost the first hour, which would have been the only quiet time due to school trips! On the plus side, they kept the coasters and Ghost Train open until 5:30pm.