Great Yarmouth Pleasure Beach - Sun 24th May 2015 PTR

[Coaster]

PARK OPEN: 11am - 8pm

RIDES CLOSED: None! 

 

Great Yarmouth Pleasure Beach is a good amusement park, it takes advantage of walking trade with ride tokens as well as wristbands, and the 8pm close was good.  It's worth noting that it poured down with rain from 1pm - 5pm which cleared out the park, but despite it being absolutely dead in the afternoon, they still stayed open until 8pm rather than closing early - BPB take note!

 

Obviously the park isn't full of high quality theme park attractions, but it's an amusement park and doesn't pretend to be anything else.  The atmosphere is fantastic with music playing on several of the attractions and the park bustling with life (well, until the rain).

 

 

This was our first visit to the park so here's a review of some of the attractions;

 

The wooden roller coaster (which I think is simply called "Roller Coaster") is fantastic fun.  Don't expect anything on the level of BPB's woodies, but some of the drops are great and I got a lot of airtime at some points on the back.  The fact that the ride isn't actually attached to the rails and requires a breakman to sit on the train adds to the thrill, as well as making it unique.  It's great to see parks maintaining wooden coasters, this one in particular dates back to 1928 and is still going strong today.

 

Evolution is fantastic, it leaves you hanging upside-down for ages whilst spinning and swinging, I've never been on anything quite like it but I really enjoyed it.  From watching the ride it looked slow, boring and uncomfortable, but it's now my favourite flat ride, taking over from Slammer at Thorpe.

 

Haunted Hotel is an enjoyable ghost train.  There is lots of scenery but unfortunately it is let down by poor lighting meaning that you can barely see any of it under normal lighting conditions of the ride.  I hate attractions that do that, I don't see the point in having scenery if you can't see it.  

Thankfully the ride op kindly let us ride with the lights on, meaning that we could see everything and it was much better.

I wouldn't have ridden it so many times but I really felt awful towards the end of the day so it was a break from the other rides.

 

This log flume is evil!  It's good fun but the second drop (which is tiny) goes straight into a corner with a tiny splash zone, therefore the person at the front (which was me) gets absolutely drenched as a whole wave of water comes over the side!  Also, the splash on the final drop sailed straight past everyone and landed straight on the person at the back, who said it "was like having two buckets of water thrown at you." 

It's still a great log flume, and in the right weather would be really good.

 

Family Star is a spinning coaster which I rate higher than Magic Mouse at Brean, it was good and the fact that it spins throughout the whole layout makes it better.  Very odd name though!

 

Whirlwind is a new spinning coaster which was tiny, but was still enjoyable considering that and a good kiddie coaster.

 

RIDECOUNT:

Roller Coaster x13

Haunted Hotel x8

Family Star x3

Evolution x2

Whirlwind x2

Waltzer x2 

Fun House x2

Dodgems x2

Snail Ride x2

Mulan x2

Log Flume x1 (The tiny drop is deceptive!  It goes straight into a corner meaning that the person at the front gets soaked!)

Sky Drop x1

Monorail x1

Big Apple x1 

4D Cinema x1

Freefall (mini spinning drop tower) x1

Twister x1

TOTAL: 45

 

Photos!

Most of these were taken after park close.

 

Roller Coaster, this is great fun;

 

 

 

 

The ride on the right is Whirlwind;

 

Haunted Hotel;

 

Evolution, an amazing flat ride;

 

We also had a brief visit to Joyland (about a mile away from the Pleasure Beach) and went on The Snails, Tubs ride and Spook Express (£1 per ride) which were a bit hilarious!

Although I'm not joking when I say that I got airtime on the snails!   

 

Thanks for reading.