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Blackpool Pleasure Beach - Potential New Attraction on Trauma Towers Spot

A certain lady was going round telling all and sundry that she expected the park attendance to double this year. I heard this from park staff, managers and concession staff, repeatedly.
It hasn't happened, attendance may have increased marginally, but this summer has been much drier and warmer than any for at least a decade...
I don't think Icon has made much difference at all to park gate figures.
I go at least once every week, the park has not had a significant increase in visitors this year, it has been nothing like as busy as I expected with a major new attraction.
I would say Nickland was a better magnet for new punters...dragging more young families in, and grandparents taking little ones to the park on school days.
Back to school time has seen Icon coping on one train...not what I expected at all.
 
I'm probably alone here, but I seriously can't see what the point is of putting in a Mack Big Dipper just two years after Icon. There's no way it would be able to be able to match the excitement there was for Icon, and without much of a USP, I can't see how a Big Dipper would be able to draw back the crowds Icon attracted. I imagine anyone who hadn't been to PB for years before going back for Icon wouldn't be rushing back to the park for a Big Dipper just two years later, even if it is a great model of ride.

From the looks of something like Lost Gravity, it looks like a coaster the GP would say, " that doesn't look anywhere near as good as Icon, there's no point going back for that". Wait a couple of years, and a few flat rides/family rides later, and a Big Dipper would have much more hype around it, simply because it's the first new rollercoaster in X amount of years.

The park needs another good flat, possibly something along the lines of the giant, 170ft+ frisbees Six Flags are putting in.
 
rob666 said:
A certain lady was going round telling all and sundry that she expected the park attendance to double this year. I heard this from park staff, managers and concession staff, repeatedly.
It hasn't happened, attendance may have increased marginally, but this summer has been much drier and warmer than any for at least a decade...
I don't think Icon has made much difference at all to park gate figures.
I go at least once every week, the park has not had a significant increase in visitors this year, it has been nothing like as busy as I expected with a major new attraction.
I would say Nickland was a better magnet for new punters...dragging more young families in, and grandparents taking little ones to the park on school days.
Back to school time has seen Icon coping on one train...not what I expected at all.
Click to expand...
Before Icon opened, I thought the park would do well if they got an 8% increase off the back of Icon. To think that Icon would double attendance is ridiculous, Harry Potter is the biggest new thing to happen in the theme park industry for a long time and that increased attendance at IOA by around 30%.

I think if people were expecting a massive attendance increase based on Icon there is a slight bit of delusion at play. I recall certain people were predicting 2 hour queues all summer and throughout the rest of the season, that was just never ever going to happen in this universe :p. Comparisons with PMBO's opening don't work, it's a whole different ball game now.

I have been saying for years that a new coaster at Pleasure Beach would not pull in people like they do at Towers, there is just too much stigma (largely undeserved I might add) around Blackpool and BPB for a new ride to appeal to a broad enough audience.

Doesn't help that the marketing campaign around Icon has been the worst I have ever seen for any new ride launch.

Nickelodeon is different, it's an IP and IPs work wonders.
 
It would only be a headline grabber with tallest/fastest/etc. that would get people back to the park in big numbers. BPB always needs to find a balance between looking after the heritage and grabbing the headlines - and getting rid of The Mouse and building Icon is possibly the worst of both worlds in that respect. It's a decent ride that enthusiasts like that has no USP, and nothing that would make Joe Bloggs get in a car in the Midlands and drive up to Blackpool.

The fact that the park have worked on refreshing its lineup in recent years will keep it ticking along rather than providing a giant boost in numbers. Enthusiasts may hate the Big One, but what a bargain it was - permanently changing the skyline of the town, creating a real icon (sorry) and generating enough hype to bring in a decade's worth of custom. It cost about the same as Icon when you factor in inflation.

The next ride at the Pleasure Beach should be a headline pleaser. **** it, build a 400 foot drop tower. The public will go for that and it will be on the telly all the time. How much do they cost? Not that much I bet. Build decent rides, but build stat-breaking ****e as well. That's how the park will survive.

By the way - regarding the stigma around the town. If you think Blackpool is a dump, that the people are chavs etc - don't come. Take your snobbery somewhere else. If Blackpool is rubbish - at LEAST it's rubbish and not just a vacuum like the places many of the critics come from. I'd rather be from there than some Barratt home, cul-de-sac, Ford Focus in the driveway hellhole, populated by people with Estuary English accents where the vowels dribble down their shirts like warm baby sick.

Anyway, bet the markings are for an event.
 
sandgrown said:
By the way - regarding the stigma around the town. If you think Blackpool is a dump, that the people are chavs etc - don't come. Take your snobbery somewhere else. If Blackpool is rubbish - at LEAST it's rubbish and not just a vacuum like the places many of the critics come from. I'd rather be from there than some Barratt home, cul-de-sac, Ford Focus in the driveway hellhole, populated by people with Estuary English accents where the vowels dribble down their shirts like warm baby sick.
Click to expand...

I mean, it is a bit of a ****hole though isn't it?

Agree with some of the posts above, it's something I covered in my dissertation too about the strength of IP's and strong branding in pulling guests in.

Also something we've covered on here loads is the UK market; I've been sceptical from the off in that Icon and Wickerman aren't going to have a huge impact on changing the perception of the GP away from OH EM GEE WORLDS FIRST I MUST GO NOW, which seems to be the only way to install something that will have a noticeable impact on attendances. I hoped I was wrong because it would see a shift away from gimmicks and towards quality rides being built instead.
 
Anyone who says anything bad about Blackpool can get prepared for the salt mines when the revolution comes. I hope you all like Siberia.
 
Soooo... these markings, then. I have no clue and I have no opinion on what they are, but what I do have is a question: exactly how big is this Trauma Towers site? In other words, if it is for a new ride, what could fit in the space? I mean, if it's only 30ft square then it ain't gonna be no Lost Gravity clone, right?
 
Exactly that...about 30 foot square.
The big coaster rumour suggests that bit, and the Bowladrome and car park behind it, so a much bigger area overall.
 
With regards to Icon not bringing that many guests, I'm gonna put it down to it's marketing because the marketing budget was tiny when compared to something like Wicker Man as well as the fact the marketing didn't really explain what it actually was that well, heck even the poster for the ride just had a CGI image created in photoshop with the name of the ride on and "Blackpool Pleasure Beach" in a white font at the bottom and the marketing which explained it was the "UK's first multi launch coaster" was on sites with Google Ads and TV channels like E4 where not a lot of the target audience will see it.

TL;DR If you have the world's best cake you could make millions from it but it means nothing if you spend $0 on advertising it effectively.
 
this thread is literally just a bunch of british males chatting more breeze then my ass passes after a hefty curry
 
I think there's a number of factors that can be attributed to Icon not being as successful as hoped, ranging from poor marketing, fairly hefty price increases park-wide (despite not actually offering any more attractions than last year) and the... discourteous removal of one of the best coasters on the planet. The original TV advert was clever but didn't really showcase the ride, nor include people (generally people respond well to a "human" element in ads, hence most of Alton's showing people on the ride etc). By the time they'd done the cut-and-paste ride footage one, it was sort-of too late.
 
Coaster said:
The original TV advert was clever but didn't really showcase the ride, nor include people (generally people respond well to a "human" element in ads, hence most of Alton's showing people on the ride etc). By the time they'd done the cut-and-paste ride footage one, it was sort-of too late.
Click to expand...

Very much agree. I was expecting at least some off ride footage of the launch into or out of the tunnel, maybe the top hat or even the immelman or zero g roll but it just never came, not even any on ride POV action. They managed to advertise a new coaster on prime time television but didn't actually showing the bloody thing. School boy stuff.

Edit;
Here's the edited version @Coaster is discussing.

 
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