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Ride Count: 27 (alphabetical)
Alice in Wonderland: 1
Avalanche: 3
Big Dipper: 2
Big One: 2
Blue Flyer: 1
Derby Racer: 1
Flying Machines: 1
Ghost Train: 1
Grand National: 2 (1 each lift hill)
Ice Blast: 1
Impossible: 1
Infusion: 1
Nickelodeon Streak: 1
Red Arrows Skyforce: 2
Revolution: 2
Steeplechase: 2 (Red and yellow rails)
Valhalla: 1
Wallace and Gromit: The Thrill-o-matic
Wild Mouse
The first three woodies
To start with, we generally made our way across the parking, hitting the various coasters on our way. We began with the Wild Mouse, one of the many classic rides at BPB. The 'riding technique' for this is to sit forward, otherwise you can cause yourself a bit of back trouble on the not-so-smooth drops as I found out on the first drop! Great ride however, mix of tight turns, wonky track and airtime in a car that has a seatbelt about a foot above your lap.
- Wild Mouse Jammy (bad camera work)
- Wild Mouse Austin (better camera work)
Following this we hit up the Grand National (right lift hill side). This interesting woodie is a mobius loop - you start on one side of the ride and get off the other which never fails to confuse the GP. My favourite part of this ride is the double down first drop because everyone knows two spurts of airtime is better than one! The ride rode reasonably roughly, although it wasn't unbearable in my opinion. The Big Dipper followed this and was riding extremely well. Both these woodies are extremely iconic of Blackpool Pleasure Beach with the Big Dipper (current layout) dating back to 1936, and whilst you're not going to find El Toro levels are airtime - I don't think they disappoint in what they do.
- Big Dipper From Afar
- Big Dipper Closer
Children's Rides
Before wandering into Nickelodeon Land we checked out the Vekoma SLC Infusion (Formerly Tramautizer (lol) at Southport Pleasure Beach) for a front two row ride. Surprisingly smooth ride until the roll-overs. On our wander over we rode Wallace and Gromits Thrill-o-matic - "quintessentially British old chap" - on which a small child in the car behind us cried the entire ride, just to be surprised by a giant rabbit just when he thought the ride was over. Nickelodeon Land is fairly well themed and has a slew of great children's rides and two classic woodies Blue Flyer and Nickelodeon Streak, both of which have had recent rethemes but retain their original layouts from the early 1930's. Blue Flyer was the only ride we managed to get take decent on ride photo thanks to Austin (sometimes) all day!
- Nickelodeon Streak
- Infusion
Steelies
We moved on to a particularly coaster concentrated (even more so when they build their new coaster) area of the park for our first of 3 rides on the Mack Bobsled Avalanche (personal favourite ride at Blackpool) and the Launched Loop - Revolution. Revolution is probably the most underrated ride at the park, it delivers some decent airtime and positives for a simple, but effective thrill!
- Revolution
We then rode the Big One, the most imposing ride at the park. This has an incredibly good drop, the twist and the airtime really throw you out of your seat, however the rest of the layout is pretty dull, with teh hills providing no real airtime and the turns taken too slowly to be particularly thrilling. This was running fairly well too, and didn't rattle as much as I remember, nor did it have too many serious bumps. We followed this up by riding the two operating sides of steeplechase (fortunately for me the two I was missing from my coaster count!). This ride had broken down by the end of the day with people having to be escorted back the station (I hope they took pictures of the blue markers for the new coaster on their travels!) so we did well to get these whilst we did.
- Steeplechase
- The Big One
We finished off the morning by riding Blackpool's newest attraction - the Gerstlaur Sky Fly called Red Arrows Skyforce. For those of you not familiar with this ride it's basically a giant angled spinning arm that has several "planes" attached to one end. You seat in these planes and which have user adjustable wings to allow you to spin around the heartline. The combination of moving your weight and the air passing past the wings means that you can get your plane to "do a barrel roll"! Once you've completely a barrel roll you can maintain the rotation for the remainder of the ride (if your stomach can take it!). One of the highlights of the day was some small kid whom we saw on the ride many a time, flapping about still not understanding the concept of how to make the ride spin (there are instruction videos in the queue line but they were too busy skipping the (0 minute) queue to take notice)
- Sky Force and the Big One
Family Fun and Re-rides
After lunch we took it a little easy for a while, working our way back across the park riding the ghost train, wandering through the fun house called impossible and riding Alice in Wonderland (another tracked ride). We then hit up the classics, being the only riders on Derby Racer which is a giant carousel style ride and then Flying Machines which is a large spinning ride siting on top of a shop that sells old parts of the rides at Blackpool Pleasure Beach at a healthy profit!
- Avalanche
- Future Coaster?
We then proceeded to ride the shot tower Ice Blast before heading back across the park to get a few re-rides in on all the bigger rides before returning to Valhalla for the last ride of the day. We opted for ponchos due to the British weather, although I had to fit mine during the ride (despite mine and Austin cries of "BUT HE'S NOT READY" as they ushered us into the boat). This was probably the best ride to finish the day on, it was extremely fun (as water rides always are when you're trying to stay dry) and this ride has by far the best theming in the park.
Overall I had a great day at the park and it was great to meet another enthusiast with an American perspective!
- Flying Machines
Pictures:
http://imgur.com/a/l6G3N
Thanks for reading :]
