As many of you know we headed to Blackpool early May for Ants Birthday. It was mid week so Wednesday & Thursday and the weather wasn’t that great. However it was the quietest we’ve ever seen the place. So this is our second blog out of 5 if you haven’t checked our Alton Towers off peak day blog out then click the link here. We hope you enjoy this blog and feel free to share your thoughts with us across our socials / comments below.
Parking:
We released a blog all about our top 9 tips for when visiting Pleasure Beach. If you read that blog you’d know we try to get free street parking during our visits. Off peak days for sure are very quiet and very easy to grab yourself a free space. Again we arrived nice and early preparing for the worst but it was very easy to get a space.
Collecting Wristbands // Entering the Park:
Anybody who visits regularly will know the box office can get horrendous queues and you can sometimes be stood there for hours. However off peak days your lucky to get one line of the pen filled. Again those who read our top tips blog will know about season passes been able to collect their wristbands from the information desk. Once collecting our passes we headed into the park with no queues and straight through security which was fab. Basically off peak days means it’s easier entering the park and collecting your park tickets & wristbands.
Ride Availability // Ride Closures:
Every coaster was up and ready to go once the park opened no staggered openings like on peak days. Don’t be deceived if you visit during an off peak day and you don’t see a coaster go round they are no doubt waiting for people. We wasn’t sure whether Big One was open so headed their and they were waiting in the station for people. There was a few smaller rides closed more or less Nickelodeon Land rides like Dora’s World Voyage and outside of Nick Land Grand Prix was closed. When collecting your wristbands they’ll no doubt in form you of any closures. Our second day we were told Valhalla was closed within a second of scanning our passes they managed to fix it and reopen it.
Opening Hours // Food Outlets:
Unlike most parks Pleasure Beach opens 11am during off peak days and closes at 5pm. It’s more than enough time to do the park at least twice in our opinion. We found the opening hours very fair and more than enough. There were a few food outlets closed during both days which we assume are permanent during off peak days. For what we noticed the actual fish & chip shop by Ice Blast & Wok by Infusion were closed both days.
Queue times // Throughputs // Capacity:
Strangely enough everything was running 1 train or less yet the queues were kept to the minimal. The Big One was running half a train and got a maximum queue of 10 minutes across both days. Icon was on one train with no queue and that was the same for the rest of the coasters. On Thursday we were waiting for people to run Grand National nobody turned up so me & Ant had a whole train to ourselves. There was one ride which we got on that had a full boat which was Valhalla as they held the boats in the station. If your worried about awful capacity or throughputs on weekdays honestly we’d recommend not worrying as they have it nailed. Every decision where throughputs were concerned was completely fair & reasonable.
Atmosphere:
For us we found the atmosphere wasn’t the same with the lack of people on park and the normal happy uplifting pop music. It seemed like a ghost town and in some areas a little eerie. If your a person for atmosphere definitely visit during peak days because it’s a shadow of its self during off peak.
Off Peak is a fab chance to embrace all the rides at Blackpool Pleasure Beach. Like I mentioned above off peak days are little eerie in regards to atmosphere with such a lack of people around yet the usual uplifting playlist. Rides were running at their utter best with next to no break downs & queues. Staff were hot on the usual mobile phone issues and stopping trains if they could to get them to pop their phones away. If you want to up your ride count weekdays are your best option.