Blackpool Pleasure Beach Is BACK For 2025!
Blackpool Pleasure Beach is BACK for 2025! After a long seasonal break, the iconic Fylde Coast amusement park finally welcomed visitors back for another season of fun and thrills yesterday (Saturday 1st March 2025).
The highly acclaimed, family run amusement park, home to such rides as The Big Dipper, ICON and The Big One officially reopened it’s doors to the public yesterday morning for it’s FULL 2025 season.
But while it’s great to see Blackpool Pleasure Beach back open again, not all rides and attractions made their return in time for opening day.
The Grand National, Impossible, River Caves and Launch Pad were just some of the park’s major rides and attractions off limits to guests during their opening day, but rides such as The Big One, ICON, Ghost Train and Valhalla all welcomed guests back with a bang.
Now, opening days at Blackpool Pleasure Beach are usually (as a rule) absolutely rammed, but yesterday’s guest levels didn’t seem to match previous years in our opinion.
Whilst this could be to do with the change in opening schedule over the past few years, the absence of other rides such as The Thompson Carousel, Eddie Stobart, Grand Prix and Red Arrows Skyforce could well have contributed to this.
Regardless, Blackpool Pleasure Beach still presented one of their STRONGEST opening days in many years with ride reliability, availability and consistency all being pretty spot on throughout the day.
Some rides did of course suffer downtime, but this is to be expected during any opening day as the rides have only just recently concluded extensive Winter maintenance.
Yesterday’s sunny weather also added a further depth of success to the park’s reopening too with crowds flocking in their dozens to get back on Valhalla (which to Blackpool Pleasure Beach’s credit had all but one of the ride’s minor effects working perfectly) at 2PM!
Okay, so while yesterday’s reopening did sport A LOT of positives (and it really did), there are a couple of negatives to mention here too.
Firstly, in past years it has always been tradition for Blackpool Pleasure Beach to reopen the park on opening day with a countdown, speech from Amanda Thompson OBE – CEO of Blackpool Pleasure Beach & a pre-opening performance from the Nickelodeon entertainments team.
Yesterday’s reopening was a far more somber affair in comparison though with none of the above taking place and one member of the team announcing the park’s reopening to crowds of onlookers via a PA system from outside the arena doors next to the entrance.
While this could well be down to cost cutting, we suspect there could be other contributors to the park’s decision for a far less extravagant reopening.
Secondly, the tiresome process of scanning E-Tickets at EVERY ride and attraction as well as the entrance has once again it’s returned for 2025.
Now, not only does this feel incredibly pointless given the park doesn’t offer none rider tickets (yes, there is a none rider annual pass, but none rider day tickets are no longer a thing), but it also takes away from the experience, can be VERY frustrating given how unreliable scanners can be and it seems to slow operation down overall due to staff constantly having to assist customers at the turnstiles.
As much as we still don’t understand the full reasons for this additional measure when boarding rides, doing this constantly not only drains battery life on devices, but it also means guests are forced to take phones onto rides with them (Valhalla in particular is a prime example where this really doesn’t work very well).
All of that aside though, yesterday’s opening day felt very much chalk and cheese in comparison with 2024. Ride availability was much better, staff were very friendly and helpful and the park seemed to sport a far better atmosphere overall.
Highlights of Blackpool Pleasure Beach’s 2025 opening day included getting back on ICON (one of our favourite UK roller coasters), meeting up with plenty of friendly faces we haven’t seen for months and having the chance to get back inside the park overall.
Yesterday also brought with it a few developmental revelations too with the former Bowladrome area now walled off for future development (rumoured to be the chosen site for the park’s incoming Intamin Gyro Swing), the River Caves sporting a cryptic plaque at it’s entrance teasing a complete re-imagining and the former Grand Prix site completely flattened and cleared of rubble.
Opening dates for River Caves, Grand National and Launch Pad have still yet to be announced though, but we have heard from several sources that Launch Pad COULD make it’s triumphant return in time for Easter next month.
Grand National is also undergoing a major refurb for the ride’s 90th birthday too which is set to take place this year and full details for River Cave’s return have yet to be announced.
The future of Blackpool Pleasure Beach is definitely feeling much brighter now though and with so much work taking place in and around the park it’s safe to say much better years undoubtedly lie ahead for the much loved seaside amusement park.
We look forward to returning to Blackpool Pleasure Beach again very soon indeed and as such if you don’t want to miss out on all future updates be sure to subscribe to our blog now to avoid missing out.
Check out yesterday’s vlog below for even more insight into yesterday’s opening day!!