 PLEASURE BEACH RESORT (Formerly: Blackpool Pleasure Beach) United Kingdom (Abbreviation: BPB)
Park and Area Attraction News - (8/5/2025) If you’ve ever wanted to bring your dog to the theme park with you, then you may be in luck. Blackpool Pleasure Beach has announced that for the first time they will welcome dogs to visit the park on Sundays. According to this article you can expect the park to feature special water stations and “unlimited treats” to be available for your fuzzy best friend. Look for this to begin on Sunday, August 10th and run through to the end of the month. If this test phase works out well, the event may be extended to continue through to the rest of this season. (7/2/2025) The Wallace & Gromit Thrill-O-Matic dark ride at Blackpool Pleasure Beach has been confirmed to be getting five new updates this summer. The updates will include elements from the 2024 W&G film, “Vengeance Most Fowl”, including new characters like Norbot and new versions of old characters like Feathers McGraw, along with some new sets and props, updates to the queue and more. (7/1/2025) Good news for Blackpool Pleasure Beach fans… the Grand National racing wooden coaster is now re-open following a lengthy refurbishment that started in 2024. (6/5/2025) According to the news several of Blackpool’s various tourist attractions that have been managed by Merlin Entertainment for years will now be handed back over to Blackpool’s own tourism company to run starting on August 1st. The list includes the Blackpool Tower Eye, circus, ballroom as well as taking over management of the local Dungeons and Madame Tussauds attractions from Merlin as well. The later two attraction will be run as a “franchise from Merlin”. (2/24/2025) Blackpool’s Pleasure Beach Resort has announced that five ‘smaller, less popular rides” will closed for the 2025 season. The list includes Convoy, Alpine Rallye, the Thomson Carousel, Gallopers and Red Arrows Skyforce (Gerstlauyer Sky Fly). Interesting to note that the Alpine Ralley, Convoy and Thompson Carousel are right next to each other, and essentially woven into the same general landscape as the now Grand Prix which closed for good last season, which does seem to indicate a greater plan is in the works to redevelop this section of the park going forward.
2025 - Launch Pad - (5/6/2025) A video showing off the transformation of the former Ice Blast attraction at Blackpool into Launch Pad has been posted. I’m told that Launch Pad has soft-opened to riders from time to time over the past week, but the official opening day is Wed, May 7th.
(12/15/2024) Blackpool Pleasure Beach has announced that the park’s former Ice Blast tower ride that has been closed this past year will reopen in 2025 as “Launch Pad”. The 210-foot tall S&S Space Shot tower will reopen with all new themeing, along with an all new “pressure cylinder” that will allow the ride to launch riders into the air with much more force. The ride first opened under the sponsored name, PlayStation: The Ride back in 1997, before adopting the Ice Blast name in 2000 when they Sony sponsorship deal ended.
2026 - Aviktas / Intamin Gyro-Swing - (7/26/2025) Blackpool’s Pleasure Beach Resort has posted a brief teaser video showing off what Aviktas, their new 138ft Gyro Swing ride coming for 2026, will look like once placed within the park.
(5/20/2025) Pleasure Beach Resort in Blackpool has confirmed that their Project MMXXVI (Intamin Giant Swing) is going to be called Aviktas when it opens in 2026.
(3/20/2025) ThemeParks-UK reports that Blackpool Pleasure Beach will open the UK’s Tallest Gyro Swing ride from Intamin 2026. For now they’re just calling it “Project MMXXVI”, but they say that the Gyro Swing will swing up to 40 riders at a time up 120º in either direction, up to a height of 138 feet. For comparison, this new ride will be nearly twice the size as the Maelstrom at Drayton Manor. They say that the new ride will be placed along the northern side of the park, near the perimeter, likely taking over some of the former Bowl-A-Drome location.
(11/3/2024) According to a new video from Chall Chats, Blackpool Pleasure Beach have closed the the Bowl-A-Drome building and may be preparing to remove the structure itself. If this ends up being true, there are also rumors that the site could be used as the home for a planned Intamin Gyro-Swing ride. Oh, and the video also reconfrms that the park’s Ice Blast tower ride, which was previously rumored to be removed, is also expected to make a return in 2025 after getting an update and parts from S&S that they were not able to finished in time for the 2024 season.
(3/3/2024) While we previously mentioned that this was likely the last season for Ice Blast, the park opened for the season with it closed, along with The Big One unfortunately. According to a tweet from Amanda Thompson, Ice Blast is awaiting parts needed to open it later this season, but nothing was confirmed as to the long term fate of the S&S tower ride. (2/25/2024) According to the latest rumors, the Ice Blast (S&S Space Shot) tower ride is rumored to be potentially retired later this year. I’m not sure if they have something else in mind to replace it for 2025, or if the tower ride is just getting old or harder to maintain. Given that there are much older S&S tower rides out there running well without issue, I’m thinking that the park may just want to put in something newer or bigger on the site. Backing up the Ice Blast removal rumors are also claims that various land-survey paint markings have been spotted around the ride area as well. If anyone knows more, please do let us know.
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