After the success of our Alton Towers alternative, we bring you this how-to beat the queues at Blackpool Pleasure Beach guide.
Blackpool Pleasure Beach is a popular tourist destination in the UK, attracting millions of visitors each year. With so many people flocking to the park, it’s no surprise that the lines for the rides and attractions can get pretty long. But don’t let that dampen your spirits! Here are a few easy tips to help you beat the queues and make the most of your day at Blackpool Pleasure Beach.
By following these tips, you’ll be able to enjoy all that Blackpool Pleasure Beach has to offer without wasting too much time waiting in line.
Here are a few more tips for you to beat the queues at Blackpool Pleasure Beach.
Screenshot your E-Ticket
2021 brings a very annoying new system to Blackpool Pleasure Beach where instead of just scanning your E-Ticket once to get into the park you now have to scan at every single ride entrance.
This slows down operations considerably so instead of rooting inside your bag for your phone or running out of signal to bring up your internet E-ticket, just give it a screenshot.
Why not set the QR code as your phone background for even easier access when approaching the ride entrance?
Naturally, you can’t help if others in front of you are holding up the queue but as long as you’re prepared you can get through quickly and not be holding up anyone else behind you.
Resist Grand National and Ice Blast Upon Entry
Now this one is a test of will rather than a set plan but unless you’re the very first human being to step foot on park that morning it’s always best to skip these two rides (and Valhalla when it’s open unless it’s a wet day then be crazy and enjoy).
Everyone jumps to these rides first as the closest rides to the entrance and the queues stack up immediately.
Resist the urge and keep on walking by.
Head To The Back Of the Park
You’re going to want to head to the back of the park to jump on the rides with the lowest throughput first.
Whilst guests head towards the big coasters such as Big Dipper, Infusion, ICON and get an early head-start on Big One you’ll be jumping on the low throughput rides.
Get these out of the way first and you’ll save yourself stacks of time as these rides always rack up a queue on the busy days because of how slow operations are on one-train service.
The three amigos, also known as Avalanche, Revolution and Nickolodeon Streak are some of the lowest throughput rides on park.
You can add Steeplechase to the list if you wish but at least there are 3 individual tracks sending horses around on Steeplechase. With these three it’s slow, slow, slow.
Usually, Nick Streak has the longest queue of the three so if you wanted to shave even more minutes off get that one done first, then Avalanche, then Revolution but now I’m just being picky.
Revolution has the quickest ride duration out of the three so you can decide for yourselves.
If you’ve followed this method no matter which order you do them in you should have done three rides within the first 60 minutes or so of being on park.
If you walk past any empty queues such as Steeplechase, Blue Flyer or any flats in Nick Land on your travels, jump on them. They’ll always get busier throughout the day so rack up those totals if and when you can.
The Big One
Sadly with numerous trains on different days, operations, peak periods etc it’s hard to have one set plan for The Big One at the start of the day.
During the last hour on park, the ride is usually on a ridiculously short queue but this is a ride where you need to look at the queue line to assess timings.
If you see where the arrow is pointed above if you see the queue here it’s going to be around a 20-minute wait on a two-train service and 25-30 minutes to wait on a one train service.
At the bottom of the ramp you’re looking at 30-40 minutes depending on how many trains are running and anything beyond that is just not worth your time if your goal is to crank out as many rides as possible in a day.
For me, I never wait longer than 30 minutes for any ride at any park unless I absolutely have to so gauge the queue lines accordingly.
The joy of Blackpool Pleasure Beach is the very open queues so you can judge exactly how long a queue is going to take to filter down if you know how many trains are running.
Sadly operations on some rides (ICON) will be much slower than normal with new seatbelts added and operations as a whole will be slower with the E-Ticket scan per ride so keep that in mind when planning your day.
Don’t Take the Queue App As Gospel
The Pleasure Beach queue app site is a great way to see what’s happening in the park but the queue times especially in its debut week were inaccurate.
Coming off our ride of Nick Streak it said the queue was 0 minutes and the queue stretched out of the ride station building and down into Nick Land.
Take it with a pinch of salt for at least a few weeks until they fix the initial bugs.
The queue app for each individual ride has a really annoying interface and the sheer amount of scrolling you have to do per ride is ridiculous.
Personally, I’d avoid it altogether but there are some other helpful menus on there not queue related that would be beneficial to your day out.
Dark Ride Dinner
Whilst everyone is getting their dinner or using quieter queues at dinner to ride the bigger rides the dark rides usually start emptying out.
Get yourselves on Wallace and Gromit, Ghost Train and Alice in Wonderland during dark ride dinner.
River Caves ALWAYS has a small queue so this one is completely up to you.
You can pick and choose whenever you’d like to ride it.
Last Hour Of Freedom
Our final tip on how to beat the queues at Blackpool Pleasure Beach!
If the park is absolutely rammed all day then last hour freedom is your time to shine.
Grand National always seems to have a long queue all day but with it loading two trains you usually aren’t waiting too long within the last hour.
Jump on ICON, Big One and Infusion especially (the least popular of the bigger rides) for shorter queues.
Big Dipper also will have a much shorter queue and you’ll start noticing the back of the park becoming quieter and quieter the closer to closing it becomes.
Take advantage of that and rack up your ride count totals for the day.
Rides such as Grand Prix and the dark rides also start to die off around this time as the children’s rides usually go quiet with many kids leaving with their parents mid-afternoon so grab a cheeky ride on Dora’s Boat Ride or Avatar Airbender if you please.
There are speedy passes available for you to skip the queues but if you follow the tips above there really shouldn’t be any need to get them unless the park hits max capacity and the rides too which are rarer than unicorn poop!
Check out the video below of our beat the queues tips in action as we absolutely smashed it on an incredibly busy day at the park.
