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October 2006
Flick through our news pages this month, and you’ll find details of more parks closing than opening. Depressing, huh? This is by no means a scientific survey; it’s simply the news that we had ready to go for this issue, and of course we must consider there are going to be few new openings at this time of year.
Yet I can’t help feeling that these latest closures are part of an ongoing trend, and one that involves more than just the individual circumstances relating to each park. Competition is greater than ever before – from an increasingly wide range of competing pursuits – profit margins are smaller, overheads and land values are higher.
This latter fact in particular means that, for some park owners, selling up can sometimes seem an attractive exit/retirement plan. In coastal resorts, developers seize the opportunity to build houses and apartments on the land, and then market them as a room with a view.We all need somewhere to live, but life’s a lot more fun if we also have somewhere to play.
One of the venues closing, in fact it’s already gone, is Pleasureland in Southport, England, sister park to Blackpool Pleasure Beach since 1986 (it was actually founded in the 1920s).
The park was one of the first venues I profiled (well, if it’s on your doorstep...) when I became editor of this magazine in 2001. Back then general manager Phil Pickett was only too happy to tell me about Traumatizer, the rollercoaster that had doubled park attendance when it was added two seasons previously. And then when I visited the park three years ago, Phil looked over to the adjacent abandoned zoo as we climbed the lifthill on one of the other coasters. Reaching out his arms, he smiled: “I can’t wait to get my hands on it!” Geoffrey Thompson, the late managing director of Blackpool Pleasure Beach Ltd, had in his final years signed a lease on the neighbouring site and planned to expand Pleasureland into it.
Yet in recent years, investment at the park in general was relatively modest. There were no major new attractions, but guests at what was once a pay-as-youride park were asked for £2 just to walk round it. Many voted with their feet. I’m sorry to see Pleasureland go, but see a glimmer of hope on the horizon: Sefton Borough Council, which owns the land, has stressed (and is obliged) to use it for leisure of some sort. Let’s hope that whatever that is, it provides as much ‘pleasure’ as the land did when I was growing up.
Owen Ralph, Editor.
