Saturday 9th February 2013
The first day of the 2013 season gave us the chance to do our first opening day event. Club Pleasure Beach used to aim to be the first riders on the Big One each season, so we kept that going by taking the first public ride(s) on the Big One. The Big One, as always in February, kept us all waiting but eventually after an hour we got our Arrow Hyper fix.
The next activity of the day was to take a look around the Pleasure Beach's Education Academy which has models of the Pleasure Beach, old signage, old ride carriages and lots more classic Pleasure Beach bits 'n' bobs! Our regulation stop at the Pizza Kitchen followed, and the day came to a close with an hour ERT on the Big Dipper.
The funny thing about the Big Dipper ERT was that on the day before we'd been informed it wouldn't be open, but Pleasure Beach ran it all day and night that day, and it was ready for opening day!
Saturday 27th April 2013
One Man & His Dog, a fitting event name for celebrating the opening of W&G's Thrill-O-Matic at the Pleasure Beach. At the time this was our highest attended event for a few years with 74 people attending.
The event started with breakfast in The Grill (now Costa), followed by an ERT on Thrill-O-Matic (with the lights on) and a group takeover of the Pleasure Beach Express. We brought Nickelodeon Land to a stop with big splashes on the Rugrats Log Flume before heading to ERT sessions on the Revolution and Infusion.
The day ended with a Blackpool Pleasure Beach quiz, and a meal in the White Tower Restaurant.
Saturday 1st June 2013
Thrills in the Valley was our one and only Lightwater Valley club event, beyond Mike dressing up as Batman for a bet, the temporary Rapids amusing us for over an hour and the group spending the last hour of the day re-riding The Ultimate, there's not a lot else to write about this day.
Our host, Simon, was fantastic and made everyone feel very welcome at LWV.
Saturday 13th July 2013
Wow, what a day! Writing this has made me realise how lucky we were to do this event, it was an action packed itinerary at a very reasonable price for everyone. The day started with the usual breakfast buffet, followed by a complete walk around the Pleasure Beach Express track.
BPB's operations team were constantly on their radios throughout asking the ride staff of whichever was the next nearest ride to send a train round for testing so the group could get some good photos. A notable mention to Mike, because his camera went into power saving mode just as he was about to get a shot of the Big One!
The event also included an ERT session on Splash Bash, followed by a lap around Valhalla before it opened for the day, the combination of two soakings was a bit much even on a gorgeous summer day!
Big Pizza Kitchen was part of our catering on the event, as always, plus at ride close we had an ERT on the Grand National, met the Hot Ice cast and then watched the show! Great day, with great photo memories in the gallery at the bottom of this page.
Saturday 9th & Sunday 10th November 2013
Our usual breakfast buffet started off the Saturday, followed by an hour ERT on Nickelodeon Streak and behind the tours of The Arena & The Globe. It was BPB's first midnight close since the early 2000's, so we had a stop at the Pizza Kitchen before spending 'free time on the park' at BPB for the rest of the day. Pleasure Beach did surprise the whole group with Pasaje del Terror tickets which we all used whilst BPB closed at 5pm before reopening at 6pm.
The Sunday started with breakfast which was followed up with a round of Adventure Golf before an ERT's on Steeplechase. The Steeplechase ERT was memorable for a few of us who kept getting parked on the lift hills, the ride op's were having a lot of fun and we loved it too!
As the day drew to a close, we had a 'Sunday Dinner' in the Big Blue Hotel before ending the day with an hour ERT on the Big One, in the dark! Our only ever night time ERT on the Big One!
