Qualla: Blackpool Pleasure Beach

Blackpool Pleasure Beach: Introduction

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit BlackpoolJC91, CC BY-SA 4.0. William George Bean had wanted to be an advertising man on Madison Avenue. New York did not work out. He came back to England in 1897 and opened two amusement parks in quick succession - one in Great Yarmouth, which flopped, and another in Blackpool, opposite the tram terminus on the south shore, which did not. The Blackpool one had been built around a Switchback roller coaster from 1891, with a few roundabouts, a bicycle railway and some stalls scattered across the sand dunes. Bean's stated ambition was to make adults feel like children again and inspire gaiety of a primarily innocent character. The Pleasure Beach is the result.

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Image: BlackpoolJC91 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Blackpool Pleasure Beach: From a Sand Dune to Forty-Two Acres

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit BlackpoolJC91, CC BY-SA 4.0. In 1903 Bean partnered with a local businessman called John Outhwaite and bought thirty acres of land known as the Watson Estate. They had been to Coney Island and seen what an amusement park at scale could be. By 1923 they had reclaimed land from the seafront to give them the pr...

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Image: BlackpoolJC91 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Blackpool Pleasure Beach: Charles Paige's Wooden Bones

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit BlackpoolJC91, CC BY-SA 4.0. Between 1933 and 1935 the architect Charles Paige designed three wooden coasters that defined the park's identity. The 1933 Roller Coaster, the 1934 Fun House, and the 1935 Grand National - the last being a wooden Möbius loop coaster, where two trains race on what looks like two ...

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Image: BlackpoolJC91 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Blackpool Pleasure Beach: Records, Rebuilds, and a Family Tragedy

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Randy Beck-Stewart, CC BY 4.0. Geoffrey Thompson took over from his father Leonard in 1976 and ran the park for nearly three decades. He oversaw Steeplechase, Avalanche, Revolution - the first inverting steel coaster in Europe - and the Norse-themed dark ride Valhalla in 2000, repeatedly voted Best Water Ride ...

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Image: Randy Beck-Stewart | CC BY 4.0

Blackpool Pleasure Beach: Hot Ice and the Casino Building

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Keith Edkins, CC BY-SA 2.0. The Casino Building - which has nothing to do with gambling and everything to do with Italian dance halls, casino in the old sense - has been Pleasure Beach's front door since 1938. Inside, the Hot Ice Show has been running since 1936, an extravagant seasonal ice spectacle now pr...

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Image: Keith Edkins | CC BY-SA 2.0

Blackpool Pleasure Beach: Four Generations on the Same Sand

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit BlackpoolJC91, CC BY-SA 4.0. Pleasure Beach is the most-visited free attraction in the UK. Four generations of one family have shaped its character: Bean, the failed New York adman; Leonard and Doris Thompson, who steadied it through depression and war; Geoffrey, who modernised it; and Amanda, who is still i...

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Image: BlackpoolJC91 | CC BY-SA 4.0