Review - Journey to Hell - Blackpool
This year, Blackpool Pleasure Beach promised to take us on a terrifying ‘Journey to Hell’ with their brand new Halloween offering. But did it deliver?
The evening began with us being batched into 5 large groups, each consisting of around 30-40 people. We were then led, group by group, into the park where our journey would begin.
First up was a decontamination phase. Here the security officer explained that officials had been working to prevent various creatures spawning from hell-portals that had opened up within the Pleasure Beach. We were deemed a risk to this effort and needed to be cleansed. This involved large quantities of water being sprayed at us on a rather cold evening - just what we needed when we were about to spend 2 hours outside on a cold night in Blackpool!
We were then led to the fountain area of the park and entertained with some witty team building exercises while the other groups were led in behind us after their decontamination treatment. As the first group to enter and with another 120-160 people behind, there was quite a lot of waiting around at this point.
Finally, with everyone safely into the park, the experience could properly begin and the story unfolded. Within the fountain square we were welcomed again with a speech from the mayor. Sadly for him, we were ambushed and he met his untimely demise. Blackpool Pleasure Beach had again been overrun by the creatures they had been working to prevent. With more soldiers suddenly onsite, we were told to get to the floor as they tackled the creatures and then split back into our earlier groups.
From here, each group was led in different directions through the park on different missions under the instruction of the soldiers who assumed leadership of the groups. Unfortunately, this is where the experience completely lost its way. There were a total of 6 separate experiences within the park; the Experiment Lab, the Plague Doctors including a very unique ride, a clown maze using the park’s Chinese puzzle maze, the underground tunnels, the S&M arena and finally a run through Pasaje Del Terror.
With no clear narrative linking these experiences together, we found it really hard to keep track of any storyline and it felt as though the event lacked overall cohesion. The soldiers did attempt to yell instruction at times but with the group being so large and noisy, much of this was lost on us.
We also feel we should call out the ‘S&M arena'. Rather than make use of one of the large show spaces the park possesses, we were actually lead into the park’s admissions corridor where we were greeted by four women clutching sex toys, posing for photos - not quite the grandeur that the image of an ‘arena’ conjures! Maybe this wasn’t what that park originally had in mind either for this part of the experience either.
We were also surprised by some of evening’s rules which we felt impacted our enjoyment of the event. At the very beginning of the evening, we were advised there were only 3 rules:
1. Smoking was permitted throughout, not limited to designated areas. As non-smokers, being surrounded by large groups of people ‘lighting up’ made us really uncomfortable. We also noticed some of our group discarding their cigarette butts in inappropriate places. We were also quite shocked to see the actor leading our group accept the offer of a cigarette, and later light this whilst still leading our group through the experience!
2. Use of cameras was permitted anywhere as long as no photos/videos were taken of the hell creatures - this seemed to become an open invite for people to pull out mobile phones with the camera flash and torch light often interfering with the experience.
3. Toilet breaks could be taken whenever we were near a loo - whilst we completed understand the need for people to take a break to answer to the call of nature, it became tiresome to have to stop at every loo we saw and meant that the whole group had to wait until others were finished.
Despite this, there were some aspects we enjoyed along the way. The quality of acting within the experiment lab and tunnel maze was good, with some really great individual performances, sets and theming within them. A late night ride on Icon, with an added touch we won't spoil, was also a really fun experience for those coaster fans among us. Our run through Pasaje Del Terror also packed its usual high-quality punch, although we had no idea how it fitted into the main story.
Overall, it’s a shame that the care and attention that Blackpool Pleasure Beach usually upholds seems to have not quite been executed this time. We really hope that should Journey to Hell return, the park take steps to address the issues of this first year and make it an event to remember next year.
The evening began with us being batched into 5 large groups, each consisting of around 30-40 people. We were then led, group by group, into the park where our journey would begin.
First up was a decontamination phase. Here the security officer explained that officials had been working to prevent various creatures spawning from hell-portals that had opened up within the Pleasure Beach. We were deemed a risk to this effort and needed to be cleansed. This involved large quantities of water being sprayed at us on a rather cold evening - just what we needed when we were about to spend 2 hours outside on a cold night in Blackpool!
We were then led to the fountain area of the park and entertained with some witty team building exercises while the other groups were led in behind us after their decontamination treatment. As the first group to enter and with another 120-160 people behind, there was quite a lot of waiting around at this point.
Finally, with everyone safely into the park, the experience could properly begin and the story unfolded. Within the fountain square we were welcomed again with a speech from the mayor. Sadly for him, we were ambushed and he met his untimely demise. Blackpool Pleasure Beach had again been overrun by the creatures they had been working to prevent. With more soldiers suddenly onsite, we were told to get to the floor as they tackled the creatures and then split back into our earlier groups.
From here, each group was led in different directions through the park on different missions under the instruction of the soldiers who assumed leadership of the groups. Unfortunately, this is where the experience completely lost its way. There were a total of 6 separate experiences within the park; the Experiment Lab, the Plague Doctors including a very unique ride, a clown maze using the park’s Chinese puzzle maze, the underground tunnels, the S&M arena and finally a run through Pasaje Del Terror.
With no clear narrative linking these experiences together, we found it really hard to keep track of any storyline and it felt as though the event lacked overall cohesion. The soldiers did attempt to yell instruction at times but with the group being so large and noisy, much of this was lost on us.
We also feel we should call out the ‘S&M arena'. Rather than make use of one of the large show spaces the park possesses, we were actually lead into the park’s admissions corridor where we were greeted by four women clutching sex toys, posing for photos - not quite the grandeur that the image of an ‘arena’ conjures! Maybe this wasn’t what that park originally had in mind either for this part of the experience either.
We were also surprised by some of evening’s rules which we felt impacted our enjoyment of the event. At the very beginning of the evening, we were advised there were only 3 rules:
1. Smoking was permitted throughout, not limited to designated areas. As non-smokers, being surrounded by large groups of people ‘lighting up’ made us really uncomfortable. We also noticed some of our group discarding their cigarette butts in inappropriate places. We were also quite shocked to see the actor leading our group accept the offer of a cigarette, and later light this whilst still leading our group through the experience!
2. Use of cameras was permitted anywhere as long as no photos/videos were taken of the hell creatures - this seemed to become an open invite for people to pull out mobile phones with the camera flash and torch light often interfering with the experience.
3. Toilet breaks could be taken whenever we were near a loo - whilst we completed understand the need for people to take a break to answer to the call of nature, it became tiresome to have to stop at every loo we saw and meant that the whole group had to wait until others were finished.
Despite this, there were some aspects we enjoyed along the way. The quality of acting within the experiment lab and tunnel maze was good, with some really great individual performances, sets and theming within them. A late night ride on Icon, with an added touch we won't spoil, was also a really fun experience for those coaster fans among us. Our run through Pasaje Del Terror also packed its usual high-quality punch, although we had no idea how it fitted into the main story.
Overall, it’s a shame that the care and attention that Blackpool Pleasure Beach usually upholds seems to have not quite been executed this time. We really hope that should Journey to Hell return, the park take steps to address the issues of this first year and make it an event to remember next year.
Links:
Blackpool Pleasure Beach website
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