Blackpool Pleasure Beach

W.G Bean founder of Blackpool pleasure beach had an idea of an american style amusement park, with the main aim to make adults feel like children again and to inspire them. Alderman William George Bean founded the pleasure beach in 1896 and brought the forty-two acre site on which the park now stands.
In the 1930's. Leonard Thompson succeeded his father-in-law to become Managing Director of the company. This decade saw the introduction of many new rides, including the Rollercoaster (now Nickelodeon Streak), The Pleasure Beach Express, and the world-famous twin track coaster, The Grand National.
During the war years plans to expand and investment were temporally put on hold, although the park was open all year round to the public, especially evacuees, as an escape from reality and the harshness of war.
Post War the company continued to prosper. The 1960's saw an increase in development of new projects and investment into new technology to improve the rides. This encouraged and attracted old and new customers to visit the pleasure beach for their holiday breaks. Additionally in 1976, following the death of his father Geoffrey Thompson became Managing Director of the company. It was under his leadership that exciting new rides were added, including the spectacular 360 degree rollercoaster, The Revolution, and the UK's only bobsleigh ride - The Avalanche.

The Pleasure Beach has been continuously profitable and these profits have been reinvested in the company as new rides giving Blackpool more exciting and adventurous rides to offer the pubic, furthermore incising customers to choice Blackpool as a holiday destination.

Disadvantages of Bell Vue

Belle Vue had a persona of an amazing holiday destination were nothing went wrong and every aspect was perfect, from bright colour posters and advertisement to using models on park rides when conducting photo shoots. The park wanted the public to believe everything was like a dream, but this was far from the truth. The Zoological gardens being the main area of scrutinisation, as the animal well fair was none existent. The park had the view that when an animal died they could just replace them with another. Many of the animals including the elephants were on show in cages so small that they could not turn around in them and had to be backed out of the cages at the end of the day. The animals in the gardens had months if not weeks life expectancy.

In the 1960's the number of people going to Belle Vue was on the decline. The rides found at the fairground were becoming very common and the family were unable to reinvest. The whole atmosphere and entertainment became tired and dull. Blackpool had similar rides and the idea of being at the beach for cheap get aways became more appealing to the public over being in the city center. So Belle Vue started focusing more on sport events such as boxing, wrestling, football and tennis to try and get people coming through the gates instead of traveling to the Blackpool pleasure beach. Eventually in the late 1970's, after being around for about 140/150 years Belle Vue closed. It was so successful and has been compared to Disney Land Paris. The business was also more profitable than the cotton industry. It is a great shame that this amazing and exciting park, for its era, is rarely spoken about in todays history.

 

Belle Vue

Belle Vue was a holiday destination for many families and people of all ages. The attraction opened in Manchester, in 1836 and closed in 1977, and between this time an average of 2,000,000 excited holiday makers made there way through the famous gates every year. Belle Vue offered a wide range of entertainment from the fairground, circus, zoological gardens, ballrooms and the biggest firework exhibition outside of London, lasting 20-30 minuets long, every evening from May to september. The majority of families would often stay all day to watch these famous shows. This was a cleaver ploy by Belle Vue, as they knew staying all day would make them more money through the public having to buying food and drink. However this famous holiday destination was well known for the exotic animals they kept in their zoo. Many of which the population of Britain had never even seen in pictures before. Being able to see, touch and even ride these exotic animals attracted more and more people to Belle Vue.

Belle Vue also kept a monkey who became very famous for wearing children's clothes, smoking a pipe and drinking beer, his name was Consul and he was much loved by the public and staff. Unfortunately he only lived for 5years, the average chimp should live to 40/50 years. This is thought to be down to the the poor living space, little food and not being looked after in captivity properly. When Consul died the park just brought another chimp and dressed him in the same jacket that Consul once wore. However the public soon realised the difference and complained about the behaviour of the new monkey. He then became known as Consul 2.