Dear all,
I can’t believe that another main season has ended and we are now preparing the park for our Christmas Wonderland.
2011 was a year of highs and lows. The season started well with great visitor numbers and great weather. However as we all know, the latter did not last for long and we were soon faced with below average temperatures and heavy rain over the all important Bank Holiday weekends. This as you can imagine does not bode well for the theme park industry and combined with the economic situation we all find ourselves in at the moment, by mid August, things were not looking too rosy. The short lived but much appreciated Indian summer experienced in early October was gratefully received and we were thrilled to welcome record numbers through the gate for that month.
The highest high of the entire year (so far) has to be the firework weekend. Once it became evident that all 6000 tickets for the Saturday night were going to sell we very quickly decided to extend the celebrations to the Sunday. Fortunately this proved to be the right thing to do and we welcomed an additional 2500 people to the park on the Sunday. If you didn’t manage to visit us on either day then you missed a fantastic weekend of rides in the dark and the most spectacular fireworks I have seen for many, many years. Already we have decided to hold two days and nights of fun and fireworks during 2012 (November 3rd and 4th) so if you didn’t manage to get to us this year, we hope to welcome you next time. We are currently in discussions with the firework company and for 2012 we are hoping to incorporate some kind of display on our lake so that should be something special. Some more good news – we have decided to keep all prices for the fireworks as per this year (£3 for the fireworks, £6 or £9 for the ride wristbands).
As mentioned above, preparations are well under way for our Christmas Wonderland. We will open weekends throughout December plus the full week in the run up to Christmas itself (until the 23rd). We have kept open rides suitable for the under 9s including the Frog Hopper, the Flying Chairs, the Mini Mine Train and the Whirly Twirl. The skating rink will also be available and now sits well outside McCormacks Suite which will also remain open for lunch and refreshments. Our Father Christmas grotto can be found indoors in Tinks Town and I must say it truly is a magnificent grotto. Already lots of people have booked birthday parties during December which is a great idea – certainly something different! We are keeping everything crossed and hoping this Christmas event will attract lots of local people as well as visitors from further afield. This is just one of the many ways we hope to extend the season here at Pleasure Island.
Plans for the 2012 season are already taking shape as you might imagine. There is so much to be done during the closed period that there is little time for rest for the maintenance and engineering teams especially. Rides will be stripped down, checked thoroughly by an independent body and certificated when all tests have been passed. Painting is always a massive job in the winter and everyone helps out with this when they have any spare time. As we open on April 1st next year there really is no time to be wasted.
If you visited us during 2011 I hope you enjoyed your day and thank you for choosing Pleasure Island – we hope to welcome you back next year. There will be regular updates to the website throughout winter so please keep in touch.
In the meantime all that remains for me to say is Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you all.
Regards,
Melanie Wood
Director
