DelPiero said:
Pleasure Island suffers from 3 main issues imo. The first being location, It's based in the north, where Alton, Lightwater, Flamingoland and the two Skegness parks are all within around an hour.
Way off on that one if you mean those parks are around an hour from Pleasure Island? Alton Towers, as has already been mentioned, would be just shy of three hours. Flamingoland and Lightwater would be around two hours each. It's only the Skegness parks that are close.
If you mean those parks are around an hour from anywhere in "The North" in general, I think you'd need to be more specific; I don't think there's anywhere that puts all those places at even roughly equal distances.
You're right about location being a thing, but not necessarily because of competition from other parks.
Pleasure Island is not going to be a destination park for anyone, though that's how they've set themselves up. Like most seaside parks, it should rely on passing trade from holidaymakers, but Cleethorpes doesn't get the visitor numbers that other seaside towns get. Outside of those holidaymakers - many of which won't want to spend the time and money at a pay-one-price park (paying one price, for most people, implies spending a full day there) - nobody is going to think to bother with Pleasure Island.
Essentially, they've got a comparatively low catchment of potential visitors based on Cleethorpes being a "minor" seaside town. then they've reduced that potential number further by setting themselves up as a "proper" theme park that people will see as a whole-day activity with all the costs that implies.
Nobody would go to Adventure Island as a main park trip, but Southend gets loads of people through during the season, many of which will pop in to Adventure Island for a couple of hours.
The parks around Skegness and Great Yarmouth will be the same; people are there anyway and they don't have to pay to get in or make any real effort to just have a look and then probably ride a couple of things.
Pleasurewood Hills will be next to disappear even though the seaside parks just up the road in Great Yarmouth seem to be doing really well. It was obviously built with the Great Yarmouth/Lowestoft holidaymakers in mind, but it's just a slight bit of an effort to get to and would be seen as an "expensive" all-day thing to do when you've already got a few rides on the seafront.
The only 'destination" park to really target a seaside market successfully, rather than passing trade, and without actually being on the seafront, has been Flamingoland. They manage to get plenty of day trippers who are staying on the Yorkshire coast for a holiday, advertising heavily in towns and holiday parks around the area. They're also well-positioned for day-trippers from York and Leeds as well though, as well as being the closest proper park to Hull, Newcastle, Sunderland, Middlesborough and Scotland (along with maybe Blackpool for Scotland, but people visit more for the place as whole rather than the Pleasure Beach specifically).
Pleasure Island, along with Pleasurewood Hills, has been relying on a market that just isn't there.
