About Blackpool Pleasure Beach
The Blackpool Pleasure Beach is Europe's biggest amusement park and a monument to the enterprise of the Thomson family, who still own and operate it today.
It was created amongst South Shore sandy wastelands with the imagination of William George Bean, who in partnership with John Outhwaite, operated amusement rides from 1896. In the early years of the Twentieth Century, they purchased forty acres of land and later formed the Blackpool Pleasure Beach Ltd.
This brought order and respectability to a haphazard fairground, meeting the early objections of South Shores residential population. With W.G. Bean's introduction of novel American rides, the Pleasure Beach became one of Blackpool's principal attractions before the First World War.
Following his death in 1929. the family tradition passed to Leonard Thomson, Bean's son-in-law. He acquired the Outhwaite family interests in 1931, and completely modernised the amusement park in the Thirties.
Today the pleasure beach is managed by Amanda Thomson and assisted by Nicholas Thomson, representing the fourth generation of the family. However the late Mrs L.D Thomson – daughter of W.G.Bean – maintained her own interest in the Pleasure Beach, and sampled most of the rides.
In 1994, the creation of the Pepsi Max Big One - the tallest, fastest and most sensational ride in the world - confirms every sophistication imaginable to provide thrills and excitement for the public.
In the midst of these new technological treats, the Maxim Flying Machine of 1904 continues in its popularity, as a symbol of the continuity which has been the strength of the Pleasure Beach throughout the Twentieth Century, and beyond its Centenary in 1996.
