Big One (Pleasure Beach Resort)
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| Big One, taken from the promenade | |||||||||||||||||
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| Manufacturer | Arrow Dynamics | ||||||||||||||||
| Product | Hyper Coaster | ||||||||||||||||
| Type | Steel - Hyper | ||||||||||||||||
| Riders per train | 30 | ||||||||||||||||
| Hourly capacity | 1700 | ||||||||||||||||
| Propulsion | Chain lift hill | ||||||||||||||||
| Height | 64.9 metres | ||||||||||||||||
| Drop | 62.5 metres | ||||||||||||||||
| Top speed | 119.1 km/h | ||||||||||||||||
| Length | 1675.5 metres | ||||||||||||||||
| Inversions | 0 | ||||||||||||||||
| Drop angle | 65° | ||||||||||||||||
| Duration | 3:00 | ||||||||||||||||
| G-Force | 3.5 | ||||||||||||||||
Big One is a steel hyper roller coaster located at Pleasure Beach Resort in Blackpool, Lancashire, England, UK. The ride was formerly sponsored by Pepsi, during which time it was called Pepsi Max Big One. It is the tallest roller coaster in the United Kingdom and the tallest in the world when it opened on 28 May 1994. The ride was designed by Arrow Dynamics and manufactured by British firm Watson Steel, with Allott and Lomax acting as consultant.[2] The ride's supports were designed by Ride Centerline.[3]
History
Construction for Big One started in 1992 and it was completed at a cost of £13 million.[4] To make room for the attraction, Space Tower was removed after the 1993 season and was relocated to sister park Frontierland Western Theme Park in 1994, reopening in 1995.
The 1994 opening of Big One, Shockwave at Drayton Manor and Nemesis at Alton Towers resulted in 1994 being celebrated by UK parks and fans as the "Year of the Rollercoaster".[5]
At some point in the 1990s, both the first drop and the turnaround were reprofiled. Some of the old track was reused in the facade for Valhalla, where it remained until the replacement of the facade during the 2011-2012 off-season.[6] Big One's track was also used in the construction of a new facade for the Lost Dinosaurs of the Sahara (formerly River Caves) ride at former sister park Pleasureland Southport in 2004.[7]
For the 2012 season, the Pepsi Max branding was dropped from the name.
From 2019 onwards, the track began to be replaced in portions of the ride.[8] Over the 2019-2020 off-season, the section passing under the lift hill was retracked, while the ride's ending was retracked over the 2020-2021 off-season.[9] The work was conducted by Taziker, a local engineering firm, and was believed to be a phased project happening over multiple closed seasons.[10]
Design
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Color scheme
Red track and blue supports. The turnaround has a white support frame, with the normal blue supports under it.
Trains
2 trains with 5 cars per train. In each car, riders are arranged 2 across in 3 rows, for a total of 30 riders per train. The ride originally operated with three trains.
Incidents
In July 1994, shortly after the opening of the roller coaster, a computer fault caused two trains to collide, injuring 26 people. It reopened on 31 August.[11] A similar incident occurred again on 31 August 2000, when 20 people were injured as two trains collided at low speed in the station.[12]
Images
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Big One in 2017 -
The drop at night -
The tunnel -
A train descending after the mid-course brake run -
The manufacturer plate -
Big One, as it enters the tunnel through the structure of Nickelodeon Streak
_tunnel_1.jpg)
_2015_01.jpg)
_2004_01.jpg)
References
- ↑ "National Rollercoaster day is sounding amazing for The Big One". Amusement Today. 15 August 2019. Retrieved 26 April 2021.
- ↑ Pepsi Max - The Big One - Engineering Timelines
- ↑ "Rides List". Ride Centerline. Retrieved 2022-04-18.
- ↑ "Bits of the Beach: Big One". Joyland Books.
- ↑ Anniversary Features - Coaster Kingdom
- ↑ Valhalla at Blackpool Pleasure Beach - Theme Park Review
- ↑ Early Changes to The Big One - CoasterForce
- ↑ "Pleasure Beach Big One Re-tracking Work Gets Under Way".
- ↑ "Work Begins On Big One Retrack at Blackpool Pleasure Beach".
- ↑ "UK's Tallest Rollercoaster Retracked by Taziker".
- ↑ "Big One reopens". The Guardian.
- ↑ "20 hurt in Blackpool rollercoaster crash". The Guardian.
External links
| The category Big One (Pleasure Beach Resort) contains additional media. |
- Big One on the Roller Coaster DataBase.
| Tallest complete-circuit roller coaster May 1994 - July 1996 | ||
| Preceded by Magnum XL-200 |
Tallest complete-circuit roller coaster May 1994 - July 1996 |
Succeeded by Fujiyama |