Podcasts about Blackpool Pleasure Beach

On this week's episode of The Therapy Crouch, it's an alfresco Ask Me Anything special as Peter Crouch and Abbey Clancy answer your juiciest, funniest, and most heartwarming listener questions straight from their sun-soaked Portuguese holiday.Filming from the "Blackpool Pleasure Beach" of Portugal (according to Pete), the couple dive headfirst into topics ranging from secret office romances and Mandela Effect conspiracies to the realities of pregnancy sickness, balancing big families, and how to keep the spark alive in a long-term relationship.Abbey gets candid about the hellish sickness of her pregnancies and her longing for another baby, while Pete weighs in on why he's firmly closing the baby shop. The pair also reflect on their dream future five years from now and hilariously debate whether Abbey could go without designer homeware or alone time with Pete forever. Spoiler: “femur fever” is involved.As always, expect emotional honesty, outrageous overshares, and infectious banter from everyone's favourite therapy couple.If you want to submit a question to the pod, hit the link below!https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1Mv3i0N5Jm1Kkjvd-4iUkpJEV1_Tisgq58siorNb9zS0/edit00:00 – Chaos in Portugal: Pete's bad back and alfresco filming fails00:50 – Pete's femur length and the flight legroom disaster03:00 – The three emojis that sum up their relationship04:15 – Abbey's emotional confession about wanting another baby06:45 – Can you love someone else before loving yourself?10:15 – How to handle dating a co-worker in secret13:00 – Abbey and Pete react to the Mandela Effect mind-benders17:45 – My boyfriend ignores me in front of his mates—what do I do?22:00 – Abbey opens up about being violently ill during pregnancy26:00 – Abbey's “prison drama” level sickness explained29:45 – Abbey and Pete's dream day in five years time32:00 – Barbecue memories and the episode sign-offTo contact us: Email: thetherapycrouch@gmail.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thetherapycrouchpodcast/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/ @thetherapycrouch Website: https://thetherapycrouch.com/ For more from Peterhttps://twitter.com/petercrouchFor more from Abbeyhttps://www.instagram.com/abbeyclancyOur clips channelhttps://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZntcv96YhN8IvMAKsz4Dbg Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week we head to the seaside resort of Blackpool. Home to Blackpool Pleasure Beach and the iconic Blackpool Tower, the town attracts millions of visitors every year. And it's not just tourists that flock to this quintessentially British holiday destination. Every year, thousands of people move to Blackpool from other parts of the UK. In 2016, 21-year-old Debbie Leitch and her mother, Elaine Clarke, moved there from Leeds, with Elaine's three other children. The move should have signalled the beginning of an exciting new chapter in their lives, but for Debbie, who had Down Syndrome, it heralded the beginning of the end when her life spiralled into a downward descent into hell where neglect, abuse and isolation reigned supreme. This is an infuriating story which contains descriptions of neglect and abuse that some listeners may find distressing. Listener discretion is advised. We have made a donation to the Downs Syndrome Association (Home - Downs Syndrome Association) in honour of Debbie Leitch - if you are able to and would like to donate too, please hit the link below: Make a donation to the Down's Syndrome Association If you would like to access exclusive bonus content and support us on Patreon, you can find us here: www.patreon.com/seeingredpodcast If you would like to GIFT a Patreon membership to a special someone, head to www.patreon.com/seeingredpodcast/gift If you would like to buy us a coffee (or wine!), hit the link below: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/seeingredtw Get your merch here: www.seeingredpodcast.co.uk Theme music arranged and composed by Holly-Jane Shears - check her work out at www.soundcloud.com/DeadDogInBlackBag Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week we head to the seaside resort of Blackpool. Home to Blackpool Pleasure Beach and the iconic Blackpool Tower, the town attracts millions of visitors every year. And it's not just tourists that flock to this quintessentially British holiday destination. Every year, thousands of people move to Blackpool from other parts of the UK. In 2016, 21-year-old Debbie Leitch and her mother, Elaine Clarke, moved there from Leeds, with Elaine's three other children. The move should have signalled the beginning of an exciting new chapter in their lives, but for Debbie, who had Down Syndrome, it heralded the beginning of the end when her life spiralled into a downward descent into hell where neglect, abuse and isolation reigned supreme. This is an infuriating story which contains descriptions of neglect and abuse that some listeners may find distressing. Listener discretion is advised. We have made a donation to the Downs Syndrome Association (Home - Downs Syndrome Association) in honour of Debbie Leitch - if you are able to and would like to donate too, please hit the link below: Make a donation to the Down's Syndrome Association If you would like to access exclusive bonus content and support us on Patreon, you can find us here: www.patreon.com/seeingredpodcast If you would like to GIFT a Patreon membership to a special someone, head to www.patreon.com/seeingredpodcast/gift If you would like to buy us a coffee (or wine!), hit the link below: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/seeingredtw Get your merch here: www.seeingredpodcast.co.uk Theme music arranged and composed by Holly-Jane Shears - check her work out at www.soundcloud.com/DeadDogInBlackBag Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Join us as we catch up on all the latest attraction news from around the world! We discuss the removal of The Blade at Alton Towers and what could be Blackpool Pleasure Beach's next investment.

Looking for daily inspiration?  Get a quote from the top leaders in the industry in your inbox every morning.   This episode is brought to you by New Vue. New Vue is a team of attractions experts providing an ‘all-in-one' reporting suite for attractions businesses. Their reporting solution empowers attraction leaders to make well-informed decisions, based on real-time data. New Vue also build slick websites that elevate your digital guest experience and provide strategic support to help you with booking systems and all of your IT needs. Jim Futrell is the Historian for the National Amusement Park Historical Association and IAAPA. With over 40 years of experience researching and preserving amusement park history, Jim has authored multiple books and articles on the subject and is recognized as a leading voice in the field. In this interview, Jim talks about amusement park history, putting context on history, and shared experiences across generations. Amusement Park History “One of the first watershed moments in amusement park history was the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. It gave birth to the modern amusement park industry.” Jim discussed how the exposition introduced the Midway Plaisance, which became a blueprint for amusement parks worldwide. Attractions like the Ferris wheel captivated visitors, and the fair's profitability from entertainment inspired park developers to embrace thrilling rides and immersive environments. Jim highlights key moments, such as the development of John Miller's under-friction wheel in 1919, which revolutionized roller coaster safety and design. This innovation allowed coasters to evolve from scenic rides to thrilling centerpieces of amusement parks. According to Jim, these milestones laid the foundation for the resilient and ever-evolving amusement park industry we know today. Putting Context on History “Being a true historian isn't just memorizing facts—it's about contextualizing them within a broader framework.” Jim emphasized how understanding historical context deepens our appreciation of amusement parks. For instance, he explored how global events like World War I and II transformed the industry. After World War II, the rise of suburbanization and interstate highways shifted parks from urban centers to sprawling suburban attractions, such as Disneyland. He also shared examples of how past myths about the industry, such as Disney's alleged detachment from IAAPA or the history of Blackpool Pleasure Beach's membership, were debunked through diligent research. For Jim, the essence of amusement park history lies in connecting these moments to broader societal changes. Shared Experiences Across Generations “Amusement parks are one of the few places where you can share the same experience across generations.” Jim passionately described how amusement parks enable families to create multi-generational memories. He shared a personal story about how his family has ridden Kings Island's carousel for six generations, underscoring the industry's ability to preserve nostalgia while remaining relevant to new audiences. Jim noted that balancing tradition with innovation is critical for parks. They must honor iconic attractions while introducing new experiences that resonate with modern guests. For example, parks like Knoebels and Kennywood have thrived by preserving their history and making forward-thinking investments.   Jim Futrell's dedication to preserving amusement park history offers valuable insights into how the industry's past shapes its future. To connect with Jim directly, you can reach him on LinkedIn or Facebook. To learn more about the National Amusement Park Historical Association and IAAPA, visit their websites.   This podcast wouldn't be possible without the incredible work of our faaaaaantastic team:   Scheduling and correspondence by Kristen Karaliunas Audio and Video editing by Abby Giganan   To connect with AttractionPros: AttractionPros.com AttractionPros@gmail.com AttractionPros on Facebook AttractionPros on LinkedIn AttractionPros on Instagram AttractionPros on Twitter (X)

A Jackson Wang haunted house, "Under the Castle", comes to Halloween Horror Nights 2024 at Universal Studios Singapore; Six Flags Fright Fest Extreme at Six Flags Magic Mountain suffered challenges during opening this past weekend; Eveerland and Netflix collaborate to bring "Stranger Things" and "All of Us Are Dead" to Blood City 8; a new Disney Villains show is coming to Walt Disney World's Hollywood Studios next summer; Blackpool Pleasure Beach announces two new scare zones and triple the rides for Journey to Hell: Freak Nights; a Boston, MA announces new Spooky Streets program to provide grants for Halloween block parties; the Douglas Halloween Parade for Adults seeks donors for its 26th annual event; the Vegas Theater Company will premiere the new Halloween haunt-themed musical "The House on Watch Hill" on September 27th; Ames Haunted Forest to close after 25 years of fears; Niles Scream Park returns for its 51st season; Freakling Bros. Horror Shows returns in a new location for 2024; "Onionhead's Revenge" returns to the Mall of America starting September 27th; Meow Wolf's Halloween experience, "Cosmic Howl" will return to each of its locations this Fall; City officials have halted construction of a popular home haunt display in Ortilla, Ontario; Ghost of Glamis returns to the landmark 650-year-old castle for 2024 with new child-friendly storytelling tours; Freaklings Bros. Horror Shows now hiring scareactors for this season; The Canadian Haunters Association hosted their 10th annual awards ceremony this past weekend.

Send us a Text Message.Hello and welcome back to the Treat Your Business podcast! I'm Katie Bell, and if you're a clinic owner feeling overwhelmed by the ups and downs of business, this episode is made for you. Running a clinic can sometimes feel like a wild ride on an old rollercoaster at Blackpool Pleasure Beach—unpredictable, thrilling, and at times, downright exhausting. Today, I'm sharing the five key lessons I've learned through years of experience to help you avoid the common pitfalls and achieve success faster. So, strap in, and let's get started!Episode Summary: In this episode, I reflect on my journey as a clinic owner and share the five most valuable lessons I wish I'd known when I first started. From understanding your "why" to upgrading your mindset, each lesson is designed to help you avoid the mistakes that can slow your growth and drain your energy. We'll dive deep into the importance of focus, asking for help, and surrounding yourself with people who inspire you to play a bigger game. Whether you're just starting out or looking to reignite your passion, these insights will help you build a clinic that serves your life, not the other way around.Key Takeaways:Clarify Your Why: Regularly revisit the reasons you started your business to ensure it aligns with your personal values and goals.Focus on One Mentor: Avoid information overload by following the guidance of one trusted mentor who aligns with your business vision.Ask for Help Sooner: Recognise your strengths and delegate tasks that drain your energy, allowing you to focus on growth.Upgrade Your Mindset: Challenge limiting beliefs and adopt a mindset of abundance to break through to the next level.Play a Bigger Game: Surround yourself with people who inspire and challenge you to reach your full potential.Call to Action: Thank you for tuning in today! If you found these tips helpful, I'd love to hear from you. Please leave a review, share the episode, and let's help more clinic owners thrive. For more support, join our free Facebook group or explore our transformational coaching programmes at Thrive Business Coaching. Until next time, remember—your business sho This podcast episode is sponsored by Jane, Clinical Management Software. Book a demo and use code THRIVE1MO to get one month freeResources: BUY YOUR TICKET TO CLINIC GROWTH LIVE https://events.thrive-businesscoaching.com/clinicgrowthlive Join this months FREE masterclass https://join.thrive-businesscoaching.com/masterclass-registration Score App: https://bizhealthcheck.scoreapp.com/ Book a Discovery Call to find out how our programs can help you grow your business https://call.thrive-businesscoaching.com/discovery-call If you've found value in this podcast, I'd greatly appreciate it if you could take a moment to leave a review. Your feedback helps others discover the show and join our community. Thank you for your support!: https://ratethispodcast.com/tyb This podcast is sponsored by HMDG a physiotherapy, Chiropractic, and Allied Health specialist Marketing agency.

Tap into innovation at IAAPA Expo, the biggest industry event of the year. Join us and other AttractionsPros in Orlando, FL, Nov. 18-22 to engage with the global community. Learn from the experts, leave with new ideas, and turn your passion for the industry into new possibilities. Register now to save up to 30%.   Neil Dwyer is the Vice President of Operations at Six Flags Qiddiya City, the largest amusement park in Saudi Arabia, opening in 2025. Neil's career began when a summer job as a ride operator sparked a lifelong passion for the attractions industry. Over the years, he has climbed the ranks, gaining invaluable experience at notable parks like Blackpool Pleasure Beach, IMG Worlds of Adventure in Dubai, and Global Village, a multicultural heritage park in Dubai. In this interview, Neil talks about designing through the operator's perspective, effective service recovery, and how no challenge is unsolvable. Designing from the Operator's Perspective "We've been fortunate enough to work with some really great architects and some really great designers who've just absolutely listened to everything that we wanted to do and we wanted to incorporate." Neil explains how being involved in the early design stages of Six Flags Qiddia has been crucial to ensuring the park's success. By incorporating the operator's perspective, Neil and his team have focused on details like the operator's visibility in the control booth and guest flow throughout the park. This level of involvement has allowed them to address potential operational issues before they arise, leveraging advanced technology like 3D modeling to visualize and optimize every aspect of the guest experience. Effective Service Recovery "Just giving a free ticket and saying sorry is probably not enough to recover that service experience."   Neil discusses his findings from his master's thesis on guest service and service recovery, revealing that only 30% of guests who received free tickets after a negative experience returned to the park. This insight led Neil to understand that effective service recovery goes beyond offering compensation; it requires genuine apologies and thoughtful resolutions that leave a lasting positive impression on guests. He emphasizes the importance of empowering staff to address issues on the spot, ensuring that every guest feels heard and valued. No Challenge is Unsolvable "No challenge is unsolvable. We're going to have all these issues, but we're going to solve all of them. That's part of the fun of the game." Neil's optimistic outlook on overcoming challenges is a driving force behind the development of Six Flags Qiddiya. He acknowledges the unique challenges of opening a theme park in a new market like Saudi Arabia, where there is limited local expertise in the attractions industry. However, Neil sees this as an opportunity rather than a setback, allowing his team to innovate without the constraints of "how things have always been done." This mindset has been instrumental in tackling the monumental task of building the world's tallest, fastest, and longest roller coaster, Falcon's Flight.   To connect with Neil and learn more about his work, you can reach out to him on LinkedIn, where he is always open to networking and sharing insights from his extensive experience in the attractions industry.  For more information on Six Flags Qiddiya, visit their website.   This podcast wouldn't be possible without the incredible work of our faaaaaantastic team: Scheduling and correspondence by Kristen Karaliunas Audio and video editing by Abby Giganan To connect with AttractionPros: AttractionPros.com AttractionPros@gmail.com AttractionPros on Facebook AttractionPros on LinkedIn AttractionPros on Instagram AttractionPros on Twitter (X)

In this episode, Luke and Dad give you a little bit of information on what's been going on during half term, but primarily this episode is all about WWE. There is no mention of AEW at all during the show, which is indicative of how far off the pace promotion has been. This episode concentrates on the upcoming premium live event at Crown Jewel 2023 and we give our predictions and hopes for who will be the winners and what the future holds for some of the Stars. Please remember this is a father and a son and we are not professional broadcasters, please be kind. We really appreciate you listening, thank you very much.

Classic and historic is the city of Blackpool in the UK. Your typical seaside town with a promenade and lots of activities. One of the most recognisable activities is Blackpool Pleasure Beach, a park originally inspired by Coney Island and owned by a family for generations now. The current CEO Amanda Thompson explains the curious city of Blackpool, the history of this historical themepark and why it is important to know and understand your market. A lovely interview, recorded live during IAAPA Expo Europe in Vienna 2023. For more about Blackpool Pleasure Beach visit: https://www.blackpoolpleasurebeach.com/

Skip the Queue is brought to you by Rubber Cheese, a digital agency that builds remarkable systems and websites for attractions that helps them increase their visitor numbers. Your host is  Kelly Molson, Founder of Rubber Cheese.Download the Rubber Cheese 2022 Visitor Attraction Website Report - the first digital benchmark statistics for the attractions sector.If you like what you hear, you can subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, and all the usual channels by searching Skip the Queue or visit our website rubbercheese.com/podcast.If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave us a five star review, it really helps others find us. Show references: https://carbonsix.digital/https://www.linkedin.com/in/pmarden/Paul Marden is the Founder and Managing Director of Carbon Six Digital and the CEO of Rubber Cheese. He is an Umbraco Certified Master who likes to think outside the box, often coming up with creative technical solutions that clients didn't know were possible. Paul oversees business development and technical delivery, specialising in Microsoft technologies including Umbraco CMS, ASP.NET, C#, WebApi, and SQL Server. He's worked in the industry since 1999 and has vast experience of managing and delivering the technical architecture for both agencies and client side projects of all shapes and sizes. Paul is an advocate for solid project delivery and has a BCS Foundation Certificate in Agile. https://www.rubbercheese.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/kellymolson/Kelly Molson is the Founder of Rubber Cheese, a user focused web design and development agency for the attraction sector. Digital partners to Eureka! The National Children's Museum, Pensthorpe, National Parks UK, Holkham, Visit Cambridge and The National Marine Aquarium.Kelly regularly delivers workshops and presentations on sector focused topics at national conferences and attraction sector organisations including ASVA, ALVA, The Ticketing Professionals Conference and the Museum + Heritage Show.As host of the popular Skip the Queue Podcast for people working in or working with visitor attractions, she speaks with inspiring industry experts who share their knowledge of what really makes an attraction successful.Recent trustee of The Museum of the Broads. Transcription:  Kelly Molson: Welcome to Skip The Queue, a podcast for people working in or working with visitor attractions. I'm your host, Kelly Molson.In this new monthly slot, Rubber Cheese CEO Paul Marden joins me to discuss different digital related topics.In this episode, we're talking about the impact of design, navigation and content on selling tickets and how to go about testing if your design is working or not.If you like what you hear, you can subscribe on all the usual channels by searching Skip The Queue.Kelly Molson:  We're doing something a little bit different on the podcast this season. So alongside the usual guest interviews, which we'll have each month, me and the Rubber Cheese CEO, Paul Marden are also going to be recording an episode on a different digital related topic. So we're going to do this once a month. Kelly Molson: Each of the episodes, we're going to share insight around design, user experience, content, accessibility, SEO and loads, loads more. We're going to talk a little bit about what's possible, give you some ideas about how easy or how hard that topic is to implement.Kelly Molson: Maybe what kind of budget that you might need to look at and what some of the next steps are to take if you want to implement some of these things. We're even going to call out some of the best in breed websites, people that are doing things really well within the sector.Kelly Molson:  So I've been hosting the Skip the Queue podcast since July 2019. Goodness, that's been a long time. Five seasons in now. This is season five. You all know me already. So I am the founder of Rubber Cheese and my background is in design. Kelly Molson: I co founded Rubber Cheese back in 2003 after learning about ecommerce when I worked at a very early kind of Shopify type startup agency. The person that you don't know quite as well as me is my fellow host on this podcast. That's funny to say, that my fellow host is Paul Marden. So. Paul. Hello. Welcome. Paul Marden: Hello. Kelly Molson: This is strange. I'm going to have to share the spotlight for a while, that's very uncomfortable for me. No, it will be fine."It will be fine", she says. Paul, I would love it if you could give us a little intro to yourself. Kelly Molson: I know your background and I know you very well. We've known each other for about, I think it's about 14 years now. It's been a long time, hasn't it?Paul Marden: Yeah. Not long after I started doing this as a proper job. Kelly Molson: Well, there you go. Tell us about what your proper job is. Paul Marden: Yeah, so I'm the CEO of Rubber Cheese now, alongside another agency that I run called Carbon Six, which we merged Carbon Six and Rubber Cheese just over a year ago. My background is as a geek. I'm a developer by training. I started out ten years at British Airways, all over the airline, doing all different sorts of IT related jobs. So I saw lots of operational side of things, commercial sides of the airline, say, selling tickets, that kind of thing. I don't know if I've told you, but my first visitor attraction job was a long time ago, because when I was at Uni, I did a placement at the National Botanic Garden of Wales when it first opened. So I was there when it was a hole in the ground and I helped them write their IT strategy. Paul Marden: So my visitor attraction experience predates my involvement in Rubber Cheese. Kelly Molson: I did not know that. So you've done geek stuff for attractions. Paul Marden: For a long time. Yeah, it was amazing. I can still remember I was in an office in a farmhouse as they were building the giant glass house. It was just the most amazing place and I've not been back for a long time. It would be amazing to go and see the place, how it's transformed in the, what is it, 24 years since I was there? God, I really sound old now, don't I? Kelly Molson: You do sound old. I'm just wondering if they still use the IT plan that you put in place for them. Paul Marden: Probably not. I was only a student at the time. It can't have been amazing. Kelly Molson: So what we normally do on the podcast, listeners, as you well know, is I ask my guests a series of uncomfortable questions, icebreaker questions, which they very graciously answer beautifully for me. We're not going to do that on this episode. Ha. So we thought, yeah, Paul has wiped his brow in a state of relief there. But what we thought we would do is Paul and I both visit a lot of visitor attractions, both professionally and in our personal life as well. We've both got daughters at very different ages, so Millie is  coming up for I think, 9.Paul Marden: 10 in two weeks' time. Kelly Molson: Okay. And my little one is 2. So we're going to very different visitor attractions right now. But we thought we would talk about the attraction that we visited most recently and what we loved about it, and we thought we'd ask each other that question. So I am going to ask you that question first, Paul. What attraction have you visited most recently and what did you love about it? Paul Marden: So we just finished the summer holidays, so went away for just over a week to the Netherlands. We did visit a few different attractions whilst were there, but went to an amazing place. We went back to it, actually, it was one that we've been to before called Burger's Zoo. So I loved the whole experience of going there the first time around and we wanted to go back there. It's an amazing place. But the reason why I was going to call it out today was a conversation that we've been having and something that we've done with Kitten Museums in terms of the food offering. Because when you go to Burger's Zoo, the restaurant is amazing. We've talked recently about the sorts of food that you get at visitor attractions and your frustration around this. Lots of fried food. Paul Marden: There's never any healthy food. So went to Burger Zoo, we had lunch and of course, there'd be obligatory portion of chips there if you want to have it. Lots of kids food there, but I was able to have a massive great salad. It was in enormous and it was lovely and healthy and really enjoyable and it didn't cost the earth when you were there. And it's so unusual to talk about going to an attraction and getting that kind of quality of food without spending the earth in doing it. So, yeah, that was pretty cool. Kelly Molson: That is cool. This is probably a whole another podcast episode to talk about that. I think actually, in your intro, you forgot to mention that you are a Trustee for the Kids in Museums, which is quite a new role for you, isn't it? But it's one that kind of immersed you into the world of attraction. I think that's been a good one for you. They have set up a brilliant scheme, which is kind of an accreditation scheme for attractions to go through, just to check into how healthy and how great their food offering actually is, which I think is brilliant. It's really weird. Kelly Molson: The day that they launched it, I was having a like, literally the day before, I was having a conversation on LinkedIn about how atrocious the food offering had been at an attraction that I went to, which is one of the top ten most visited attractions in the UK. It's a great place. It really is a brilliant place, especially if you've got toddler. However, the food was pretty horrendous and I've got an unusual toddler in that. Well, she will eat chips now, she will eat chippies, but she won't eat fried stuff or battered things or anything like that. She's just not interested.Paul Marden: Nothing beige.Kelly Molson: Not really, even pasta has to be, she should have been an Italian, she should have seen the amount of pasta that she wolf down when were over there. But it's got to be good. Kelly Molson: It's got to be good. Yeah, she is particularly fussy toddler. But just for myself, I mean, just the range of food that was available that day was just dreadful. I mean, the healthiest thing that was on the menu that Lee and I both had was jacket potatoes and I think I took a picture of it somewhere and it was too awful to put on social media. So, yes, that is well needed and I'm glad that attraction stood out on the food front for you. Paul Marden: What about you? Where have you been recently? Kelly Molson: I've been to lots of different places recently, but this one I can't stop thinking about and so I want to talk about it today and it's not one that I visited with Edie. It's one that I visited with a fellow attractions professional a little while ago, but it's the Beamish Living Museum. I honestly can't stop thinking about it. It's the first living museum that I've been to, so it's the first experience of that for me. And I had such an emotional reaction to it. I'm a bit embarrassed, actually. So I went to meet a couple of people. I met one person that I'd met briefly at a conference before, and then I met one of their colleagues who I'd never met before in my life. And I actually had a bit of a cry to this colleague because it was so emotive. Kelly Molson: If anyone who hasn't been to Beamish Living Museum, there's lots of different areas that you can visit, and one of them is a 1950s area and they essentially recreate what it was like in the 1950s, where the museum is located. And it brought back so many memories of my grandparents, both sets of grandparents, for different reasons. The house was very similar to my grandparents on my father's side and just down to some of the things that they had in that space. And I just got overwhelmed by it. It was so wonderful to go back and see that. And in my head all the time I was thinking, well, both my sets of grandparents are no longer with us. They passed away when I was in my early twenties. And so Edie will never get to meet her great grandparents on that side. And I thought, God, how amazing would it be for me to bring here and say, show her some of the things that great granny used to have in her house and yeah, just lost it. Paul Marden:  It's interesting, isn't it, that you can become so immersed that even now the emotional attachment that you've built when you were there takes you straight back there. Because there's a risk, isn't there, with those sorts of places of it feeling a little bit plastic and fake, isn't it? But this clearly had an emotional impact on you. Kelly Molson: Yeah, I think for me, I was worried that it would be people in costumes. It would feel like that. And it did not feel like that at all. It just felt so authentic. Anyway, you've got to go. I don't want to cry for the rest of this podcast, but yeah, it's definitely a must visit for me, it was something really special. Paul Marden: Excellent. Kelly Molson: Should we move on to what we're going to talk about? And I'll compose myself, shall we?Paul Marden: Okay, moving swiftly on.Kelly Molson: Let's. So in this episode, we're going to talk about the impact of design, navigation and content on selling tickets and how we go about testing if it's working or not. So this episode actually launches on the 4th of October, which is one day after we release the 2023 Visitor Attraction website report. There's data that has come out of this year's report that is so insightful and I cannot wait for everybody to get this year's report. It dives deeper into a lot of the topics that we talked about in the first report last year, but there's just so much more to it and I'm very excited about it.Kelly Molson: Anyway, looking at the data from the report, a 100% of the attractions that took part think that having consistent design and clear navigation is important, which is brilliant. Big tick there. However, many of them don't think that their site meets the need and some of them think it does, but they don't test that it does. There's some really interesting stats about testing that we're going to talk about in a minute that have actually blew my mind a little bit. But one good stat around the design is that 76% of respondents believe that their websites were consistently designed despite using multiple platforms in their customer journey. Kelly Molson: And this is something that we talked about quite frequently in that sometimes there's a big disconnect if you are using if you've got your website that's built and designed in WordPress for example, and then you've got your ticketing platform and the two don't look like each other, they're not consistent, they're incongruent. That can be a bit of a challenge for people in terms of trust and how they feel about your brand. Paul Marden: It can be a jarring experience, can't it? Kelly Molson: Yeah, absolutely. Responses this year once again saw that websites that look good and are easy to use are doing far better than those that don't prioritise consistency. So I'm just going to read out this snippet from the report. We saw that websites that were high scoring for their design and navigation made more sales over the past twelve months. So those successful websites had around 200,000 to 500,000 completed transactions. Whereas on the other hand, websites with lower design and navigation scores didn't do as well, stating that they had below 50,000 completed transactions in the last month. That's quite fascinating, isn't it? Paul Marden: It is. This is not just a handful of people that are answering, is it? Because there's a large number of people that are answering that this is important to them and that they think they're doing quite well. And then you see how their perception of doing well correlates really strongly with the actual outcomes of the site itself. Kelly Molson: Yeah, I think that the way that we asked the questions this year is interesting as well. So when I talked then about we said that websites that were high scoring for design and navigation, we gave respondents the options to score their website. So we gave them how well designed do you think your site is? Between 1 and 10, 10 being the highest. So we allowed them to kind of self score. But it's interesting because some of those self scores don't correlate to the data that we then took. So those scores, they're based mostly on assumption, which is always a difficult, challenging place to be. But I think, Paul, you had some insight here around the conversion rate and design and how they tally up. Paul Marden: So the stats you just talked about were about the volume of transactions. You could say that having good design leads you to have more transactions flowing through your website, but you could also say that the organisations that have more transactions flowing through their website can afford to spend more money on design. But what I found interesting was that when you ignore the absolute number of sales that they make on the website, if you actually look at what their conversion rate is on the website, the attractions who think they have good design tend to have a higher conversion rate by about 1% or 2%. Now, that could be on a low base. Paul Marden: There could be a fairly small attraction that has fewer people coming to it, but they still perform relatively better than those attractions that didn't think they had good design but could be massive organisations with large numbers of transactions flowing through. And what I found interesting is we started to work out what is the value of 1 or 2% extra conversion rate, because it doesn't sound like much. Really. There's somebody in the business that doesn't necessarily understand the technology side of it that doesn't sound like a lot. So we started playing with converting that into money. What could that actually be worth? So we played around with we tried to model what is our average attraction and what is the absolute top performing attraction. Paul Marden: And even for our average, an increase of 1% in conversion rate could mean tens of thousands of pounds of extra sales that they make. But for the top performing attraction, it could make the difference of hundreds of thousands of pounds of extra sales just by squeezing 1 or 2% of extra conversion rate out. I think that's absolute gold dust in terms of insight that we've drawn out of this data. The organisations that think they have good design tend to have a conversion rate of 1 or 2% more, which could equate to tens of hundreds of thousands of pounds of extra sales that they make. It makes you begin to think that investment in the design of the site could actually be really worthwhile. Kelly Molson: Absolutely. And information like that helps the marketing managers build the case for good design and investing in good design. Paul Marden: Yeah. And before you say, "Oh, the large organisations with the big budgets, they can afford to do this, what about the small ones?" The smaller organisations with small budgets who had good navigation tended to be the ones that would have the better conversion rate amongst their peers. So you don't need to be a nationally recognised attraction brand to be able to invest an appropriate amount of money in design and get a return on that investment that you make. Kelly Molson: I always think that the best use of budget is on the pre planning side, which is unusual coming from a designer, I think. Yeah.  But Paul, you're really data driven, aren't you? You're super data driven. Paul Marden: Such a geek. Kelly Molson: Yeah, you are a massive geek. Massive nerd. We're very complimentary, but I never used to be very data driven. I was always far more visual driven. But actually well, I'm not going to share it on this podcast, actually, because I'm going to share it at a talk that I'm given. But I've got a really good story around why user testing is very important. We'll come a bit more onto that later. And why you should be driven by the data and the stats and not just by what something looks like. Okay, let's talk about navigation quickly as part of this design section. So it's really interesting. So we've actually got some findings from the Journal of Market Research. Kelly Molson: So they state that, when websites are easy to understand and navigate, individuals have a lower cognitive load, so fewer things to work out, and therefore are more likely to have a positive experience to go on to purchase. So having a consistent and well designed website can really help people make complete purchases with your visitor attraction. What I've always said, it's about trying to stop making people think, give them something that is really easy. So I think when we worked with Eureka!, and this is back in 2016, when we first worked with them, we did some research around what people wanted to find out about attractions, what were the first things they needed to know about. And it was literally, when you open, how much do you cost? How can I get there? Kelly Molson: So, if they're the three things that people desperately need to know, they're the three things that really need to be highlighted front and centre when you arrive at the site, wherever you arrive at it, whether that's the homepage or what. And it's the same with navigation. People need to understand where they're being taken and why they're being taken to certain places. So we're working with an attraction at the moment, we've just about to start work with them. They have got some really key, really strong elements to their Nav, but then they've got an area that says more, and there's a load of stuff that's been added onto the more section, and things like this happen over time. Kelly Molson: When you've got a website, people will say, “I need this to be featured on the site, I need this page to put up there”, and it gets added to, and ultimately you end up with all these things that haven't been thought about from the start, about where they're supposed to go. So they get kind of bundled somewhere, and a more section kind of feels an obvious place to put them. But what is it? Users don't understand what's in there. And they're not going to go searching for hours to find something that they want. They need to find it quickly. And so that for me, is a huge no about bundling stuff into these kind of sections. That just so ambiguous, you don't know what they are. Paul Marden: I think that figuring out what people are trying to do, what are they trying to get out of the website? I think that bundling exercise, putting lots of things onto the site that happened over time or putting it in a bucket of more is often there's so many people in an organisation that want their content heard and seen, don't they? Everybody wants their content on the site. It all goes on there. And sometimes you have to step back and think, what's the point? Who is it that's coming to the site and what are we trying to get them to do? We want the customer at the end of it to think, now that you've read this, what are you going to do next? But we don't always think about that journey. Paul Marden: We think about the snippets of information that we put onto the site, but we don't think about what the journey is they're going through. Attractions are really lucky. I think a lot of the people that go to their sites are really motivated to buy, a lot more motivated to buy than the average ecommerce site. So how do you get out of the way of those people so they can just buy stuff? And then for the people that are less motivated, they don't necessarily want to know how, when and how much they still want to be sold on the idea of going to the attraction, then maybe you need to give them more information. Paul Marden: But identifying who those people are and giving them a journey to go through and coming up with a navigation that makes it really easy for those people to navigate along that journey, there's a lot of psychology that's hard. That's your prep work, isn't it, before you do the design? Kelly Molson: Yeah, and it's the hardest part of it. And I think that's where the most amount of time needs to be spent there and the wireframes really, the design. If you've got good brand guidelines in place, the design ultimately becomes a simplified process at that point. But the pre design work is really where the time and effort needs to be spent. And I think it is a challenge for attractions. So there are attractions that are, if you compare a Chessington World of Adventures, for example, a theme park orientated to a historic museum that you're coming to visit, that not only is an attraction, but obviously has a lot of historical information to share and learning and education plays a big part in them as well. You have different audiences for those. Kelly Molson: So I think one part of that process is you need to think about all the different audiences you have and what are their motivations for visiting the site and what do you want them to do, what actions do you want them to take? But I think when you are working, this has gone off a bit of a tangent, but when you're working with an agency, I think what's really core for the attraction is to make sure that you've got key stakeholders from each of those areas of your attraction that play a part in those early conversations. So you don't want the site redesign to be driven solely by the marketing team for the attraction side. You need someone from the education side to be part of those conversations as well. Kelly Molson: You need visitor experience to be part of those conversations because if you're planning content, each of those individuals will have a different need for what content they need to showcase on the site. So they all need to be talking to each other about how that's going to look. I'm talking from experience because this has not happened in the past. Paul's nodding his head at me because he knows that we've had this challenge previously.Paul Marden: Yeah. Kelly Molson: So yeah, and I think that kind of leads us nicely onto content, really, and about the need to frequently update your site and keep it refreshed. So once you've done all of that hard work of working out what content is going to be on it doesn't stay static. So in the report we have a stat that says 31% of respondents said that they updated their online content multiple times a week. That's good. Another 31% said that they did so at least once a month. Good. However, 22% of respondents said they had infrequent content updates or didn't update their content at all. Not updating your content at all. Paul Marden: That surprised me, that one. Yeah, I was surprised that there were 31% of respondents updated it multiple times a week. I was really impressed by that. Yeah. That takes some work, doesn't it? To be able to produce that level of content change, but to do it infrequently or not at all, that surprised me. Kelly Molson: I guess it depends on the attraction and what their offering is as well. Thinking about one of our clients, Holkham actually, so we know that Holkham update their website frequently. They have a lot of different events, they write a lot of really incredible content about what happens across Holkham Estate. So they're engaging with the audience from the perspective of someone coming to visit and what they can do on the day and what they can come and see. But they're also talking about their wider sustainability efforts across the state and what they do and how they focus on that, which again, might be for that same audience. Might be for a slightly different audience as well. Kelly Molson: So the volume of content that they produce is a lot higher than potentially Thorpe Park as a visitor, they will talk about what's on that day and maybe an events that they're running, but they might not talk about the same things that are going on across the Estate that Holkham would, for example. So I think, yeah, it's what your attraction offers. Paul Marden: Holkham's a really good example because they can take inspiration from the place. They're very diverse, they've got lots of different things that they do at that location. It's quite a large location, but there's lots of different things going on and those things are inside and outside. They can take inspiration from the season. So there's a lot of inspiration that you can take there and produce. Just off the top of my head, I could think of lots of different stories that you could tell and changes to the site that can be inspired by the season. But then I think about a theme park where there's lots that goes on. I think I've done lots of trips to Legoland. There's Legoland at Halloween. There's Legoland in Spring time. It changes through the seasons and there's a lot of story around that. Paul Marden: I wonder if you're an indoor attraction, if you're Heritage Museum based, there's going to be lots of stories that you can tell about the items that you've got in your collection. But it might be harder to tell those stories influenced by the seasons, which can be a real driver for telling varying stories throughout a year, can't they? Yeah, but I don't write a lot of stories for those sorts of organisations, so maybe I don't have the right view of the world, but I would imagine it would be a lot harder to write lots of content varying through the year for that sort of organisation. Kelly Molson: Yes, probably so I'm just thinking about it would just be a change in topic, wouldn't it? So I know Blackpool Pleasure Beach, who Andy Hygate, the Operations Director, came on the podcast a couple of seasons ago, actually, and he talked about the experiences they've developed around walking up the big one and the rise that they have there. And actually, I think for people that are interested in theme parks, there's probably a lot of content around how things are built and how they're developed and that kind of side of stuff that people would be really interested in. So it's not talking about seasonal stuff, it's about the things and how they're constructed and how they're designed and kind of stuff like that. Kelly Molson: So, yeah, again, it comes back to just knowing your audience and what are they interested in and how you can engage them and what are your potential new audiences as well, and how can you develop content that attracts them. There is a correlation between content and purchases, though, which is quite interesting. So our report shows that those who were deliberate in ensuring their content was kept fresh and engaging saw an average of 25 to 50,000 completed website purchases a year, whereas those who didn't, on average, had around 10,000 completed purchases. In the same time frame. That's interesting. In addition, of the respondents who recognised the need for regular content updates but weren't action in them, 23% stated that their average sales conversion rate sat between one and 4%, which is below the benchmark for the sector. Kelly Molson: So the sector benchmark is 5% now, so that 1% is significantly low. Paul Marden: Absolutely. Shall we move on and talk about some testing? Because I know you think this one really is. Kelly Molson: Oh, yeah, I really do. So there is a statistic in the report that I had to reread a few times, actually, to believe. So last year's survey and report, we had about 70 attractions take part. This year has been significantly more than that. We got 188 attractions from up and down the UK and Europe take part, which was incredible.Paul Marden: And one in North America as well. I was really excited when I saw that one. Kelly Molson: Yes, we went international. That was exciting. Okay, so think about this: 188 attractions took part in this. 70% of the respondents have never conducted user testing of any kind on their website. 70%! That's actually not the worst stat though. I'm going to save the worst stat for another episode, but that's not the one that shocked me the most. But this one is really surprising. We've talked a bit about making assumptions about how well your website is perceived by people.Kelly Molson: Hard data from actual users is the key to designing a website that has an improved user experience because it can clarify problem areas and identify where most effort is needed to create a really great online experience. So if you're not asking your users how they're interacting with the site and do they like it? Can they buy things well? Can they find what they want? How do you know if it's good or not? It's blown my mind. Paul Marden: It's really hard, isn't it? Really hard. Kelly Molson: And I think it's really you wrote this down, actually. It's really important to be aware of a familiarity bias. So just because you think your website is easy to navigate doesn't mean other people think is it's because you're familiar with it so you understand where things are. Which is really interesting. Actually, I've just been reminded of a conversation that I had with somebody when I was at an attraction. Now I can't name this attraction, we're working with them and we're under NDA, but they asked me about a website that we'd redesigned. They said, "Oh, you did this website, didn't you?" I said, "Yes", "I can't find this thing anymore that I couldn't find. It took me ages to find it before" and I was like, "All right, what is the thing?" And he talked about what it was. Kelly Molson: I said, "Oh, well, it would be in this area". And he said, "Yeah, which makes sense. But before it was over here and I knew where it was and it just feels a bit weird now." I said, "Do you think it was in the right place before?". "Oh, no, shouldn't have been." Okay. So it's just because you know where it is doesn't mean it's actually in the right place. It's just what you get used to over the years. Paul Marden: It is incredibly hard to put yourself into the position of the person that knows nothing about your organisation. Trying to imagine what the customer is going through takes a lot of effort and I think that you can get data to be able to do that. But a lot of there's kind of levels of kind of understanding of that, putting yourself into that customer's position, the empathy that is required. Lots of people that we meet and work with will talk about how they want their site to be structured and what makes sense to them. Some people then will go the next stage and think about what they think their customer wants. And then there's a stage beyond that which is not even trying to put themselves into the customer position, but actually test what the customer thinks. Paul Marden: It's really hard to have the empathy to understand. If you know nothing, what would you do? And there's loads of stuff that you can do. I'm sure we'll come on to that later on to try to understand and test. But just sitting somebody down and watching them go from zero to hero and buying your tickets is a valuable thing that you could do, couldn't it? Kelly Molson: Yeah, absolutely. Now the report on the survey is anonymous. All the data that we get from it, we don't talk about the people that have submitted it and we don't talk about them. There was a number of websites within the data set that were doing really well in terms of both design and navigation and the impact that they were having on their conversion rate. So we reached out to these organisations to ask if we could talk about them today. And all of them were very happy for us to talk about it. So we have had their permission. I think I'll hand over to you, Paul, because you've been doing the analysis over on these sites. It's really lovely to see that Roman Baths are on this list.Paul Marden: They're on the list.Kelly Molson: Because they have been on the podcast and they're our podcast alumni. So that was good.Paul Marden: Yeah, more than once, I think, as well. Kelly Molson: Yes, they have been. Paul Marden: What I went looking for were who were the organisations that thought that they had good design and navigation in their site? But I didn't think that was really enough because of course you could think that it was good and it isn't very good. So what could I dig into the data to try to pull apart the people that thought they had good design and following through from that good design actually had good outcomes. And Roman Baths was up there in that top set of organisations that had they thought they had a good, consistent high quality design, but they also had a conversion rate up there in the top ratings that we had inside the data set. Obviously, Roman Baths really well known organisation, lots of international visitors will be going there. Paul Marden: There was another that I pulled out in the data set, which was also a really high profile brand. London Zoo came out in that top set. Kelly Molson: Also past podcast guests. Thank you. Yes, lovely people. Paul Marden: So they also thought they had good, consistent design, but coincidentally also had good quality conversion rates up there in the top performance in the data set. But to avoid you saying to me, "Oh, but all these are all big, internationally recognised brands. What's design got to do with it?" Up there we've got Roman Baths, London Zoo. Big, well known brands. But there's also some organisations that I wasn't familiar with in that data set. So there were organisations that are probably more regional, less internationally well recognised brands. And one of those that considered that they had good quality design and they also had high levels of conversion rates. Alongside that were Smithwick's experience in Kilkenny in Ireland. It's an attraction that is a brewery tour. I thought that one was really interesting when I went and looked at it. Paul Marden: It was really easy to navigate around the site, ridiculously easy to go and buy tickets. You go onto the site, it's right there to be able to buy those tickets, to go to that experience. So I think that told me that you didn't need to be a big, well recognised brand to be able to devote the time and attention and budget that's needed to get a good design, which then has the impact on your conversion rates. Yeah, this is not just for the big brands. This is also for other brands, smaller, regional brands that can maybe not devote the same levels of investment to it that a large organisation can, but they can still have good outcomes and good design. Kelly Molson: Yeah. And I think it's fair to say we do ask questions in the report about budget, but we don't ask them specifically. So we haven't asked. We don't, for example, know the investment that Roman Barths, London Zoo or Smithwicks have made in their website to get it to where it is now. We literally have no idea. So their budgets could be phenomenally big, they could be phenomenally small. We have no idea whatsoever. But we know that they have invested in good design and they've done it to a really great standard, which means it's easy for people to make purchases. Therefore their sales are sitting at a really great level. Kelly Molson: The Roman Baths I just a little shout out to Simon Addison, actually, because Simon did come on to the podcast a couple of times now, and actually he came onto a recent episode where we talked about the value of this report and the survey that we carry out. And this is its second year now and we can see the value in terms of the data that we've been able to glean from it is so much more insightful this year. The key insights themselves are much more in depth than they were last year. But one thing that Simon mentioned is that we don't work with Roman Baths. I've made that clear on the last podcast. We didn't design their website. We've not worked with them. Kelly Molson: They did use the report to inform some of the decisions that they made about designing their website and making changes to it, which I think is so great. Right. The report is actually actively doing what we set out for it to do. Regardless of whether anyone comes to work with us or not. Someone can take this report and use the insights from it to inform their current agency to make changes to their site that are going to make a significant difference to their bottom line. Well done, us. Paul Marden: Well done, us. But well done, everyone that's responded as well. Kelly Molson: Whatever. Well done, us. Well done, everyone. Thank you. Paul Marden: So I just think it's really impressive, isn't it, that we've got what was it you said? 180 something respondents from across the sector.Kelly Molson: 188.Paul Marden: It's so hard in a tough industry. There's lots of industries where people would not work together. And this is a collaborative exercise in sharing your data that takes a certain confidence within the sector to be able to be willing to share that information so that then somebody like us can then do the graph that aggregating that and seeing the interesting stories that people can then use to make things better. There's so many places where you would not see that happen.Kelly Molson: It's a wonderful part of the sector, that collaboration and that willingness to share and be open about things. Right, let's talk about next steps then, because we've talked about some of the items within design, navigation, testing. We've talked about who's doing it well. Let's wrap this up with next steps that you can take.  Kelly Molson: If you think some of these things are relevant to you and you want to do something about them. Do some testing. Do some testing and you can do that in a variety of ways. Paul Marden: Do you want me to test some stuff? Kelly Molson: Let's do some testing. Let's test. Look, there's loads of ways that you can do user testing if you're going through the process of a redesign at the moment. Go back to your wireframes, make them interactive. Do some internal testing, do some external testing. You can do this in multiple ways so you can do focus groups, get bums on seats in front of computers and give them some things that you want them to do on your site. Don't tell them how to do it, but just give them some things that you want them to achieve. I want you to buy a ticket. I want you to tell me how easy it is to go and find the interactive map. I want you to find a blog post and can you get from the blog post to buying a ticket, some of those things. Kelly Molson: This doesn't need to cost you a huge amount of money, right? You all have an asset in that. "Hey, would you like a free ticket to our venue if you come and do some testing for us?" Put on a little bit of lunch, put on people are really happy to help and give you feedback in that way. So that doesn't need to be a huge cost at all. You can use online tools, so we use tools like UserTesting.com. You can select a certain demographic that you want to test out and you upload what you want them to test. And then they go off and they do it, and they record videos, and you can see how they interact and they talk through what they're doing and how easy it was for them to do those things as well. Kelly Molson: They are not a huge, costly I actually don't know off the top of my head. There will be a fee to use the system, which will be a monthly fee and then there'll be a fee probably for that will cover X amount of tests within that monthly fee. So it will probably be from what, 150, maybe a month, something like that, maybe a bit more. Paul Marden: The cost depends as well on factors, how many factors you place on the do you only want people to do user testing that are of a particular demographic and age? If your attraction has mainly parents with young kids coming, do you want your user testing to be done only by parents with young kids? When you add more constraints to it, the cost of doing it becomes higher. But arguably the quality of the data that you get back from the testing is more relevant to you. Kelly Molson: You can do this with I've talked about going back to the wireframe stage. You can do this at any point. So great, do a load of testing before you go ahead and release something to the world. But if you've got something that's up and running now, do some testing. So you can do user testing on what you already have. You can do exit surveys so you can ask people once they've bought a ticket, you can ask them how easy that was. What did you find difficult? What were your challenges at the end of your purchasing journey? So there's small little things you can do there. Paul Marden: The world has changed a lot, hasn't it? In the last few years we've moved to almost exclusively online sales beforehand. So we've got this massive pool of data, of contact information of the people that have bought your tickets. That's such a great resource that you could use, which in previous years pre pandemic it would have been a struggle because a large chunk of your people would have been walk ins who you didn't necessarily it wasn't easy to capture those sorts of contact details and follow up with them. Kelly Molson: Yeah, exactly. And then I think there are things that you can do in terms of looking at your user experience and the design side of things. We do things like UX reviews for people. We actually offered one as a prize for all of the people that entered the survey this year and the lovely people at Cheddar Gorge won that. We're going to be looking at that in a couple of months for them. Paul Marden: Back near my home proper, that's Cheddar Gorge is where I went as a kid, like, so that's exciting to be. Kelly Molson: In that we'll be carrying that out later on in the year for them. So, yeah, there's things that you can do in terms of working with an agency to look at what your user journeys look like. Are they correct for the audience that you have? Does your design flow? Where are the barriers that you're seeing? And again, if you're looking at some of the data of where you're seeing people drop off, is that a design issue, is that a function issue? How do we work those things out? Paul Marden: There's loads of tools, isn't there, as well, like Hotjar that you can stick on, which doesn't cost a lot of money. And it's not just Hotjar, there are lots of other tools just like it which would give you insight into the behaviour of the users on the site. It's just a snapshot that you get for free, but that snapshot could really help inform decision making about maybe I need to make it easier for them to find the button because they're finding it hard to book tickets or whatever. Kelly Molson: Because they can't see where they need to book their tickets. Paul Marden: Yeah. Kelly Molson: So, yeah, I think in summary, do some testing is what I'm going to end this podcast episode with. Do some testing, come back and tell us what you find.Paul Marden: Exciting. I'd love to have those conversations. Kelly Molson: As ever, if you want to get in touch with either of us, all of our contact details are in the Show Notes. If anything has sparked your interest that we've talked about today, we're really happy to answer any questions and things like that. So if you do want to ask any questions about any of the kind of stats that we've talked about, again, just our email addresses will be in the Show Notes. And also, if you haven't downloaded the report yet, why not? Because it's out. It launched yesterday. We did a webinar. Did you come to it? Why not? If not, but if you do want to go and download the report, we'll put the link to that in the Show Notes as well. But just head over to the rubbercheese.com website and you'll be able to find it. We'll see you next time. Paul Marden: Awesome. Thank you. Kelly Molson: Thanks for listening to Skip the Queue. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave us a five star review. It really helps others find us. And remember to follow us on Twitter for your chance to win the books that have been mentioned. Skip The Queue is brought to you by Rubber Cheese, a digital agency that builds remarkable systems and websites for attractions that helps them increase their visitor numbers. You can find show notes and transcriptions from this episode and more over on our website, rubbercheese.com/podcast.

In this episode of Pints of View, Gary Goldsmith talks to his daughter Lula.   Lula decided to turn the tables and interview her father for a change. Gary provides some fun childhood stories from Lula's early years, including nearly freezing her during a trip to Blackpool Pleasure Beach.   They also discuss Gary's past business ventures and lessons learned from investments that didn't turn out as planned. Lula challenges Gary on his views about remote working versus being in the office. The interview covers lighter topics as well such as Gary's love of Wham! and which celebrity he thinks would portray him best in a biopic.   In this episode you will hear: Gary and Lula's wild adventures Gary's career path and past business investments including restaurants, hotels, and wind farms Gary's stance on remote working   For more information about this episode, Gary's advisory services or the RDLC please email us on POV@garys.world   Thank you as ever to our sponsors: Kingsbridge Elements (getelements.co.uk) https://targetrecruit.co.uk/ https://corporatepeaks.com/ https://rdlcpirates.com/   Pints Of View is the podcast hosted by socialite, in-demand Non-Exec Director, recruitment legend and all-around nice guy Gary Goldsmith. In this podcast, Gary opens up his eclectic Black Book of friends that ranges from international footballers, high street moguls, champion boxers, investment oracles, national team coaches, royal correspondents, business leaders, military special forces, sports club owners, scale-up experts and even conspiracy theorists with a sense of humour! They're all interesting, they've all got different stories, they've all got different backgrounds and they have all got lessons that you will learn a great deal from, alongside a fair few belly laughs too. Plus, as well as the amazing guests, you will also learn that there is a lot more to Gary Goldsmith than what the headlines might have had you believe! Far from just being a loveable rogue and famous royal Uncle, there are insights and wisdom shared that reveal why Gary has been integral to hundreds of millions of pounds of business growth over the years.  So, join us for some real, raw and interesting chats down at the pub - yes, this show is really shot on location at an actual, working West End boozer!

The one about Social Media ROI, RogVLOG creative process, Blackpool Pleasure Beach and the film Pitch Black - TG105 00:00:00 Introduction Here are your hosts, Roger and Pascal. 00:02:06 In the News A selection of announcements and news releases from the world of marketing and technology that caught our attention. 00:15:34 Content Spotlights ROGER: Ask Buffer: How Many Social Media Platforms Should a Small Business Be Active On? By Kirsti Lang, Buffer: https://buffer.com/resources/how-many-social-media-platforms-business/ PASCAL: A special look at Roger's RogVLOG videos and his creative process: Why do TRAINS stop at STOW? What makes it a must-see village on the Scottish Borders Railway: https://youtu.be/yaU-FR8kC5Y and Great Travel Battle - Car vs Trains - we RACE from Edinburgh to the Lakes: https://youtu.be/U2Gn2kdveEw 00:35:24 This Week in History Our selection of historical events and anniversaries from the world of science, technology and popular culture. 00:44:23 Marketing Tech and Apps  ROGER: EmbodyMe's Xpression Chat: https://www.creativebloq.com/news/xpression-chat-ai MuseList: https://www.producthunt.com/posts/muselist-vintage-cassette-playlist-app PASCAL: It's all about AI-powered suggestions for your long form content: https://tome.app/ for visual expression to help you explore new ideas and instantly generate new content https://www.perplexity.ai/ your digital assistant to suggest how to structure an article or an interview 00:51:42 Film Marketing PITCH BLACK (2000) Director: David Twohy Writers: David Twohy and brothers Ken and Jim Wheat Starring: Vin Diesel (Strays 1997, Saving Private Ryan 1998, The Iron Giant 1999) Radha Mitchell, Cole Hauser, Keith David, Rhiana Griffith, and ensemble cast. Music: Graeme Revell We look at how the director insisted on building one of the first websites to promote this film alongside the usual posters and trailers. About Two Geeks and A Marketing Podcast Hosted by the two geeks, Roger Edwards and Pascal Fintoni, to keep you up to date with the latest news, tech, content and wisdom from the world of marketing. Roger is a marketing speaker and consultant who's spent his whole career helping his customers keep their marketing simple but effective. He's the author of Cats, Mats and Marketing Plans and the creator of the RogVLOG video series. Pascal is a digital marketing veteran, he is a speaker, trainer and advisor with nearly three decades of experience who enjoys revealing visual storytelling techniques to help you build better...

Join Tokyo locals Jordan (8 Bit Theme Park) and Alex (TheDisneyZan) as they discuss the breaking news surrounding the largest theme park expansion in Disney parks history, Fantasy Springs coming to Tokyo DisneySea.  They also discuss Alex's recent day at Tokyo Disneyland and Jordan's visit to Blackpool Pleasure Beach and Sundown Adventure Park in England!

Owen Blackhurst, Seb White, James Bird, and Tommy Stewart celebrate the launch of MUNDIAL Issue 26 with a RYWYLF Goalkeeper Special. They discuss kissing Fabien Barthez's head, Phyllis from The Office, Off-White Goalie “Gloves”, fluorescent adidas three stripes, World Cup 90 binders, Guillermo Ochoa, Eurodisney, William ‘Fatty' Foulke, Beat the Keeper on Blackpool Pleasure Beach, Orlando Pirates, goalies scoring from corners, predicting a riot, Big Nev, really handsome Pierre van Hooijdonk, kids drawings of football players, KEEEEPPPEERRRSSSSSSS, birds-eye views, Tetris, the distress of rugby players playing football and somehow so much more.Subscribe to CLUB MUNDIAL nowhttps://mundialmag.coSign up for the Newsletterhttps://mundialmag.co/newsletterFollow MUNDIAL on Twitter - @mundialmagFollow MUNDIAL on Instagram - @mundialmag Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week Andy Hygate (Director of Operations at Pleasure Beach) joins us to talk all things Pleasure Beach as well as catching up on all the latest news!

One of Blackpool Pleasure Beach's biggest attractions is the huge viking themed Valhalla ride. Opened as the largest, private Millennium project in 2000, it has been closed since 2019 for a multi-million pound re-imagining. Now ready for re-opening... Alex talked Beth into having a ride on it! They also caught up with the team behind the re-imagining to talk about all the work that's gone on behind the scenes.

This week we share tips & tricks for getting through the opening weekend in the UK! We also catch up on all the latest news including the new TV ad for 'The Curse at Alton Manor' at Alton Towers, Valhalla opening date revealed at Blackpool Pleasure Beach and Fuji-Q Highland's new Roller Coaster (Intamin Launched Motorbike Coaster).

We're back! To open Season 4 of Benjamin's Britain we've invited our history teacher friend Paul along to talk all things Northern. Lancashire born Paul, leads us through through the history of the iconic seaside town of Blackpool, it's Pleasure Beach, drag scene and social culture. And his alternative landmark has a very similar flavour...You can now buy us a coffee if you enjoy our episodes - https://www.buymeacoffee.com/benjaminsbritainWe'd love you to subscribe and rate us on when you listen to your favourite podcasts. Follow us at @benjaminsbritainpod on Instagram for social content and updates.

DISCUSSION - Theme Park Loopy invites you to join us as we discuss some interesting Theme Park Fails, the latest news around Valhalla at Blackpool Pleasure Beach, plus some of the scare attractions coming Halloween 2023.

Skip the Queue is brought to you by Rubber Cheese, a digital agency that builds remarkable systems and websites for attractions that helps them increase their visitor numbers. Your host is  Kelly Molson, Founder of Rubber Cheese.Download the Rubber Cheese 2022 Visitor Attraction Website Report - the first digital benchmark statistics for the attractions sector.If you like what you hear, you can subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, and all the usual channels by searching Skip the Queue or visit our website rubbercheese.com/podcast.If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave us a five star review, it really helps others find us. And remember to follow us on Twitter for your chance to win the books that have been mentioned in this podcastCompetition ends July 31st 2023. The winner will be contacted via Twitter. Show references: https://twitter.com/AndyHygatehttps://www.linkedin.com/in/andy-hygate-50351a45/https://www.blackpoolpleasurebeach.com/https://www.blackpoolpleasurebeach.com/events/walk-the-big-one/ Andy Hygate is the Director of Operations at the iconic UK amusement park Blackpool Pleasure Beach. Andy has worked in visitor attractions for over twenty years - including as a General Manager of Blue Planet Aquarium in Cheshire and also Oakwood Theme Park in Pembrokeshire. In Blackpool Andy heads up a team of almost 200 staff who operate the rides and deliver the guest experience - including High Adventure Experiences - 2023 will be his eight season in Blackpool.  Andy also claims to be a rollercoaster aficionado having ridden over 600+ coasters worldwide. His current favourite coaster (though it changes all the time) is Iron Gwazi at Busch Gardens in Tampa.    Transcriptions: Kelly Molson: Happy New Year, everyone. 2023 at Skip the Queue is packed with more amazing guests, and we're starting the new year with a really great one. In today's episode, I speak with Andy Hygate, Director of Operations at Blackpool Pleasure Beach. We are talking about walking The Big One and how to develop an exclusive experience from an everyday safety process.If you like what you hear, you can subscribe on iTunes, Spotify and all the usual channels by searching Skip the Queue. Kelly Molson: Andy, welcome to Skip the Queue.Andy Hygate: Hello. It's nice to be here. Thanks for inviting me.Kelly Molson: Well, it's my pleasure. Just to let everyone know, we're recording this today, as we do, on YouTube and I've got this halo-like effect over my head.Andy Hygate: Okay. Ray lights.Kelly Molson: I look quite angelic, don't I, Andy? Quite festive. If you're watching this on the YouTube channel, you will understand what we're talking about, but this is not good podcast material. Sorry. Anyway, Andy, we're starting with some icebreakers.Andy Hygate: Okay.Kelly Molson: I've got a good one for you. I know that you are a big old rollercoaster fan. So I want to know, and this might be a little bit like asking who's your favourite child, or who's your favourite dog. But I want to know, what's your favourite rollercoaster?Andy Hygate: Oh, wow. I mean, it changes all the time. I guess I have kind of a top three, but I've recently been lucky enough to go to Orlando and I went on a ride there called Iron Gwazi, which is a RMC rework of what was a classic wooden coaster into a steel coaster that's got inversions and so on. And it's one of those rides where if you're a roller coaster fan, it's everything that you want from a roller coaster, from an incredible, and I think it's almost beyond vertical first drop. It's got inversions on a wooden structure.But it was one of those rides that just didn't let up until it hits the brakes at the end. I mean, it blew me away. It was incredible. But then I say that, I also went on the VelociCoaster and I was lucky to get in the front seats, which is the Islands of Adventure. I went on that at night. And again, I mean, that was an incredible ride. So at the moment it's probably between those two. Maybe I can't pick a favourite. But yeah, both incredible intense, fabulous long rides. Really, really good stuff.Kelly Molson: Okay. Do you know what? The VelociCoaster, feel like I've been watching that happen for years on Twitter, because they've been really good at feeding little snippets of what's been happening before it's launched, like the design of it. I just feel like I've seen it. It's just been happening for so long.Andy Hygate: The weird thing is sometimes you watch these things on YouTube, particularly if you watch POVs of rides and you think what the ride is going to ride like. And we've got a double-launch coaster and effectively that's what VelociCoaster is. But that last inversion, which is really low over the water, you have to go on it to experience what it's like. I can't describe it to you. It's one of those you think you're coming out, which is not good, but you are obviously not. But it is just, I mean, yeah, it just blew me away. Absolutely blew me away.Kelly Molson: Amazing. Great recommendation, Andy. All right. Okay, next one. Who's your idol and have you ever met them?Andy Hygate: I don't know. I mean, there's a rollercoaster designer, a German guy called Stengel who is behind many, many of the designs of the world's best coasters. I'm a coaster geek and I'm a big fan of B&M, and I guess I would love to meet them, but I haven't. I don't know because they always say don't meet your heroes. And so I kind of think that I'm not really sure that I would want to.Kelly Molson: Keeping a distance, probably safer. What's the weirdest food you've ever eaten?Andy Hygate: Weirdest food. Before I was five years old, I'd had more birthdays in America than I'd had in the UK. And I remember on my fifth birthday having an ice cream birthday cake. And the fact that I can still remember this, 30 whatever years later, I remember that being something that was very unusual at the time. I don't know now. Yeah, I mean, that's quite cool, actually. To be honest, I've got a big birthday coming up in a couple of years and I'd quite like an ice cream birthday cake for that now.Kelly Molson: There you go.Andy Hygate: I suppose that's weird.Kelly Molson: Putting it out there, just getting the hints in already for Andy's birthday.Andy Hygate: Pretty much. There you go.Kelly Molson: Love it. All right, Andy, what is your unpopular opinion? What have you got to share with us?Andy Hygate: You know what? I think camping should be banned. And particularly, level above that, glamping. I guess, again, for me, if you go on holiday, you want to stay somewhere nice, I think. My experiences of camping are always being freezing cold, in soaking wet, and being covered in mud. When you wake up in the morning and you've been like you've slept outside effectively, and it's just a different level of cold. And I don't get the whole thing about... People say, oh, I don't know, "I'm connecting to nature, or the great outdoors."And I actually do like the outdoors, but if I go anywhere, I want to at least stay... Well, if you come to Blackpool, you don't want to be in a tent. You want to be in a nice hotel, which you can obviously do here. But I don't understand the appeal of it. I haven't done it for probably 30 years, but my whole recollection of camping is being freezing cold, soaking wet, and it being thoroughly unpleasant. So yeah, I would ban the tents.Kelly Molson: Oh, Andy. That's a really strong opinion and I like it. Have you ever been glamping? Have you ever done the one level up?Andy Hygate: I've seen it because it appears. I mean, a lot of places and particularly there seems to be a thing with safari parks. I can't think of anything worse than being asleep in a safari park. It's always a beautiful white tent, isn't it, when it's glamping? But ultimately, you're sleeping next to a lion enclosure. And in the middle of the night, you get picked off by one of the animals. I obviously sound very passionate about this, but glamping is supposed to be a luxury, but it's not a... I don't know. Having plastic champagne glasses in a canvas tent, to me is not luxury. Sorry. That sounds awful.Kelly Molson: No. Do you know what? I think it's my favourite opinion of the year. Listeners, let me know what you think over on our Twitter account if you agree with Andy. It's very strong, very strong unpopular opinion today. Oh, I love that. All right. Well, Andy, I'm going to guess that your background isn't in camping or nature, but tell us a little bit about your background.Andy Hygate: Okay, well, I'm the Operations Director for Blackpool Pleasure Beach and I've been here for eight seasons. But I've worked in attractions for over 20 years. I actually used to work at a famous aquarium in Cheshire for many, many years. I basically had the opportunity to go and run a theme park, a small theme park in Pembrokeshire down in Wales, beautiful park in the country, a theme park called Oakwood. And I went and worked there.And one of the reasons I went and worked there is because I've always liked roller coasters. And so from as young as I can remember, I grew up in Kent and we used to go on day trips to Margate. Not camping trips. And I used to go on the rides at Dreamland there. And I was hooked, I was obsessed with it. And so obviously when I got the chance to come work at Oakwood, it was a no-brainer because they had big rides. And I learned about rides, how to operate rides, the maintenance involved and all of that kind of stuff.And then that kind of opened the door, really, for me to work in other parks, and that's ultimately why I work here. But I think I'm very, very lucky to work in an industry that I'm passionate about. And the fact that I love roller coasters, we've got 10 roller coasters at Blackpool Pleasure Beach. And so for me to work with those every day is a real privilege and really good fun. And part of my job is literally to go and ride rides. And if you told me that when I was 10 years old, I just never would've believed that that was a possibility.Kelly Molson: That's very lovely. This comes up quite a lot with our guests, actually, because it is an industry that people tend to work in from a young age and then work their way up. And they love it, they really love it. And it's really nice listening to people where they're like, "I get to do this for my job, but this is fun." And it's really nice to hear. I'm going to guess, Andy, only because you mentioned that you got a big birthday coming up, but I'm going to guess that you are maybe a similar age to me and you would remember Dreamland as Bembom Brothers.Andy Hygate: I do, yeah. Bembom Brothers Amusement Park.Kelly Molson: Yeah, because I can remember, because I'm from Essex and then I can remember my granddad taking me to Bembom Brothers when I was really little and riding the wooden rollercoaster that they had there.Andy Hygate: Railway, yeah. It's still there.Kelly Molson: Yeah, good times. Good times. All right. So Andy, today, I'm really interested in this. I think this is such a great topic for our listeners. What we're going to talk about is how you've developed an exclusive experience from an everyday safety procedure, which sounds crazy, but tell us a little bit about how this idea came about.Andy Hygate: Well, it's a strange one. But we're talking about an experience called Walk the Big One. And for those of you that don't know, Blackpool Pleasure Beach has a very large roller coaster, which is still, some 25 years later, the tallest rollercoaster in the UK, a rollercoaster called The Big One. It's 235 feet tall, and basically guests can pay to come and walk up the ride after the park closes, up the main pull up, which is the main lift and the sort of slow part at the start of the ride.And we're obviously located right next to the beach, so you get an absolutely spectacular view. And when I say spectacular, it's a really difficult one to describe. But if you don't know Blackpool and saw the sunset. So something else, I mean, I said I've just been to Florida and I think I would say our sunsets are comparable with theirs. Maybe the temperature's not quite the same. But what we were ultimately able to achieve is roller coasters generally have steps running up the lift hill and that's no different to our coaster.They're there for safety reasons so that ultimately if there's a stoppage or you have to clear a train of guests or whatever, that you can walk people down. But by using those we were able to give people this very unique experience in a controlled and safe way, where they get this unbelievably photogenic and unique experience, which only really, and certainly compared to the number of people that ride the ride, only a handful of people get. When people go on roller coasters, one of the things that you don't want, it's a very modern problem, is trying to stop people from taking photographs or filming on rides, because inevitably they drop their phone, and you don't want things falling and all of that kind of stuff.But by doing a controlled walking experience like this, it means that people can get those amazing pictures and so on. And people love putting that on social media and all of that kind of stuff. So how it actually started, though, well, again, there's two versions of this depending on who you speak to. And I can say that because it started before I started working here, so I don't know which one is true. But one of them is that we had a corporate inquiry from a group that had hired out a room and were having an event at the Pleasure Beach. And they wanted to do something different with the boss of the company. And again about taking a crazy photo or whatever and they asked if they could take them to the top of The Big One.And so they looked into it and the safety aspects and so on and were able to achieve that. So that's one possibility. And then the other one is that a member of staff went on a trip to Australia and walked up the Sydney Harbor Bridge and came back and said, "That was an amazing experience. Wouldn't that be really cool if we could replicate something like that in the park?" And so depending on who you believe, depends on where this started from. But all I know is that when I started here, we were running on Friday evenings throughout the year, we were running three walks a night taking groups of six people up the structure for an hour.And an hour is the whole thing. So you come and you do a little safety briefing, we kit people up. You'll be pleased to know people are connected with a safety line whilst they're doing this and we show them how to use it and so on. And then we walked them up the structure to the top. We do it in stages, because, as I said, it's over 70 meters high, so it's 420 steps to the top. We do it three times in an evening, so our leg muscles are quite...Kelly Molson: Nice. Good workouts.Andy Hygate: Quite good. But you basically walk people up and you stop at 50 foot intervals. We tell them a little bit about the history of the ride and some facts about the ride and so on. And also, what you notice is as you get higher up you get to see more and more at the park and also beyond the park as well. And you get that different sort of vantage point. And so by the time you get to the summit, which is the bit that everyone's looking forward to, if it's a nice clear day, you can look one way and you can see across the estuary, and you can see as far as Southport. And then you look the other way and you can literally see the Lake District. And you've got the Blackpool Tower and you can see the whole of the town set out below you.And it's an incredible experience, and even though I've walked up the structure loads of times, for me, I still get a thrill out of doing it and I'm still always impressed by the view. So for the first-time guest that's coming to do it for whatever reason, because we get loads of people doing this for... We get rollercoaster enthusiasts, which obviously you can understand why they would want to do it. But we also get people that are doing it for charity events and we get people that have had it as a surprise present and they've turned up at evening and didn't know really anything about what they were going to do. And so there's that whole mix of different people doing it and for different reasons and whatever. And again, once you get to the top, again, other people are getting different things out of it.We get the people that are serious photographers that want the sunset walk and so on. And then you get the people that are Facebook crazy and want to do Facebook Live at the top so all their mates can see it and so on. And it caters, really, for all of those people. What's quite cool is you can start with six people that don't even necessarily know each other. Sometimes you do get a group where it's six people that do, but we've had it where you've got six people haven't met before and then by the time they get to the end of it and they're back down on the ground, there's this kind of camaraderie that's been built up by having this experience.And they're always towards the staff because it's us that do it, it's the rides team that walk up. They're always so appreciative. And I think finding out stuff that you wouldn't find out normally when you visit, little tips and facts about the ride and little interesting oddities about how roller coasters work and so on makes it a really good experience. So yeah, I mean, I know that was a very long answer to-Kelly Molson: That was a great answer. It's a great answer and it leads me on to some of the questions that I've got about what's it brought the attraction? Because you talked there about a lot, so there was a lot to take in there. And some of the things you talked about were when people go up, you've got these incredible views and people want to take photos of that, they want to do Facebook Live. I guess you've got so many different audiences that that appeals to as well, like the rollercoaster nuts or just people that just want that Instagram moment. What has it brought, the attraction?Andy Hygate: For us, it's brought us into the experience market in a way which is something that we wouldn't have necessarily... I mean, the rollercoaster was never built with that in mind. It was obviously built as a thrill ride and the fact that are stairs there, and I'm sure we'll talk a little bit about Walk the Woodie later on. But the stairs are there for a functional reason and so you can do track inspections, and so in the event there's a stoppage there's a way for people to get down and a safe way and so on. And I think it's been able to make use of something that's already there or existing in a different way that's also such a memorable way.And invariably, I said, for all those people doing those different things, whether it's taking photos and posting them on social media or whether it's Instagram or whether it's Facebook or whatever it is that they're doing it for. And we have seen, particularly over the last five years doing it, there is, I think, this explosion in experiences and experience culture and people wanting, instead of... You are buying an experience, ultimately, and then you are showing other people that you've done that experience.So that's a big part of what social media is and a big motivator for doing it. But I think it's great that you can have that mix of people. And you even get the people that quietly... We've had people that live in Blackpool that can see the structure from their house because it's a tall structure I have always just been curious about it and just want to come and walk up it. And that's what's great, that you get that mix, really.Kelly Molson: It's opened up the park to a different audience, I guess, because those people might not have come along and come on and taken a ride on the rollercoaster or spent the day at the park. But there they would come along in the evening and walk up it and be able to spot their house from the top of it, I guess.Andy Hygate: Yeah, no, it's definitely true. And also you get people that have driven up from London, which is quite a long way from us, and so on, to do an experience which is pretty unique. And it's certainly unique in our location. And there are all those different reasons for doing it, makes it a really good thing. And I also think we are catering for a desire to have an adventure. I mean, roller coasters ultimately are that as well. I mean, the great thing about roller coasters is that people are searching for a thrill and an experience. I mean, even me talking about those rides that I was talking about before, I was absolutely thrilled or blown away by them and so on.But people want to go on a ride where you have the illusion of danger, that ultimately in reality is actually a very safe experience. And actually you could relate this to that as well, this experience, walking up something. You're at a very high height, you're on a slender gantry. And the structure moves, it's designed to, it's good that it moves in the wind and so on. You wouldn't want it to be brittle and so on. That all adds to the adventure. So you're getting that experience but in a way which is actually a really safe way of doing it.Kelly Molson: Yeah. It's brilliant. It's still incredible to me that something that you would've done on a daily basis anyway you've been able to develop into this incredible experience. So it's brought you a different audience. It's obviously brought you more revenue, right? So you mentioned earlier you do three walks.Andy Hygate: Yeah, so we take six people on each walk. And they pay obviously for that experience. And it's a premium-priced experience because you're getting something which is a small group of people, it's after the park is closed and all of that side of it. And this is with the experience economy or people looking for those things. People are prepared to pay extra. For one, you're getting that level of service and insight that you wouldn't get necessarily normally, and talking directly to people that work on the ride and know about the ride and so on.If you were here as a visitor, you'd probably just queue up and go on the ride, have a great experience, find it thrilling and then off you go, where people like to, I think, have a curiosity about the behind the scenes, how things work and so on. And Walk the Woodie, which is the version of this that we do on one of our wooden coasters, is the classic example of something where we've taken something that we have to do every day. So this is the rollercoaster geek in me. There's two different types of coasters. There's steel coasters, which are the ones that you find where they invert, and most modern coasters are steel coasters. And then you get wooden coasters, and Blackpool Pleasure Beach, we are really lucky to have four, which is really unusual, classic wooden coasters, all built in the 1920s and '30s.I mean, these rides, rides like the Grand National and so on, which are iconic rides. When you think of our park, if you ask people about our park, they'll mention those rides. But for me, the fact that people want to come and ride a wooden coaster. It's 90 years it's been thrilling people and they still find it a thrilling ride and still want to go on it and so on. I think that's incredible that people want to do that, and what that says is those attractions, even if they were built in the 1930s, are still brilliant attractions and that people still want to come and ride them.Now, part of looking after and the maintenance of a wooden coaster is that you do daily inspections of them, and you literally walk the entire track of the ride, which you can do on a wooden coaster because unlike on a steel coaster, you've got a walkway literally the entire length of the ride. And so we have an in-house structures team and construction team here, which is part of how we maintain the coasters and are able to keep them going and so on, have to walk the entire track every day. And so every morning before the park opens, nice and early, doesn't matter what the weather is, our team of structures people will come and walk alongside the entire track, carrying out an inspection and making sure there's no problems, no issues, no rot, no nails where there shouldn't be, all of those kind of things so that the ride's ultimately safe to open.And with this stuff I'm talking about with offering experiences, we suddenly thought, well, wouldn't it be great if the general public had the opportunity to do something that this very selective group of people were having to do every single day of the year when we're open? And that's really how that experience came about. And I think The Big One gave us the confidence to look at other rides and other attractions that we've gotten and start to think, actually, what is it that we do that people would pay to come and do as well? And Walk the Woodie a hundred percent came out of that.Kelly Molson: That's absolutely brilliant. And I think when we spoke briefly before today, you mentioned that you've got special merchandise that people can buy. And do they get a piece of Woodie? Don't worry, folks, it is structurally sound but they do get a piece of Woodie.Andy Hygate: I have to say, with wooden coasters, people... And I can use this, I said this to some of my American friends and they have no clue what I was talking about. But wooden roller coasters, it's like Trigger's broom. And part of the maintenance of them is that you are constantly working on them and you are constantly replacing the wood. So actually how much of the structure, the original structure is still there a hundred years later or whatever. And anyway, so we're always carrying out that work. And when we did Walk The Big One, we wanted people to take away something after the experience. And actually I've got one here, look, to hold up for you.Kelly Molson: Oh, brilliant.Andy Hygate: You get this medal at the end of it. And it's for some people, particularly if you're scared of heights, which we do get, it's an achievement if you've made it to the top and all of that kind of stuff. And invariably, what actually happens with that as well is that when you get down and you give them a medal, they all immediately have their photo taken with it and so on.So again, it feeds into all the stuff I was saying about social media and so on. So anyway, with Walk the Woodie we thought, well, wouldn't it be nice if we could do something like that? And we thought about a medal and so on. And then we thought, well, hang on a minute, we've got all this wood that we've removed from the ride as we've replaced and updated it. Why don't we chop it up into little pieces and give people a piece of the ride to take?Kelly Molson: It's a genius idea. Not only is it a brilliant piece of memorabilia, it's sustainable too.Andy Hygate: Well, yeah, exactly. And actually what's cool about it is the wood itself often has... You can see the rungs of the original growth in the tree and so on in it. And I'll tell you a really nice piece. People always want the chunk that's got the nails sticking out a bit or the bit with the flaky paint or whatever it is, just because it's all... There's a certain, again, this whole experience thing, people want authenticity. And I think that just plays into that. And also if you are going back afterwards and you've got home and you're telling your friends or your family what you've done, if you're producing a piece of wood from that very ride that's a piece of history and all of that kind of stuff, it just adds to the thing.So yeah, I mean, we always say to people that do it, look, we don't do any hard sell or anything, at the end of it you get those things as part of the experience regardless. But then we do some merch which is exclusive. I mean, I'm wearing one of The Big One pieces of clothing, which we only sell to people that have been on the walk that evening. So the guests in the park can obviously, when they come and visit they can buy Big One mugs and pin badges and Big One everything if that's what they want, of course. But you can only get this stuff by participating in the experience. So it makes it quite special, really.Kelly Molson: Yeah, it does. It's brilliant. I mean, really, we are recording this episode in the run up to Christmas, listeners, but this will launch, this is obviously going out in the new year. And I think this is such a good message to start the year on. And it's something that has been talked about at a number of the ALVA meetings that I've been to and it's something the industry's been talking about in the run up to Christmas season is about that level of experience and doing things that are different, because it is what people are absolutely craving for. And they will be happy to pay the higher price point for doing something that's really special and something that's really unique, and just something that's of real interest to them as well. You are hooking into people's real desires with these unique experiences. I think this is such a brilliant story. Your dates sell out really quickly as well, don't they?Andy Hygate: Yeah, I mean, we've just put on our 2023 dates online. And what we find is that there's a lot of... Well, because of the social media aspect of it, there's a lot of word of mouth about it anyway. And also we got a lot of repetition. Again, I think it's because it's so unique, but in the case of Walk The Big One, the other thing that we find, because we do it from March but we also do it through until the autumn. And you can come along in, I don't know, in the spring and do it and it can be sunshine and lovely and bright and so on. But then you hear that actually you can come back and you can do it in September when the illuminations are on in Blackpool, when it's dark, and the experience takes on a whole different thing altogether. And to walk up effectively in the darkness and just see the lights along the fragile miles along the coastline is a beautiful and very different experience.Kelly Molson: Yeah, I bet that's amazing. So do you get a lot of repeat visits for something like this?Andy Hygate: Yes. What you do is you'll find that those people that do it in the spring, we say, "Oh yeah, we do it in September." And they say, "Oh, I didn't know that." And so that happened certainly early on with it, we were finding that people came back to it. And then obviously once it built up a bit of a reputation when we started thinking about these like Walk the Woodie with the wooden coasters, what you found is that people had done Walk the Big One and knew it was a really fun experience, had a great time. Suddenly thought, oh, well, actually I want to try that as well. And I think it was emotive in a different way because with The Big One obviously it's really tall, and there's no getting away from that. And the thing is, the payoff on that one is that you're going to get that amazing view right at the top and so on.With Walk the Woodie because we've walked the track on them on the Big Dipper, you're not going to go as high at all because the ride's only like 60 feet tall and so on. It's a different experience but in some ways it's, I don't want to say more fulfilling because they're fulfilling for different reasons, but it's certainly more challenging because you're walking a lot more of the track than you would do on Walk the Big One. But also it's that insight that you're getting and that understanding of how the ride's maintained, how it works.And as much as I can describe to you what it's like to walk along a rollercoaster track, when you actually do it, you suddenly get some kind of... The bit that always shocks people is that we start at the end of the ride and we actually walk backwards. And you walk from where the break run is and where the ride would normally end and you do the last little bunny hops, which are the last part of the ride when you're on it, and you do them first. When you're on the ride because the ride's coming to an end, those little bunny hops don't feel like the first drop.You think, that's the end of the ride, they're not very big, and so on. When you have to walk them actually you realise that what you thought was small bunny hops are actually quite large and steep and so on. And it gives people a different appreciation for the ride. And so we've had people that have done Walk the Woodie and then gone back on the Big Dipper when they've come back to the park as a regular visitor, and said that it has totally changed the way that they view the ride and they've got a totally different appreciation for it and how we maintain it, how we look after it, all the work that goes into it. But also an understanding of the scale of these things and so on. And you would never get that just by going on the ride itself, I suppose.Kelly Molson: That's really cool, isn't it? I mean, there must have been, with both of the rides, Walk the Big One and Walk the Woodie, there must have been some challenges that you had in terms of opening this up to general public. I'm sure health and safety was an absolute nightmare. What kind of challenges did you come across, and how did you overcome them? And what would be your advice for other attractions that were looking maybe to do similar or just looking at things that they already have that they could make more of?Andy Hygate: As an idea, I mean, what I would say to people is don't be afraid of an idea. And it was true, when we first came up with Walk the Woodie, and said, this is what we want to do, or we want to try and do it, before we'd even touched the ride or even looked at what the reality of doing of that, I do remember, I remember being told by several people, "You're not going to be able to do that. Not with the general public. It's not going to work." Then there's this problem, this problem, this problem and all that. And we kind of chipped away at those things and thought, well, okay. Well, we know that we do this every day with our staff, and how do they do it safely? And so what do they know that we don't?So we spoke to them and we started doing risk assessments and all the sort of boring stuff, I guess, but the stuff that you really do need to do. And then we did some practices. And we literally walked the entire track with a team of the operations staff in conjunction with engineering and worked out a way to make it work. And some of the challenges were one, yeah, because whenever you do anything different you have to convince some people that it's going to work. So you've got to make it, whatever you're doing, safe. But what I've found is that by actually physically having a go at stuff and getting input from other people and feedback and so on, in the case of Walk the Woodie, we were able to work out a route that we thought, yeah, actually we could do this with the general public.There were bits of it where there's some of the ride, you don't walk the entire track, you walk probably about a third of it during the experience. There was some bits of it where I thought, actually, I'm not sure that this is going to work really well with the public. I'm not sure what they would get out of that. I'm not sure if this is too challenging, this bit, and so on. And we sort of just crafted it into something which also had to work in a certain amount of time and so on. So I guess my advice would just be, don't be afraid to think about doing something that you haven't done before. We've got a great team of people that I work with in my department, and often it's just by chatting to people, you can come up with these ideas, which at first might sound silly or whatever. But I remember us talking about it and someone saying, "Wouldn't it be fun if we could walk in the footsteps of the engineers?"And that sounded really exciting, before you've even heard what it is. It's peeking behind the, I don't know, the curtain to see how things work and so on. And there's a natural sort of curiosity to do that. So I would say to any other attraction that they will have stuff which is unique to them, which people will be interested in having that experience. And the trouble with, I think, one of the things that we always warn our staff about just generally is that in terms of guest service in an amusement park, there's a massive difference between visiting an amusement park for one day as a guest maybe once or twice a year and going into an amusement park every single day because you work there.You have to be really careful when you work there you don't become complacent and you lose that air of magic that a guest will have when they go there just once or once a year or whatever. And so we do a lot of reinforcement with our own staff to make sure that they're remembering that that's the first time that the guests have seen that, when you might have seen it or experienced it 500 times. I think that aspect of it's quite important as well.Kelly Molson: That's really good advice, actually, and that's really interesting, isn't it? Because we always talk about that it's the people that make the experiences, but those people have to genuinely still be excited about it even though they've seen that thing 50 billion times. Because it's the visitor's first time they've seen it and they need to be equally as excited about it as that person that's seeing it for the first time.Andy Hygate: Absolutely. And then on these experiences, that aspect of it actually becomes easy and quite infectious. Because what you see, particularly with... We've involved some of our seasonal staff in delivering these events and they get massive amount out of it. And they learn a few facts or a few stories or whatever and they retell them. The reaction that they get from the people that are stood in front of them when they're stood on the ride talking about it is always positive and that builds their confidence. I've seen members of staff go from being shy and retiring to being stood 150 feet up The Big One, talking to the general public, answering questions, pointing out things on the horizon, all of that kind of stuff. And I'm quite proud of the fact that we've been able to achieve that, both for the guests and also for the staff as well.Kelly Molson: Yeah, it's brilliant. It's really interesting as well, in a couple of weeks on from this episode we have an episode speaking to the London Transport Museum. And it's all about innovation and fostering a culture of innovation. And what you said earlier about don't be afraid to have those ideas and come up with those ideas with your team, I think that just goes to show that you have fostered a culture where people are comfortable to bring those kind of ideas to the front, regardless of how crazy they might seem at that point. But they're encouraged to bring those ideas to you and to see where they can go.Andy Hygate: Yeah. And we've been lucky that that also continues. I mean, Walk the Woodie, we are really excited about 2023 because the ride that you are basically walking, which is The Big Dipper rollercoaster, it's a hundred years old next year. So it's got a big birthday coming, a big centenary and so on. And so we were thinking about Walk the Woodie and thinking, well, actually, now that we've done it and we know how to do it and so on, what can we do differently? Because it's its birthday coming up and people are excited about it, enthusiasts know about it and they're expecting us to do something and so on. And so we started looking at what we could do differently. And so anyway, we've come up with a product for one year only for next year, which is a version of Walk the Woodie but it's called Walk the Woodie 100, for obvious reasons. And we're going to do it differently.And so again, it's about not just resting on our laurels. We've come up with something which is we think guests are going to like. We went through a very similar process to how we came up with the original idea, but we went back to the idea and thought, well, actually, what can we do that we didn't do last time, and what would be different? And we've now got the experience of we had people telling us what they liked about it and so on. And so I'm not going to tell you exactly what we're doing because we want it to be a bit of a surprise. But we are going to do something different with it next year. So people that have done it before can come and they will have a different experience, and people that don't know anything about it or whatever and maybe they're hearing about it on this, I don't know, will come and have a hundredth birthday special version of the experience.So it's always about innovation and keeping things moving and trying to come up with other stuff. And in this particular instance, the fact that it's a ride's hundredth birthday, which is a big deal, really, for a ride, was the motivator, but it could be for any other reason as well.Kelly Molson: Love it. Again, brilliant advice, Andy. It is about coming up with these unique ideas with things that you already have, generating that repeat interest from people that have been on it once but can come back and do it. And then you are expanding on that again by developing on the experience because there's a big event or a big thing happening that year. I think it's such good advice for attractions. So thank you for sharing today. What else have you got coming up? Is there anything else that's coming next?Andy Hygate: We're always looking. I mean, obviously, Walk the Woodie 100 is the big thing. We've done Walk the Woodie, but we haven't done it in the way that we're going to do it. And I think making it unique just for one year, so we're only going to do it like this for one year, it's kind of a cool thing. But I haven't mentioned our other experience, which is Walk the Big One XL, which I probably should because in a way that's a similar kind of... We only introduced that in 2022 and so that's a relatively new version. But what we did with that, and so this will be the second year that we've offered this, basically was quite targeted. And it was targeted at enthusiasts, and I've said that I'm a ride enthusiast, and so we knew that there was this demand there for people to find out more. And Walk the Big One, it's an amazing experience, but it's done in an hour.You're here and gone in an hour, which is fine for a lot of people, but for enthusiasts they might want to know a little bit more and they might want to see some other locations around the ride. So again, we revisited Walk the Big One and thought, actually, what is it that we can do differently that would specifically target that group of people that want to see more or want to know more in depth information? And so again, we went and looked at the ride. Again, we were careful not to get blinded by the fact that we see things like the break run every day. So for us that's not a big deal. But actually for a guest to come and stand on the break run, learn about the station design, learn why it's the way it is, how we put trains on and off the ride and so on, to them is actually really interesting because that's not something that they get to see or hear about every day.And so we worked out a way to take people to different locations on the ride, including a couple of locations that we've never been to really with guests before. Which we've got a platform, and because The Big One is a gravity driven ride, like a lot of rollercoasters. So what that means, in case you don't know, is the train is taken up to its highest point, usually with the click click click noise. It's on a chain and that's the anti-rollback because you don't want to go backwards down the hill. And then when the train is released at the top, it's free-rolling. And there's no brakes on the train, it's only when it goes to a block section, which is either partway round or near the end of the ride, that you can actually stop the train. So a rollercoaster, particularly in our case, which are built right next to the sea, can be affected by wind and so on.And you have to make sure that in the event that a train dipped or didn't make the course, maybe it was slowed down by the wind or whatever, although we do monitor that while we're operating, obviously. But on the rare occasion that something like that could happen that you could get people off. So what that means is you have platforms around the ride, where if the ride stopped for whatever reason, again, gravity would kick in, the train would stop at the lowest point, and you've got to be able to go and get to that train and take people off. And so we thought, well, wouldn't it be cool if you could take people to those locations and they can stand on them and get to go... Again, bits where you would never normally get to go anywhere near. So we take people on, we take them to the brakes first, as I said, then we take them out onto... There's one that has a particularly good view of the beach and the sea and so on.So we deliberately, because it's the most photogenic, we take people there and they get to stand on the platform next to the track and they get some amazing photos that you would never, again, never normally be able to get. And then we take them to the block brake. And we were quite deliberate in this, in that we were increasing the height throughout the experience. And so each location that you went to was higher up than the one before. So it effectively gets more exciting as the event goes on. And the block brake's 110 feet off the ground or whatever. If you've been to the ride, you think that's near the end of the ride. It's not that exciting. And people, when you walk them up, are suddenly shocked at actually how tall it is and the view that you get across the whole park. You get, again, these wonderful photos. And the feedback that we get from guests when we do that is that it is just we couldn't believe that they were able to be up in that location.And then we end, effectively, with the regular Walk the Big One. So we take people right to the top of the ride. It's a much longer experience. The whole thing lasts about 90 minutes. If you're a coaster geek, then you're going to love hearing all of this. And the fact that you get to go to all of these places. And we deliberately walk people through the staff route through the park rather than the guest route through the park.Kelly Molson: That's cool.Andy Hygate: Again, they get to see bits that they would never normally get to walk and so on. And again, it'll be our second year of doing it. If you are a rollercoaster enthusiast and you come on Walk the Big One XL, we're hopefully going to deliver you a proper geeky in-depth look at how a rollercoaster is operated. And again, going right back to the start of it, it's offering an experience that... You're almost offering, although you do have to pay for it, it's almost like a money can't buy experience. Because to be able to do that is really rare.Kelly Molson: Yeah, I guess as you were talking, when you were talking about taking guests through the operators' way through and not the guests' way through, I was like, it's really an alignment to being a zookeeper for the day and being behind the scenes on that kind of thing, that kind of level.Andy Hygate: Yes, absolutely. You go through a gate that to us is a gate that we go through every day and we are not bothered about it, but to a guest it's somewhere in the park they've never set foot in before. It's underneath the structure of another ride. They can get a photo of somewhere where they wouldn't be able to go normally. All of that stuff, all that which just adds to that feeling of, one, it makes the person feel special because they're being given information and a look at stuff that they could never normally see. And two, they're getting this experience that runs alongside it that's just really, hopefully for them a really memorable experience. And then they get all this other stuff, optional stuff at the end of it as well.And I think one of the big bits of feedback that we have about it, and it was interesting that you said about the people, and I do think that you can take people to all of these cool places. The bit that brings it alive is the staff talking about it. Particularly when it's staff that work on the ride and have that knowledge of the ride and know the park and all of that kind of stuff. It's those bits and pieces that when we get feedback about this, and they're the bits that people really love and really latch onto. And yeah, I'm pleased that we're able to deliver that for people.Kelly Molson: Oh, it's brilliant. I've loved talking to you, Andy. This has been so interesting to hear about. I love how passionately you talk about it. You genuinely love it and it really comes across when you talk.Andy Hygate: Hopefully, I mean, roller coasters are fun ultimately, aren't they? But to be able to do these kind of things with roller... I think back, I was saying when I was a kid going to Dreamland or whatever, if I could have walked up the roller coaster in Dreamland, I would've been the happiest kid in the world. So we are trying to offer that, I guess, now to-Kelly Molson: Well, there you go. Andy, you've got your big birthday coming up. I hope you're listening, Dreamland, because you know what will make Andy happy for his birthday. You should do a little hookup, maybe do a little trade with their team and your team.Andy Hygate: I'd love to.Kelly Molson: Brilliant. Andy, what book have you got to share with us today? We always ask our guests to share a book with our listeners.Andy Hygate: Yeah, I've picked a book by a director, a film director called Derek Jarman. And it's a book called Modern Nature. And don't worry, it's got nothing to do with camping or anything like that. He's sort of an inspirational person to me. But why it's important to me is actually it's based around... The guy lived effectively in a beach hut in Dungeness, which is down in Kent, which is where I'm from originally, in a situation which is considered by many to be... It's somewhere that's not that far from where my parents live. It's probably about 20 minutes drive.And to some people you would describe, particularly in the winter, you'd describe it as blink. And it's a pebble beach and so on. And there's something about the English coastline and beaches and so on that I really like. And I like the fact that we have seasons. I like Blackpool in the summer, but I actually like it in the winter as well. This book is kind of like a diary, really, about how he's built a pebble garden, because it is literally on the beach, in the shadow of a nuclear power station, which sounds horrible, but actually I think it's a really inspirational thing. And I think you can see beauty in stuff which is unconventional and so on.And the fact that he's managed to build a pebble garden and have plants in an area which is a harsh environment that can be seen as bleak, but actually I think there's great beauty in that. And that all comes across in that book and its very inspirational, conversational style makes it a really memorable book for me. And it's also somewhere where whenever I go back to Kent, I always go down there for fish and chips. And there's something, it sounds really strange, but sitting in the car in the winter, having fish and chips and listening to the power station humming in the background, it's actually really sort of reassuring. I don't know.Kelly Molson: It's not an experience I've ever had, Andy. I feel like I'm going to have to add that one to my list.Andy Hygate: No, I realise that sounds really odd, but I guess I've got an emotional connection to that place as well. And the fact that someone's written a whole book about it and their connection to it is what connects with me. So yeah, that's probably my choice.Kelly Molson: I think that is a great book choice, Andy. I've never heard of that book, but I'm absolutely going to check it out. Listeners, if you want to win a copy of Andy's book, you know what to do. Go over to our Twitter account, retweet this episode announcement, and you'll be in with a chance of winning it. Andy, it's been an absolute pleasure to chat with you today. I think this is a wonderful podcast to start the new year off on. So thank you for coming on and sharing with us. And I look forward to joining you up in Blackpool at some point to Walk the Woodie.Andy Hygate: Yeah, you must do. Looking forward to it. It's been a pleasure. Thank you very much.Kelly Molson: Thanks for listening to Skip the Queue. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave us a five star review. It really helps others find us. And remember to follow us on Twitter for your chance to win the books that have been mentioned.Skip The Queue is brought to you by Rubber Cheese, a digital agency that builds remarkable systems and websites for attractions that helps them increase their visitor numbers. You can find show notes and transcriptions from this episode and more over on our website, rubbercheese.com/podcast..

Ashwood City take on SkyBet Championship side Blackpool in the Third Round of the FA Cup. Before the game, Chief Executive Chris 'Woody' Woodall takes Club Chairman Patrick Nolan to Blackpool Pleasure Beach. Paul Waggott as Patrick NolanAdam Jarrell as Chris 'Woody' WoodallJoel Emery as Dan WatsonEpisode written by:Joel EmeryEdited by:Adam JarrellDirected by:Adam JarrellExecutive Producer:Joel EmeryWith thanks to:The Ashwood City Season Ticket Holders & Shareholderswww.patreon.com/ashwoodcityWARNING. This podcast contains explicit language and content some listeners may find objectionable.This is a work of fiction. Any similarities to persons living or deceased, organisations, places or events is purely coincidental. All scenarios are from the author's imagination. This podcast is protected under copyright.Listener discretion is advised.The Offensive is property of Primley Limited. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week we're joined by Parks and Pints (Abi and Nicole)! We talk all about Theme Park enthusiasm, vlogging, and getting into the community. We also talk news from PortAventura new 'Uncharted' Roller Coaster, Joris En De Draak at Efteling getting a Titan Track from GCI, and the rumours surrounding Grand National at Blackpool Pleasure Beach.

Skip the Queue is brought to you by Rubber Cheese, a digital agency that builds remarkable systems and websites for attractions that helps them increase their visitor numbers. Your host is  Kelly Molson, MD of Rubber Cheese.Download our free ebook The Ultimate Guide to Doubling Your Visitor NumbersIf you like what you hear, you can subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, and all the usual channels by searching Skip the Queue or visit our website rubbercheese.com/podcast.If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave us a five star review, it really helps others find us. And remember to follow us on Twitter for your chance to win the books that have been mentioned in this podcastCompetition ends January 31st 2023. The winner will be contacted via Twitter. Show references: https://aromaprime.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/liam-r-findlay/Smells for Theme Parks and Dementia Care: AromaPrime on BBC NewsKickstarter for the game where a reward is a scent collection, based on the locations in the game Smell tour of Amsterdam Liam R. Findlay is a designer of themed attractions who also works for AromaPrime, advising attractions on how to enhance their experiences using scent. AromaPrime was founded in 1973, and it creates weird and wonderful pongs for venues like Alton Towers, The British Museum and Madame Tussauds. The company's collection of over 400 concoctions ranges from Dinosaur to Dungeon, and Pirate Ship to Penguin Sick. While Liam helps clients select or develop the best smells to tell their stories, he also assists in implementing them in the most effective ways. Transcriptions: Kelly Molson: Welcome to Skip the Queue, a podcast for people working in or working with visitor attractions. I'm your host, Kelly Molson.We're getting smelly on the podcast today as I speak with Liam Findlay, Multisensory Attraction Designer and Sensing Specialist at AromaPrime. Liam discusses the use of Aroma's storytelling and psychological influences in your attraction and why smell is a form of mind control. If you like what you hear, you can subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, and all the usual channels by searching Skip the Queue.Kelly Molson: Liam, hello. Welcome to Skip the Queue.Liam Findlay: Hi, how are you?Kelly Molson: I'm very good. How are you is the question?Liam Findlay: I'm very good. Fatigued from lots of orders, but it's a good thing.Kelly Molson: Right, we'll talk about that in a minute because it's a very busy season for you. Our listeners will find out why soon, but first, icebreaker questions. So I'm going to start with a couple of topical ones. I want to know, what is your favourite smell and also, what is the smell that turns your stomach?Liam Findlay: My favourite smell is probably a kind of, when I was growing up there was an attraction called The Timewalk in the town I lived in, and it had a musty smell in a Black Death scene. And it was very scary and dark in there and it had that horrible smell but the attraction's been closed for over a decade now, and everyone in the town remembers it for its Black Death smell. And now I work for the company that made that smell, so I have kind of a personal connection to it.Kelly Molson: Oh, how funny. Okay, so do they have the smell in the archives? So can you go and find the smell and it takes you back to that attraction?Liam Findlay: Yeah, we're selling it now as The Timewalk smell for locals who might want to transport themselves back.Kelly Molson: This is amazing. And again, this is something that we will talk about a little bit later, the reasons why smell is so emotive for people. Okay. And what about the worst smell?Liam Findlay: I'm not sure when it comes to that because I'm so used to all sorts of horrible smells, and especially with AromaPrime, everything's artificial so I know it's just chemicals, so I don't tend to be repulsed by them. Personally, I think things that are to do with people's mouths, like food-related smells or if someone's just been eating and you can smell it.Kelly Molson: Like if someone had eaten raw onion or something like that? Yeah, okay. All right. I mean, mine's tequila but there's a whole other story around that that we'll save for another day. All right. What are you most likely to buy when you exit through the gift shop?Liam Findlay: Probably a magnet for my parents' fridge.Kelly Molson: Do they collect magnets when they go on holiday and stuff? Is it full of them?Liam Findlay: Yeah, it's kind of a mandatory thing, if someone goes on holiday they have to get a magnet for the fridge.Kelly Molson: Okay. All right, I like that. That's quite a good collection to have. Liam Findlay: Unless they sell smells, Efteling sells smells of its rides in its gift shop. So that's a must do for me.Kelly Molson: I've never heard of that before. Is that the only attraction that you know that does that?Liam Findlay: I think Europa Park might have done it, and Blackpool Pleasure Beach has candles that are inspired by the rides, but they aren't the actual smells. So yeah, I don't know why more places don't do it.Kelly Molson: Well, maybe they will after they hear this podcast, Liam, who knows? Okay. And if you could choose any attraction to create a smell for, what attraction would it be?Liam Findlay: It's hard to say because I kind of work on lots of smells for all sorts of attractions anyway. I think I always enjoy kind of time travel ones, maybe linking back to The Timewalk attraction that I grew up with, because they always have a nice variety of smells with all the different time periods you can go through.Kelly Molson: Okay, yeah, all right. So yeah, there's a little bit of variety involved in what you could create with them, so it wouldn't all be the same.Liam Findlay: Yeah.Kelly Molson: Okay, interesting. Thank you. All right, Liam, what's your unpopular opinion?Liam Findlay: I would say that bad smells are not necessarily bad in that like I was just saying they can bring back memories. We work with lots of care homes at AromaPrime, and sometimes you can have a horrible fishy smell that's used in scare mazes, but it's also used to bring back memories for people that used to be fishermen or fisherwomen. Bad smells, if you put them in different contexts, they can actually not be so bad. Sometimes you can have a kind of horrible manure smell, but if you present it as something like a lovely countryside kind of atmosphere, people can react positively to it. And actually, rhino dung, I was sniffing some rhino dung last week.Kelly Molson: As you do.Liam Findlay: At Chessington World of Adventures, and we were saying how it's just got a lovely kind of grassy smell to it because the rhinos eat grass, but then when you realise it's rhino dung, you might end up reacting to it negatively.Kelly Molson: So we need to reframe our minds around what that smell is and take away the bad connotation of it?Liam Findlay: Yeah. Bad smells are perhaps not always necessarily bad depending on how you look at them, that's my message.Kelly Molson: All right, listeners, well let us know what you think. As ever, I'm going to need to reframe tequila in my mind. Maybe, I don't know, maybe if we meet up at an event, someone can help me do that, who knows? I thought about you while I was on holiday a few weeks ago, Liam. I don't often think about many of my podcast guests when I'm on a holiday, but you definitely came to mind. It was because of some of the things that we're going to talk about today.So I took my husband and my daughter into the Museum of Torture, which was a very small museum in Tuscany, in Sienna, probably not child friendly, I'm not going to lie. I don't think my 14 month old was overly impressed. But it was very small museum, we went down into the dungeon area and it was very small and it was very dark and it smelt really musty. And it was the one part of the museum for me that really captured that sense of for like, "Oh, this is a dangerous place to be, something horrid is going to happen here." And it was because of the smell. You didn't have that in any of the other areas.And it was really fascinating, you walked around and you looked at these torture instruments and you saw how people were treated and what they did to people but that area was the one place that it really got under my skin and up my nose, but for the right reasons because of the smell. And it instantly made me think about you and what you guys do. So tell us a little bit about AromaPrime and then tell us a little bit about what your role is there.Liam Findlay: Well, AromaPrime's been around since 1973, so we're turning 50 next year and throughout that time we've been making immersive smells for visitor attractions. So it could be to kind of increase anticipation and anxiety in a rollercoaster queue with the smell of fire, for example, like at Alton Towers it's Wickerman rollercoaster. Or it could be to educate people and engage them in the past if it's a historical smell. It could be to kind of bring about certain feelings if they're walking into a hotel and you want a lovely signature scent that's going to make people relaxed, or if it's historical or a nostalgic sense that are used in care homes like I was just saying to kind of bring back fond memories. So there's kind of lots of ways you can use smells to trick the mind and change how people feel, maybe feeling anxious in the Torture Museum.And my job is to advise attractions on how to implement these smells and which smells might work best and kind of lead to the best results in their attractions. So whether they want to make people feel a certain way or if they want to tell a certain story and use smells to change how the story's being told as it developed. So it's very exciting, always lots of different projects.Kelly Molson: It is. And I'm really intrigued about how you came to be in this role. So your bio says that you advise on Aroma's storytelling influences, psychological influences and thematic influences, as well as practical ways to utilise aroma in different environments. All of this is really, really fascinating. But what did you study and how did you get to be this person that advises them on all these things?Liam Findlay: Well, I actually did an animation degree and then I worked in the animation industry for a while. And from that I kind of learned lots of design skills and storytelling skills and I ended up putting that into work at an escape room where I designed escape rooms. So there was kind of sound design and visual design and telling stories again. And then I ended up working freelance designing experiences and museum interpretation for attractions like castles and more escape rooms and a ghost train on one occasion. And through working in the attractions industry as a designer, I wondered if I could maybe contribute my kind of understanding of the processes behind attraction design and put that into smell. And I knew that AromaPrime existed and I wondered if maybe I could help them out through that. So I sent them an email and they said, "Oh, we're looking for someone like you," and they took me on and I think it was late 2018 maybe so it's been a few years now and it's been going quite well.Kelly Molson: So you've kind of honed your craft working at AromaPrime. So can you just explain a little bit about, I understand about the storytelling influences that we talked about and how smell brings back those memories and it can transport you to a different place, tell me about the psychological influences and the thematic influences. What do you mean by those? How does that work?Liam Findlay: It's a bit like what I was saying about the rollercoaster queue or in a scare maze, for example, you might use a pleasant smell that lots of people have a familiar connection with like the smell of bananas. Maybe not everyone likes bananas, maybe the smell of chocolate, to kind of lift people's spirits and give them a false sense of security so that when they suddenly turn a corner and see something horrid and it has a disgusting kind of rotten smell, you're kind of crafting the psychological journey for them. So you're bringing back these pleasant emotions and memories and then you're twisting it. And maybe that horrible smell will be the smell of vomit that most people will have really unpleasant associations with and it'll make them feel uncomfortable when suddenly a pig man jumps out with a chainsaw. So you can tie the sense into how the story develops and manipulate or influence emotions as it goes along.Kelly Molson: Yeah. And what about the thematic influences? What does that mean in terms of smell?Liam Findlay: It's probably the most basic way of looking at sense. So at fantasy experience for example, like we did a wizard mini golf attraction recently, so it's kind of binding or creating sense that apply to a theme. And sometimes that can be tricky if it's a fantasy theme, you might not really be sure what kinds of smells potions have. But with our unicorn smell, for example, we sniff some horses, as you would, and we read lots of ancient myths about unicorns and we kind of approached it like we would approach historical smells. So we want them to be backed up with stories and kind of authenticity where possible to make sure that the theme is as strong as it can be.Kelly Molson: Isn't that funny though because when you said unicorn, the image of unicorn in my head is glittery and pink because every little girls are obsessed by glittery pink unicorns. And so I was like, "Oh yeah, but for me, unicorns smell a bit sugary," a sweet sugary smell they'd smell like.Liam Findlay: Yeah, well that's what the final product is really. It's like got a little undertone of horse, but it's mostly like a birthday cake.Kelly Molson: Yes. Oh, I love that. Thank you for explaining that. That's put me right. Yeah, it's really weird how you see what something looks like and you instantly imagine what it smells like, even though I have no clue what a unicorn smells like, obviously.I guess it's the same feeling, the one that you spoke about in terms of making people feel comfortable and then shocking them is, I can remember reading something years ago about if you are selling your house, have some freshly baked bread just come out of the oven because that is a smell that everyone finds quite comforting and quite homely. And so then if you can smell that while you're in a new home, you think, "Oh yeah, I could see myself living here. This is a cozy place to be, isn't it?" So it's that kind of sense that you're trying to get build in people.Liam Findlay: Yeah, it's a big thing in retail using scents in shops. There was a study where people went into a room, I think it was full of shoes and it wasn't scented and they kind of responded to what they thought of the products, whether it was shoes or not. And then there were some other participants who went into a room that was scented and it had the same products and the people in the scented room valued the products as being more expensive, or they guessed that they would be more expensive because they saw them as a higher quality because the room was scented even though they didn't realise it was the scent that was causing that.Kelly Molson: Because they could smell the leather and the... Right, okay. Gosh, that's interesting, isn't it? How it can affect how you perceive something as well.Liam Findlay: Yeah, it can change perception. And also like you say about pleasant smells, if you smell something like bread, it makes you kind of hungry because it kind of triggers those memories of enjoying bread and therefore you'll start to kind of seek it out and you won't necessarily find bread, but you'll seek out some kind of satisfaction and that satisfaction might end up being purchasing something.Kelly Molson: A very expensive house purchase.Liam Findlay: Yeah.Kelly Molson: How do you create smells? Because I watched one of the interviews that you did, I think it's for the BBC, which I will link to in the show notes, it's really interesting. But I think one of them said that your recipes, some of them are based on 30 year old recipes, these smells. So how do you even start to create the smells?Liam Findlay: Well, yeah, well like I was saying, we are turning 50 next year, so it was actually slightly inaccurate in the BBC video is-Kelly Molson: Sorry, kids, it's wrong.Liam Findlay: Well that was my fault, I told them the wrong date. Because actually, there are not many records about the company history and I only a while ago realised or found a document that said when it was founded. So it's always been a bit of a mystery. But yeah, over that time we've accumulated over 400 aromas, so we've kind of got a big stock of anything anyone could imagine just about. And if they want something that's a bit more specific, sometimes we might combine our existing scents. So it might be a bit of grass with a bit of rotten eggs for some kind of Roald Dahl soup for example. And then if we are making something from scratch, it will be a case of finding the chemicals that kind of have certain qualities like you might have a chemical that is generally used in rose products because it has a rose smell and then you can combine it with others. And often we'll have references like maybe rhino dung, we've been sent otter poo and jaguar urine before to get that right.Kelly Molson: In the post? Go get the post today, I wonder what could be in it, that's a surprise.Liam Findlay: Yeah. So sometimes we'll be kind of mixing things and sniffing and then we'll also send lots of samples to the clients so they can say if it's accurate or not and it works that way.Kelly Molson: That's brilliant, isn't it? Funny to understand what might turn up in your letter box each day. So when you work with an attraction, Halloween is a very obvious market for you. There's lots of scare things that happening and they are very smell related. But how do you work with an attraction? What's that process of them calling you in and going, "Look, we've got this thing that we are doing, how can you work with us?" What do you do?Liam Findlay: It kind of varies on what their end goal is. Sometimes regardless of what the kind of function of the attraction is, sometimes it will just be a case of them telling us how large the space is and then we'll advise on the kind of machine that they'll need because we do machines as well and the themes as well and then we'll suggest some scents and then they put them in the machines. And it can be quite a quick process sometimes.If it's more complex, it might be like a museum that wants a historical scent and they don't want it spreading around the whole museum and stinking things out or ruining the paintings down the corridor, there can be more advice to give in that regard. So museums often it's good to use what's called dry diffusion when you have an object that's scented rather than liquid kind of going out as a mist into the air. So that object will just kind of emit a smell and you can maybe put a lid over it or have it in a container that has a puffer. So yeah, I would often ask what the end goal is and then kind of make some suggestions from there.Kelly Molson: Yeah, because I hadn't thought about if it's a museum, those artefacts and those things could be damaged by certain smells. It's also, I guess you have to be quite consultative in your approach about what you offer to them individually.Liam Findlay: Yeah, another case or another issue can be around whether people want to smell things or not. Like if they go to a scare maze, they'll probably expect to be repulsed. But if you go into a museum, I suppose it's because people aren't really used to it, they're not always prepared to sniff things. So it can be good to have flaps so people can choose whether they're going to smell things or not. Or maybe some places will put up little warnings if it's kind of a profound world war trench set that they can walk into and there's going to be horrible smell of bodies and things. Sometimes there might be a warning because it almost equates to having gory images, like in museums you'll have warnings that there'll be gory images here.Kelly Molson: Yeah, and I guess talking about what we were saying earlier about those emotive, it can take you right back to a place, I guess that could be quite frightening for some people as well if they don't want to be taken back to those places, for example.Liam Findlay: Yeah. And because smell's kind of flexible and a horrible smell relating to war could also be a horrible smell relating to some other unpleasant personal memory. So yeah, sometimes you have to think about how the smell's going to be presented in a way that's going to work for the visitors.Kelly Molson: Okay. Thorpe Park, the Dungeons and Warwick Castle all have promotional scent ranges. This is something that you helped them develop, isn't it? I think this was during the pandemic. Am I right? So can you tell us about this? How did this happen?Liam Findlay: Well, it was a tricky time because all the parks were closed so the parks were wondering what to do while they were closed. And the parks were our customers as well, so we couldn't sell to them. So everyone was kind of out of action at that point. So we were kind of thinking of ways that we could engage people in our products for the parks and for us. So I think it was Thorpe Park we approached first and we just suggested that we could kind of release some of their smells that they used in their scare mazes and eventually it was Warwick Castle and the smells they used in their Kingmaker Experience and the Dungeons and their smells to make them available, branded under the scenes that they appear in those attractions so people could buy the Blacksmith smell at the Warwick Castle Kingmaker Experience. And that was a nice way to take people back to the attractions while they weren't able to visit.And it helped AromaPrime as well because we were kind of profiting from the customers of our customers in a way that everyone was kind of happy with because it was promoting the parks and the customers were happy because they were being taken back to the parks. There was one customer who contacted me and was thanking me for the opportunity to buy the smell of the Tomb Blaster ride at Chessington World of Adventures because her sister had autism and she was really struggling with the lockdown and being able to transport herself back to the ride through the smell during lockdown kind of brought her lots of comfort. So it turned out to be a kind of lovely and beneficial project for everyone, a nice way of adapting to the scenario.Kelly Molson: That is so wonderful, isn't it? By the power of smell, being able to be in your favourite place without being able to leave your house. That's incredible, what an amazing thing to have been able to do.Liam Findlay: Yeah, and fans really enjoy it. The Wicker Man Woodsmoke smell from Alton Towers is really popular and we get people that diffuse it in their living room and make all the lights red and they play the music and send us photos.Kelly Molson: That's taking true fan to a whole nother level, isn't it? Recreating the smell of your favourite attraction in your living room, wow. Okay, that's great. But there's other ways of using smells as well, isn't it? And I think this is something that you've been talking about quite a lot on LinkedIn that I was really interested in. A smell tour of Amsterdam has been developed. And you've been part of this, haven't you? So this isn't just about attractions, this is about tourism as well. Tell us about this. I don't fully understand what it is and how you've developed it.Liam Findlay: Well, this was run by Odeuropa, who I've been collaborating with a lot. And Odeuropa is a kind of global group of academics who are working to improve the ways that senses are used to tell historical stories and how they are used their museums. And one of their projects was this smell tour of Amsterdam and this was done through a scratch and sniff card. So my job was to illustrate the card and it was a map of Amsterdam so you could kind of follow a route and go to an apothecary that had a certain ingredient to its perfume that it once used or you could go down to the canals and smell what the canals used to smell like hundreds of years ago and kind of scratch as you went around. And they developed an app as well so you could kind of track where you were going.And that was a really nice way to engage people in history and they were able to access the stories themselves. They weren't just going through a museum and reading stuff, they were properly exploring and sniffing and taking it all in. And it was a really exciting way. It was throughout the month of September and the cards were available at Amsterdam Museum and it was an exciting way to get people enjoying and almost living the past because they were going through the real places where all this stuff happened.Kelly Molson: That's such a brilliant idea. So yeah, it's completely immersive, isn't it? You are in the area, you're doing a walking tour so you can see the places that are being described to you and then you can smell what they smell like a hundred years ago.Liam Findlay: Yeah, it was cool.Kelly Molson: Wow. That is really cool.Liam Findlay: Got lots of good responses.Kelly Molson: And I guess you worked with them in the same mode that you would an attraction, it's just understanding what used to be there, finding the smells that you already have and then bringing them all together into the scratch card.Liam Findlay: Yeah. In this case, Odeuropa already had the smells because they've been working on lots of different historical smells themselves like the smell of hell, I think based on a kind of 1700s painting, maybe it was another century.Kelly Molson: And what does hell smell like? Can you describe it to us?Liam Findlay: From what I understand, it's mostly fire and bodies.Kelly Molson: Burning hot stuff? Okay.Liam Findlay: But one of the members of Odeuropa had worked on an exhibition in The Hague where people could go around a gallery and they had paintings and smell puffers like foot pumps so they could pump it and a smell would come out and that would be the smell of the painting or of something that was in the painting. And it was a nice way to kind of engage them with the contents of the painting, kind of look a bit harder and think about what's making that smile and why did it smell that way? So Odeuropa already had lots of interesting smiles that they could incorporate into this.Kelly Molson: That's brilliant. I would absolutely go on a scratch and sniff tour of anywhere.Liam Findlay: Yeah, well it's a nice model because you can kind of apply it to any city or even, I don't know, an ancient school or a hospital or all sorts of places.Kelly Molson: And if you think, I guess there's just so many advantages to it as well for people that can't see the places that they're in but can still feel that emotive connection to them by being able to smell what those places smell like.Liam Findlay: Yeah, smell is very good in terms of accessibility because even if you're on a theme park ride and you're going along in a boat and maybe there are cannons going off, if you can't see the cannons or you can't hear the cannon sound effects, if you smell it, it kind of means that you're not missing out on the story.Kelly Molson: Yeah, it's brilliant. I hope they do more of those, I'd be up for that.Liam Findlay: Yeah.Kelly Molson: There's a quote that I read from you that said, "Smell is a form of mind control." It really resonated with me, especially because of some of the things that we've been talking about. But let's go back to what you started to talk about at the beginning of our interview was about the smells for care homes because you've worked on quite a few projects for those as well. And I think obviously this is not attraction related, but I just think this is such a wonderful thing to be able to use your skillset for. Tell us a little bit about what you've done.Liam Findlay: Well, care homes was one of the company's first kind of activities I suppose back in the seventies. I mean, back then it would be the smells of the 1920s that would be made to take people back into the past. And that's something interesting as well because the kind of residents who are always getting that bit older and the smells that will be familiar to them change gradually so we have to kind of think, okay, maybe World War smells, I saw on Twitter someone was complaining that their mother was being subjected to World War II songs, even though most care home residents probably weren't around back then anymore or at least a small number.So yeah, we've been producing nostalgic smells for care homes for a long time and it can be really nice if there's like carbolic soap for example is a popular one. If there's a smell that lots of people perhaps with dementia who will have personal memories with, it's a nice way of unlocking those memories, especially you tend not to lose your smell memory. So if you smell something from the past and even if you have memory problems, smelling that can kind of unlock something from years and years ago and bring back those memories and encourage conversation with the other residents that you might live with about their memories and then they'll kind of start talking about it and sniffing and it can be a nice way to lift spirits as well as bringing back memories.Kelly Molson: Yeah, it's wonderful, isn't it? I saw the clip, and again this was in the clip that we will add into the show notes, but it was about the soap smell and the lady said, "Oh, it just makes me feel comfortable." It took her to a happier place where she just had really good memories of it and it was just such a lovely clip to see, you could almost see her face kind of light up with the smell because it took her back there instantly. It was just brilliant. And just think that's such a lovely thing to do.Liam Findlay: Yeah, there's a company called Rempods, which they make a kind of sets for all care homes like a recreated nostalgic pub from the sixties or a train carriage, that's quite a popular one. So like a wall and there's a window that's a screen and you can see the countryside going past. And we work with them quite a lot to supply smells to kind of bring that whole experience together. So that kind of ties into the theme entertainment as well.Kelly Molson: Yeah, it's like a mini attraction in a care home with sense. That's incredible. I had no idea that that was even a possibility. What a brilliant thing to be able to do for people.Liam Findlay: Yeah. It could even be as simple as a memory box that. We have a customer who makes memory boxes for care homes, which are just kind of full of props and things that the residents might be familiar with and they include the smells as well. And that same customer, she is a funeral director and we have what are called aroma cubes, which are normally used by care homes and they're just little cubes you can pick up and sniff. And there was someone who was in her chapel of rest who had died and the person who had died had worked in a bakery so this funeral director had put the smell of bread in a little aroma cube just in the same room. And when her family, the person's family visited in the chapel, they could smell this and they just found it really kind of nice and it took them back to her bakery and it wasn't kind of gimmicky, the room wasn't full of bread smells, it was just a little thing that they could use to have a nice moment with. And it worked really well.Kelly Molson: That is so lovely. I was just thinking, because I lost my granddad a really, really long time ago, I think I was like 20 when I lost him. And if I could be in a room now and his smell would be Polos, he had Polos, pockets full of Polos everywhere, even when he passed away, all of his cardigans had Polo packets in them. And that would be the smell that would bring me back to him instantly. So I can completely imagine how comforted they were by smelling that. Oh, it sounds really lovely. Liam, I know that you're super busy at the moment because we are recording this at the beginning of October and Halloween is coming and everyone goes crazy at Halloween, right? So you've been busy since probably a good few months with people ordering in their smells. What's the most popular Halloween smell on order at the moment?Liam Findlay: I'd say the familiar one is the most popular because you want smells that are going to affect the largest range of people. So it will be things like vomit and poo and rotting flesh is actually popular. And I suppose not many people would be familiar with that.Kelly Molson: It's not a statement you hear very often, "Rotting flesh is very popular." It's not popular here.Liam Findlay: We've released a new blocked urine smell as well. Because we already had a urine smell, but I wanted to try something that had more of a kick to it. So we've got kind of two urine choices this year.Kelly Molson: Wow, wow. We've taken it to a whole new level of poo and wee smells on the podcast people. Liam, thank you for joining us today. I've thoroughly enjoyed talking about this and I think it's such a fascinating subject to talk about. So thanks for sharing your insight. We always ask our guests for a book that they'd like to recommend to us, something that they love or something that's helped them in some way. What would you like to share with us today?Liam Findlay: Mine is Theme Park Design and the Art of Themed Entertainment by David Younger. And this is like, I think-Kelly Molson: It's like a Bible, Liam. It's huge.Liam Findlay: Yeah. Well I was just going to say, lots of attraction designers kind of treat this as their Bible because it's like a big encyclopedia of everything to do with theme park design. So there's a bit about smells in it, there's a bit here about costumed characters, there's stuff on cues and how different cues work. So it's like anyone wants to go into theme park design or attraction design in general, even if it's like museums, this is a great resource.And actually David Younger, the author, I've just been working with him because he's started a Kickstarter for a video game that's based on a theme park sort of. And we've put together a scent collection of the different locations in the game so as people are playing, they can sniff the smells and kind of transport themselves into the world of the game.Kelly Molson: Oh, how cool. You must send over the link to us and then we can pop that in the show notes for any of the listeners that will be interested in it.Liam Findlay: Yeah.Kelly Molson: Okay. So look, as ever, I feel like this is going to be an expensive one for my marketing budget, because that looked like a really big book, Liam. But as ever, if you'd like to win a copy of this book, then if you pop over to our Twitter account and retweet the episode announcement with the words, "I want Liam's book," then you'll be in a chance of winning it. Liam, thank you for joining us on the podcast today. Good luck with Halloween, I know it's a really crazy busy time, but thank you for coming on and sharing all of your wonderful smells with us today.Liam Findlay: That's all right. Thank you for having me. It's been fun to talk about them.Kelly Molson:  Thanks for listening to Skip The Queue. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave us a five star review. It really helps others find us. And remember to follow us on Twitter for your chance to win the books that have been mentioned. Skip the queue is brought to you by Rubber Cheese, a digital agency that builds remarkable systems and websites for attractions that helps them increase their visitor numbers. You can find show notes and transcriptions from this episode and more over on our website, rubbercheese.com/podcast.

In this week's episode we talk about funny social media posts from Blackpool Pleasure Beach, updates on Magic Kingdom's TRON Roller Coaster,

It took a wonder-goal from Will Vaulks to break the deadlock and ultimately take the three points at Vale Park as we came away as 1-0 winners against Port Vale. James and Liam dissect the game and go over the major talking points. patreon.com/wtidpod wtidpod.myshopify.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to Eyes & Teeth Legends of Laughter. Hypnotists over the years have enjoyed summer seasons, corporate shows, TV shows, stints across Europe at the hottest destinations where there are clubs, cabaret, cruise ships and stag & hen parties as well as depiction in TV comedy sketches such as Little Britain and has been caught up in controversy over the hypnotist and volunteer in a few cases but the art of hypnotism is as serious as it is hilarious making its subjects the star of the show.It is though a greats night entertainment and today we talk to one of the best in the country. Ken has worked worldwide and has a legion of celebrity fansIf you have been to Blackpool for a weekend then you may have enjoyed the very funny and naughty talents of the Outrageous Ken Webster

Oh boy, do we have a doozy for you! Wir sprechen zuerst in aller Ausführlichkeit über unseren (Erst-)Besuch im sauerländischen Fort Fun Abenteuerland. Unter den vielen kleinen und großen Gründen diesen hübschen Park zu besuchen stechen einige Highlights ganz besonders hervor. Im Anschluss berichtet Andi von seiner Tour durch das United Kingdom und die dort befindlichen Parks Chessington World of Adventures, Thorpe Park, Alton Towers und Blackpool Pleasure Beach. Auch hier ist von absoluten Highlights bis hin zu verständnisloser Enttäuschung alles dabei. Aber hört selbst! Neben Host Marc aka goldentapes sind diesmal Andi aka DrCoaster und Markus aka Coaster Toaster dabei! Die Folge gibt es wie immer bei Spotify, Apple Podcasts und allen Podcatchern. 0:00 Intro 5:00 Hallo & was so abging 16:34 Fort Fun 1:24:40 UK TOUR 2022 CHAT: https://discord.goldentapes.de/ SHOP: http://shop.goldentapes.de/ https://airtimeradio.de instagram / tiktok: @goldentapes / @airtimeradiopodcast 10% Rabatt mit Code "goldentapes" bei https://www.stormbeforethecalm.de/ Herzlichen Dank an IMAscore für die Bereitstellung der Musik "Fly To The Hills"! www.imascore.com Beat: invention_ - Woozii https://chll.to/b602c61e

Der politische Tanz um den Brexit haben wir alle noch vor Augen. Erst das knappe Ergebnis beim Referendum, dann die Zerrissenheit bei den Briten selbst und die ewig langen Verhandlung. Seit Januar 2000 ist England kein Mitglied der EU mehr, wodurch sich vieles für das Land und die restlichen EU Mitgliedsstaaten geändert hat. Was sich genau verändert hat, aus der Sicht der Betreiber:innen, erfährst du in dieser Folge. Ich spreche mit Marcel Kloos, Regional Director Midway Germany & Austria bei Merlin Entertainments, und Robert Owen, Director Marketing bei Blackpool Pleasure Beach, über die Auswirkungen, Herausforderungen und Veränderungen seit dem Referendum in 2016. Diese Folge wurde in Kooperation mit dem europäischen Fachmagazin EuroAmusement Professional produziert. Der Artikel zum Brexit und weitere spannende Themen findest du im eReader unter https://www.eap-magazin.de. Shownotes https://howtofreizeitpark.de/?p=4110  Hat dir die Episode gefallen? Ich würde mich über ein Feedback freuen -> Feedback Wer steckt hinter How to Freizeitpark? Stefan Burian ist passionierter Freizeitparkfan und seit über 15 Jahren in der Branche in verschiedensten Rollen tätig. Mit seinem Amusement Business Support unterstützt er Freizeitattraktionen aller Art in operativen Themen mit dem Fokus auf Personal, Guest Experience und Operations. Wenn du deine Experience für deine Besucher:innen und Mitarbeiter:innen ausbauen möchtest, kontaktiere mich -> contact@stefanburian.com  LinksMelde dich jetzt zum Newsletter an und erhalte News zum Podcast und zu meinen Services direkt in den Postfach: https://www.stefanburian.com/newsletter/ Webseite Stefan Burian (Mehr zu meinen Services) https://www.stefanburian.com Webseite Podcast (Weitere Folgen und Shownotes) https://www.howtofreizeitpark.de Twitter https://twitter.com/howtofreizeit Instagram https://www.instagram.com/howtofreizeitpark/ LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/experience-stefanburian/

In this episode, Sven has a chat with Emma and James about all the novelties coming to the United Kingdom in 2022! Learn more about what's coming to Paulton's Park, Alton Towers, Blackpool Pleasure Beach, Flamingo Land, Fantasy Island and much more! Find out more at https://coaster-kings-radio.pinecast.co

NEWS EDITION - We talk about the new events coming to Alton Towers and Thorpe Park in 2022, Mikey shares his experience of opening weekend at Blackpool Pleasure Beach plus we talk about Lightwater valleys new logo! Co hosted by Brett (Theme Parks by Brett) and Mikey (ScareTrack) Socials: www.facebook.com/themeparkloopy www.instagram.com/themeparkloopy www.twitter.com/themeparkloopy www.youtube.com/themeparkloopy

Scream in the New Year with Dead Hollow's New Year's Nightmare; Sir Henry's Haunted Trail debuted a new Christmas event this December; "Turkish Halloween", Bocuk Night, will be celebrated on January 15th; UK's ASA rules Blackpool Pleasure Beach's Halloween is too disturbing for young children; Sign-ups now available for the Haunted Attraction Association's first two mixers of 2022 and Crisis Management Webinar; Monsterpalooza 2022 tickets now on sale; Dallas & Co. Costumes & Magic are holding an online auction of their retail inventory through January 18th; Learn about the 2021 & 2022 haunt industry trends with the November Haunters Toolbox Masterclass; A Joplin, Missouri family turned leftover Halloween candy into Christmas kindness by raising money for a local charity and family in need; Arizona teens help a man whose Halloween display had been vandalized. Read more: https://mailchi.mp/hauntedattractionnetwork.com/haunt-industry-news-dec-29

Scream in the New Year with Dead Hollow's New Year's Nightmare; Sir Henry's Haunted Trail debuted a new Christmas event this December; "Turkish Halloween", Bocuk Night, will be celebrated on January 15th; UK's ASA rules Blackpool Pleasure Beach's Halloween is too disturbing for young children; Sign-ups now available for the Haunted Attraction Association's first two mixers of 2022 and Crisis Management Webinar; Monsterpalooza 2022 tickets now on sale; Dallas & Co. Costumes & Magic are holding an online auction of their retail inventory through January 18th; Learn about the 2021 & 2022 haunt industry trends with the November Haunters Toolbox Masterclass; A Joplin, Missouri family turned leftover Halloween candy into Christmas kindness by raising money for a local charity and family in need; Arizona teens help a man whose Halloween display had been vandalized. Read more: https://mailchi.mp/hauntedattractionnetwork.com/haunt-industry-news-dec-29

This week we'll be talking about widespread rumours of Thorpe Park and Blackpool Pleasure Beach getting an RMC. Alton Towers sell a replica Scarefest sign and we chat our predictions for the UK 2022 Theme Park season!

ScareTrack- Journey To Hell FREAK NIGHTS at Blackpool Pleasure Beach Press Night 2021 / On-location Review Episode 2021   ScareTrack were invited to the Press Night of the returning Journey To Hell Freak Nights at Blackpool Pleasure Beach. We experience scare attractions along with coasters in the dark and blindfolded! We even experienced The River Caves in the dark with actors along with an experience within the real tunnels of Blackpool Pleasure Beach.   Follow Pleasure Beach Insta: @pleasure_beach Twitter: @Pleasure_Beach Facebook: Blackpool Pleasure Beach   ...................................................................................................................... VISIT THE BLACKPOOL PLEASURE BEACH WEBSITE HERE: https://www.blackpoolpleasurebeach.com/whats-on/journey-to-hell/ ......................................................................................................................   Visit our website here: ScareTrack Watch our latest ScareCam vlogs: ScareCam ScareTrack merchandise can be found here:  Merch     Social Media Facebook.com/ScareTrack Instagram- @scaretrack Twitter- @scaretrack Snapchat- scaretrack   Check out the Haunted Attraction Network here: https://hauntedattractionnetwork.com/     *Logo/Photo property of Blackpool Pleasure Beach *All views expressed are of the individual host/guest.

In this weeks show we talk about Blackpool Pleasure Beach's Halloween event 'Journey To Hell', The Golden Ticket Awards, Valhalla's new artwork, Alton Tower's Oktoberfest and Great Yarmouth Pleasure beach.

ScareTrack - Pasaje del Terror 2021 /  Review Episode The ScareTrack team visit Pasaje del Terror at Blackpool Pleasure Beach. Pasaje is the first indoor UK scare attraction to reopen in the UK after stage 3 of the Covid Lockdown restrictions.    Follow Pasaje del Terror Insta: @pasajedel_terror Twitter: @Pasajedel FB: /Pasaje del Terror Blackpool   ........................................................................................................................... BUY PASAJE DEL TERROR TICKETS HERE: http://www.pasajedelterror.com/ ............................................................................................................................. Visit our website here: https://scaretrack.co.uk Watch our latest ScareCam vlogs: https://youtube.com/scaretrack You can support the show here: https://patreon.com/ScareTrack ScareTrack merchandise can be found here: https://smart-fx.co.uk/smart-artists/...   Social Media Facebook.com/ScareTrack Instagram- @scaretrack Twitter- @scaretrack Snapchat- scaretrack     *Logo/Photo property of Pasaje Del Terror *All views expressed are of the individual host/guest.

Kitty Harris is a Tik Tok performer with over 500,000 friends and growing watching her little shows. Not only can Kitty sing and write songs and dance but she has a natural comedy talent that shows through her tik tok sketches and is the reason she has stood out in this popular social media platform.I met Kitty and her brother Shenton in the Algarve and in Blackpool at the Harris family home whilst meeting up with their parents Sarah & Keith Harris.Keith was a huge inspiration to me as a ventriloquist and performer and if we were not chatting on the phone, he was texting me and always ended the text with "Eyes & Teeth" and you can see how much that has influenced me.To pay tribute to Keith after his passing in 2015, Kitty, Sarah and I teamed up with Nick Thomas and his Qdos Entertainment team to put on a Spectacular night of variety in Blackpool and it sold out fast as the industry and fans of Orville & Cuddles alongside Keith pulled together to remember a Great man.Kitty that night shone twice putting together 2 hit performances with her dance group and she even joined me on Tour and in a summer season at the Pleasure Beach in 2017 & 2018.Kitty just keeps on performing, find out more as I welcome to Eyes and Teeth - the finale of Future Stars - Kitty Harris

LIVE FROM THE PARK - Joined by Sam, Brett and Charlie we record live from Blackpool Pleasure Beach and later get back together in the studio to record our thoughts about the day! Socials: www.instagram.com/themeparkloopy www.facebook.com/themeparkloopy www.youtube.com/themeparkloopy Coaster Sam Blog: www.instagram.com/coastersamblog Theme Parks by Brett: www.instagram.com/themeparksbybrett Go Theme Parks: www.youtube.com/gothemeparks

*CoasterTrack* - Blackpool Pleasure Beach Trip Report OPENING DAY / 125th Anniversary We celebrate 125 years of Blackpool Pleasure Beach on their first day of the 2021 season. The park was immaculate, the staff were amazing, the sun was shining and we had a fantastic time.   Check out our montage video on YouTube now:  https://youtu.be/_vy5cqlLUy8   Follow Blackpool Pleasure Beach Insta: @pleasure_beach Twitter: @pleasure_beach Facebook: /Blackpool Pleasure Beach ....................................................................................................................... BOOK YOUR TICKETS HERE: https://www.blackpoolpleasurebeach.com/ .......................................................................................................................   Visit our website here: https://scaretrack.co.uk Watch our latest ScareCam vlogs: https://youtube.com/scaretrack ScareTrack merchandise can be found here: https://smart-fx.co.uk/smart-artists/...   Social Media Facebook.com/ScareTrack Instagram- @scaretrack Twitter- @scaretrack Snapchat- scaretrack   *Logo/Photo property of Blackpool Pleasure Beach.  *All views expressed are of the individual host/guest.

This episode of OFF THE TRACKS (Viewer Takeover LIVE), Your Theme Park Podcast. I am joined by my Co-Hosts Rob from The Park Life, and Chris from That UK Coaster Guy,  and our newest member from the team Lee from (Inversion Addicts) we are also joined by 2 special  guests, Joe from (Theme Park  Insanity) and Luke from Coaster Gen. We will be answering your questions which you have sent in by our social media platforms, and the chat box and discussing our thoughts on this week's news and topics, plus answering your calls with questions and in the comment section too. All of this LIVE, what could possible go WRONG!!!!!!!!!! -------------------------------------------------------------------------

This episode of OFF THE TRACKS (Viewer Takeover LIVE), Your Theme Park Podcast. I am joined by my Co-Hosts Rob from The Park Life, and Chris from That Uk Coaster Guy,  PLUS 2 special guests Lee from (Inversion Addicts),and Joe from (Theme Park  Insanity). We will be answering your questions which you have sent in by our social media platforms, and the chat box and discussing our thoughts on this week's news and topics, plus answering your calls with questions and in the comment section too. All of this LIVE, what could possible go WRONG!!!!!!!!!! -------------------------------------------------------------------------

DISCUSSION - We talk about the Future of Blackpool PLeasure beach including the renovation of valhalla and our wish list for future rides at the park. Joined by Coaster Sam Blog and Theme Parks by Brett. Socials: www.facebook.com/themeparkloopy www.instagram.com/themeparkloopy Coaster Sam Blog: www.instagram.com/coastersamblog Theme Parks by Brett: www.instagram.com/themeparksbybrett

Skip the Queue is brought to you by Rubber Cheese, a digital agency that builds remarkable systems and websites for attractions that helps them increase their visitor numbers. Your host is  Kelly Molson, MD of Rubber Cheese.Download our free ebook The Ultimate Guide to Doubling Your Visitor NumbersIf you like what you hear, you can subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, and all the usual channels by searching Skip the Queue or visit our website rubbercheese.com/podcastIf you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave us a five star review, it really helps others find us. And remember to follow us on Twitter for your chance to win the books that have been mentioned in this episode.Competition ends March 31st 2021. The winner will be contacted via Twitter. Show references:Laura is Head of Content at the National Football Museum in Manchester, UK, where she is responsible for overseeing the collections, exhibitions and communities teams. Prior to working at NFM, she held leadership roles at Oxford University Museums and the National Trust. Laura has 8 years’ experience as an independent museums consultant, a role in which she worked with museums of all types and sizes to improve resilience through transforming organisational practice, better understanding audiences, improving evaluation, and developing innovative programming. Laura holds a PhD in Museum Studies from the University of Leicester, UK, for research into resilient community engagement practice in museums.Outside of work, Laura likes going to gigs, exploring new places and visitor attractions, watching football (her own footballing ability is, sadly, non-existent), enthusing about dogs (particularly her own rescue Staffy, Chance), and spending far too much time scouring vintage shops to find the perfect 80s dress.www.nationalfootballmuseum.comhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/laurafcrossley/Twitter: @lfcrossley Jon is Exhibitions Manager at the National Football Museum and has worked in the sector for 15 years. He’s worked on a number of exhibitions including Curator of the show ‘Strip: How Football got Shirty’. Born in Blackpool, his seaside upbringing has had an impact on his exhibition ethos of bright colours, cheeky humour where appropriate, experimentation and “what’s the worst that could happen?!”. Prior to working at NFM, he served candyfloss to the punters at Blackpool Pleasure Beach and worked in the curatorial department at the Manchester United Museum. With a remit to lead the National Football Museum’s move into digital, Jon has co-presented the Museum’s successful podcast and developed a popular online version of the ‘Strip!’ exhibition.Outside of work, Jon is a vinyl obsessive and adores electronic pop and guitars. He supports the mighty Tangerines of Blackpool FC and is a season ticket holder at the cathedral of football, Bloomfield Road. He likes visiting attractions and travelling a lot, with a preference for open spaces where he can freely walk and drink ale (not at the same time!) in the countryside.  www.nationalfootballmuseumstrip.comTwitter: @introspective81 Transcription:Kelly Molson: Welcome to Skip the Queue. A podcast for people working in or working with visitor attractions. I'm your host, Kelly Molson. Each episode, I speak with industry experts from the attractions world. In today's episode, I'm joined by two guests, Laura Crossley, Head of Content, and Jon Sutton, Exhibitions Manager at the National Football Museum. We discuss why it's helpful for museums to have a podcast and what you need to think about strategically if you're going to create one. We also talk about their new podcast, Strip!, and all of the lessons learned from creating it. If you like what you hear, you can subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, and all the usual channels by searching Skip the Queue.Kelly Molson: Jon, Laura, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today. Look at us as well. We've dressed for the occasion. We'll have to do a little standup, we've all got our strip on. Our favorite strip and all will become clear a little bit later why we are dressed as our favorite football teams today. Kelly Molson: Okay. As ever, we start with our lightning round. Jon, I'm coming to you first. What is the greatest movie that you have ever watched?Jon Sutton: I don't know. Karate Kid's very good. Karate Kid's a good film.Kelly Molson: With Karate Kid, are you a massive '80s fan? Is this your thing?Jon Sutton: Yeah, that's one of the films that left a great impression on me. I'm watching Cobra Kai at the moment, which is the follow-on.Kelly Molson: Can we talk about Cobra Kai? Because we were obsessed. I wasn't feeling very well, and I tucked myself up on the sofa with a duvet and Karate Kid. I was like, "Everyone keeps talking about Cobra Kai. We should do it. Let's start it tonight." Oh my God. Genuinely, did the whole two series in less than a week. We just smashed through it.Jon Sutton: Yeah, I'm stopping it. I'm calming it down because I don't want it to end. I think we got a bit giddy and then I'm calming it now because I want to... Series three is coming very soon so I want to make it that I'm there for it.Kelly Molson: So, you haven't seen the last episode yet?Jon Sutton: No, I've not seen the second, I've only just joined the party.Kelly Molson: It's feel good, isn't it? That's what I love about '80s films, they're really feel good. That was a great answer.Kelly Molson: Okay, Laura, I'm coming to you. What fictional family would you be a member of if you could be?Laura Crossley: The Simpsons. That's really obvious, isn't it? Partly because my family was absolutely obsessed with The Simpsons and even now, I find myself saying catchphrases. Like, "I have a feeling that we are going to win the lottery." Or like, I'm a vegetarian and I always quote things from the Vegetarian and I think other people know what I'm talking about but I'm like, "Oh no, it's just me and my family who know that."Jon Sutton: It was on the first day when you said, "Cowabunga dude." Laura Crossley: I skated in, in a hat. Kelly Molson: Love it.Laura Crossley: When I was younger particularly, I would get a lot of grief about basically being Lisa. Like when I was younger, I was very, very right on. I was a vegetarian and in the episode where she becomes a vegetarian, she can see bits of animals. That was exactly like me.Jon Sutton: Can you play the saxophone then?Laura Crossley: Can't play the saxophone but I could play the flute. I was in an orchestra, I could play the flute.Kelly Molson: Oh, that's close enough.Jon Sutton: Going to play the piano.Laura Crossley: And in my peak teenage years, I did go out, but I also spent early Friday evenings in Salford Youth Orchestra. So, I was really cool.Kelly Molson: You really are Lisa. You've already joined the family, you're there. Oh, I love it.Kelly Molson: Okay, we're going to go to your unpopular opinions. Jon, I'm going to come to you? What's the thing that you think is true but nobody else agrees with you on?Jon Sutton: I think it's humanity's worst invention, umbrellas should be banned really. I hate them. They're a weapon, pretty much, and particularly as people are more and more on their phones these days while they're walking down the street, if they're carrying an umbrella, you could lose an eye.Kelly Molson: Do you not think that this is an issue with people looking at their phones rather than the umbrella though?Jon Sutton: No, I think it was even before. I thought everybody hated them. Apart from Rihanna, I thought everybody hated them.Laura Crossley: I don't think I've ever hated an umbrella. I lose a lot of umbrellas. My mum once bought me 11, you know those little pocket-sized ones? She bought me 11 of them for Christmas one year. I had a whole stocking full of one pound bargain umbrellas because I just leave them in places.Jon Sutton: That's the thing, you think, "Well I don't want to spend a lot of money on them because I'm going to lose it," but if you buy a too cheap one, it's going to be inside out, probably leave things, it just doesn't stop revolving that's the problem.Kelly Molson: That's a great answer. Again, not really what I was expecting but interesting. All right, Laura, what's yours?Laura Crossley: Mine's going to sound really geeky now which is that I think that often theme parks are better at talking about history, teaching people about history and the environment than museums are.Kelly Molson: Oh wow, okay.Laura Crossley: Do you remember when we could go on holiday and things like that last year?Kelly Molson: The good times.Laura Crossley: We could go to other countries and it was really nice. I went to Florida last year and I didn't really go to Disney as a kid or anything but it was really fun last year and I nearly came back and wrote a big blog post about all the things that museums can learn from theme parks because I think they can learn absolutely loads. But one of them definitely is about teaching people about history and the environment and science because it just talks about things, you don't even realize you're learning. You think you're just on a ride or having fun or in a queue or just walking for a different land or watching a film or doing something that's just really fun and then you come out and you're like, "I've just learned about this new [inaudible 00:05:55] a new kind of animal that I didn't know about. I've learned about this really interesting thing in history that I didn't know about."Laura Crossley: Obviously, we can't see the original objects and that is a really good thing about museums but I just think the way that theme parks are quite sneaky about the way that they teach people history. Maybe it's mainly Disney because that is a big theme across Disney.Jon Sutton: I worked five years at the Pleasure Beach, Blackpool Pleasure Beach, for five years. I must admit I didn't really think about it from that point of view. I felt that I was not getting paid enough. I wasn't very good at doing candy floss either, terrible. If you asked me for a stick of candy floss and I would give you them through gritted teeth. I'd really try and shove a bag onto them because a bag was much easier to make.Kelly Molson: Oh, I always fancied a go of that though.Jon Sutton: Oh my god, it's really hard. It's so hard. Laura Crossley: Really?Jon Sutton: Particularly in Blackpool where it's windy all the time. The machine's quite dangerous as well because it spins around but you have to make sure you've got the right amount of moisture on the edge of the... You can't have too much moisture but you need some moisture for it to stick to the sides. It's really, really hard.Laura Crossley: It's like science.Kelly Molson: I've learnt so much today, I really have. I haven't even asked you any good questions yet. I've learnt loads.Jon Sutton: Museums are a breeze compared to producing candy floss.Laura Crossley: That's really interesting.Kelly Molson: I think, Laura, it's about making it fun.Laura Crossley: Yes absolutely, and immersive.Kelly Molson: Yeah, and then you don't really realize that you're learning, so you suck it in.Laura Crossley: Yeah, the other thing I really like is that it's really multi-sensory. You can hear music or read stuff and the atmosphere and so you just, yeah exactly, you don't realize you're learning. It's just really cool. Whereas at museum's I think sometimes, we don't talk enough about the story. I think sometimes it's just like, "Oh, there's another object." As Jon knows, I'm not the biggest fan of labels in museums. Maybe that's an opinion that won't go down well with the museum sector but I do think we put far too much stuff on labels and always want people to read everything.Laura Crossley: And I think sometimes it's nice to also help people use their imagination and tell a story, and not just be like, "This is a thing. Look at this thing and here are some facts about it." It's just, I don't think it's very engaging.Kelly Molson: Well, this leads us really nicely actually to what we want to talk about today because the reason that we are dressed in our strip is because we want to talk about your new podcast, it's called Strip the Podcast, but it's in line with the exhibition that you've got running at the moment which is Strip! How Football Got Shirty. And I guess that goes a little bit hand in hand about what you're talking about in terms of telling a story about something. So Laura, just for our listeners, can you just give us a little overview of what the National Football Museum is.Kelly Molson: I mean, it says very clearly what it is in its name, but what do you do there?Laura Crossley: We do all sorts of things. We are England's only national museum for football and we basically explore the impact that football has on all our lives and how it shapes identity and a bit like I was saying about telling stories, we are moving much more towards telling stories and sharing other people's stories about the diversity of the game. So we are not just about talking about men's elite game, although that's obviously a big part of football but we're also about the women's game and also, I think a really good thing that we can do is challenge attitudes around homophobia and racism. Laura Crossley: I watched that Anton Ferdinand documentary last night and just thought, "Gosh, there's still so much work to do in terms of challenging racism in football." So we're trying a lot more to tell those difficult stories and hopefully change attitudes and make football something that's really welcoming for everyone because it's something that touches all of our lives, even if you're not a football fan, it's not something that you can escape. It's something that you might dip in and out of or you'll know people who like football and so it is about telling those really broad stories and for me, about celebrating diversity and making everybody feel like they have a place in the game and that they're represented in football.Kelly Molson: Lovely. And Jon, the exhibition is something that you've been organizing. So can you tell us a little bit about what this exhibition is about? Again, How Football Got Shirty, I think we could maybe hazard a guess at that.Jon Sutton: There's no shorts or socks in the exhibition. That was the first thing. We're not having shorts, we're not having socks, it's just shirts. So yeah, it's got over 200 shirts going right back to the Victorian era, so it's very comprehensive. We did the first century of football shirts because there wasn't an awful lot of change and then we branch out into the '70s of Admiral and the dawn of replica shirts. And then we've got some bangers from the '90s, lots of the bright and the garish ones. We've got a bit about the retro revival. Got a real controversial hall of shame area which actually, the six shirts in the hall of fame are all pretty good shirts, to be fair, generally. But they're there almost for a malfunction of design, that's why they're there like that.Jon Sutton: And then right through to the present. So one of the big things now is eco-friendly shirts, so sustainability and we've also got loads of shirts from the women's game as well because I think we're the first exhibition that have worked out that basically women can play football too and women wear football shirts.Jon Sutton: There's been football shirt exhibitions in the past or there's almost like kit experts and things like that but I don't think the women's game and the shirts that women wear has been told yet. So it's really comprehensive. One of the toughest things is having to do the top 20 shirts of all time. It's so subjective.Kelly Molson: Yeah, I'll bet.Jon Sutton: I'm a Blackpool fan and I didn't put a Blackpool shirt in the top 20.Kelly Molson: There's no Tottenham shirt in the top 20 either, I checked.Jon Sutton: There are a lot more Arsenal shirts than Tottenham shirts as well.Laura Crossley: Oh dear, anyway.Jon Sutton: The shirt you're wearing is in the exhibition. Kelly Molson: It's a great shirt.Jon Sutton: We've got a Jurgen Klinsmann shirt as well when he did the dive celebration. We've got that in the museum as well. It's not in the exhibition.Kelly Molson: Perfect moment. Okay, so great exhibition, great museum. You've been shut for most of this year which has been a challenge all around in the sector. So what I really want to talk about is what you've done to engage your audience while you've been shut, and one of the great things that you've done is launch the podcast. It's a big thing to do, it's a bold move, and that's what I want to talk about today really. So I guess my first very short question, which has probably got a really long answer is, why a podcast?Jon Sutton: To be honest, I don't really listen to podcasts, so it was quite hard presenting one because I didn't really know much about the basis of being the host on a podcast, I'll be honest. And I think David realized that very quickly, our digital producer. I think David realized that too when we started.Kelly Molson: What have I let myself in for?Jon Sutton: I was amazed. On the day, luckily Tim, who is our graphics and interpretation producer, basically the three of us in our exhibitions team, we kind of led it I suppose, and luckily, he'd done a script which was really helpful because I was going there without even a script. Laura, why did you [crosstalk 00:13:36].Kelly Molson: Yeah, how did you come to the decision that a podcast is the thing that you're going to create to engage people with? How did that process work?Laura Crossley: I think a podcast would... because I joined the museum almost a year, just over a year ago, and even when I joined there were talks, before we even knew about COVID, there was talk about doing a podcast as a way to reach the audiences and share our stories in a different way. I think because our mission is all about sharing stories and a podcast, I think, and that narrative, is a good way to do that.Laura Crossley: So we'd always thought about doing a podcast and then Jon's team got some funding and it made sense to make that about the Strip exhibition. But certainly, when we then shut, for me it became more of an imperative. I know that museums decided to see lots of different things during lockdown but we have on our strategy, the aim to build a virtual museum, basically reflect the galleries and the content of the museum, but digitally, whether that be in our social media content on YouTube or via podcasts or whatever it might be.Laura Crossley: And so I saw this year as a way for us to just experiment because what other year do you get... I mean, obviously, it's been a bad year but the one positive, I think, is that it's allowed people to throw caution to the wind and just say, "Well, we'll just experiment with lots of different ways to engage people because why not? And if it doesn't work then it doesn't matter and we learn from it."Laura Crossley: And I really hope that that's something that museums take into the future. I think we always try and plan and try and be perfect, whereas actually, I think experimentation is much more exciting and just seeing what happens and not really worrying too much if things don't work because so what? You've learnt lessons and you try again. So for me, that was the really good thing about a podcast and also, I did really feel for them. Strip opened in my first week at the museum, and so it was open for what, three months, and then shut.Laura Crossley: And I could tell when I joined, I mean, Jon can talk a lot more about it because it's his exhibition, but I went to the opening night and I remember just thinking, "Wow, so much passion and love and care has gone into this exhibition," and it was incredibly sad to see it have to close, well, the whole museum have to close. So I think we focused a lot on putting content out about Strip. Partly for that, because it was just such a great topic, something that was really engaging. Something that we know that if the museum had been open, lots of people would have come to the exhibition and we really wanted to give them the chance to experience it in a different way.Jon Sutton: Yeah, on the day, the last day of March before we closed, we did a frantic tour around the exhibition and we got our own Strip website as well dedicated to the exhibition. And in co-curating the exhibition, we had so many assets. I'd spoken to a lot of the kit manufacturers, a lot of the kit experts. We'd had a panel discussion, been out to some clubs. We had so much and then only so much of that can go into the exhibition.Jon Sutton: So we're sitting on all these assets and I think we divided it so some went out onto the Strip website but then even then, we had so much and we just thought, "If we theme it right, we've definitely got a podcast here." And so we've managed to use some of those assets in the podcast but also recorded new interviews with people as well for it. So luckily, I think we've done a decent job on it.Kelly Molson: So you've done six episodes, is that right? Six episodes so far. Let me just go back a bit because what you said is really interesting, Laura, and I think I agree with you in terms of playing with things this year. We all know it's been a challenging year but it has given us that opportunity to do some new things and do some different things that we don't know if they're going to work, we don't know what the reaction's going to be but let's try it, right? Very much the same with this podcast that we're on. I had no idea what the... We'd pre-launched it the previous year. Hadn't really got a lot of traction and thought, "Let's bring it back. There's a lot of people that are potentially sitting around maybe with not a lot to do at the moment. Maybe we can give them something to listen to."Kelly Molson: And so, that was the objective really. What can we push out there that'll be helpful and engaging for people right now. So with the podcast, did you actually set any objectives for it or was it purely, "We're just going to do this, see what happens."Laura Crossley: I think this is what we were grappling with a little bit because we were kind of pushed into doing digital before we'd written a big strategy about it, and as I said, I don't think that's a bad thing. It's kind of like writing a strategy for research and development which isn't a bad way to do it. For me, Jon might disagree I don't know, but it's about engaging more people in a deeper way and growing those audiences and also hopefully, some of the people we engage will actually physically come to the museum. Acknowledging that some people who live in different countries might not actually physically be able to get to the museum now or in the future.Laura Crossley: But for those people, making them aware of us and getting a kind of loyalty to us and looking out for our stuff and feeling part of the museum and then for other people, hopefully encouraging them to come through the door and become physical visitors.Kelly Molson: And I guess you won't see that until a bit later on potentially, whether you do make that shift from people that are listening to the podcast, to coming along. Jon, I've got so many questions about the podcast because I know myself personally, how much time and effort and a challenge it can be. You said earlier, you've never made a podcast before. Have you ever been a guest on a podcast? Have you ever had any interaction with any of them?Jon Sutton: No, I don't think I have. I don't even think I've been a guest. I think I just assumed they were a bit like radio but not live. I have listened to some podcasts but not many, so I had no experience really.Kelly Molson: All right, so you were at the point where you've got all your assets and you think, "Yeah, we've got a podcast here. We can create some content and its valuable content, it's interesting." Where did you start because that's a big learning process, right? To saying, "I've got this idea about a podcast, I've got all this stuff, now I need to make a podcast." What did you have to learn?Jon Sutton: Well luckily, [crosstalk 00:20:02]. The first episode was a bit... Looking back now, if I listen to it now, I think it would be quite rustic and a little bit raw. One thing I did before we did the podcast, I listened to some other podcasts about football shirts. They were all pretty good, generally, but at the same time, I thought they might be slightly better at presenting than we would be. They may be more confident in front of a microphone, et cetera. But at the same time, I thought they might not necessarily have the assets we've got and also the knowledge that we've acquired in curating the exhibition.Jon Sutton: So that was a bit of me that thought, "Well, what's the worst that can happen with this thing and if we are terrible, at least we've got the guest to pull us out." The first one we did wasn't the best but then the next one we did was really good and then what we did was we went back to the first one and re-recorded it. But we did that with most of them, so it wasn't necessarily really a quick process. Sometimes we'd start in the morning, rattle through in say, an hour, get lunch. Then we'd go, "Actually, I think we could do that better now."Jon Sutton: So most of them, we did it in two takes. There was a period where we recorded, I think, probably three or four within a two week period because we were going into the museum, say, once a week when we could. And we found that we found a rhythm to it and then there was one episode, the last episode in the podcast, which I think is actually somehow the best one. We'd been about three, four weeks between recording the fifth and the sixth and that day, we had Linda working on it. She was fantastic. We had Tim working on it, he was fantastic.Jon Sutton: Whatever reason, I think I might have had a couple of too many drinks the night before or something, but I was absolutely appalling. Nothing was flowing that day, it was awful, but listening to it, you can't tell. So, David's a magician.Kelly Molson: So you had in-house editing skills, which is a huge bonus because we outsource our editing, we've got a brilliant, Steve is our... He's an award-winning podcaster. I have to just give him a little plug there. But that's the one thing that we didn't have in-house, so we were like, "Well that's something that we need to get professional help with." That's a huge cost saving and, like you say, it means that you can go back and do things again, so you've got that time.Jon Sutton: I mean, there's a lot of to-ing and fro-ing as well. David would cut something, for example, and I'd go, "David, you just cut me." The pinnacle moment of the podcast, for once I was really funny in that point and David's just like, with a straight face, "It wasn't very funny at all, Jon."Kelly Molson: Steve does this to me all the time.Jon Sutton: That's the thing. Just because you're the host doesn't mean you get any kinds of rights, do you?Kelly Molson: None at all. My bits are always the bits that have been cut. Jon Sutton: The weird thing, I've been finding myself cutting myself as well. So when we have the to-ing and fro-ing, I'll say to David, "You need to cut me at this point," because I sound like an absolute imbecile. And it feels weird being the... It's almost like if you did an exam or something and you're the teacher putting the red pen through your own examination.Kelly Molson: What about equipment or anything like that? I'm just thinking about other museums that might potentially be looking to make this decision and do something like this. Did you have to invest heavily in any specialist equipment or did you have things that you just got? Did you just get by with what you had?Jon Sutton: Yeah, I think what we try and do with each exhibition is we try and purchase bit by bit, like piecemeal, I suppose. Little bits that make us stronger in the future so we've got a legacy from each project we work on. I'm not really technical, I'll be honest. I think we got new headphones and the new microphone but we had some other microphones. I remember though, I had the worst microphone. It wasn't a massive outlay. The other thing is, David is really particular and Tim, we are quite particular, but I think really, you don't have to have mega-quality to do it.Jon Sutton: For me personally, I think the stories and what you're going to tell is more important than if there's a little bit of hiss on it, for example. And we did have to lower our standards a little bit because we did some interviews with people via Zoom, et cetera, for it. So it's not all slick, I suppose. But yeah, it wasn't a massive outlay and luckily we've managed to, each exhibition we do, we try and buy a little bit of stuff.Kelly Molson: All right, two questions. What went well and what didn't go well?Jon Sutton: I think we managed to replicate the themes of the physical exhibition, I suppose. If you hadn't seen the exhibition, I think you would've got a good flavor of what it was about and I think, actually, at times, we even went a little bit further. In the exhibition, for example, there's a Lewis FC shirt and it's got What If on it as a hashtag and it's about the fact that they are the world's leading club on equality. Their men and women's teams get exactly the same resources, same pay. There are not many clubs doing that.Jon Sutton: And you've got a label on it and we're really strict, I think it's 50 words on a label, but we then take it one step further, so we then in the podcast, feature somebody from the club about what that stance means. So in a way, it looks at it and expands on it. It adds more to it. So I think in that respect if you think about the podcast and the Strip website as a duo in digital terms, I'd still want people to come and see the exhibition but you're getting a really, really good flavor of what we're about.Jon Sutton: Things that didn't work was, you can't really tell, but it's quite a time consuming, I think, recording a podcast. David's having to do a lot of editing. Tim, our digital producer's doing the theme music to it which obviously you don't have to do, go down that route, but he was bringing his own symph-pop tune-age to the proceedings. But even writing the script's quite time-consuming as well, so you've got to dedicate quite a lot of time to it really but luckily this year, we've been able to do that with lockdown and that experimentation aspect.Jon Sutton: I suppose one thing is that if you're doing it, don't see it as an add-on to what you're doing really. I think you need to build it in from the start. I think in the past, we'd never done a podcast. We've done online exhibitions on our website but they've been very much afterthoughts. Whereas we did build it into our thinking when we opened the exhibition in, I think it was November. 2019, we knew we were going to do some of this stuff but when we had the lockdown, it almost accelerated it, I suppose.Kelly Molson: Yeah, that makes sense.Jon Sutton: Nothing major. I remember the police sirens going off quite a lot when we were trying to record and then the lift would be going up and down, so it makes a racket. You've got to choose your space as well. Kelly Molson: That is really good advice actually because our podcast has been a lot better since I've been recording it at home. I do get the occasional dog bark but that's better than the constant trains that go past our office. So, it's swings and roundabouts.Kelly Molson: This brings me to a really good question to come back to you on Laura, actually, and it's something that you mentioned before we started speaking which is around what you said about not just bolting a podcast on, thinking about this strategically. Why is it helpful for museums or attractions to have podcasts and what do you need to think about strategically from the start if you're going to go down this path?Laura Crossley: I'd say this for everything about digital museums, that I think we can get a little bit excited about the word digital and just go, "Oh yes, we need a thing. We need a digital thing and if we get a digital thing then we're going to engage lots and lots of people and then they're all going to come to the museum and it's all going to be amazing." And I try and remember back to my Masters, which was a long time ago now, so before we were talking about things like podcasts, we talked a lot about digital interactives and it was in the first session where the lecturer was like, "Digital interactives are great but they will break and you have to have a reason for doing them and there has to be an audience in mind."Laura Crossley: And I think sometimes with digital, we don't plan with audiences in mind. It's like everything that we know about audience-centric planning goes out the window because we think, "Digital. Cool. Amazing." And I love digital stuff and I do listen to podcasts. Adam Brookson's podcast is my happy place and I do think they can be really good for museums in order to tell those stories and engage people who might not have heard of the museum before. Build the brand. Engage them with stories that they wouldn't hear if they weren't in the museum. Laura Crossley: Keeping engagement with audiences. I suspect that some people who listen to the Strip podcast have come to the exhibition but want more information and also, as I said, potentially convert people into visitors to the museum. But I think it's really important firstly, that there's a reason to do it. The podcast took a long time, it wasn't the quickest digital thing that you could do, so you do have to have a reason for doing it. I also think, really thinking about who the audience is and is the audience right for a podcast or should you do something like a YouTube channel or should you get a TikTok channel. I don't know, all the various different digital things that we can do.Laura Crossley: And also really plan it into strategic planning because the time it takes, the capacity, the resources. It can feel like it's free because you might not have to buy loads of equipment but it's not free because it takes people away from doing stuff on the galleries and the museum. So it is really important to schedule it in and make sure that you have the provision for it. And although I think that museums are getting better at having roles, actually it's been really interesting, over lockdown, I've seen so many more roles for digital content producers who just solely focus on blogs and podcasts and digital channels. So I think that's definitely going to be a trend that continues but you do need someone to take ownership of these things and not just say, "Oh well, someone will do it at some point."Laura Crossley: So yeah, definitely have it in the strategic plan. Have a reason for doing it. Know who your audience is. Test if it's the right thing to do, and it's fine if you have all of those things and then you try it and it doesn't work because then you can evaluate why it doesn't work, but you need to know why you're doing it. And also I'd say, next week, we're doing an evaluation session about the podcast which is really important to me because again, I want it to be a learning experience. So there'll be things that have gone really well and there'll be things that haven't as much but it'd be good to really test that. And I'd also really like us to talk to people who listen to the podcast and hear what they think about it and whether it has done what we set out to do.Kelly Molson: That is really good advice, and actually, my next question was going to be, what would be your best piece of advice to other museums who were thinking about doing this? But I think you just summed it up absolutely beautifully there, Laura. Jon, have you got anything that you would add to that in terms of your best piece of advice for a museum that's thinking about starting a podcast?Jon Sutton: Yeah, I think I might have covered some of it already but it's things like building the time, don't see it as an add-on, what's the audience? The Strip, I knew that we already had an engaged crowd for that and also it's not particularly niche either. We're not going for necessarily the most niche subject in the world, football kits and what they represent. Particularly at the moment, I think lockdown brings in... This year, if anything, has brought in a real nostalgia to yesteryear, hasn't it? Jon Sutton: The first shirt, basically, I ever had. Wore it when I was eight years old. It's an adult one but it's the same design, so I knew there was an audience for it. So that's how we built around the exhibition but if we were talking about football studs, for example, boot studs or something like that. I'm not sure whether that-Kelly Molson: That's like the niche that, isn't it? I definitely wouldn't have listened to all six episodes of that podcast, Jon.Laura Crossley: [inaudible 00:32:44].Jon Sutton: Exactly, but the thing is, you need to realize what you're presenting isn't niche. I'm not sure all museum people do that, I think you get bogged down in the day to day and maybe you need that bigger picture of actually what I do is quite a niche.Kelly Molson: Great advice.Jon Sutton: So we knew with this one it wasn't too niche.Kelly Molson: Really, really good advice. We're coming towards the end of the podcast. On every episode, I ask my guests if there's a book that they would share with us and it can be a book that's either helped you in your career or just a book that you really love and our lucky listeners get to win this book. So Laura, what have you chosen for us?Laura Crossley: Well, I was racking my mind for museum books because I did a Ph.D. in museum, so I have obviously read some amazing and really not so amazing type of books. Some amazing museum books that have really shaped my career but I was thinking about what book do I actually really love and again, remember that I'm a geek. The book that's really stayed with me for a long time is, Of Mice and Men, which I read when I was in year 10 doing my GSCEs, a long time ago now. And I was thinking, "Has that affected my museum career?" And I think it has because of all the books that I like, like that and The Catcher in the Rye and A Room with a View. Well firstly, they're all set in the past. Well for me anyway, they might have been contemporary at the time but for me, it was reading about the past and so I think that kind of bringing history to life.Laura Crossley: A bit like I said about theme parks. I think that books can do that as well really, really well and sometimes in a more emotive way than museums do. I think museums have the power to do it but they don't always do it. And also, all those books are about this big and you can probably read them in a day if you put your mind to it. And again, I think that's why I really like the power of storytelling but not over using words, just telling, a bit like with films. I just want an hour and a half. I just want to watch Stand By Me in an hour and a half and be told a really good story. Laura Crossley: And the same with books, just tell me a really emotive, evocative story, that paints this amazing picture and transports me into that world. I don't need too much and that's what I think museums should really aim to do as well. Think about storytelling and description and emotional engagement, as well as just, "Here's an object," and expect people to be engaged with it. Kelly Molson: I love that. I love that you've tied your book choice in with your career and how it's focused you on what you do. Jon, what about you? What have you got to share with us?Jon Sutton: Bringing you back to football shirts. When we were starting this exhibition, there was two books that stood out. One of them was book that was The Worst Football Shirts Of All Time, and I was flicking through it and I was like, "Well, that's a banger, that's a banger. These are amazing shirts. This book is so wrong." But the thing is when you look at these best ever shirts and worst ever shirts, often they're the same, they've just put opinion. But the book really that got the exhibition, made me say, "We're definitely doing this exhibition and we need to bring this author in," is a book called True Colors by John Devlin. He's done various books. His latest book is all about international kits.Jon Sutton: He does these beautiful illustrations of the shirts. He draws every single shirt, for example, England. He will have drawn in that book, every shirt that England have worn. Really nice illustrations. The passion for the subject comes across, the depth comes across as well. His books are amazing and we actually hired him as an exhibition consultant on the basis of his brilliant books.Kelly Molson: Wow, bet he never saw that coming when he was writing his books.Jon Sutton: No exactly. We can't feature every club in the exhibition, we've got 200 shirts, but there is this rainbow of football shirts that he drew for us and so most clubs are covered under that, for example, Derby under white, for example, Tottenham under white. And so, True Colors by John Devlin is my choice and it's the right one.Kelly Molson: Great but I love that book has been part of this journey that you've been on with the podcast as well. It's really great to tie it all together. Well as ever, if you want to win a copy of those books, then if you head over to our Twitter account which is Skip The Queue, and you retweet this episode announcement with the comment, "I want Laura and Jon's books," then you will be in with a chance of winning them.Kelly Molson: I've loved having you both on today, it's such an interesting topic because I've a personal experience of just how difficult it is to start a podcast, edit a podcast, all right, Steve does the editing, but pull a podcast together. Think about who you're going to have on as guests. It's a huge amount of work and I think it's a brilliant task that you've gone ahead and done this.Laura Crossley: Can I just say, I think yours is brilliant. It's so good.Kelly Molson: Thank you.Laura Crossley: I think that visitor attractions have a lot to learn from each other and I sometimes think museums can be quite snobby and not see themselves as a visitor attraction. Whereas actually, one of the best things we can do is give people a good day out. We should sometimes just relax a bit and say, "Actually, a really great thing we do is give people a good day out."Kelly Molson: Yeah, it's making memories, isn't it? So six episodes of the podcast have been released, what's next? Do you think there's any more episodes coming?Jon Sutton: David was really, really brutal in his editing, so I think there could be something in a bloopers episode, like a special. He'll probably tell me, 'No," but I was thinking like some of the bits, sort of me being stupid generally.Laura Crossley: You've said it now in public, so that's it. [crosstalk 00:38:40]. Kelly Molson: It's a commitment.Jon Sutton: It'll get vetoed, I know it will. It never gets their own way. I think it's probably it for Strip for the time being but then we're going to look at hopefully something that talks about the other stuff we do as a museum. So something that isn't exhibition focused but is about our general offer and the stories we want to tell and the power of football ultimately.Laura Crossley: I think for me, really feeling down to who it's for because we could just do it in so many ways and tell so many different stories and maybe that's something that museums do grapple with a bit, that unless it's about a special exhibition, you have to really think about who it's for and what you're trying to do, otherwise you could do a podcast that just never ended and you talk about a different random thing every week.Jon Sutton: That doesn't mean it's not going to have those studs [crosstalk 00:39:28].Kelly Molson: Honestly Jon, if anyone wants to listen to a podcast about football boot studs, email me and let me know and I'll pass this onto Jon but I think I'm going to get very few emails about this.Laura Crossley: That's episode 527.Kelly Molson: Guys, it's been so good to speak to you today. Right everyone, if you want to listen to the podcast, it's called Strip! The Podcast and you will find it on all of your usual podcast channels. Go and download it, it's really entertaining. I have listened to five of the six episodes now and look, I'm a football fan, I love football shirts and I really, really enjoyed it. I think you'll get a lot out of it if you're a football fan in general. So definitely go and download it.Kelly Molson: All that's left for me to say is, "Thank you both for coming on."Jon Sutton: Thanks very much, brilliant.Laura Crossley: Thank you, I love the Skip The Queue podcast, so it's really cool. Thank you so much for inviting us.Kelly Molson: Thank you for making it... It's the guests that make it, so thanks.Kelly Molson: Thanks for listening to Skip The Queue. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave us a five-star review, it really helps others find us and remember to follow us on Twitter for your chance to win the books that have been mentioned. Skip The Queue is brought to you by Rubber Cheese, a digital agency that builds remarkable systems and websites for attractions that helps them increase their visitor numbers. You can find show notes and transcriptions from this episode and more over on our website, rubbercheese.com/podcast.

Episode 7: The Leisure and Attractions Industry in England and in Europe, a short and long term outlook on the road to recovery Guest: Amanda Thompson OBE, Managing Director of Blackpool Pleasure Beach Amanda Thompson OBE, Managing Director of Blackpool Pleasure Beach in the UK and current Chairman of IAAPA, joins Dennis Speigel to discuss the status of the leisure and attractions industry in the midst of a global pandemic. As the first European woman to hold the position of Chairman of IAAPA, Amanda specifically discusses unique and successful practices that have been put into place at Blackpool Pleasure Beach and provides her exclusive perspective on what the road to recovery will look like moving beyond 2020. Watch this highly informative and dynamic conversation!

Joined by Sam from Coaster Sam Blog we talk about Sam's first impressions of Blackpool Pleasure Beach along with highlights and lowlights plus our advice for those planning to visit Blackpool Pleasure Beach. Theme Park Loopy: www.facebook.com/themeparkloopy Coaster Sam Blog www.instagram.com/coastersamblog

Past gamertags, buying Pokemon cards from Woolworths, the Mets and whether our children will one day think we're cringe.

*CoasterTrack* - Covid:Secure Theme Parks Mikey and Hannah discuss the procedures in place to ensure UK theme parks are Covid:Secure. We discuss our visits to Alton Towers and Blackpool Pleasure Beach and go through all the positives and negatives to visiting a theme park during Covid-19.   .....................................................................................................................   Visit our website here: https://scaretrack.co.uk Watch our latest ScareCam vlogs: https://youtube.com/scaretrack ScareTrack merchandise can be found here: https://smart-fx.co.uk/smart-artists/...   Social Media Facebook.com/ScareTrack Instagram- @scaretrack Twitter- @scaretrack Snapchat- scaretrack   *All views expressed are of the individual host/guest.

David Bromilow is Global Director - Parks and Attractions for Mobaro, although you won't hear us talk much about his current position on this episode. Instead, we tap into David's 42 years as a maintenance and safety professional in the attractions industry to find out more about how these dedicated folks keep us safe and entertained. David starts off by telling us he literally "grew up" at Blackpool Pleasure Beach where his dad worked. From there his story is about building rides, traveling to and living in the US, pioneering safety protocols and working with everyone from a traveling carnival to the big theme parks. We literally only scratch the surface of all the great insight David has to share! For more on David or Mobaro: https://mobaro.com/ David on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-bromilow-icae-5a157322/ David's email: db@mobaro.com Help celebrate the AttractionPros 150th episode! We've heard a lot of great stories on the podcast so far, but we haven't heard YOURS! For our 150th Episode Spectacular, and we want to highlight YOU, our listeners, by having you share your favorite attraction industry memory in 2 minutes or less! We'll all gather on July 7 on Zoom to record this historic episode which will go live on July 14. Don't miss your chance to be part of this inspiring episode! It's episode 150... and we're just getting started! #weareallAttractionPros http://attractionpros.com/ap150/   Josh – josh@amusementadvantage.com Matt – matt@performanceoptimist.com Twitter Facebook LinkedIn  

Lockdown Series Episode 6: This week I'm joined by Sam Emmerson, an actor and performer and manager of Moonstone Murder Mysteries. Moonstone Murder Mysteries is an entertainment company specialising in dining experiences entertainment. Alongside private performances, we work with a wide variety of high-quality venues in the UK, including Blackpool Pleasure Beach, Hawth Theatre Crawley, Hyatt Hotels, Boisdale Restaurants and even ran for a year in the heart of London's West End with Murder at the Library. Our shows are performed by a team of professional, experienced actors, packed with plot-twists, suspicious suspects, tears of laughter and plenty of red herrings along the way! Find out more by visiting their website at www.moonstonemurders.co.uk or via. Instagram: @moonstone_murder_mysteries or Facebook: Facebook.com/MoonstoneLondon To get involved in a mystery yourself visit their YouTube channel (For current livestreams): https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzOZnIKRGqWTfQPCwRCA8mA

WE'RE BACK !, Attraction Images In Conversation with : Harry Forshaw , Talking Blackpool Pleasure Beach and THAT TWEET We Discuss Harrys love of Theme Parks , Covid 19, The NHS and what the future holds.

Ihr habt abgestimmt und ihr bekommt natürlich auch Teil 2 der Episode zum Brexit (wenn auch mit so viel Verzögerung, dass es die Briten in der Zwischenzeit tatsächlich geschafft haben aus der EU auszutreten). In dieser Folge geht es um den zweiten Teil von Marvins England Tour aus 2018. Unter anderem behandlen wir den Thorpe Park, Blackpool Pleasure Beach, Alton Towers und die legendäre Achterbahn The Ultimate. 0:00:00 Begrüßung 0:03:04 Thorpe Park 0:21:33 Fantasy Island 0:27:24 Bottons Pleasure Beach 0:30:45 Flamingo Land 0:38:50 Lightwater Valley - The Ultimate 0:53:12 Blackpool Pleasure Beach 1:20:44 Gullivers Warrington 1:26:45 Drayton Manor 1:30:14 West Midland Safari Park 1:32:19 Alton Towers 1:58:05 Zusammenfassung und Verabschiedung 2:01:05 The Ultimate Audio Onride Habt ihr Anmerkungen, Fragen, Verbesserungsvorschläge oder wollt einfach nur so etwas sagen? Folgt uns doch einfach auf Instagram unter @launchundlifthill und ihr verpasst nichts mehr. Viel Spaß bei dieser Episode! Launch und Lifthill Felix und Marvin Folge direkt herunterladen

Blackpool Pleasure Beach is een van de oudste parken van Europa. Gelegen in het Noorden van Engeland, vlak aan de Ierse Zee, is het park een merkwaardige collectie van decennia oude achtbanen, darkrides en flatrides. Wat maakt het park zo bijzonder?

Off The Tracks episode 14, this week we discuss our trip to Blackpool Pleasure Beach for the first time this year, we get Hayley and Liams reviews on the park and the rides as they have never been to Blackpool Pleasure Beach before, and our second subject we discuss the closing on our Theme Parks around the World due to the Coronavirus. we did record this on Tuesday so they may be some information wrong with the UK park. but ALL THEME PARKS ARE CLOSE till further notice. as always thank you for your support. Follow us on: Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/438o7QZ... https://audioboom.com/posts/7497744-o... Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TPFamilys/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/TPfamilys Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tpfamilys/

Harry (Coaster Bot) & Zoe ramble about their visit to Blackpool Pleasure Beach 2020 opening weekend and offer tips for those planning to go next year.

In this episode we look back at the weekend in Blackpool, my first thoughts on the different rides on offer at pleasure beach and looking forward to future experiences and events to come!

ScareTrack - Pasaje Del Terror 2020 /  Review Episode The ScareTrack team visit Pasaje Del Terror at Blackpool Pleasure Beach for the opening weekend of the season. Click and listen too our full review episode. ........................................................................................................................... BUY PASAJE DEL TERROR TICKETS HERE: http://www.pasajedelterror.com/ ............................................................................................................................. Visit our website here: https://scaretrack.co.uk Watch our latest ScareCam vlogs: https://youtube.com/scaretrack You can support the show here: https://patreon.com/ScareTrack ScareTrack merchandise can be found here: https://smart-fx.co.uk/smart-artists/...   Social Media Facebook.com/ScareTrack Instagram- @scaretrack Twitter- @scaretrack Snapchat- scaretrack   #ad #gifted *Photo/logo credit: Pasaje Del Terror

Harry (Coaster Bot) & Zoe ramble about what they would do with it if they owned Blackpool Pleasure Beach and discuss your own opinions.

Today on Human Business, we're talking about Starting a Movement. Simone Roche is CEO and Founder of Northern Power Women launched this campaign out of a passion to connect and engage with people about gender equality.​Simone started her career in the male-dominated military and then held roles at Aintree Racecourse, Blackpool Pleasure Beach, the Arena Convention Centre Liverpool and the Olympics, and she is quick to note that she was not treated differently because she was female.So it wasn’t until she became the Director for a campaign supporting women in the hospitality, leisure, travel and tourism industry – and she was asked to be a champion for the Government Equalities Office – that gender equality grew to be her passion.When the International Festival for Business was held in Liverpool in 2014, Simone campaigned to include businesses’ role in promoting gender equality and developing talent, and held a sell-out event focused on the role women played in driving the economy.Men and women suddenly saw women’s benefit to the economy – and the role the North could play in driving that. And Simone saw the need and opportunity to focus on gender balance in the northern powerhouse region. Northern Power Women was born.

Strap in for the greatest saga since Odin and Loki went to Blackpool Pleasure Beach. In this week's episode, the boys talk everything Norse. Horned helmets, plunder, longboats, the lot. They also discus how not Vikings they are, unfortunately. We also hear from Fergal again, he's been dating. Now, we're off to Ragnarok.

Theme Park Halloween Season is upon us! One of our favourite times of year to visit parks. And when Blackpool Pleasure Beach said they were planning a new experience for 2019, it would have been rude not to check it out for you. In this Episode you can find out exactly what they've got in store, and find out what we make of it. Plus Shawn from Theme Park Worldwide pops up from the back seat (which is not as weird as it sounds......)

www.admusement.de | Ihr hört unseren ersten Podcast, in dem wir (Robin und Julian) gemeinsam über die Neuigkeiten der Branche auf der IAAPA Europe sprechen. Dazu geht es um Themen wie das Marketing für Rulantica im Europa Park, einen Messestand, den wir gestaltet haben und zwei sehr gelungene Kampagnen-Videos von Blackpool Pleasure Beach. • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIWoSSohtHQ • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUg1j4BmqEI www.admusement.de

Blackpool Pleasure Beach is an amusement park situated along the Fylde coast in Blackpool, Lancashire, North West England. Mikey and Hannah visit Blackpool Pleasure Beach for the Freak Nights Press Preview event. We find out more about this first time event and interview some of the creative minds behind it.

ScareTrack - Journey To Hell Freak Nights at Blackpool Pleasure Beach Interview Episode: Lynsey Brown (Entertainments Director BPB) David Noris (Writer/Director) Aron Byrne-Carter (Pasaje Del Terror) Mikey and Hannah visit Blackpool Pleasure Beach for the Freak Nights Press Preview event. We find out more about this first time event and interview some of the creative minds behind it. Check out our YouTube channel to watch our mini ScareCam of the event: https://youtube.com/scaretrack ............................................................................................................................ BOOK YOUR FREAK NIGHTS TICKETS HERE:  https://halloween.blackpoolpleasurebeach.com/ ............................................................................................................................. Visit our website here: https://scaretrack.co.uk Watch our latest ScareCam vlogs: https://youtube.com/scaretrack You can support the show here: https://patreon.com/ScareTrack ScareTrack merchandise can be found here: https://smart-fx.co.uk/smart-artists/...   Social Media Facebook.com/ScareTrack Instagram- @scaretrack Twitter- @scaretrack Snapchat- scaretrack

He got his first ride when he was only ten and has since been addicted to roller-coasters. Since then he's had 1,200 rides (not all naked!) David Ellis is an Accountant by day but a Nude Rollercoaster Rider at night! Unlike Superman he takes his clothes off and there's nothing underneath. It's been up and down and side to side but he is a five-time Guinness World Record Holder for his naked exploits and he told Muireann all about it. He's even featured in The Guardian: The most important question of course being, "What's the craic with bum sweat!?" [audio mp3="https://media.radiocms.net/uploads/2019/05/13133233/ROLLERCOASTER-NUDE-GUY.mp3"][/audio] Here's David and the rest of his naked crew breaking the record for most naked people on a roller-coaster. They recently shivered their way into the Guinness Book Of Records by getting 195 naked bodies on to the Grand National wooden roller coaster at Blackpool Pleasure Beach in England.

Harry (Coaster Bot) & Zoe ramble about their recent visit to Blackpool Pleasure Beach and discuss your questions about the park.

We had a day out

In this thrilling episode we talk about Far Cry 5, Nightflyers, The Monster, Matt getting stuck on the Pepsi Max ride at Blackpool Pleasure Beach, Bloodborne, Star Trek Discovery, MGS5: The Phantom Pain and Umbrella Academy. Emails to: onlydrummermattatsnipeandwib@gmail.com

Die Parks: Blackpool Pleasure Beach Blackpool South Pier Die Bahnen: Icon BPB auf rcdb Crazy Coaster auf rcdb

This week we’re a bit ill. But we talk about some of the sickest theme park happenings, including Wicker Man testing, an inverting go kart track, possible Walking Dead attraction for Thorpe Park, Batman at Six Flags over Georgia going backwards, and more.

THE THEME PARK DUO PODCAST: SUBSCRIBE ON ITUNES, GOOGLE PLAY AND STITCHER! Sit down with Nikki and Gabriel as the hosts of The Theme Park Duo Podcast bring a fun trip to Shanghai Disneyland! We are joined by our friend Kevin who was lucky enough to visit the brand new Disney Park! We talk about the incredible ground breaking Pirates of the Caribbean: Battle for the Sunken Treasure, the Tron Lightcycle Power Run, the shows, and the major cultural differences between American Disney Theme Parks and Foreign Disney Theme Parks! It's such an interesting conversation and you should not miss this one! With our Theme Park Bulletin segment, we chat about Blackpool Pleasure Beach's new roller coaster ICON, Christmas in the Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Studios Florida/Orlando,  Star Wars Land construction updates and the immersive details coming to the new land and FINALLY some interesting new information coming from Pandora: The World of Avatar at Disney's Animal Kingdom at Walt Disney World. Its a jam packed episode but one not to be missed! Check out our website: themeparkduo.com Follow us on social media: @themeparkduo Contact us: themeparkduo@gmail.com

BlooTalk is back with an “end of season” special from the famous British seaside resort of Blackpool. Our guests include Blackpool Pleasure Beach deputy managing director Nick Thompson, Blackpool Council's director of place, Alan Cavill, and Iain Hawkins, head of Merlin Entertainments' Blackpool cluster. The north west tourist destination has been visited by 70% of the UK population at one time or another and now it's attempting to reconnect with lapsed visitors with a host of new attractions and upgraded infrastructure projects. Join us for almost an hour of conversation to discover how a failed casino bid paved the way for Merlin's expansion in the town, why IP-based attractions have helped the Pleasure Beach attract a more family-friendly demographic, and how the traditional Illuminations festival is facing new competition from Halloween events around the country. We also catch-up with Charlie Read over a rather dodgy Skype connection for some of the latest stories for Blooloop.com and news of the three blooloopLIVE conferences planned for 2016. Podcast presented by Owen Ralph. #Blackpool #Themeparks #Attractions

*Subscribe @ iTunes* Nick Hutson is joined by Lee to review their Blackpool Pleasure Beach trip! Tons of coasters, tons of dark rides, tons of classic amusement park charm!  Enjoy! Nick is at MusicalTalk.co.uk Check Out The Season Pass Podcast Website at: www.seasonpasspodcast.com Follow Us On Twitter! - www.twitter.com/theseasonpass Like the TSPP Facebook page! - www.facebook.com/theseasonpass Call the Hotline with Park Trip Reports, Podcast Comments, or Anything else you would like to announce. –1-916-248-5524   Thanks to each one of you for listening to the show.  Your support is extremely appreciated.   © 2013 Season Pass Podcast 

Front Row launches the Cultural Exchange project: Tracey Emin discusses her favourite painting - Vermeer's Lady Writing a Letter with her Maid. Nick Park, creator of Wallace & Gromit, invites Mark Lawson to his new ride at Blackpool Pleasure Beach. Hermione Lee assesses the new National Theatre production of Othello. Baroness Virginia Bottomley and Sir Peter Bottomley review The Politician's Husband. Photographer René Burri reflects on some of his most iconic images taken through the years. Ian Gillan and Ian Paice, of the band Deep Purple, discuss their new album Now What?!

With Mark Lawson Animator Nick Park has adapted his most famous characters Wallace & Gromit for the small screen, the big screen, the BBC Proms and now the theme park. He invites Mark to take a turn on his new ride - the Thrill-O-Matic - as it opens at Blackpool Pleasure Beach. More from the Cultural Exchange project, in which 75 leading creative minds share their passion for a book, film, poem, piece of music or other work of art. Tonight Mohsin Hamid, author of The Reluctant Fundamentalist, selects the groundbreaking sci-fi novel Star Maker by Olaf Stapledon. The 1937 book is a history of life in the universe, in which a human from England is transported out of his body and finds himself able to explore space and other planets. Considered by Arthur C Clarke as one of the finest science fiction books ever written, Star Maker also was loved by Winston Churchill and Virginia Woolf. Nicholas Hytner gives Othello a modern military setting, in a new staging starring Adrian Lester in the title role, with Rory Kinnear as Iago. Hermione Lee assesses whether this National Theatre production casts a fresh light on the play. ITV's latest sitcom, Vicious, features Sir Ian McKellen and Sir Derek Jacobi as an elderly gay couple, with Frances de la Tour as their best friend. Writer and critic Philip Hoare has watched it and discusses whether Vicious lives up to its name. Producer Ekene Akalawu.

In a packed show this month the king of light entertainment Lenny Beige talks about his life as a cabaret superstar, and you'll hear his version of an Eminem classic. Also I sat in a broom cupboard backstage at the O2 Arena and chatted with professional wrestler William Regal about his life, career and love of British comedy. At the age of 15 he was taking on all comers on Blackpool Pleasure Beach, and now is one of the most beloved and respected performers in the WWE. He has quite the story. As an added bonus we've also included a lecture I gave at part of the ToMax talks project about how I got into variety and cabaret, and why it's so important to me. Thanks for listening!

*Subscribe @ iTunes*   This week Len Testa returns to the Season Pass Discussion Room to finish conversation on The Unofficial Guide's soon to be released book on British Theme Parks.  Len, Brent and Doug talk Blackpool Pleasure Beach, Chessington World of Adventures, and Legoland Windsor.  Enjoy!   Thanks to all the listeners for nominating the Season Pass for "Best Travel Podcast" for the Podcast Awards (Second Year In A Row!!).  www.podcastawards.com.    Show Links: Touring Plans Unofficial Guide Series Blackpool Pleasure Beach Chessington World of Adventures Legoland Windsor   The Newly Designed Season Pass Podcast Website is at: www.seasonpasspodcast.com   Follow Us On Twitter! - www.twitter.com/theseasonpass Like the TSPP Facebook page! - www.facebook.com/theseasonpass Contact us:  doug@seasonpasspodcast.com   brent.young@seasonpasspodcast.com   nick@seasonpasspodcast.com     Call the Hotline with Park Trip Reports, Podcast Comments, or Anything else you would like to announce. –1-916-248-5524   Thanks to each one of you for listening to the show.  Your support is extremely appreciated.   © 2010 Season Pass Podcast