Visited Blackpool Pleasure Beach yesterday. There are some good rides, though many are dated and very rough. But the staff are awful and we had a couple of incidents when there:To begin with, at the gate security, we were rudely informed that picnic food is not allowed in the pleasure beach. We had brought food in for two reasons: 1. myself and my partner are vegan, and our children vegetarian, and we find it difficult to find food we can eat. And 2. one of my children is autistic and extremely picky with food. There are only a handful of foods she is able to eat, so I have to carry those foods with me when we go anywhere. The woman at the security gate did not elaborate that the park policy actually states: "Allowances are made for guests with special dietary requirements" or that "Guests with special dietary requirements can report to an Ambassador upon arrival", which I later discovered when I looked up the park FAQs. Nor did she direct us to the lockers located next to the entrance where presumably we could have stored our food and eaten it outside the park. She was extremely rude, unhelpful and argumentative, and my partner had to walk 30 minutes to the car and back to drop off our food, whilst I waited with three very impatient children. Of course we then also had to take an hour out of our day to go back to the car and eat our food. This was hugely inconvenient and really spoiled our day.The second incident was when we attempted to get on the River Caves ride. Before getting on the ride we had first established, like we always do, who will sit with whom as, as I previously mentioned, one of my children is autistic and needs support whilst on rides, particularly dark rides, as this one is. However, when we got to the front of the queue the man organising getting onto the ride was very rude and abrupt and dictated to us where we should sit to balance the ride. That's fair enough, but he was very rude about it, rushing us and giving us no time to reassure my daughter and explain to her what was happening, which would have taken mere moments (there was no one else in the queue behind us so what the rush was I don't know!). Then, to my astonishment, he actually physically took hold of my autistic daughter's arm, pinning her against the metal railings, and refused to let her get onto the ride until we were all on. This distressed her immensely. She is very sensitive to touch and has social anxiety so severe she was wearing a face mask and a hood throughout the day so no one would attempt to look at or speak to her. My partner had to get into an altercation with the man to let her go, telling him not to touch young girls and that his behaviour was outrageous. When we were finally all on the ride we were very shocked by what just happened, and my daughter spent the entire ride sitting alone having a panic attack because, as she perceives it, she was physically assaulted by a male staff member. She barely leaves the house because of her social anxiety, theme parks being a rare exception because she loves thrill rides, and something like this only adds to her fear of the outside world. Once we got off the ride my partner again spoke to the male staff member in question, explaining how much distress he had caused. He apologised but continued to defend his actions. This event ruined the rest of our day. My daughter continued to feel panicked, unsafe and sick with anxiety throughout the rest of our time at the park and I had to spend considerable time reassuring her and trying to calm her down.It cost us £159 for five people, which is much more than any other theme park. And the whole place is run-down and just looks crap. I'll be sticking with Alton Towers where the staff are lovely and the park is clean.
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