coach day trips to blackpool illuminations

Tickets vary in price depending on the day of the tour. Please note: If the weather is unsuitable for an open top tram, we reserve the right to substitute it for a covered tram. To see our full fleet of Heritage Trams, click here. This is in addition to our open top trams that offer 360-degree sights of the Illuminations. We also have our double deck Heritage Trams that provide a view from above of the amazing promenade! These are lit up with thousands of bulbs as you glide down the promenade! If you’ve seen Blackpool lit up during the Illuminations, you’ll be familiar with the HMS Blackpool and the Western Train. This just means you get longer to take in the sights and the lights! Which trams are running on Illumination Tours? Blackpool’s regular service trams run at the same time as our Illuminations Tours, which can also cause slight delays. The Illuminations Tour lasts for 1 hour but can run slightly longer.ĭue to how busy the promenade is during the Illuminations, slight delays can occur. Please see the map below for the boarding location. The tour starts at our ‘Heritage Tram Tours’ stop – just across from the Pleasure Beach beside Sandcastle Waterpark. Once you have completed the first stretch from Pleasure Beach to Little Bispham, you can leave the tour at any of these stops on the journey back. Starting at our Pleasure Beach tram stop, the tour takes you through our North Pier/Tower, Cabin and Little Bispham stops.

You’ll get amazing views of the whole illuminated promenade, all three piers and every bulb on the coastline! Please note: Due to the World Fireworks Championship, no tours will take place on 7th September, 14th September and 5th October in 2024. Tours will run from the start of September through to the end of December.ĭuring October, Illuminations Tours will run daily.ĭuring September, November and December, tours will be running Wednesday to Sunday. Please note: Tickets will be available from the 26th April. We also have our double deck Heritage Trams running during the Illuminations, which provides a stunning view of the famous lights from start to finish. You have the pick of our iconic fleet for your tour, including the famous Western Train and the HMS Blackpool. Watch the Tour de France this weekend, realise that the pubs, hotels and restaurants of the Yorkshire towns they're cycling past are beginning to rival the scenery they're labouring through (and the festivals mounted to entertain the visitors), and you'll see the real reason Blackpool simply can't begin to compete any more with the spectacular success stories in tourism throughout the rest of the North.Illuminations tours are back in 2024! Ahead of the new Heritage season, here is all the information you’ll need to enjoy the world-famous Blackpool Illuminations from the best seat in the house! Or the world's finest motorway service station, at Tebay on the M6. It's a quirky theme park devoted to what the Elsie Tanner generation did for fun when they weren't picking each other up at the Rover's Return.īut most of us these days are more interested in walking or cycling through the North York moors, Liverpool's museums and architecture, Manchester's football (well some are), the archaeology of Vindolanda, York Minster's stained glass, the gastropolis of Cartmel (home of the sticky toffee pudding) or the retail horrors of the Trafford Centre.

Blackpool simply hasn't got a private sector with the resources - or gumption - to match the huge infrastructure investments the rest of the North's tourism has attracted. The town's council is trying: it's spending about £300 mn of its (and the nation's, and probably even a bit of the EU's ) tax revenue on trying to tart the place up.īut tourism to places in Northern England (like Liverpool, York, the Lake District and Hadrian's Wall) with things people want to see and do, and decent hotels and restaurants, is booming. Now you might argue that, with so much against it, Blackpool is doing jolly well to keep its visitor numbers as high as half what they were in the days before cheap foreign travel. In the Orwellian language of the town's promotional agency, visitors in 2013 'almost matched the 2012 annual total' (ie were still falling). In 2013, that was down to 10 million, with just 42% staying for even one night. In the mid-50s, when I used to endure interminable coach trips to that tacky autumn traffic jam PalQ raves over, it was attracting 17 million visitors a year, most staying for a week. It really is pushing things to call Blackpool 'a still thriving seaside resort'.

Coach day trips to blackpool illuminations