The park’s signature ride is almost certainly the Big One, opened in 1994. Standing 235ft above the Irish Sea below, the ride is a vast feat of engineering, pioneered by Arrow Dynamics and designed by Ron Toomer.

To keep the ride running safely, there is a vast array of control gear and equipment to support maintenance and engineering work.

These photos give some insight into the ride’s behind the scenes areas. They were taken on a Behind The Scenes event on 18 March 2026.

This video from the UK Theme Parks channel takes us back to 2018 and the introduction of the double launch roller coaster Icon.

With the launch of the new ride came a new TV advertising campaign. The highly stylised footage doesn’t show the ride in motion, this may have been an artistic choice – but also may have been for practical purposes if the ride wasn’t ready for a film crew.

The ride’s iconic train, several of the precision parts that make up the ride and the cherry blossom trees that adorn the ride’s garden area are seen.

This beautiful postcard was sent in 1938 and shows a night scene of the park’s northern area. Noah’s Ark sits proudly in the foreground with the (from left) Grand National, Fun House, Jack & Jill Slide and Flying Machine in the background.

Although the park was known for its light displays at the time, particularly during the Illumination period, it is not known if there is any artistic licence in the depiction. Even the Grand National at the rear of the site is fully lit.

Of particular note is the bi-plane car on the Flying Machine (you can see the outline in front of the central column) – these cars replaced the original ‘propeller-driven submarines’ in 1929.

The Illuminations of 1938 were the last until 1949 due to World War II.

Hot Ice ’91 was the park’s chief entertainment offering for the 1991 season alongside Mystique. That year also saw the debut of Peter Jay’s Superdome Circus.

As ever, the show took place in the Arena and it was directed by Gloria Gee.

In this video from the Ryan The Ride Mechanic channel, he talks through the mechanics of S&S Tower Rides (like Launch Pad) that use compressed air to send riders skyward. The video includes Ryan talking through the specifics of the mechanics and also a model that has put together in his garage to further demonstrate how they work.

Introduced in 1997 as Playstation: The Ride, the ride was one of the earliest European installations of the S&S Space Shot concept and was relaunched in 2025 as Launch Pad.

The channel features a number of videos that talk through some of the geekier aspects of theme park engineering – if that subject matter is of interest to you, you may wish to check those out.

A slightly quieter month in terms of new content because we had three weeks in the sun without a laptop. That said, there’s still various new things to see as per the below. If you haven’t been to the park during May, make a real effort to get there to ride Aviktas – it’s an absolutely fantastic addition.

There are a few other Rides in draft, but it’s difficult to know how to represent them when we don’t even know what they were called. One to ponder.

Almost all of the circus shows from the 1990s are ready to go live in the Entertainment section. Also in June, we’ll add lots more features and try to clear more of the News backlog.

As was customary during the opening of new attractions throughout the 1980s and 1990s, a celebrity guest was on hand to do the honours. The opening of the Big One was no exception, boyband Bad Boys Inc were on hand for the occasion.

This TV spot from the soldatodiventura channel shows the band opening the ride on 29 June 1994 and is followed by a fan quiz on Fan TC, hosted by Dannii Minogue.