Being only a short walk from one of the countries top amusement parks in Blackpool Pleasure Beach you may well find yourself overlooking this park. To be honest it's taken me a few visits to Blackpool before I got to try this one out. I'm glad to say that it does do slightly more than provide a short distraction from the Pleasure Beach. It's a place I would recommend a visit to during some free time, or perhaps after the Pleasure Beach closes, as this park sometimes stays open later.

When we went I was only expecting to spend a short time at the park, mainly to add it's Crazy Mouse to my coaster count, but in the end we did spend well over an hour on the pier. I think the biggest distraction are the amusements and shops. The shops did surprisingly have a few nice things in them, that caused me to stop and look at them. There is a good set of amusements as well, they aren't quite as modern as some other amusements out there, but for me this added to the charm of them. When we went the store holder on one of the games was pretty generous as well, meaning we did eventually end up with a halfway decent prize from playing the games, it wasn't really worth what we paid for it, but it was still a huge improvement on some of the rip offs a lot of other parks represent.

After the shops and the amusements there's the funfair at the end of the pier. The rides here can be split into two groups, the pay as you go token rides, and the extreme thrill separate price rides. The token rides consist of a pretty intense spinning mouse, a collection of kiddie rides including a big slide and a mini fun house like attraction, and a group of thrill rides that remind me of the fairground rides that sometimes visit my home town of Brighton. This includes a Waltzer, a ride called the Hard Rock, which is like a Magic Carpet, only you face in a different direction, and a Sea Storm like ride called the Roller Bob. There's also the Storm Chaser, which feels like riding an intense version of the Waltzer. This and the Crazy mouse are enough to make me pay a short visit here next time I'm in Blackpool.

My only serious misgiving about the token rides is the price. The lack of wristbands in a small park like this I can understand, but the the price per go on the rides is huge. I think the rides on Brighton Pier are a little pricy, but here they charge even more. It works out at £2.00 a go to do one of the kiddie rides, and £3.00 per go to do the rest, and it's only slightly cheaper if you go for the multi token deal. The only slightly redeeming factor is they let you stay on and do repeat rides for only £1.00, but to be honest there aren't that many rides here you'll be wanting that many goes on. You might have noticed there are quite a few rides I haven't reviewed here, that's because I wasn't willing to pay the asking price.

The other rides here are the big extreme thrill rides, if you've ever wanted to do a bungee jump this is the place to come. As well as a bungee jump platform they have one of those Geospheres, where your secured in a metal sphere that launches into the air on bungee ropes, a Sky Coaster, which is like a giant pendulum, where your attached to a harness at the end, and a Scad tower, where you're hoisted in the air inside a cage, before the floor drops out the cage and you fall into a net below. I think having a selection of rides like this is a good strategy by the South Pier, as it means it offers something you don't get at Blackpool Pleasure Beach, and makes this a place worth visiting for the extreme thrill seeker.

Overall apart from the rides being a bit pricy the pier is a nice place to visit. If you want to do a bungee jump, or one of the other extreme thrill rides it's a must visit place, but even if you don't want to do one of these I'd still recommend paying a visit if you go to Blackpool.