Icon
Blackpool Pleasure Beach · Multi-Launch Steel Coaster · Amusement Park
Need To Know
- Best for: speed and flow without the fear, and confident first-timers stepping up to a big coaster.
- The numbers: a Mack multi-launch steel coaster, the UK’s only double-launch, 1,144m of track, around 90 seconds, minimum height 1.3m (1.5m for the rear rows).
- Typical wait: moderate — around 30 minutes on a busy day, rarely the park’s longest.
- Intensity: moderate — built on float and flow rather than raw force.
Turnstile Score
80
Great
Ride Review – The Turnstile Score!
What Is The Turnstile Score? Find Out More!
Introduction
Most coasters are handed a plot of land and told to fill it. Icon was handed a century of Blackpool Pleasure Beach instead. The UK’s first double-launch coaster does not ride through scenery — it threads through the park’s living history, ducking under The Big One’s lift hill and racing the Big Dipper around fifteen times across ninety seconds. If you want to know whether Icon lives up to its name, ride it once and watch the park rush past. Few coasters anywhere belong to their park the way Icon belongs to this one.
Ride Experience and Fun – 9
This category has a 30% weighting towards our total Turnstile Score.
The first launch is not the hardest you will feel in Britain — and it turns out not to matter. It fires you through a tunnel and up over a 25-metre top hat that crosses under The Big One’s lift hill, and from the back row the crest hands you a clean pop of airtime, the kind the ten-year-old version of you would have queued all afternoon for. This is a ride about float, not force.
What follows is a genuine layout, not a victory lap: a shallow inclined loop, banked turns intertwining with the Big Dipper and Steeplechase, and a downward barrel roll taken slowly enough to give you a real beat of hang-time before the second launch lands with a noticeable shove. Icon is still going when most UK launch coasters have already coasted apologetically into the station. At roughly ninety seconds, it lasts long enough to feel like a journey rather than a hit.
It is, by some distance, the smoothest launch coaster in Britain: comfortable seats, glassy transitions, not a rattle in earshot. The honest catch is that a thrill seeker chasing raw violence will find the launches too polite, and Taron at Phantasialand does this format with more bite. Icon trades ferocity for flow, and wins the trade.
Theming and Story – 6
This category has a 20% weighting towards our total Turnstile Score.
Icon has no story, and the park has never pretended otherwise — its own managing director called it “styled, not themed,” which is at least refreshingly honest. The styling is Japanese-inspired: cherry blossom in the landscaping, a pebbled water feature, the symbol for “speed” tucked into the logo, and gold and copper daggers dotted about that never quite explain themselves. Pleasant, light, and forgettable on its own.
What rescues the category is two things working harder than the budget should allow. The station is a genuinely good one, its mirrors, lighting and the ride’s own soundtrack giving the final minutes of the wait a real lift. And the clean, modern styling reads sharper precisely because it sits inches from the 1920s timber of the Big Dipper. The real theme was never the cherry blossom — it is the living park all around it. Decorate the space, and let the neighbours supply the meaning.
Queue Experience – 7
This category has a 15% weighting towards our total Turnstile Score.
The queue’s best feature is the view from inside it. Largely outdoors and lightly landscaped, it gives you vantage points to watch Icon race through the park before you ride — better entertainment than most pre-shows, which is handy, because there isn’t one. The catch is the obvious one: this is Blackpool, the queue has little shelter, and an exposed wait is a gamble every time the weather turns. Which it does.
There is no single-rider line to speed things along, though a separate front-row queue lets you choose your seat. The redemption comes right at the end, when the line feeds into the station and lifts the final few minutes of the wait. A pleasant wait on a dry day, a test of resolve on a wet one.
Operations and Reliability – 8
This category has a 15% weighting towards our total Turnstile Score.
Icon is a dependable machine: open when you arrive, trains out quickly, and steady two-train running keeps the queue from ballooning even on a busy day — you will rarely find it among the park’s longest waits. The flaw is one of capacity, not reliability: with no batcher and no single-rider line, trains regularly leave the station carrying fresh air in perfectly good seats, and the staff keep things ticking without ever adding to the occasion. Reliable and quick off the mark, if never quite the master of its own capacity.
Value of Time – 9
This category has a 10% weighting towards our total Turnstile Score.
Is Icon worth the queue? Comfortably. Typical waits sit around thirty minutes on a busy day, and you are rewarded with a ninety-second ride — long, where most UK launchers give you one hit and a handshake. Even at a rare sixty-minute peak the payoff holds, and it is re-rideable enough that you will want straight back round. Measured pound-for-minute against Rita or Stealth, where a long queue buys a short burst, Icon simply gives you more ride.
The one asterisk: the version you will rate highest, the ENSŌ spinning seat, is a £7 upcharge rather than something your wristband includes. For the standard ride, the time-to-payoff ratio is among the best in the country.
Icon Status and Memorability – 9
This category has a 10% weighting towards our total Turnstile Score.
Take the heritage acts out of the equation and Icon is the signature ride of Blackpool Pleasure Beach, and even standing beside them it more than holds its own. Its claim to memorability is one nothing else can copy: a modern Mack train speeding past a classic Steeplechase horse, fairground noise all around, and, if you time it right, another train duelling alongside. Enthusiasts will travel for it. What most people miss on a single ride is everything happening outside the train; a second lap, ideally a night ride during one of the park’s late events, is where it all clicks.
Icon is iconic less for what it is than for where it is — and that is the cleverest thing about it.
Pay the £7, take the free-spinning back seat, and wait. The seat stays locked through the station — and then the first launch fires, the lock releases, and you crest the airtime hill sideways with no idea which way you will be facing next. That is the half-second the whole upcharge is built on: the exact moment a smooth, civilised coaster reveals it has been hiding a streak of pure madness. ENSŌ is, quite literally, the E-Ticket version of Icon, and it is the rare add-on that earns every penny.
Conclusion
Icon is the best launch coaster in Britain, and the fact that it manages it without ever trying to terrify you is the whole story. No other coaster in the country could be moved an inch without losing what makes it special; strip away the legends it runs amongst and you would have a very good Mack, not this. Is it worth the queue? Without question. The waits are modest, the ride is long by UK launch standards, and you will tire long before it does. If you have ever stood at the foot of The Big One and thought “maybe not,” Icon is the ride that says start here. A real thrill, and one nobody regrets.
It will not suit everyone; anyone hunting raw, white-knuckle extremity will find it too polite. But for the far larger crowd who want a proper thrill without the headache, Icon at Blackpool Pleasure Beach is as easy a recommendation as the UK offers. Just don’t pass ENSŌ by — that £7 is the difference between a great coaster and one you will still be talking about on the drive home.
turnstile score breakdown
|
Category |
Score |
Weight |
Contribution |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Ride Experience and Fun |
9 |
30% |
27 |
|
Theming & Story |
6 |
20% |
12 |
|
Queue Experience |
7 |
15% |
11 |
|
Operations & Reliability |
8 |
15% |
12 |
|
Value of Queue Time |
9 |
10% |
9 |
|
Icon Status & Memorability |
9 |
10% |
9 |
Turnstile Score
80
Great
Who It’s for
Anyone after the perfect mix of fun and thrills: fast and exciting without overwhelming you or leaving you with a headache.
Who It’s not for
Thrill seekers chasing raw, white-knuckle extremity; if your measure of a great coaster is sheer speed, height or fear, Icon will feel too polished and too civilised.
best strategy tip
Don’t pass ENSŌ by. Buy it in the app early on a busy day (capacity is limited and prioritised), then enter via the dedicated ENSŌ line by the Big Dipper exit — it is 100% worth the £7. And come back for a night ride during one of the park’s late-opening events: the weave through the lit-up classics is a different experience after dark.
Ride badges
