I feel like I’ve got a lot to talk about with regards to Icon and more with regards to Enso.

Let me start by saying the ride is good. Great even, and certainly worthy of it’s current 7th place in my own personal rankings. The issue is that I feel like it should deliver more.

Lets start by breaking it down into its elements, starting with the trains. These are excellent. Very comfortable seats with great lap bar restraints allowing for a lot of upper body freedom. I like the lighting on the trains too, when its turned on in the evenings.

Next is the launch and it feels a little gutless. It’s probably not fair to compare it to the likes of Rita and Stealth but they’re all I have, so compare I shall! I’ll be using Rita mostly as its closer in speed (and my own rankings) to Icon over Stealth.

Rita manages to get up to 61 miles an hour where Icon initially launches to a slower 50. The second launch takes it to the full 53 miles an hour, which is decent enough but I wish it were doing more.

I have read in a few places that the park runs the coaster a bit slower than its rated top speed due to cost savings, but I’ve seen nothing official to back this up, but it would be fun to ride it with the launches dialed up to the max, I’ll touch on this later.

After the launch it does head into a very good element, the 82ft top hat. This always gives me airtime, it gives good views and has a great dive back towards the ground afterwards.

It then leads into an inclined loop that doesn’t invert, before twisting and turning behind Steeplechase before retuning, doing a barrel roll over the path below and diving into the second launch.

The barrel roll is taken a little too slowly in my opinion as it feels a little awkward when riding, but this is also a huge complaint about Colossus and its 4 heartline rolls too.

The second launch is good and it fires you into a junior Immelmann. To throw my opinion in here again, I don’t think much of this element and it is also not an inversion too. All sources I read say Icon only has 1 inversion, and I agree!

Following from the Immelmann, the train then ducks and weaves around a series of twists and turns before heading back into the station. The layout is smooth, snappy and fun, if a little too clinical.

I’d love to see an alternative upcharge added to the ride assuming the rumour I mentioned above is true. I’d happily pay to ride Icon when the launches are dialled up a bit more. I don’t know how it would affect comfort and the smoothness of the ride, but taking that top hat with a bit of speed, or feeling like you’re actually spiralling through the barrel roll and diving into the second launch would be great!

Enso

Now comes my biggest gripe with Icon and something that I feel tarnishes it somewhat and that is Enso.

This is an upcharge attraction that at the time I’m writing this costs £15 for a standard ride and £25 for a VIP experience. The VIP ticket simply gets you on near instantly where the standard ticket puts you in a virtual queue and calls you up when its your time to ride.

The big thing about Enso is that you can experience Icon while spinning and to some extent this is true, however I barely got any spin on my run. I went alone too as I’d heard its better as the seat is out of balance so should spin more.

I feel that if it was free, I wouldn’t have much issue with it as it is certainly a different way to experience Icon. It isn’t free however. Now I have no issue with upcharges at all, I’ve paid to go on Go Karts, bought so many photos and various merchandise from parks. I even own a piece of the Big One, Shockwave and Megafobia, so I don’t have issue with prices per se. I’ve even suggested an alternative upcharge that I personally feel would be worth my money!

What I do have issue with, is that Enso was blown up to be the next big thing for Blackpool Pleasure Beach and Icon, and yet Storm Chaser gives you more spin. And Storm Chaser is a family ride!

I think it would be fine dropping the price to around £7/£12 for each tier as the park can still recoup some of the cost of the new car and seats and you don’t feel like you’ve been over charged.

That, or include a photo or on ride video of your ride on Enso and keep the price the same? I don’t know what I’d prefer really!

I also feel that they should have had a full train of Enso seats too. Or maybe Mack should have sold them one of their extreme spinner trains instead of a single seat?

If they put an extreme spinner train on Icon, then the ride can not only boast being a double launch coaster, but also a double launch extreme spinner, and the UKs first extreme spinning coaster?

Either way, I do want to make it very clear that this is purely my opinion! I know other have loved Enso and that’s excellent for them! I’ve seen Icon split opinions too, and I don’t hate the ride, or Enso for that matter!

It does also seem like Pleasure Beach is having a few issues as of late, so I do feel a little harsh criticising their newest offering but I do honestly think that Enso tarnished Icon, a ride that I feel like I’m falling out of love with the more I ride it and the more I hear about it.

I did somewhat enjoy my time on Enso, but felt quite disappointed afterwards too.

It not you Icon, it’s Enso, and possibly me!