Blackgang Chine: A little park on a collapsing cliff

Sitting on the edge of the Blackgang’s cliffs for over 175 years, Blackgang Chine is one of the Isle of Wight’s only theme parks, and a far cry from the hustle and bustle of larger, newer parks like Alton Towers and Thorpe Park.

Here you can take a stroll through your favourite fairytales, pay a visit to an old-style cowboy town and even play a life-size version of snakes and ladders, all while surrounded by stunning coastal scenery, but the Isle of Wight’s Land of Imagination is slowly being swallowed up by the English Channel. Lets dive into the charming history of this family-owned park, and explore how Blackgang Chine’s clifftop location has affected it over the years!

Creating a Seaside Resort

Throughout the Victorian Era, tourism was booming. The upper and middle classes began searching for locations at which they could take a break from their busy lives, and coastal areas were some of the most popular. Meanwhile, Alexander Dabell made the decision to turn the previously quiet fishing area into a tourist hotspot, getting to know a businessman who had opened a small hotel in the area, and started making his vision a reality. By 1843 Blackgang Chine Amusement Park had opened to visitors, with a multitude of gardens as well as pathways around the ravine and leading down to the beach below.

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One of the few attractions to open with the resort was the giant skeleton of a whale beached at the Needles, a stunning rock formation on the West of the island. From here the park continued to evolve to feature more and more attractions and experiences, and you can still spot the whale today in one of the indoor areas!

The Growth of Blackgang Chine

Even after a hundred years of entertaining visitors, Blackgang Chine was still expanding. 1953 brought the addition of a model village, showcasing historic and enchanting buildings and attractions from around the Isle of Wight, while nine years later the Water Gardens, a trail of plants and water features were built and opened by park employees. Around the same time the Hedge Maze also debuted, which is quite likely the maze with the most beautiful views in the world!

The 1970s were a time of massive expansion for the park. In the first year of the decade, Blackgang Chine opened Adventureland, featuring a range of old vehicles as well as a spaceship! (Pretty different from the Disney park version of Adventureland!) 1972 was the opening year for Dinosaurland, a walkthrough at which you could get face to face with some rather terrifying dinosaurs in a safari-type setting. Four years later Buffalo Creek made its rootin’-tootin’ debut, as an area where visitors can become cowboys and cowgirls and explore a wild west town complete with wagons and a last chance saloon.

In 1974 Nurseryland opened its doors to visitors, a land that allows you to come face to face with your favourite nursery rhymes from Hickory Dickory Dock to The House That Jack Built, as well as a whale (known as Jonah’s Whale, now Moby Dick’s Revenge) that squirts water at innocent guests as they try to run through. I’ve had my fair share of times where I’ve gotten soaked by that whale!

Yet just as the park was evolving and thriving, a sudden event soon occured that would change not only the park, but also Blackgang village forever.

The 1994 Landslide

Around 9PM on 12th January 1994, local residents and tourists in Blackgang village began to notice the ground moving. Areas of land atop the Isle of Wight soft rock suddenly fell into the sea, while homes, holiday homes, caravans and hotels were swiftly evacuated and residents temporarily housed in Chale Village Hall, just a short distance from the area. Crumbling roads were shut off and rescue teams as well as the Coastguard turned up to assist those who were evacuated. Heavy rain had saturated the rock, causing it to become unstable, and even today many of the areas close to the landslide zone are closed off, derelict.

No visitors were in Blackgang Chine at the time of the landslide, but some attractions and buildings around the park didn’t survive the event. Buffalo Creek and Adventureland had to be closed completely, and while the majority of Buffalo Creek’s set pieces were moved inland to the new Buffalo Canyon area, parts of Adventureland were left abandoned on the cliff edge years and even decades later.

Despite the devastation this landslide caused, the park took it in their stride, did everything feasibly possible to relocate attractions that were damaged and/or deemed unsafe, including Snakes and Ladders ,which was moved to an area next to Buffalo Canyon (now Cowboy Town). The Crooked House, despite opening two years before the rest of Adventureland, had been a signature part of the land before the 1994 landslide, but was then relocated further inland and can now be spotted at the end of the Giant Bug Walk (which is quite possibly the one of the steepest uphill walks you will ever do in a theme park!) Fairyland was also moved to another site close to Snakes and Ladders, and the Mouth of Hell now sits a short walk from Rumpus Mansion, after it was moved from Dinosaurland in 2016.

Today Blackgang Chine features an indoor exhibition where visitors can learn more about the 1994 landslide and how it affected the local area, as well as a simulator where you can experience the landslide for yourself (though obviously significantly more safely!)

The Tornado Tantrum

If you were building a new £197,000 rollercoaster, especially one that wasn’t particularly revolutionary or obscure, you’d expect it to be safe, right? Well, when Blackgang Chine’s first coaster, Tornado, was being constructed, it was assumed that it would meet UK safety standards, stating that a ride’s supports have to be a certain distance from the track, however, this was not the case. Blackgang Chine requested that the manufacturer, Westech, fix the issue so that Tornado would be able to open as planned. Westech failed to do this the first time… as well as the four times after that.

Eventually it was decided that Tornado would just be removed, which Westech agreed to do, yet at first the company refused to refund Blackgang Chine for the coaster. The park took Westech to court over the matter and won their case, and Westech were forced to fully refund Blackgang Chine for the failed rollercoaster (and rightly so!)

A year after Blackgang Chine won the court case in 2004, another rollercoaster would make its debut at the park, this time manufactured by I.E. Park. The new ride, known as Cliffhanger, is a compact family coaster sitting on the cliff edge (hence its name!) and it’s pretty intense for a family coaster! To this day it’s unknown as to what actually happened to Tornado, though its likely it was sold into the Travelling Fair Circuit or to a park somewhere else in Europe.

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Lands Lost Along The Way

Theme parks are constantly growing and evolving, and Blackgang Chine is no different. From refurbishments to complete rethemes, the Land of Imagination has had its share of attraction openings and closures, some larger than others, with one of the park’s largest rethemes being the transformation of Fantasyland into Underwater Kingdom in the mid-2010s. From its opening in 1991, Fantasyland was one of the main lands at Blackgang Chine, and was home to three attractions: a giant animatronic dragon known as the Angry Dragon (which now watches over the park entrance!), the Liquorice Factory, a charming little walkthrough attraction home to several animatronic based scenes, Fantasyland’s largest attraction, the Weather Wizard.

This magical walkthrough allowed visitors to explore the different types of weather, from snow to sun, before coming face to face with the wizard himself, who had a rhyme ready about, of course, the weather. The Weather Wizard actually opened in 1989, two years before the other two Fantasyland attractions, but became part of the land when it opened in the 1990s.

Fantasyland delighted guests until its closure in 2016, when it was announced that the area would undergo a complete retheme. After just a year of construction the new area debuted as Underwater Kingdom- a land that takes you under the sea to meet a frantic crab looking for his children, a few cool turtles, and a huge whale!

While many fans were upset at the closure of Fantasyland, Underwater Kingdom is a concept that hasn’t really ever been done in a lot of theme parks, and is a good change for a park that already has two Fantasyland-type areas (Fairyland and Nurseyland).

While not exactly a retheme, the conversion of Dinosaurland to Restricted Area 5 was also a pretty big change. Restricted Area 5 has more of a safari-ish Juarassic Park type theme than Dinosaurland ever did, and so some theming elements needed to be added or removed in order to rebrand the area. Several of the dinosaurs were upgraded or replaced altogether with newer technology to make them more realistic and up-to-date, but guests can still meet some of the older dinosaurs at the end of the walkthrough to climb on and take photos.

For twenty-two years, Dinosaurland/ Restricted Area 5 wasn’t the only place in Blackgang Chine where dinosaurs made an appearance. The Isle of Wight is known as the dinosaur isle, after all, so it only made sense that they would have another attraction- and this was known as the Triassic Club.

Here, smartly dressed dinos would invite you to a dinner party, where you could stand on a set of scales to find out which dinner course someone of your size was fit for, then meet the three Triassic Club dinosaurs, Allosaurus, Wallace and Oscar, who were hungry for their dinner! The attraction closed in 2016, but the three dinosaurs appeared at an event in 2018, showing that since the Triassic Club’s closure, Darwin the Allosaurus, Wallace and Oscar have been kept in a good condition!

Have you visited Blackgang Chine? What is/was your favourite attraction or walkthrough? Let me know in the comments below!

If you enjoyed this article, you’ll love my other posts from theme parks and attractions around the world! Check them out here!

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You are all clear… and outta here! Thanks for reading!

-Lily