superb. i remember my grandad drawing a picture of that roller coaster when he got fed up of trying to describe it to me 25 years ago

the quality is superb looks like it was filmed yesterday

Blackpool Bird here, born and bred xx this is absolutely gorgeous xx thank you!

Can't believe this footage is 97 years old 😮

I was lucky enough to have a go on this ride in 1980 and it was awesome, and yes it was one of the best rides ever

Beautiful! I'm not sure what happened, things are different now, but I would sure like to spend a day at that place, in that time.

@MaxxFrost The colour fringing is a by-product of the Friese-Greene process, whereby the film was shot with each alternate frame being passed through a red or green filter mounted on a rotating wheel in front of the lens. This worked well for static objects, but if they were moving, this caused colour fringing - which was one of the reasons why Friese-Greene's colour process was never adopted commercially. The film is definitely not in 3D, since the film was shot through just one lens.

I had a ride on the reel the year it closed,great film !

Aaaahh....the 'Reel' at Blackpool Pleasure Beach ( 1922-1982, I believe ). They killed the best ride ever.

The Virginia Reel was a wonderful ride. It would be the best thing ever if Blackpool Pleasure Beach commissioned a new one for 2022 - 100 years after the original one was built. It would be a world first and good for Blackpool.

Stunning,absolutely stunning.

So much cleaner and classier than the Blackpool of today!

That looks awesome and everyone is so well dressed

How smart everyone is no casual clothes then, how often do we dress that smart now, only for special occasions.

Aww I remember in the 70's and 80's just going into the pleasure beach to ride the grand national etc,just because our boarding house was so near.Shame that they have closed off folk,just wanting to take one or two rides.

We should have a modern recreation of that ride.

incredible quality in this film- amazing to see . thanks

Nearly 100 years ago wow

Some of these rides look brillliant, I wish they were still there :-( but they seem to be getting rid of all the old rides. The whip has disappeared over past year or so and even that old victorian arcade has been removed in place for the newest ride Infusion. Sad really because it gave the Pleasure Beach a bit of character instead of being the stereotypical themepark.

Very sadly, this classic ride closed at the end of the 1982 season. That July I luckily managed to take my inaugural, and what transpired to be final ride. I was gutted to see a Rainbow ride on its hallowed ground five years later, and now the "exciting" Globe Theatre!

The granddaddy to the modern day Wild Mouse rollercoaster? Looks neat!

Wonderful

Wow the reel was beautifuly decorated!

I Love Blackpool I Go There Every Year In The Last 20 Years

That ride looked really fun, actually!

OMG I remember the reel when I was a nipper,when my dad went to the car auction nearby I got to go to the PB but I was too small to go on the Reel it was still on the go in the 70's

great too see this, i remember going on the reel myself, brings back very fond memory's

fabulous pic quality....omg 80 years ago......mad

I'M 65 Y.O. AND VERY GLAD TO SEE THE REEL AGAIN NOW SADLY GONE

Brilliant!

The Reel was still there when I first visited Blackpool! I wish I'd been old/brave enough to ride it!

The reel was still operatating in the early seventies ,I saw it thought didn't ride it!

Same brake levers we used ob /Luna Park Sydney - Big Dipper and Wild Cat in the late 70's

amazing

OMG the virginia reel looks incredible.

I had the pleasure of riding the Reel back in the Day. Bouncy as hell rough as a Badgers but great fun lol

That's the 2 strip color process. Cyan and red.

What a brilliant Roller Coaster.

terrific views

I don't know much about Blackpool nor the other *.pool cities of Great Britain but this Blackpool has always interested me. What a great name, Pleasure Beach. We did have a Virginia Reel ride here in NYC's Coney Island but yours looks more interesting. It wasn't your typical roller coaster ride either. I see that maybe Blackpool has changed now but I still would like to visit. Blackpool must be great fun at night!

wow soo clear

:D amazing video!

Its absurd to know that these people still lived in a wildly different time to us

AMAZING! How did you get this restored footage?

I remember seeing the Reel in the seventies when we holidayed there.I didn't go on it though, It looked a bit scary .

look how much has changed since then !

I guess 2 more years won't hurt thanks for the tip!!!

one of englands best rides from all the way back its very disappointing to see most of the rides go extinct although its probably the best to make room for upgraded rides we have today

Valhalla doesn't stand on the spot of where the Virginia Reel was. Valhalla stands on the spot where the Funhouse used to be before it burnt down in 1991. The Virginia Reel used to be situated where the Globe Theatre now stands.

This was probably a great place back then.,,when I lived in England a few years back it was easy to see it is a shadow of what it once was. It seems now it is almost a last resort vacation.

Wouldn't it be great if these old rides made a comeback

Wow! A step back in time to a more civilized society.

it looks so clean no litter on the floor unlike today

And these days it's all recorded on a Phone Crazy

Omg this looks amazing I wish this was still their x

I'm saving up for a new set.....should have em by then so start practicing that pucker.

@MaryOMackie totally agree...good old days indeed

colour film actually came about a LONG time ago but it was very rare until about the 1960's

@chrssgreen yeah i missed that, incredible looking back at the birth of theme parks

The soundtrack score for this film is fantastic, any info on who wrote and played the music?

Fantastic how do you get colour? The attendants so smart a great film

This is not only in color, it's in 3D. Notice the red and blue around the edges of some objects. Watching with 3D glasses does show depth. Whther this is intentional or a byproduct of the film type that was used, I don't know. But it is in 3D.

@MentalRob Actually, yes. I haven't changed much since 1985. I just wear larger sizes and the hat covers less hair. I'd like to ride the "Reel". That actually looks like a better ride than the 30 second rocket coasters they rush you through these days.

im not sure if its still there but before the pleasure beach turned into a fill resort , the ark was still there , i know it was there at atleast 2001 if not later

I loved The Reel ride.....yes it looked dangerous and was a very bumpy ride and I do mean bumpy! It had a wheel in the centre and you could spin yourselves too! Oh happy days! Are there any left...anywhere?

the Friese Greene color technique looks like they put both technicolor (2 strip) and kinemacolor into one color technique considering it leaked the colors a bit but not too much

I rode it in the 1950s with a group of friends. Looks very attractive in 1926 - had a different scenic background in the fifties. I wonder if its still there? Nowadays,young people might find it a bit tame. There was another ride called 'The Bug' in the fifties and I wonder if that ride is stiil there.

@Calmany37 It does doesn't it? it's amazing quality.

Is this the mucic for this ride

Wonder what happened to this ride, Would be ideal for Dreamland, Margate when it reopens this year =D

Did they recolour this video or something

classic footage..

no litter no drunks no fights how good did it look back then

why dec.21 2012? whats happening then? n i think they should of kept this ride at pleasure beach!

If only this Virginia Reel still existed today, or any Reel for that matter. At least I can still make one in Roller Coaster Tycoon...

Heh... A Virginia Wheel, as featured in Roller Coaster Tycoon. :-P Do any still exist in the world?

If you are female what are you doing dec.21 ,2012?

Rode that ! Jack n Jill ! during the 60 s sad lots of the classic rides gone ! They took down the Wild Mouse ! WHY ?

Cool.I'll be the 143 year old with the expectant smile.

Amazing film. I never knew the BFI had its own KZfaq Channel (Thinking about it, its obvious that it should). So much of our amazing heritage has been lost and it is amazing to know that the BFI is helping to preserve what we do have. Saying that, the Noah's Ark seen at 0:23 is still present.

@PleasureBeachFTW Hey that's fine. I find it frustrating that everywhere seems to be charging more and more for what we had before and yet staff levels always seem to be in decline. I know we have to be more competetive nowadays, mainly due to privatisation, but everything seems to be run in an increasingly 'skeletal' fashion today. I used to be a contractor for BPB and the staff were always very friendly there. My argument was more of a general one against modern trends than against BPB, sorry.

The Reel was really good, I went on it once, a couple of years before they demolished it. I live in Blackpool and sadly I have to say it's a disaster these days, a real shit hole. Such a huge shame as it used to be a really nice place.

How much would it cost to build the reel today ?

The only thing I would change about the 20s is the dental hygiene 1.45 ! ..... however how sophisticated and well dressed they are

@M4OON yeh because it burnt down! haha valhalla=best water ride i have ever been on!

FGS, can't you just appreciate the video you're watching instead of making snidy remarks about society has changed.

is that really 1926? course ive been watching alot of videos of 1901 and the way they use to dress up.. from 1901 and look at 1926 between these 2 different years have change quite alot from the way people use to dress up.

@PleasureBeachFTW The £5 Pleasure Beach Pass would not permit me to ride on anything other than the Pleasure Beach Express or to explore the Maze. Everyone I speak to complains about the cost of going there so please don't delude. I used to frequent the Pleasure Beach when I lived nearby. If you're trying to tell me that the current owners have families' satisfaction at heart, as opposed to extracting as much profit as is achievable, then you're obviously not very bright or an employee perhaps?

That surely can't be safe lol

Sherlock, I presume : )

Excellent film and to see old Blackpool but the ‘so-much classier and civilised’ opinion of Blackpool is very much a romantic one. It is most likely that the film-maker only peopled his film with well-dressed and well-defined people. But there were slums, and homeless people, and rogues and charlatans back then as much as there are today. Indeed, to the modern-day time-traveller it would have appeared to have been a brutal place and time. Anyone getting knocked over by a vehicle in the street wouldn’t have been taken to the hospital but laid-out on a table at the nearest Inn or School-building. Only when it was established whether he/she could pay for hospital care would they consider placing that person in the Victoria Hospital. Most people would simply be transferred to their own home. There are stories of families who actually lived in the back-yard of a property… an elderly lady who would go into a public bar and ask for a shot-of-rum, the bar-keep would pour her the drink, she would knock it back and then claim that she had left her purse in the post-office/or at home/or in another coat. She went into the Palace Building and did the same thing, staggered out around the corner into yet another of the public saloons that stretched along the promenade. Only problem was that she didn’t realise that the bar she now entered was simply another entrance to the Palace Hotel, neither did she realise that the bar-keep that now stood before her was the very same one that she thought she had just left behind in the previous bar. Super-Intendent Derham was soon on the scene. Every year they had what was known as the annual police fund. The money donated by collections, by donations made by the big hotels and attractions of the town, and by end-of-season spectaculars, went towards fitting out all the poor children of the town with new clothes. Some children would turn-up to collect their new outfit still wearing the threadbare clothing they had been given the year before. They also got a free mug of Bovril.

1926 The year Queen Elizabeth was born. Rides must have been exciting back then.

....stop moaning, and don't listen to what people say, who have just heard drivel from other moaners - just go there and enjoy yourself. A wristband for the Pleasure Beach can be made value for money if you stay for 7 or 8 hours on the rides !

Wow - I remember being on that ride when I was about 6. It was great fun because it felt so rickety and quite dangerous! The cars rotated while you were descending and the whole family could squeeze in. Nowadays you've got to but a f**kin wristband even if you only want to go on one ride. Conning twats.

nowadays just last week it cost me £125.00 for a family of five to get in this place and enjoy the rides .How this world has changed for the worst . All these places in blackpool are empty and dying off due to admission costs . Why not slash the prices in half and attract more customers rather than have empty establishments ? .High prices are killing off tourism .

This looks more like the 40's than the 20's judging by what the girls are wearing.

I bet the internet was really slow back then

there was no internet then

my father was born that year.....

Stupid modernization! They took some of our favorite roller coasters! Take the Looping Starship for example.