If you love this popular and fun seaside game you’ll love this vintage Princess Parade Crazy Golf! Why don’t you test out your skills? We did – and we’re not very good! Find it in the sunken garden at the right hand side of the Metropole Hotel near North Pier.
Princess Parade Crazy Golf
This most favourite of seaside pass times is now operated by a great cause. All funds raised go towards supporting marginalised and disadvantaged people in Blackpool.
Test your skill on the ramps, tunnels and holes as you try to complete the course in the shortest number of strokes. Take a trip back in time and revisit your youth. Share something special with your grandkids!
- Open daily from 10am until 5/6pm (depending on the weather!)
- Just £3 for adults, £2 for children and £10 for a family ticket.
- Find them on Facebook
- If you go, please tell them you saw it on Visit Fylde Coast. Thanks!
How playing this game helps disadvantaged people
In the summer of 2018, two groups, Blackpool Street Angels and Fulfilling Lives were litterpicking one day and spotted the potential in the dilapidated site.
Blackpool Fulfilling Lives is a National Lottery Community Funded project. They agreed to fund the development, with Street Angels as partners. Together they sought permission to renovate the site from landowners Blackpool Council. Other community leaders and the Civic Trust also offered advice and support.
Teams of volunteers with first hand experience of homelessness and other forms of multiple disadvantage carried out the restoration. Braving the elements for weeks, they poured concrete, cleared, weeded and painted to get the course ready for relaunch.
The renovation project officially launched on 20 May 2019.
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Unfortunately the Covid pandemic created unavoidable postponements. But volunteers redoubled their efforts to be ready for the reopening in 2021.
Princess Parade Crazy Golf through the years
This Crazy Golf course at Princess Parade was approved in a Blackpool Council meeting in 1956 and opened the following year. Extremely popular it soon appeared on seaside postcards and holiday photos alike.
It remained in use for three decades before falling into decline with changing tastes. After finally closing in the early 1980s it had one or two brief periods of reopening but never really regained its former glory.
Thankfully, Princess Parade and the Sunken Gardens are deemed to be of special architectural and/or historic interest. They’re part of the Talbot Square Conservation Area, so been saved from vanishing forever.
History of Crazy Golf
The game of Crazy Golf, also known as minigolf, goofy golf or mini-putt developed in the early part of the 20th centure, becoming a really popular leisure activity throughout Europe and the USA.
It’s a fun, accessible and fiercely competitive game of golf, without the space or time needed for a full time course. Over the years the number of obstacles, tunnels and ramps increased to heighten the challenge.
The earliest known example of a miniature golf course dates from 1867 at The Ladies Putting Club of St Andrews. Skegness is the location of the first ‘Crazy Golf’ and seaside resorts became allied with the game.
Blackpool was no exception, and courses soon appeared along the promenade, in parks and public gardens. It became as much a part of your holiday as buying a stick of rock, riding a donkey or touring the illuminations.
Bet you didn’t know that, along with increasing popularity, it even has its own governing body!
Cash prize tournaments and recognised titles are overseen by the World Minigolf Sport Federation. It’s most popular in Europe and the US, but played all around the world. The WMF has more than 60 member nations!
While you’re here…
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