Client: Blackpool Council/ Merlin Entertainments
Construction budget: £10million
Completion date: 2011

Working closely with Blackpool Council and the global visitor attractions specialist Merlin Entertainments, Kay Elliott restored the grandeur and heritage of the Tower Ballroom and Tower Circus located in the tower podium and added two new contemporary global attractions.

This unique project features the reconfiguration of visitor flows, imaginative wayfinding, the sensitive integration of new structure within the tower complex revealing the original structure. It also signals regeneration on Blackpool’s iconic waterfront. 

The Blackpool Tower Dungeons takes a fun look at the North-West’s most horrible history and the Blackpool Tower Eye, is a 4D cinema experience in which a 3D film combines with the addition of physical effects in a specially constructed theatre. A specially made film charts Blackpool’s history with detail so realistic that you can even smell the donkeys and feel the spray from the sea.

This is linked to a spectacular new observation deck at the top of the steel structure where a new viewing platform has been constructed with a 4.15 tonne glass floor, so after discovering Blackpool’s history visitors can look down on the present-day promenade, hundreds of feet below.

Images: Donal McCann